The Penny Drops

YTD: +$40751.85

At last the penny drops…and I did think about the hand from the last post before making the bet:

PokerStars Omaha Pot Limit ($5.00/$10.00)

Seat 1: B Buddy ($1059.00 in chips)
Seat 2: the new plan ($1513.50 in chips)
Seat 3: ButchTimothy ($1587.75 in chips)
Seat 4: monster555 ($1675.25 in chips)
Seat 5: Glenmorangie ($379.00 in chips)
Seat 6: Foe ($917.50 in chips) (button)
Seat 7: 936589 ($949.00 in chips) (sb)
Seat 9: Hero ($2221.00 in chips) (bb)
936589 : Post Small Blind ($5.00)
Hero : Post Big Blind ($10.00)
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [ 2h 2c Tc Qd ]
B Buddy : folds
the new plan : folds
ButchTimothy : folds
monster555 : folds
Glenmorangie : folds
Foe : calls $10.00 (button)
936589 : calls $5.00 (sb)
Hero : checks (bb)
*** FLOP *** [6s As 2d]
936589 : checks (sb)
Hero : bets $20.00 (bb)
Foe : calls $20.00 (button)
936589 : Fold (sb)
*** TURN *** [6s As 2d] [8c]
Hero : bets $60.00 (bb)
Foe : calls $60.00 (button)
*** RIVER *** [6s As 2d 8c] [Kh]
Hero : bets $187.00 (bb)

(I BET THE FULL POT :-)

Foe : calls $187.00 (button)

I win and beat his two pair!

Shallow Draughts Intoxicate the Brain

YTD: +$40285.80

I don’t consider myself to be an expert by any means. I KNOW, from long experience (and detailed spreadsheets) that I am a good player relative to the people I play, and my wife has the money to prove it :-)

One of the reasons I created this blog, beside vanity, was that I hoped to get insight into my own play by the process of writing about it. I know that a lot of Internet posters feel the same. What has also happened, of which I am very grateful, is that some of the top Internet minds occasionally hang here and post some great stuff too. READ THE COMMENTS!

Originally it was the Sklansky-like Aksu, well Sklansky-like in his brevity :-), who pointed out that a fold I had been proud of for years was actually a bad one. Now several people have pointed out that a play I had put up as a good one, was actually a bad one.

They are right.

I didn’t spot the flush draw on the flop on the hand below. I think that I may not have spotted it when I played the hand either, which is worse. Or I discounted it, which is much worse. My foe, if he has Aces, has a 14% chance (correct me if I’m wrong) of having the nut flush draw. This doesn’t seem much, but it greatly diminishes all my best out situations on the flop.

Actually this reinforces my lack of thought theme from the last post. I nearly always auto-raise in these situations so that just putting the brakes on this was some achievement, although so focused on the trees, the forest fell in on me.

I need to do some more thinking.

Do the Right Thing

YTD: +$34795.25

I’ve been back in the PLO game again and it’s made me realize that one of my problems is lack of thinking. And I must say that I think that this is fairly endemic on the net. I don’t mean not thinking in the blindly stupid way, although I do that too. But simply making too many routine actions. This is even more critical in PLO where many situations are NOT routine, and a little thought would greatly maximize the earn on the hand. Here are some examples. One in which I lost, but I liked the play…the other in which I won but thought the play sucked.

PokerStars - Omaha Pot Limit ($5.00/$10.00)

Seat 1: CHUFTY ($1380.05 in chips) (sb)
Seat 2: allaw ($400.00 in chips) (bb)
Seat 3: Rinehart ($1652.25 in chips)
Seat 4: F.U.N. ($175.50 in chips)
Seat 5: wedel ($654.00 in chips)
Seat 6: Tommie ($967.25 in chips)
Seat 7: Hero ($2301.40 in chips)
Seat 8: fabsoul ($705.00 in chips)
Seat 9: BTDT ($1157.00 in chips) (button)
CHUFTY : Post Small Blind ($5.00)
allaw : Post Big Blind ($10.00)
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [ 7c 9c Th Jc ]
Rinehart : folds
F.U.N. : folds
wedel : calls $10.00
Tommie : folds
Hero : raises $30.00

(Yes I’m playing loose here but I was trying too build a more aggressive style)

fabsoul : folds
BTDT : calls $30.00 (button)
CHUFTY : folds (sb)
allaw : folds (bb)
wedel : raises $125.00

(It’s a limp reraise, so almost certainly pocket AA, unless he is especially tricky or loose, which he hasn’t shown himself to be so far. My hand is value against an AA)

Hero : calls $105.00
BTDT : folds (button)
*** FLOP *** [Kd Jd 4c]
wedel : bets $312.00

(A gambling play in PLO when you think someone has AA is to raise them if you have hit the flop in any way whatsoever. I considered it, but rejected it as HE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PASS. If I hit my hand I still get paid, and if the board pairs I will be glad I didn’t put him all in.)

Hero : calls $312.00
*** TURN *** [Kd Jd 4c] [Kh]
wedel : bets $207.00 and is all-in

(Uggh, the board pairs. I’m getting just less than 6 to 1 on the call. If you run through all the permutations here, even including a chance that you are in front, it becomes a clear pass, especially as your being in front % decreases based on the foe.)

Hero : Fold
wedel : collected $936.00 from pot
On the other hand…here’s one I won, BUT didn’t like!

PokerStars Omaha Pot Limit ($5.00/$10.00)

Seat 2: BTDT ($563.00 in chips) (bb)
Seat 3: Camille ($701.00 in chips)
Seat 4: Hero ($1654.25 in chips)
Seat 5: wedel ($2749.25 in chips)
Seat 6: gilgamor ($1056.00 in chips) (button)
Seat 9: Smart Ace ($866.90 in chips) (sb)
Smart Ace : Post Small Blind ($5.00)
BTDT : Post Big Blind ($10.00)
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [ 2d 5c Qc Kd ]

(I’m very loose here, but the game was strangely passive)

Camille : calls $10.00
Hero : calls $10.00
wedel : folds
gilgamor : folds (button)
Smart Ace : calls $5.00 (sb)
BTDT : checks (bb)

(woohoo I won the button)

*** FLOP *** [6c Qs 9c]
Smart Ace : bets $38.00 (sb)
BTDT : Fold (bb)
Camille : Fold

(This is a thin call, but we’re playing implied odds here. I felt this foe was particularly unlikely to be betting out with a draw.)

