Everyone see this week's "High Stakes Poker"? Just in case...
SPOILER ALERT...
So here's a hand that demonstrates why I and anyone who loves poker loves poker. It comes about 25 minutes into the show if you have it Tivo'd and want to see it for yourself.
The blinds are $400/800.
The twerpily Edward Nortonish but somehow still affable Daniel Negreanu gets 9-10 of spades in early position and raises to $3K (his standard 2.5xBB raise).
Grandfatherly old fart Doyle Brunson calls with Q's (hearts and clubs).
Cultured and refreshingly laid-back David Benyamine calls in the SB with 7-5 of spades.
According to my handy odds calculator (DD Poker, folks. It's the best...and it's free!), Doyle is about a 68% favorite at this point.
The flop: 8 of spades, 3 of spades, 9 of clubs.
According to the on-screen graphic, Negreanu (with top pair and the flush draw) is actually now the favorite over Doyle's over-pair, 45 to 43%. Benyamine is a mere 12%.
Negreanu bets $8,500 - about 3/4 of the pot.
Doyle calls instead of raising, which strikes me as kind of a dicey move with the flush draw on the board. Gabe Kaplan sounds surprised as well. (The "Kotter" nostalgia Kaplan's hokey patter provides is one of the main reasons I watch this show.)
Benyamine calls, surely not suspecting anyone else of being on the flush draw.
The turn...and here's where it REALLY gets good...is the Q of spades.
"Wow, what a card," remarks Kaplan, wildly understating the situation.
All three players now have strong reason to think they have the best hands, but Negreanu is the 78% favorite over Doyle, while Benyamine is drawing dead.
Drawing dead, I tell you. Name another game where a player could think they are winning when in fact they literally have no chance of winning. Not the old-fashioned way, anyhow.
Everyone checks.
Did this make sense for everyone?
On the one hand, Negreanu and Benyamine risk another spade coming out, which would leave them vulnerable to (and thus make them nervous about) anyone with a higher spade than them. On the other, they're successfully hiding their flushes from each other and Doyle.
Doyle is thinking, "If I bet and get check-raised, I have to assume at least one of them has the flush, and fold. If they both fold, then they didn't have the flush, and I probably could have made more money with my top set. If they call, I won't know where I stand. Whereas...If I don't bet, I might have a free chance at hitting a full house, and even if I don't hit it, if a non-spade comes, I'm probably good."
The river: Ace of hearts.
So NOW where are we?
Negreanu and Benyamine are feeling pretty good about their flushes, and Doyle LOVES that Ace. The checks on the turn indicated no flushes, but the Ace might have just given someone top pair or two pair. He has practically no reason to think he's not sitting pretty.
Benyamine, playing it safe with his medium-sized flush, checks.
Negreanu, now feeling pretty comfortable, bets $26,200, about 2/3 of the pot.
Doyle calls.
Why not raise? Same sort of problem, is my guess. If Benyamine or Negreanu RE-raises, he'll have to fold. Obviously, Benyamine has the opportunity to raise either way, but a raise by Benyamine (as we'll see) won't force him out, as it could mean a lot of things. A RE-raise would.
Over to Benyamine. Kaplan intones, "I believe David thinks he's got the best hand, that he's the only one with the flush...There's no way Doyle has the flush, and it doesn't look like Daniel has the flush."
Sure enough, Benyamine raises to $101,200. (I'll never get the logistics behind the weird bets on this show.)
Negreanu rubs his eyes, gives off a few bizarre shakes of the head, obviously perplexed. Benyamine is a sphinx.
40 seconds pass...before Negreanu reluctantly pushes his hand in.
Over to Doyle, who mutters in Benyamine's direction, "Checked that hand twice (unintelligible) with that hand...That's hard for me to believe." Pensively shuffles his chips for a few seconds...and calls.
"Flush," says Benyamine.
Doyle accepts defeat silently.
"How big?" asks Daniel.
"Small." says Benyamine, showing down.
"Damnit!" says Daniel, slamming his hand on the table. "Unbelievable!"
Wasn't it, though?