Hero : calls $38.00
*** TURN *** [6c Qs 9c] [Kh]
Smart Ace : checks (sb)

(Nice card, and foe slows right down...a chance to bluff with outs, or even maybe be in front)

Hero : bets $90.00
Smart Ace : calls $90.00 (sb)
*** RIVER *** [6c Qs 9c Kh] [Ks]
Smart Ace : checks (sb)

(I’ve got a lock. The question is how much to bet. I almost always underbet the pot in every situation so this would look natural. However, and this is a big however, what kind of hand could he call ANY bet with here. The str8 is unlikely and if he missed the flush he’s gone. A small bet may provoke a bluff reraise but this is v v v unlikely. So the situation is, he is either going to pass no matter what I bet, or he will call any bet, because he had trips on the flop and now has an underfull, but probably hopes I have a str8. Betting the pot is clear here.)

Hero : bets $170.00

(arrrrghhhh)

Smart Ace : calls $170.00 (sb)

(he does have an underfull :-( )

One of the first things you learn as a successful cash player is that it is decisions, not pots that count. As an old poker friend used to say, “putting your money in well”. Its important not to let the high speed and frankly dumb play on the net let this early lesson fade.

In Vino Veritas

YTD: +$27808.75

Wow, we are having some great threads again in the comments. Check out two poker minds discussing excellent tourney strategy. Most of what needs to be said there has already been said, but FWIW I think that Tommy Angelo, a great antidote to Sklanskyism on the 2+2 forums, gets it right when he says “the decisions that haunt us the most are the ones that matter the least.” I think Chaos’s hand is right on the cusp and could be essentially neutral as to the decision, with a slight tilt to the +EV side. And I would have gone allin too.

However, and this is a big HOWEVER, there is a meta-game situation to be considered. Chaos is normally great on these matters, but doesn’t reveal them here. (I'M EDITING HERE...CHAOS DID MENTION THEM, IN DETAIL...I WAS TOO DUMB TO NOTICE :) Basically do the table conditions, stage of tourney, quality of players etc, override the technical, mostly mathematic decision you have to make? Of course override is an inaccurate term – if you could reduce these intangibles to a mathematical % then of course they could be factored in. It’s just hard over the table :-) Perhaps an example would make things clearer.

I was recently in the US as part of a sales brainwashing for my new job. Smashed out of my face and jet lagged, I stumbled into a one table poker tourney amongst some of my new colleagues! Anyone who has been to the states recently would be amazed at how massive poker has become. The ESPN coverage of the WSOP was on every day, sometimes even pushing log rolling and dog jumping off the schedule (don’t ask.)

Soon my charade of clueless Englishman had fallen, and we were 4 handed with the top 3 spots paying 50-30-20. The sums were fairly small – I was too pissed to remember – but first was something like 240 bucks and the only sum really worth shooting for. A key hand came up as a battle of the blinds. The SB made a small raise and I called with suited nonsense in the BB. The flop came A high with two of my suit. After going through the whole repartee of Mike Caro’s Book of Tells, he did everything but burst into tears, he finally, reluctantly, begrudgingly moved allin. So clearly he had an Ace :-)

Incredibly, considering my very, very debilitated situation I went into deep thought. The maths was, or seemed close. Although I wasn’t getting quite 2 to 1, if I won this hand I would be a monster chip leader and a favourite for 1st. As Chaos would say, my utility value was skewed for 1st. :-) However, if I called and lost I would be very short stacked and have to win the next two or three showdowns to get back into contention. But. But. These guys weren’t Internet players. Although they played poorly, they were not bonkers aggressive and very much disliked calling and making big bets. So far I was the only person to have gone allin in the session. If I passed I would still have a playable stack and more than enough to make people pass their blinds. And these blinds were chunky and more than worth winning. So through a befuddled daze of alcohol, incredibly, I passed.

The meta game factors were very important in this case.

Now clearly you don’t want to go to Phil Hellmuth-like extremes, but sometimes stopping and thinking about bigger issues in the game, especially online, can pay dividends.

(I won the tourney of course.)

No Sleep to Brooklyn

YTD: +$27801.25

12 hours + to complete a WCOOP event. Yikes! I didn't enter my dead money into the 500 event tonight and I am now seriously thinking about selling my seat for the PLO too. I just can't play that long. I don't want to play that long. When I got up bright and early the other day and they were STILL PLAYING I felt ill. I guess I will never hit the big time :-(

For a change, a limit hand I quite like:

I'm in the usual insane 30-60 Omaha hilo game on Stars and raise in late position with 9d 5d 2s As and I pick up three callers. The flop comes 4h Tc 8c and everyone checks to me...I check! The reason for this is that I have no shot for high, and this being Stars, no chance of taking the pot here. Also I may get check raised by a whole range of hands. The turn comes a Jc and the pot is bet and raised coming to me. What would you do?

(pause for thought)

I passed. Even though it was limit.

In analysis later I was more than pleased with this surprising, to me at least, decision. Looking at all the permutations is tricky, so instead I looked at the best case to see whether I had pot odds. Best case is that all my lows are good, there are no more raises on the turn and I will not be quartered. The math for this is straightforward and clearly showed that even for this ideal world, I don't have the right price to see the river. Therefore QED for a more realistic case where I would have been very -EV.

All the money I must have lost glibbly pressing the "call" button. Yuck.

Past My Sell-by Date

YTD: +$23552.45

I really thought my name was on the prize of the WCOOP PLO8b tourney.  I know I am very good at the game.  I know the field isn’t.  I am not going to play a lot of the WCOOP but this was the one that I felt supremely confident about.

I played crap.

Or rather for 4 hours I played well, except for about 3 hands where I played just as bad as you possibly can.  Crucially, I bet top and bottom pair into a big field, and kept betting it even though the warning lights were going off.  As the line goes in one of my favourite Simpson’s: “Is a flashing red light ever a good sign?”  I ignored it and effectively crippled myself.

The problem with tournaments now for me is that I almost never play them.  This year I have played less than 50, discounting sitngo’s and satellites.  I simply don’t sit down for 5 -10 hours at a stretch anymore.  I’m starting to think that mentally and physically I can’t sit down for that long.  Also, when playing cash plo8b I always have at least 100 big blinds in front of me.  My whole style of play has developed around the big implied odds of a big stack.  Of course you simply never get the same stack sizes in a tourney, especially in the later stages.  So plo8b becomes “tourney poker”.  Ho hum.