The 2nd-best hand wins by wrongly believing he had the best hand, the worst hand pays off a bundle for wrongly believing that he did, and the best hand, wrongly believing he was beaten, folded.
How cool is that?
We learn from Benyamine in an interview after the commercial break:
"If somebody bets into me (on the turn), I'm probably going to think I'm beat. I probably would have to call one time and then would lay down probably the second time..."
On his raise on the river:
"Now when Daniel bets, I was never going to raise him, but once Doyle calls, I believe that Daniel might be in the middle between Doyle and I. If I raise him and he's capable of laying down, and if he hasn't bet the turn, he doesn't have like a King-high flush or an Ace-high flush, so he can lay down a medium-sized flush..."
Not sure I follow all that, but the point is, checking the turn was both Negreanu's and Brunson's big mistake...and yet, it was arguably a perfectly reasonable move for both of them.
And that's why I love this goddamn game.
Any thoughts?
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Worst Beat Ever?
So this happened at my weekly sit-n-go, night before my birthday, a couple weeks ago, but I suspect the memory will linger well into the after-life.
The set-up:
a. I'd already re-bought, having lost my initial buy-in to the guy to my right hitting back-to-back spade flushes on me;
b. Everyone else...I mean, really, EVERYONE else...was scooping huge pots with Big Slick that night.
So to the hand: I had about $9K (out of a buy-in of $20K) (for the uninitiated - these are TOURNAMENT figures; each buy-in is $20). We were approaching the end of the rebuy period, so the villain across the table from me apparently decided he'd rather rebuy and begin the second half with $20K than the shaky $10K he had, so he went all-in with 7-3 off-suit, which - again, for the uninitiated - is probably the second or third worst possible pre-flop hand. Everyone folded except me, with my seemingly unbeatable A-K (arguably among the TOP five hands pre-flop, despite being a notorious loser. My favorite nickname for it is "Anna Kournikova", explained to me by an old gentleman at a Commerce table: "Looks pretty, but never wins.").
So I flip my gold, he flips his garbage, everyone chuckles heartily at the schmattering that was clearly about to ensue...and I'll let the photo take it from here, adding only that this is one of several photos taken, as the final card prompted practically the entire group to leap to their seats and whip out their camera-phones.
Yup. It's that bad.
Enjoy.
Coda:
After this massacre, partly because it was my birthday eve, and partly out of sheer, heartbreaking sympathy, my buds let me bend the rules and do a SECOND rebuy after this hand. Within minutes, my pocket K's were topped by pocket A's, and I was done.
Happy birthday!
So what's YOUR worst beat ever?
The set-up:
a. I'd already re-bought, having lost my initial buy-in to the guy to my right hitting back-to-back spade flushes on me;
b. Everyone else...I mean, really, EVERYONE else...was scooping huge pots with Big Slick that night.
So to the hand: I had about $9K (out of a buy-in of $20K) (for the uninitiated - these are TOURNAMENT figures; each buy-in is $20). We were approaching the end of the rebuy period, so the villain across the table from me apparently decided he'd rather rebuy and begin the second half with $20K than the shaky $10K he had, so he went all-in with 7-3 off-suit, which - again, for the uninitiated - is probably the second or third worst possible pre-flop hand. Everyone folded except me, with my seemingly unbeatable A-K (arguably among the TOP five hands pre-flop, despite being a notorious loser. My favorite nickname for it is "Anna Kournikova", explained to me by an old gentleman at a Commerce table: "Looks pretty, but never wins.").
So I flip my gold, he flips his garbage, everyone chuckles heartily at the schmattering that was clearly about to ensue...and I'll let the photo take it from here, adding only that this is one of several photos taken, as the final card prompted practically the entire group to leap to their seats and whip out their camera-phones.
Yup. It's that bad.
Enjoy.
Coda:
After this massacre, partly because it was my birthday eve, and partly out of sheer, heartbreaking sympathy, my buds let me bend the rules and do a SECOND rebuy after this hand. Within minutes, my pocket K's were topped by pocket A's, and I was done.
Happy birthday!