I have qualified for the PLO and I will definitely play that.  I may also play the NLHE 500, not because I like my chances – I don’t – but because if I’m going to get lucky, I may as well have the best return for my investment.  Let the poker gods be kind :-)

Thanks again folks for the comments…keep them coming.  And if you’re a newbie, check out the comments, they’re often better than the posts!

The Evolutionary Cycle: PLO and PLO8b

YTD: +$25260.00
 
I read the other day that there is more genetic difference between chimpanzees in a pack than in the entire human race.  So although at a very basic level, we are all the same as human beings, boy, are there some differences at our level of perception.  PLO and PLO8b are very much the same at a mechanical level and to the uninitiated they look, smell and taste alike.  But again at a higher level they are radically different, to such an extent that a mediocre but a little unthinking PLO player could get creamed in a PLO8b game – as I did when I first learned the game in the School of Reading :-)  Perhaps looking at how a PLO game evolves over time, versus a PLO8b game, and importantly how a player becomes successful, will shed some light.

PLO:

Stage 1: Blast Off

Everyone plays the game like NLHE.  Explosions are everywhere.  Big pots all in before the flop.  A wrap is 8 outs, once the word is discovered.  Bluffing is all but impossible except for rare grizzly (bare) ace moves.  Winning player simply play the nuts.  It’s that easy.  Incredibly some games do not move beyond this stage a la the North of England smaller PLO games.

Stage 2: Raising has been outlawed
 
All the loose gooses have had their fingers burnt.  Play is ultra cautious with almost no raising preflop, even with Aces (because then everyone KNOWS you have aces!)  A wrap is now 13+ outs and is understood to be ok, but better with a flush draw.  Big pots only happen when a big hand hits a big draw.  Winning players start to loosen up their game, making moves and raising with a range of strong hands and draws.  Very loose, but intelligent gamblers, can blow these rock-fests apart.  Paradoxically, good players start to see that they may have a point.  You can’t beat a rocky game by playing tighter.

Stage 3:  Equilibrium, but at a hell of a cost

Good players have realized that excellent players are putting moves on them and start to lower their standards.  Bottom trips has stopped being a pass to a raise and become a reraise.  Gambling, with skill, has become legal.  Losing players, both tight and loose, will have enough good days that the game becomes sustainable.  Unfortunately the price for a regular game is variance that shoots through the roof.

Now, for PLO8b:

Stage 1: Blast Off

Looks familiar.  Remember the gene thing :-)  PLO8b is just as bonkers in the early stages as PLO, sometimes more so, as players think any low is as good as the nut low.

Stage 2: Mug Murderers Row
 
The power of A2 is firmly understood.  High hands are in their place.  The penny drops on freerolls.  The game becomes one of waiting for a mug to sit down and then for the sharks to descend in a feeding frenzy.

Stage 3: IGHN

No more fish enter the pool…good players realize that there are better ways to spend their time and the game dissolves.

Because of this, there has never been a sustainable PLO8b game on the Net.

And if you are sitting down in a PL Omaha game of either type, it’s good to understand where it is in its evolution.

Lights Go Out, Walls Come Tumbling Down

YTD: +$25862.09

It’s deja vu, all over again.

The reason I stopped playing the plo on Stars was the variance was too distressing.  So in a leap of sublime logic, the games get bigger and looser so I jump in :-)  In a few hours of play I win 5k….only to then loose 6k on the way down.   The games were so loose that the 6k loss could easily have been a 6k win!  So in true gambling fashion I have “only” lost a grand.  But some secret ungambling part of my psyche keeps on reminding me that the other 5k was actually MINE, dammit.

Anyway, back to the grind…

BTW, those of you that want to see the dark side of Dan N’s moon, as per my last post, look through some of his older posts on rgp through Google.  Searching by his name as author and Annie Duke as subject can be especially rewarding.  You will find him:

1.  Sucking up to an infamous cheat, calling Doyle Brunson a “fat cheat”, then tries to back pedal out of it saying he was “looking for information”.

2.  Hassling and threatening a long-time, mostly harmless rgper, in a drunken rage, challenging him to a headsup match which he couldn’t have played as by his own admission he was skint.

3.  Having spent several sycophantic years praising Annie Duke not just as the best female, but also as one of the best poker players in the world, he then “outs” her, at first anonymously but rapidly not so, as a bad player, a bad person and someone with poor hygiene!  Incredibly, he says that he doesn’t want to be a hypocrite and wants to just tell it as it is.

Hey, the more I think of it, maybe he is a good advert for poker.  Or at least a true one.

Revert to Type

YTD: + $31253.79
 
Apologies to my regular readers for my extended absence - work had dragged me to the US of A for a week and I have been a poker free zone except for a couple of hours today and yesterday.  Good hours though :-)
 
Scanning through cardplayer.com I found a most stunning article by Dan Negreanu.  Check out his latest one and see what you think.  I don't want to comment on it directly and spoil your fun, but it did remind me of how idolised he is on the Internet, and how contrary his public, recorded, actions are to that image, self-promoted or not.  I do believe that he is probably a nice guy to have a beer with, and certainly an excellent poker player, but like a lot of people with exceptional gifts matched with exceptional egos, he believes that "I'm in the right, now what's the question?"  Anyone with a memory and knowledge of rgp over 3-5 years can see that his integrity is certainly up for question.  It's nice to see him revert to type in this article.
 
There are two diseases rampant on the Net - Doyle Disease and Stuey Syndrome.  Doyle Disease is the mindless idolisation of people whom you have never met and know almost nothing except Nth hand hype; Stuey Syndrome is the firm belief that you can play any cards and out think and outplay any opponent as the reincarnation of Mr S Ungar himself.  One is embarrassing, the other is costly.  You are who you are.  If you start from that, you've got a chance.
 
"Everywhere you go, there you are"

Darling Buds of May

YTD: +$26615.34

Some people have commented on how well I am running since starting the blog. One of the reasons I looked to start the blog, beyond blind egotism, was that the pressure to post my results would perhaps make me more focused on how I play. With the exception of a $2k blip yesterday, this has mostly been the case. Of course, the simple day-to-day statistics hide a hell of a lot of variance. The $1k increase in the last two days has been a rollercoaster of a $6k swing. But so far my blog has been all clear blue skies and the sweet smell of success. Which is of course the smell of banknotes :-) Today I wanted to talk about a time where the skies were dark and stormy and the bitter vinegar taste of despair were my companions. Black May.

I had been rushing for most of March and April, fairly much crushing the PLO game on Stars. Going back to the maths thing, I knew from my analysis that I was rushing, and I expected there to be some kind of correction, just not one so severe and unrelenting.

Day after day losing without a glimmer of victory. Every draw missed. Eventually it became clear that I was playing with the desperation and fear of someone needing to win, and my decision making was tilting southwards. To my mind, these emotions go hand-in-hand in a bad run, especially in big bet poker. Fearful of losing again, you start to make poor decisions; desperate to actually create a winning session, you start to gamble more in spite of the nagging fear. The best part of $10k down I decided to have a harsh look at my game. I was playing marginally badly, drawing just the wrong side of the odds. Also, even though I wasn’t get the right price on these hands, 2:1 for a 7:3 draw for example, you would expect to hit them now and again. I had missed them all. On further reflection, the game itself had got tougher. Whereas before there were probably 6 fish to 3 solid players, now the ratios were probably reversed. To make things worse, all the good players were also gamblers and unfortunately, one of the problems of PLO is that good players still end up playing one another, normally with ever decreasing edges.

With all this in mind I decided to switch games to limit holdem. Unfortunately this is where I had a slight brain fart and jumped right into the Stars 30-60 game. This game can often be good, but more often is a rock fest. To make things worse, I didn’t have enough money on Stars to play the game comfortably. I went on a terrible run, getting great cards but losing with them – I was actually -$ on “even a chimp could win with them hands” like AA-QQ. The relentless losing was becoming depressing, especially as I was between jobs and this was my full time wage. Finally I switched to my old home of 10-20 Omaha on Party. I had abandoned limit Omaha before as I felt it brought out the worst in me from a tilt perspective - the games at Party were truly bonkers and the extreme suckouts seemed to frustrate me more than simple holdem ones. This time was no exception and my play rapidly disintegrated.

I was half way through the month, a vitally key month as a full time pro, and I had lost more than $20k.

To say I was at a loss is an understatement. This was by far my worse ever losing run in 8 years. The last time I had lost on this scale, it was only $10k and I was so despondent that I dropped from 30-60 Omaha to 3-6 for a couple of months. There was some light at the end of the tunnel. Aksu had been having excellent results multitabling the 15-30 holdem on Party and this encouraged me to have a final fling there. The rest, as they say, is history :-)

(I clawed back 6k in May and have been rocking and rolling ever since.)

What lessons can be learned from this? I do feel that how you handle the bad times is a critical factor of being a poker player. Anyone can handle winning, but the streets are lined with the sun-bleached bones of poker players who could not handle the downswings. Although my game deteriorated, I also KNEW it was happening so I could do something about it. I kept calm. I tried new games. My analytical nature helped as I could see when I was being unlucky (holdem), when I was being bad (Omaha) and when I was being both! (PLO). Beside the very stupid decision to jump into the 30-60 game, I am quite proud how I handled my month from hell.

Men Must be Pampered or Destroyed

YTD: +$25632.34

Thanks again to all posters and lurkers to my site. It's a real buzz seeing the feedback, especially from folks who keep on coming back. My advice is to check out the comments yourselves; I’m certainly getting a lot from them. And beside my own personal self-aggrandizement, that's what this is all about :-)

Two direct questions from old sparring partners on THM and elsewhere - Chaos and Redsimon. Chaos, I don’t keep direct track of rake except for limit holdem. And as I'm playing a lot of PLO8b (and previously PLO) a rake figure cannot be done. In limit my rake is probably in line with any ring game winning player, i.e. a lot but not quite as much as short handed. I still seem to be winning the prediction :-)

Red, I'm not playing off a huge stack by some people's standards - certainly not Aksu's :-) I have just over $35k floating around either in dollar accounts or sites and I'm mostly leaving it in them, although I am following Rolf S's secondary bankroll scheme. If P T means tournaments then truth be told, beside some SnG action, I'm mostly cash only of late. I have played less than 70 proper tournies this year, which by most online standards is tiny.

The topic for today was sparked off by a comment by Andy Ward on THM saying that cash players have to have a "...ruthless streak. Let me expand on the last one - you have to be able to take someone for everything they've got, goad them into borrowing money they don't have, and then take that as well, leaving them in the gutter, then go home, look yourself in the eye in the mirror and sleep the sleep of the just." Now Andy was exaggerating to make his point but this stereotype does exist. The Victoria Casino in London is renowned for creating the grinding pro who treats everyone as grist to his mill, treating strangers and losing players as “stars” to be mocked whilst being financially dismantled.

I can remember playing in a cash game in the Vic once, where on just sitting down in a short handed game I was check raised out of the only significant pot played in 5 minutes. Then the table charge was due and everyone sat out, talked amongst themselves and the game broke up, myself several hundred pounds lighter. It was clear that everyone else at the table knew each other and no one said a single word to me. I do not for one second believe that anything was amiss, just what a typically foolish reaction of the players there, not knowing I was the biggest fish to flop on their plates in some time, not to engage in some common, decent courtesy.

My view has always been that whilst the actions of the game should be undertaken without fear or favour, there is plenty of room for the human touch, humour, good spirit and friendliness. I try to keep the game light hearted. Many times I have told players that through their “cards spoken” that they have beat me, when they haven’t noticed it themselves, sometimes for serious money. Last year, in one of my very rare live appearances, I had a terrible run in a cash game. In a holdem pot I hit runner-runner flush to lose to a higher one. In the same game, I had the nut straight and top trips in a PLO8b hand vs bottom trips and a str8 wrap and was scooped. To be fair I had played poorly as well, but I was feeling somewhat despondent as this was a “guest” live appearance and not likely to be repeated too soon. The best part of a grand down, I had money in my pocket still, but decided enough was enough. I then went round and individually congratulated and shook the hands of the guys who had bust me, wishing them well.

The fact is that any kind of winning player, certainly in pot limit games where the pool of players and potential players is very limited, must accept that it is much better for players to “like” losing to them than to fear or dislike them. For most losing players Poker is a recreation, it must be felt to be enjoyable and they must “get something” from it. It is far more profitable, and fun for all concerned, for them to get a feeling of camaraderie and entertainment, than sly looks and “see you next time” grins.