So what's YOUR worst beat ever?
Website's up!
Hey, everyone...
Held off on blog posts for the past couple weeks while the official Chip Chap website was being created...but the wait is over!
Check 'er out...
http://thechipchap.com/
Held off on blog posts for the past couple weeks while the official Chip Chap website was being created...but the wait is over!
Check 'er out...
http://thechipchap.com/
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Live-blogging "Rounders", Part 1
When I give introductory lessons at tournaments, I often begin by asking if anyone has played Texas Hold 'em before. Then I broaden it to if anyone has played any kind of poker before. Then even broader: Have any of you ever watched poker on TV? And finally: Has anyone here seen "Rounders"?
I like the movie, don't love it, but I recommend it to new players because it recreates the feel of an actual poker game better than any film I know of. "The Cincinnati Kid" and "A Big Hand for the Little Lady" are more entertaining and ultimately satisfying, but "Rounders", aside from featuring a great cast, fairly sharp dialogue, and the most hilariously tortured Russian accent you'll ever hear, does the best job of convincingly putting you at a poker table. Unfortunately, it also feature a horribly wrong-headed climax that nearly wrecks the movie (I'll address it when we get there), and it omits some pretty vital information about the game that makes it rough going, at times even incomprehensible, for the uninitiated.
Unless, of course, they have ME to live-blog in their ear the whole time, so without further ado...
1: 39 - Mike, played by the solidly affable Matt Damon, sums up his strategy in voice-over: "Your goal is to win one big bet an hour. That's it. Get your money in when you have the best of it, protect it when you don't." The advice Mike dispenses throughout the movie is, for the most part, reasonable. Actually, a lot of it is so reasonable that it borders on the bleedin' obvious.
3:46 - John Turturro as "Joey Knish" (this movie is crammed with good names), advising Michael to play a more moderately priced game rather than risk his entire $30,000 bankroll at the big table. You gotta like a movie where John Turturro is the voice of reason.
5:04 - Damon summarizes No-Limit Texas Hold 'em very briefly. TOO briefly, in fact. Would it have killed them to take an additional 30 seconds to run down the hand rankings for the poker illiterate? Imagine watching a baseball movie and not knowing what strikeouts, walks and home runs are. Anyone who knows nothing about poker just got left behind.
Damon goes on, "The key to the game is playing the man, not the cards." Which is NOT what the movie goes on to demonstrate, nor is it specific to Hold 'em...but okay.
"There's no other game in which fortunes can change so much from hand to hand." Um...Really?
As a side note, though, I quite like Malkovich's shirt in this scene.
6:26 - Speaking of Malkovich...Here's that aforementioned tortured Russian accent. He pronounces "Go ahead" as "Ga-chead", harshening the "ch" like it's Hebrew. Just priceless. It's also polarizing: You either love it or hate it, no in-between. I gotta admit, it's grown on me over the years.
Damon gets A-9 suited, and the flop comes A-9-8, two of them spades. Damon tells us, "Against your average guy, I'd set a bear trap, hardly bet at all, let him walk into it." Really? With two spades on the flop and a possible straight draw as well? Not to mention the possibility of him hitting a higher two-pair on the turn or river if he's got Ace-10 through King? Umm...Okay.
Also, apparently in this weird little underground club, they don't push their money in the pot after each betting round. Recipe for disaster, I'd say...especially with Malkovich gleefully splashing the pot now and then.
7:01 - So, as we learn later, when Malkovich has a hand, he "listens" to his Oreo cookie, opens it with a flourish, and eats it. When he's bluffing, he sets it aside. Seriously? The antagonist, the ultimate bully, the guy everyone is quaking in their boots around, has the most wildly obvious tell in the history of poker?
"Bur-run and tur-run," Malkovich purrs, turning three syllables into five. Those in the audience who don't know what "Burn and turn" means are frantically whispering to each other in mass confusion.
Damon hits full house, 9's over Aces, or 9's full of Aces, (in voice-over, he redundantly calls them "9's full over Aces") on the turn. 3 of spades comes on the river, and NOW he finally explains that a full house beats a flush (whatever a "flush" is, think the newbies). Better late than never, I guess.