The Wrong Move at the Right Time

YTD: +$24788.09

I thought that today we would look at a poker hand. I must state up front that I do not like the way I played the hand at all. I did think at the time that I was gambling and that my chances were fair, but not huge, especially as it was a pot limit Omaha eight-or-better (plo8b) hand where I am normally looking to play large edges. I’ve started playing plo8b again for a couple of reasons: there are games for reasonable stakes again and they seem to be lasting; it’s my best game and my edge in them over the average to good player is very large, based on my slightly biased opinion and many years of results :-) In general it is unusual for me to change games when I am running good…and I was running very good in the 15-30 Party madness, but this form has continued and then some in the plo8b games too.

In the hand in question I’m dealt the reasonable starter of Ad As 4h 3c and even better, get my favourite action with this kind of hand – a raise before me. My tactic, quite simply, is to reraise and hopefully isolate myself against an A2 kind of hand over which I am a nice favourite. Things work out a little strangely however. I end up setting allin THREE other players preflop, for a nice just under $1k pot. Let’s peak under the felt and see what monsters caused this action,

Hero: Ad As 4h 3c
Foe 1: 5c Ah 2c 6c – the original raiser, he then called off his $300 stack to repeated raises
Foe 2: Js 9c Ac 4s – after only calling $4, he then raised his whole $220 stack cold in with this.
Foe 3: Jc 8d 5d Qs - ??? after only calling $4, he then called off his $80 stack with this beast.

So having played God a little, let’s extend our powers and see who is favourite at this point….that’s right FOE 3! Counter-intuitively, I am almost exactly EV neutral – my equity is the same as the probability of my winning, yet Foe 3 has a fairly chunky 30% EV, a nice 5% improvement (yes I know that we haven’t all put in the same money but I’m simplifying here for all (my) sakes :-)

This nicely illustrates my first point, which is that plo8b should not be a big action game preflop, as it is rare to have a massive edge allin at this stage. Interestingly, if I had achieved my expected result and ended up against the hands I would expect to dominate, I would have had nearly a 7% edge, and heads-up against the a2 hand a massive 16% edge. For a transaction that only lasts 30 seconds these are good ROIs.

The flop came a satisfying:

5s Th 2h

So where are we know, EV wise?

I have suddenly shot into an incredible 56% equity position, more than 100% greater than my average chance. I am now sat back, smoking cigars and sipping Courvoisier, whilst my foes are fighting over the scraps from the table. This illustrates my second point beautifully. Plo8b is a game of massive edges, from the flop onwards. Okay I didn’t actually play it that way, but I did say at the start that my play sucked.

Oh, and if you’re interested, the ten paired the turn, the river blanked and I scooped :-)

The River Runs Through Me

YTD: +$24237.29

I recently checked out the one of Andy Glazer’s new articles. I have very mixed views on Mr. Glazer. On the one hand he writes extremely well and that writing is informed by at the very least reasonable poker skills. This is a marked contrast to the other popular writers out there who seem barely able to tell a flush from a straight. On the other hand, his moral compass seems a little off from true North. He continually defends the indefensible in Phil H’s behaviour; he thinks Daniel N is a man of integrity; worst of all he made a massive mistake in his reporting of the WSOP 2002 Big One and simply did not change it, despite it being pointed out. This shows a lack of respect for both his readers and his work.

Anyway, the article was basically saying that poker is a card game, at a basic level, and that poker is a people game at an advanced one. This to me seems to be missing a fundamental point, that at its core, underlying both, poker is a game of mathematics. Anyone looking at some of the posts on rgp from Howard L can see that at the very top level, many of the players have an extremely strong underpinning in the maths of the game. As some of the hand examples we have looked at here, sometimes the maths situation supercedes the psychology. And clearly, you can be successful in some poker fields, such as tournaments, without any strong understanding of the maths at all – Phil H recently bet that AK offsuit was a favourite over AK suited :-) But how much better a player would he be if he stopped passing those 4 to 1 favourite situations just because he does not want to put his stack in jeopardy?

A simple use of the mathematics of poker is to use it as a barometer of your play. Were you lucky in a hand? Did the maths justify your actions? How much “extra” do the intangibles of the play have to make up for the shortfall in the equity you have? There are numerous sims that can do this for you, but it is still good to hand crank the numbers through a spreadsheet and get a feel for a situation. I am convinced that one of the factors that contributed to my improvement in playing PL games was my determination and perseverance in examining difficult situations on a regular basis in just this way.

If you wanted to sail, the cards may be the boat of your play, with people skills and psychology the rudder and sail. But where would you be without the ocean? Navigating a complex tributary, you’re not going to get far without the river. Mathematics is this undercurrent beneath our complex, people and cards game.

Not so much whether God plays dice, but how God plays dice

YTD: +$22564.69

The quote above is by Ian Stewart, the British mathematician, and I thought it really fitted what I wanted to talk about today, and poker in general. One of the beauties of writing about poker and one of the main motivators for me in doing that mostly thankless task, is that it makes you think about your own game, giving rise to revelations from the Poker Gods you may otherwise miss whilst checking, raising and putting in the semi-bluffs. Often these can come from the action of putting metaphoric pen to paper, sometimes, as in this case, from a comment or statement from another player - btw I’d really like to thank all the commentators so far...please check out the great comments and keep on posting; remember "hits make BDD happy!" :-)

The comment in question was from my dear Internet pal, Aksu. On the post about my plo8b pass he said he did not like it. In true Sklansky fashion, he didn't actually say why (I could almost see a "I will leave it to others to elaborate" tagged on the end :-) As I have a lot of respect for Aksu's play, this got me thinking. I felt my gut feel, my read of the situation, then and now was correct. But what about the math? The math is easy, and quite horrified me. I need to be at least 66% certain that I'm being 3/4d to make the pass. Let's call that 70% (how can you judge 4%!). That is a hell of a lot of certainty. Considering how long I thought about it at the time, I must have only been maybe 80% sure at best. The decision is basically irrelevant.

It struck me that many poker decisions, which we often think are reads, or gut plays, or psychology, are either underpinned or overwritten by simple mathematical necessity. Some examples are drawing on the turn in pot limit Omaha when you feel you are up against a made hand; calling an allin bet in no-limit holdem or even making a river bet in limit holdem; my hand and of course the hand I describe that Vlad played too. It seems more glamourous to go on our instincts, to have the "certainty" of "looking into the soul" of our opponent. But maybe we should also be adjusting our slide rules and calculating how God plays dice.

(I’ve now decided that what I SHOULD have done in the hand in question is toss my foe 10 pounds and at the same time muck my hand immediately, thanking him for saving me money :-)

How many people actually ENJOY a game of Omaha?