I like the movie, don't love it, but I recommend it to new players because it recreates the feel of an actual poker game better than any film I know of. "The Cincinnati Kid" and "A Big Hand for the Little Lady" are more entertaining and ultimately satisfying, but "Rounders", aside from featuring a great cast, fairly sharp dialogue, and the most hilariously tortured Russian accent you'll ever hear, does the best job of convincingly putting you at a poker table. Unfortunately, it also feature a horribly wrong-headed climax that nearly wrecks the movie (I'll address it when we get there), and it omits some pretty vital information about the game that makes it rough going, at times even incomprehensible, for the uninitiated.
Unless, of course, they have ME to live-blog in their ear the whole time, so without further ado...
1: 39 - Mike, played by the solidly affable Matt Damon, sums up his strategy in voice-over: "Your goal is to win one big bet an hour. That's it. Get your money in when you have the best of it, protect it when you don't." The advice Mike dispenses throughout the movie is, for the most part, reasonable. Actually, a lot of it is so reasonable that it borders on the bleedin' obvious.
3:46 - John Turturro as "Joey Knish" (this movie is crammed with good names), advising Michael to play a more moderately priced game rather than risk his entire $30,000 bankroll at the big table. You gotta like a movie where John Turturro is the voice of reason.
5:04 - Damon summarizes No-Limit Texas Hold 'em very briefly. TOO briefly, in fact. Would it have killed them to take an additional 30 seconds to run down the hand rankings for the poker illiterate? Imagine watching a baseball movie and not knowing what strikeouts, walks and home runs are. Anyone who knows nothing about poker just got left behind.
Damon goes on, "The key to the game is playing the man, not the cards." Which is NOT what the movie goes on to demonstrate, nor is it specific to Hold 'em...but okay.
"There's no other game in which fortunes can change so much from hand to hand." Um...Really?
As a side note, though, I quite like Malkovich's shirt in this scene.
6:26 - Speaking of Malkovich...Here's that aforementioned tortured Russian accent. He pronounces "Go ahead" as "Ga-chead", harshening the "ch" like it's Hebrew. Just priceless. It's also polarizing: You either love it or hate it, no in-between. I gotta admit, it's grown on me over the years.
Damon gets A-9 suited, and the flop comes A-9-8, two of them spades. Damon tells us, "Against your average guy, I'd set a bear trap, hardly bet at all, let him walk into it." Really? With two spades on the flop and a possible straight draw as well? Not to mention the possibility of him hitting a higher two-pair on the turn or river if he's got Ace-10 through King? Umm...Okay.
Also, apparently in this weird little underground club, they don't push their money in the pot after each betting round. Recipe for disaster, I'd say...especially with Malkovich gleefully splashing the pot now and then.
7:01 - So, as we learn later, when Malkovich has a hand, he "listens" to his Oreo cookie, opens it with a flourish, and eats it. When he's bluffing, he sets it aside. Seriously? The antagonist, the ultimate bully, the guy everyone is quaking in their boots around, has the most wildly obvious tell in the history of poker?
"Bur-run and tur-run," Malkovich purrs, turning three syllables into five. Those in the audience who don't know what "Burn and turn" means are frantically whispering to each other in mass confusion.
Damon hits full house, 9's over Aces, or 9's full of Aces, (in voice-over, he redundantly calls them "9's full over Aces") on the turn. 3 of spades comes on the river, and NOW he finally explains that a full house beats a flush (whatever a "flush" is, think the newbies). Better late than never, I guess.
Live-blogging "Rounders", Part 2
11:16: - Damon is forced to get a day job that Turturro hands down "to rounders who forget the cardinal fucking rule: Always leave yourself outs." I have no idea what that means, and am pretty sure it's not the cardinal fucking rule (of...poker? Life?). "Outs" is the amount of cards you need to improve your hand. How exactly do you "leave yourself outs"?
15:00 - The judges are playing 7-card Stud. For a movie that touts No-Limit Hold 'em as "the Cadillac of poker", it has a bizarre amount of Stud in it. But Stud is the right game for this type of group (Read: Old people play this game.), so it makes sense here.