YTD: +$20851.69

This post was sparked off by one of The Hendon Mob forum's most prominent posters. Needless to say he doesn't post about poker a hell of a lot. The general thrust of the thread was that Pot Limit Omaha was a very dull game, mostly revolving around playing the nuts without the flair of big bet holdem. My view was different:

----------------

What you are describing is a means to which you can seperate mug players from their money and is the starting point of a strong game. Its also probably all you need versus such players and is also really the complete heart of a game such as plo8b, the ultimate mug murderer :-)

However when you start playing better players, you can take it to a different level, and the psychology, tells, reads and the other intangibles come into play. Maybe some examples would help.

Back in the annals of time, I raised on the button with QJ98 double suited. A short stacked fish and a strong limper called. The flop came AT8, two of my suit. The fish went allin for a trivial amount and the strong player raised the pot to about 200 or so quid. This was an interesting move by him, considering that I am seen as a tight player and may have the Aces. My view was that this move could have been with two pair or lower trips and the foe in question was good enough to pass to a reraise, representing the Aces. I moved in for another 3-400 quid and the foe called...he actually had the trip aces and lost to my flush on the river, but the thinking remains the same. So even though this hand was at the very start of my career, it shows that it is possible to represent and make moves beyond just peddling the nuts.

More recently, and more interestingly, I played a small pot against another strong tight player. I limped in with high cards and the flop came KJT mixed suits. I had AQ and hence the nuts. The tight player bet out utg. Conventional play is to raise here but my thinking was different. I was fairly sure he had the same hand, and I had no improvers. Maybe a sneakier play was available. The turn was a blank, and our foe bet the pot again. Now I know he has the nuts too. I just call. The last card pairs the board and the foe checks. I bet about 3/4 of the pot. The foe passes and I win a nice pot with exactly the same hand where a conventional maths lead play would lead to a simple split pot.

Monkeys regularly write the complete works of Shakespeare

YTD: +$20852.59 (curse you work :-)

The Hendon Mob has mostly deteriorated as a forum, that is assuming you actually want to talk about poker. One of the few interesting threads was from a guy, Vlad, who made a massive jump up to the 10-20 NL game on Laddies for the first time. Basically he calls a raise mid-late position with AcTc, is checked to on a 2c 3c 4s, he bets the pot $400 and is reraised allin for his $1600 stack (he also mentions that this is basically his case money.) His foe had 4d6d and our hero hits his flush. Here’s the feedback we gave him on his play:
----------------------

Posted by Big Dave D on 15/2/2004, 8:48 pm

Ok. A true story first. The first time I was a pro, £100 comps were comparatively rare in the North. Out of the blue, a complete unknown won the first prize in a Stockport £100 comp, no deals done. By a bizarre coincidence, there was actually another £100 comp somewhere else in the North that month. He won that outright too. So in the space of one month he had won the best part of £30K, all the way back in 1996. I later played with this self-same player and it was abundantly clear that HE KNEW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT POKER. Not that he didn't know the odds of AK vs. KK, I mean to the extent that he may have actually struggled to understand the ranking of hands.

What's the point of this story? Well, I have wanted to get it off my chest for a while, but also, more importantly, I like to keep it in mind to remind me of how much damn luck there is in this game.

It seems that a lot of posts on this forum are by people who could do well to remember this story.

To the hand in question. I'm not awfully found of the cold call with ATs. It’s a hand likely to be dominated and I would want a HUUUGE stack vs. the raiser, plus knowing I am a much better player. I actually prefer the QJs UTG as I would then have the raiser on my left, which is greatly preferable, especially in a NL game.

On the flop, the poster raves as if he's got a monster hand. He hasn't. His hand is MUCH better to be putting the final bet in, much worse to be CALLING the final bet. He now cannot bluff his opponent out; he has to make his hand. Of the spectrum of potential hands his foe has, what he shows is just about the absolute weakest. He's far more likely, people and probability wise, to be up against a made hand of some kind. If you run some sims you can see that he is a EV dog to this range of hands. More importantly, this is in a very real sense his case money on Ladbrokes and a large sum of money in the context of his playing life.

If someone had bumped into him in the street and offered to toss a coin for it he would have been astounded, and doubly affronted if he was told he wouldn't be getting even money either. Yet this is what he has voluntarily done here.

----------------------

Then there are some more responses from Vlad:
----------------------

(snipped Vlad saying he is a favourite still)

BDD - There are a variety of sims out there, some free, that can do the work on this. Even if you do a simple mathematical likelihood of hands, you are a dog. And of course the real weighting of the hands is going to be greatly different from this and will strongly favour the made hands. Even if you look at the sim as a final bet of 1600 vs. the pot you only make a tiny profit. And this is somewhat an unreal assumption as you have contrived to make this pot this big yourself with your money...if you had bet 800 for example this would make the resulting call back to you, supposing the same action, even more clear cut, but in the end, although I think that's a superior play, you have really gambled 2000 to win 2400.

(snipped Vlad talking about how a mix of foes would play this differently, but against a random foe he would always make this call.)

BDD - The truth is you know absolutely nothing about your opponent. You have contrived a situation where you now have to be mathematically right. CALLING Allins in the end is mostly a maths situation, whether most people realise it or not, especially when you have no read on the foe. So if you agree with the point I made above and you steadfastly play the hand in this precise way then you will clearly go broke. Putting your money in -EV on a regular basis is just roulette.

VLAD Quote - "I agree, the preflop call was negative EV for 5% of my 100xBB stack, the implied odds perhaps were not there, and I would not make that call every single time. I am much happier playing QJs/10Js or even 45 than A10s"

BDD - you already said that you had passed QJs for a raise even though you had already called the minimum. Also your position was much better in that situation than the one you are in now.

VLAD Quote -"Still, in the end I got the kind flop I was looking for...used to playing in games where my postflop play more than compensates for the loss of EV making loose preflop calls."

BDD - You got a kind of flop you were looking for. The fact that according to your own original mail you called this allin immediately has me worried. Like most flops and situations in big bet poker, unless you have the nuts it’s the action that ultimately dictates whether you "like" a flop. Would you have liked it, for example if your UTG had simply moved allin instead? You talk about having superior postflop play, yet you also state that you have been playing only 18 months...what makes you think your play is superior after such a short sample? How do you know? And how do you know you're not in the "7th best player in the world playing the best 6" in this game?