19:37 - We meet Edward Norton's character, Worm, playing cards in prison. I've always kind of been of the mindset that naming a character "Worm" when his main characteristic is worminess is kind of clumsy, but what do I know? Incidentally, they're not playing poker at all, they're playing Hearts. Not how I picture prison, but it's an arena I'm happy to remain ignorant about.
28:27 - Michael joins the preppy home game, feigning ignorance. They're playing Chicago, which as they explain, is a stud game in which the high spade in the hole (meaning one of your three face-down cards) wins half the pot. This seems to be a dealer's choice game, so yeah, weird-ass games like this tend to come up.
29:24 - Damon rationalizes cheating the college students: "Like they teach you in One L, caveat emptor, pal." You probably know this, but so we're clear: "One L" isn't a poker term, it means the first year of law school. Or maybe he means Scott Turow's book ABOUT the first year of law school.
29:33 - Damon marvels at Norton's mastery of "discard calls, pick-up calls, overhand run-offs, the double duke." I've never heard any of these terms. They sound cool, though, don't they?
30:01 - Norton feigns frustration with Damon: "Fuck you and your never-ending string of boats, okay?" Again, they omit explaining that "boats" are full houses. The uninformed might assume that Damon has been pretending to be some sort of shipping magnate.
37:55 - Seven-card stud with the Russians. MORE stud? Norton "slow-rolls" his two pair, meaning that he reveals his winning hand with deliberate, sadistic slowness. Maurice calls him a "Motherfucker" for doing this. Maurice is right. Don't slow-roll, kids.
48:44 - Damon advises the reliably paternal Martin Landau: "You want to play premium hands...If it's good enough to call, you gotta be in there raising, all right, I mean tight, but aggressive, and I do mean aggressive, that's your style, Professor, I mean you gotta... you gotta think of it as a war." Again, not really what the movie ultimately demonstrates (i.e. Damon wins by checking and calling repeatedly. More on this later.), but fairly sound advice.
51:22 - Landau summarizes his rather long story: "We can't run from who we are. Our destiny chooses us." Did Landau just tell Damon that he's destined to be a poker player? Umm...Okay.
57:29: - "If a fish acts strong, he's bluffing. If he acts meek, he's got a hand. It's that simple." Hasn't been my experience, but okay.
15:00 - The judges are playing 7-card Stud. For a movie that touts No-Limit Hold 'em as "the Cadillac of poker", it has a bizarre amount of Stud in it. But Stud is the right game for this type of group (Read: Old people play this game.), so it makes sense here.
19:37 - We meet Edward Norton's character, Worm, playing cards in prison. I've always kind of been of the mindset that naming a character "Worm" when his main characteristic is worminess is kind of clumsy, but what do I know? Incidentally, they're not playing poker at all, they're playing Hearts. Not how I picture prison, but it's an arena I'm happy to remain ignorant about.
28:27 - Michael joins the preppy home game, feigning ignorance. They're playing Chicago, which as they explain, is a stud game in which the high spade in the hole (meaning one of your three face-down cards) wins half the pot. This seems to be a dealer's choice game, so yeah, weird-ass games like this tend to come up.
29:24 - Damon rationalizes cheating the college students: "Like they teach you in One L, caveat emptor, pal." You probably know this, but so we're clear: "One L" isn't a poker term, it means the first year of law school. Or maybe he means Scott Turow's book ABOUT the first year of law school.
29:33 - Damon marvels at Norton's mastery of "discard calls, pick-up calls, overhand run-offs, the double duke." I've never heard any of these terms. They sound cool, though, don't they?
30:01 - Norton feigns frustration with Damon: "Fuck you and your never-ending string of boats, okay?" Again, they omit explaining that "boats" are full houses. The uninformed might assume that Damon has been pretending to be some sort of shipping magnate.
37:55 - Seven-card stud with the Russians. MORE stud? Norton "slow-rolls" his two pair, meaning that he reveals his winning hand with deliberate, sadistic slowness. Maurice calls him a "Motherfucker" for doing this. Maurice is right. Don't slow-roll, kids.
48:44 - Damon advises the reliably paternal Martin Landau: "You want to play premium hands...If it's good enough to call, you gotta be in there raising, all right, I mean tight, but aggressive, and I do mean aggressive, that's your style, Professor, I mean you gotta... you gotta think of it as a war." Again, not really what the movie ultimately demonstrates (i.e. Damon wins by checking and calling repeatedly. More on this later.), but fairly sound advice.
51:22 - Landau summarizes his rather long story: "We can't run from who we are. Our destiny chooses us." Did Landau just tell Damon that he's destined to be a poker player? Umm...Okay.
57:29: - "If a fish acts strong, he's bluffing. If he acts meek, he's got a hand. It's that simple." Hasn't been my experience, but okay.
Live-blogging "Rounders", Part 3
1:03:42 - Now we come to a really weird scene.
1. Damon is watching and re-watching Johnny Chan call Eric Seidel's all-in after flopping nut straight.
Seriously? He's replaying a shot of a man calling an all-in when he has the nut straight? Like it's the Willie Mays catch or the John Paxson buzzer shot in the '93 Finals? I could see him being fascinated by a brilliant bluff or a risky call or some hugely unexpected bad beat...but calling an all-in with the nuts? It's like replaying the final 10 seconds of a football game when the winning team has the ball. What's worth the scrutiny here?
2. The absurdly sexy Famke Janssen enters and instantly recognizes what Damon's watching: "Ah, the '88 Series." Like it's Casablanca or something. She remarks in awe: "Johnny Chan flops the nut straight and has the discipline to wait him out." I'm still not seeing the fascination here; what else WOULD Chan do?
3. Damon rebuffs her advances. For some reason. Even the filmmakers, on the commentary track, admit how nutzoid this is.
1:15:15 - They're playing a hi-lo game here, and according to IMDb, it's 7-card Stud. Again with the Stud? How did this movie turn Hold 'em into the national craze instead of Stud? Anyway, Damon shows down "The wheel", meaning a 5-high straight, which is the best "low" hand possible and a decent high hand, so he scoops the whole pot.
1:20:00 - The game with the cops. Stud AGAIN! This time, Worm gets caught cheating, and they both get beaten up. Wait, so a roomful of cops catches some guys cheating them at poker...and all they wind up with is some cuts on their faces? Not a single broken bone? Cracked rib? Bruise? These are apparently the gentlest cops in America.
1. Damon is watching and re-watching Johnny Chan call Eric Seidel's all-in after flopping nut straight.
Seriously? He's replaying a shot of a man calling an all-in when he has the nut straight? Like it's the Willie Mays catch or the John Paxson buzzer shot in the '93 Finals? I could see him being fascinated by a brilliant bluff or a risky call or some hugely unexpected bad beat...but calling an all-in with the nuts? It's like replaying the final 10 seconds of a football game when the winning team has the ball. What's worth the scrutiny here?
2. The absurdly sexy Famke Janssen enters and instantly recognizes what Damon's watching: "Ah, the '88 Series." Like it's Casablanca or something. She remarks in awe: "Johnny Chan flops the nut straight and has the discipline to wait him out." I'm still not seeing the fascination here; what else WOULD Chan do?
3. Damon rebuffs her advances. For some reason. Even the filmmakers, on the commentary track, admit how nutzoid this is.
1:15:15 - They're playing a hi-lo game here, and according to IMDb, it's 7-card Stud. Again with the Stud? How did this movie turn Hold 'em into the national craze instead of Stud? Anyway, Damon shows down "The wheel", meaning a 5-high straight, which is the best "low" hand possible and a decent high hand, so he scoops the whole pot.
1:20:00 - The game with the cops. Stud AGAIN! This time, Worm gets caught cheating, and they both get beaten up. Wait, so a roomful of cops catches some guys cheating them at poker...and all they wind up with is some cuts on their faces? Not a single broken bone? Cracked rib? Bruise? These are apparently the gentlest cops in America.
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