The truth is that you took a shot in a game on short money and gambled on at very very best a coin toss. There's no shame in this. But no great glory either. Remember my tournament example. Monkeys regularly write the complete works of Shakespeare in this game.

----------------------
Then some more....
----------------------
Re: First experience of mid-stakes NL
Posted by Big Dave D on 16/2/2004, 3:00 pm
Vlad,

I get the kind of feeling that maybe you weren't looking for feedback after all, but as this is the only decent thread we've had on here in 2004, I will persevere:

: VLAD - I have a sim and I am +ve EV vs. the average hand. I may be a dog, but the pot is offering me better than 50-50 so I can afford to be a dog...The only hand I'm a loser against is a set (vs. a straight I'm more or less even money).

Your sim is broke. You are between a 6 to 4, 7 to 3 dog on ALL made hands (sets/str8s.) So the scenario is this...versus a normal player making the call, even giving you the huge benefit of modelling the scenario of how you played the hand on the dead money you yourself have contributed (vs. a simple 2400/2000), this is a LOSING call. Your EV is negative. It only ends up marginally, very marginally profitable if you throw in 64s and 54s as his potential holdings. But how often will he turn out to be that kind of player. Very very rarely. Your reaction on being set allin shouldn’t be great, I'm in fantastic shape but instead sh*t...I need to do some serious thinking and decide whether I need to flip a crooked coin.

: VLAD - Give me a big draw anyday compared to a hand which is strong but not the nuts. That's why I liked the flop.
I like to play in games where I can influence the action, so, yes if UTG had gone all in it would have taken
the action away from me. Oh, and I said my postflop play is good enough to beat the majority of the muppets
on the internet, which is not saying a lot really.

When its allin, and I’m called I don’t care whether I’m drawing or made, I just want it to be +EV. Despite the timbre of this thread, I’m not a big fan of the EV thinking in big bet poker as a carry on from limit thinking. But when you and your foe(s) are allin, with cards to come, EV is the entirety of the game. Also you talk about wanting to influence the action. CALLING on short money with a -EV hand is not influencing anything. You have to be the bettor in this coup.

Lastly you state that your postflop play is better than the majority, yet you have only been playing less than 9 months on the Net. Not meaning to be rude, but you cannot be sure of this. When you have been around even my comparatively short time you see players come and go, flying high on luck and aggression, Icarus-like, and having the same result. Onlinechamp was a beautiful example.

You may think you are great, and you may actually be so, but in 6-9 months you simply cannot know. As our Scottish legal friends say, the case is Not Proven.

: VLAD - As long as there is a tiny +EV I am happy to gamble, provided my roll can sustain the variance.

This is real limit poker thinking. The reason limit holdem players have to pursue tiny EV is because that is all that is available. The game is made up of the accumulation of tiny edges. Most good big bet players are trying to contrive situations where huge chunks of money are getting into the pot when they are significant favourites. Now to generate these you may have to make many slightly -EV decisions to set up the killing coup, especially in holdem, but strictly speaking the whole metaphor of EV kind of falls over in NL/PL except when there is no more money to be bet. You shouldn't be thinking "Great I’ve got a 1% edge, let’s shove my whole stack in". There's just too much variance in the game, and also too many good opportunities downstream to have that kind of approach.
----------------------
To Vlads credit he did later start to challenge some of the assumptions he started of with in this thread.

And Now for Something Completely Different

YTD: +$21461.42

We’ve been getting some great feedback so far, especially on my plo8b hand. But I’m going to park that one for a while and pick up on my thought processes and some general plo8b ideas on my next post. BTW, as some have been interested, I’m currently multi-tabling 15-30 limit holdem on a Party skin, and playing plo8b on Stars when a game 2-4 blinds or bigger is running.

Here is today’s post, which was a debate on rgp whether taking money of the table, sometimes called ratholing, slotting or weeding, should be allowed in big bet games. I came down real strong on this and no-one agreed with me at the time. I still mostly feel I was on track here, although I think my conclusion that stopping the practice, because it hurts good players, would hurt the longevity of the game is way off mark – if anything, reducing the huge advantage that strong players have over the weak in big bet poker could actually be “good for the game”.

“When I said ratholing was bad I was explicitly referring to potlimit and no limit games. If you don't see that I suspect you don't play a lot of big bet poker. You ask if a player takes money off the table he has increased his EV. Although I am not comfortable with the concept of EV in big bet poker (bbp), I would say that if he was a bad player then YES he had increased his winning chances. IMHO, here's why:

As stack sizes increase in live bbp the complexity of the game shoots through the roof. This is why so many tourney players, even bbp ones, struggle in the cash equivalents. Just to take a simple example, in a headsup Omaha pot, calling a £30 bet preflop could result, if you go to the river, calling a £810 bet on the river - and that's with no raising! This creates much more complex situations than the typical limit situation, where gaining and saving bets are the more common dilemma. This means that good players have to be able to play big stacks...in fact knowing how to manipulate pots in relation to stack sizes is a very key skill in bbp.

Basically you have to play your cards, knowing that every penny in front of you is in potential jeopardy in any one hand. So if you accept this empirical principle then it is clear that it is in the bad player's interest to have less money on the table. Anyone who has played any degree of bbp will recognise that bad players almost unconsciously understand this, as they try and "slot" money off the table to secure their win.

Some other common mistakes that happen when bad players have big stacks you could term "no fear" and "too much fear". In the first case, because they have so much money in front of them the player starts to call bets he should be passing, simply because the size of
the bet has lost meaning. I once saw a guy leak away £500-600 in a £2 blind bbp game simply because he had sat down with a couple of grand, his blackjack winnings, and he kept on calling the bets because they now meant much less to him (this was way out of proportion for how he would normally play as he is a tight passive player.)

The flip side of this, "too much fear" is when the player "realises" that he suddenly has a fair size of money in front of him and it may be in jeopardy, especially if there are other good players who have similarly large stacks. He then starts to pass when he should call, call when he should raise. In fact sometimes it is good to recognise this and simply leave the table, which I have done at the start of my poker playing when I knew that I couldn't play a big stack well and other, perhaps better opponents had me covered.

This all sounds a bit shark vs. fish, but unfortunately this is very much exacerbated in bbp. I suspect that if you allowed players to rathole in bbp, then the games would perhaps die out, because the pros, who unfortunately are necessary to keep these fragile games running, would start to have much worse results. And the skill element would fall through the floor. If you want to protect bad players, then limiting the maximum size of buyins such as online sites do is perhaps a better option. Perhaps comparing it to cheating is a bit harsh, but I did say the nearest thing. And if you view cheating as affecting the result of the game through replacing skill and luck with artificial means, than ratholing is pretty bad in bbp.”

Plo8b (part 2)… and we’re swamped by commentators!!!

YTD: +$21567.37

OK, not exactly swamped, but we are getting there :-) We’ve had some great, and amusing comments (tx Phat and of course anonymous).

Please keep on commentating and coming back. I promise fresh, interesting (?) poker content every day, or thereabouts. Tell your friends and come back often and cheer me up with good site visit and page stats :-)

Back to the hand…Phat recommends betting small and passing to a reraise. One of the THM posters, and a guy I have occasionally played live, Ariston, advocates check-calling because the danger of being 3/4d is too great to bet out. Here’s a snip of the analysis I did on rgp:

“(One of his most likely hands is) A3 with the flush draw. This was in fact the real holding. When we discussed the hand he said that against anyone else he would have raised on the flop. But there was a lot of knowing me, knowing you in this hand…

He can't bet a dry nut low because he knows I have it too...maybe with more. Also, if I check and he bets the full pot, he can only really be doing it because he has nut-nut and expects me to call and he makes his £30 profit. Even though he respects my play, he probably doesn’t really *expect* me to pass, as so few would do in this spot.

Here's what happened. I checked on the river and he bet the full pot, about £120. I went into the think tank. And then I folded.

It struck me that if I called, it would be the equivalent of just
handing over to him £30. He had a2378 and had called for the nut flush draw on the flop and made nut-nut.

No one I told the story to could believe I passed :)”

First commentator...and a real, live plo8b hand

YTD: +$20456.37...not much poker...too much work :-(

Thanks to Butch for his first comments...if you're here and you want to say something please do so...no registration required! Butch made an interesting point about short-handed play, in that the turn could be where the better players regain their equity. Certainly from my PokerTracker stats on ring games, the best players are very very aggressive on the turn and I could certainly see that being the way to profit s-h. But the variance is not for me! Here's one of my few thoughtful rgp posts - please comment your thoughts:

-------------
I thought I would post what I thought was an interesting pot limit Omaha 8b hand. Interesting because it is no self-aggrandizing massacre of a chump with no outs and interesting because it was live action, not online.

In the game I was playing there were two £2 blinds, one on the button and one under the gun. I was in the OTG blind with a stack of about £500. There were several limpers back to me when I found a2366 suited ace (it was 5 card Omaha 8b). I raised slightly less than the pot and picked up several callers. The flop came 642, with two diamonds, not my suit. This is a very strong flop for my hand, unless I run into a35. Also the bulk of the players were very poor and I could get action from naked a3 in this spot. I came out and bet about the pot £40, and surprisingly everyone passed, except the one player I didn't want to call, who we'll label GS. GS is a very strong cash player, as
good, if not better, than any I've seen and would only tangle with me in this spot with a strong hand. I prayed for a pair up 

Instead the dealer turned over a card of death, an offsuit 3. With my low counterfeited, I checked, prepared to pass to a bet, and to my surprise GS checked also. Clearly his only low was an a3 too. In retrospect I could have deduced that the three was a bad card for him as he wouldn't call with an a5…although there was a small chance that he may have slowplayed a35, hoping to get a big raise on a neutral turn if I led out again.

The last card was interesting…an offsuit 5. No flush had come and I now had a wheel. Most importantly, I also had a 6 straight, which although not the nuts would quarter any pure wheel holders. What do you do? And what do you do if he bet/raises? (assuming you check/bet, respectively)

I'll post what I did later.

Short-handed Verbals

YTD: +$19745.12 (I told you it was moving!!!)

Before we enter "The Vault" I thought I would cover off a question that may be in my prospective readers' minds: "If Dave is the "Internet Poker Pro" (guffaw) why isn't he winning more?" Well as I stated at the start, I do mostly only play part time....but more importantly I had a very VERY VERY bad May, which we may get into in another post.

Two thoughts of the day...the first was a post on the massive popularty of short handed limit poker, prompted by my good online pal Aksu. The other is a mildly, ok very mildly, humourous story about verbal showdowns, which are very common in cash games live but particularily annoyed one poster on The Hendon Mob. (A verbal showdown is where a player declares a hand that beats his, waiting for his opponent to show it rather than exposing his hand first).

BTW...remember to comment...you don't need to register and I would like to hear your thoughts!

"Aksu, u tease...

I have a completely contrary view on short handed games. I believe that they may have been "better", for the common reasons that Chaos states, before the internet made them a very popular form. However I honestly believe that with the current short handed player profile, i.e. very aggressive to maniac, that they are actually less skilful. I guess this view could be crystallised into two main areas:

1. Preflop - shorthanded play turns bad players into good. A significant advantage for good players in a ring game is simply the quality of hands they play. This small, but ever-present edge gives rise to a nice part of the overall earn. Of course you have to play through the streets well, and this is where a lot of your EV lies, but it shouldn’t be underestimated how significant the initial hand selection contributes to your profit, not least because you don't have to play trickier scenarios, because you simply never face them, i.e. raising utg with ATo. But a bad player will make these plays all the time, again contributing to your edge. But if you took that same bad player and dumped him in a 5 handed game, suddenly raising UTG with ATo is the right play! You've lost your edge even with the same bad player.

2. Aggression makes everyone play the same - unfortunately the super high aggression levels means that both good and bad players now play very similarly. Often you have to cling onto hands such as poor pairs heads-up in shorthanded play, and perhaps even overplay them. But this is exactly what the bad players do! I don’t have an example to hand, but it isn’t hard to build scenarios where good and bad players play the hand identically. And these come up fairly often.

I also think that to good players, short handed games can be alluring and exciting, especially compared to dull-as-dishwater ring games. It seems like poker as it really should be played. But I believe these feelings are deceiving, at least profit wise."

-------------------------------

"I'm not sure why these things annoy you so much. In truth they are just part of the game and exist everywhere, especially the "verbal showdown". If you want to play cash, you just learn to live with it.

My favourite "verbal showdown" story was between the infamous Ali Malu and myself a looong time ago. It was a reasonably chunky pot of 6 card Omaha, maybe £2k or so:

"Full house wins"

Silence.

"Flush wins"

The only sound is that of cards being desperately shuffled to find winners.

"Straight wins"

Its getting embarrasing now....

"Uhmm trips wins?"

Ahhh...now i've got it :-)"