Money Hater

I have been in LA for the past few days playing some live poker. It is always an interesting experience. There are always little gambooolers throwing cards and asking for set-ups and berating dealers and going on tilt in some form. Anything is fair game for criticism, except of course their awful awful play. When they lose, it is because dealer kill them. Or set up kill them. Or bad seat change kill them. Or machine malfunction and then kill them. It is always something, and they are not afraid to make their feelings known.

On this trip, I saw something that may have actually legitimately qualified for “this dealer kill me”. Two little gambooolers were involved in a pot. Both gamboooolers tend to like to blame dealer, but the guy on the button seems to know that blaming dealer is foolish, and often smiles and laughs when he does it. It is in his blood to berate dealer, but it is pretty clear he knows how dumb it is.

This guy raises on the button with KK, and the other little gamboooler calls in the BB with 55. The flop comes 744 with two diamonds. The little gambooooler in the BB bets out and the button raises. Before the BB can act on this raise, the dealer burns and brings out the turn card. This card is a King. The problem is that the flop action is not completed, so that card needs to get shuffled back into the deck once the flop action is completed. So, the BB calls the raise and the King gets shuffled back into the deck. This understandably irritates the button. The dealer now burns and turns and brings what would have been the ‘natural’ river card. This card is a 5. BB is now thrilled because he made a full house. The river card is some brick. So, had the dealer not screwed up, a King would have come on the turn and a 5 would have come on the river, giving both players full houses, and these guys would have gone off for a ton of bets.

The guy with KK is not pleased, and is constantly mumbling how the dealer cost him $3,000. What some of the hot-blooded little gamboooolers would have done had they been in his shoes one can only guees, but I cannot imagine a situation where flying chips/cards/obscenities would not be prominently involved, and perhaps even law enforcement.

Check out the new MoneyHater poker discussion forum.

Today I was fortunate enough to get to play live poker with some of the worst players in the northern hemisphere. I am always thrilled when I show up and the game is very good. That said, it is not uncommon for me to get absolutely tortured in such a game. It is like fighting a bunch of blind midgets in a confined area. If you can neutralize a few of them, you’ll be fine, but if they get a hold of you, it’s gonna be a long day. Today was such a day.

The lead midget kept telling me that I “always have an ace in my hand.” He must have said it 10 times throughout the day. I must admit that he is correct. If I raise, there is a very good chance that I have an ace in my hand. Even in light of this fact, he still managed to play the following hand against me today…..

One person folds and I raise UTG+1. This should be a good indication to anyone with even a modicum of poker sense that I might have something, and that something may indeed be an ace. For a moment I fear that I will not get any action, because “I always have an ace”. If they always think I have a big hand, they’re just going to fold and I won’t make any money. Thankfully this is not the case, as 2 players coldcall, king midget 3bets, the blinds call 2 more bets, I call and now the first coldcaller 4bets, we all call. This pot is now huge and it was started by the guy who “always has an ace”. These guys must have really good hands. Or maybe they have a special “wild” card or something in their hands that is actually better than an ace. Hmmm. I better be careful here.

There are many of us to the flop which comes K74r. Checks to the coldcall/4bettor who bets whatever he is misplaying, midget-in-the-middle calls, king midget calls, I call. The turn is a queen, putting 2 hearts on the board. Same action as on the flop. The river is the 4 of hearts. I check, the coldcall/4bettor bets, midget-in-the-middle who has been doing nothing but calling up to this point calls yet again, king midget now raises, I fold, the coldcall/4bettor calls in disgust and now midget-in-the-middle who up to this point has done nothing but call, folds closing the action getting over 20:1. The 4bettor slams down two black aces in disgust as king midget rolls over the 92 of hearts. Apparently he wasn’t worried about me having an ace.

Today is MayDay. It is also my sister’s birthday. Happy birthday, SueNa.

It is also the time of year when the snow needs to stop. We are over a month into spring, so it is time. Unfortunately MotherNature has other plans, for when I look at the pictures of the little boxes with days above them on the extended forecast, there is a giant snowflake icon in the box labeled “Sat.”. It was 65 and sunny today, and in 3 days there might be fucking snow on the ground. In May. The poor birds and squirrels and any other animals that have come out of hiding, to enjoy what their biological clocks are telling them should be spring, must be confused as hell. As I walked to my car the other morning in 38 degree weather, I noticed there were lots of birds chirping. I just know they were bitching about this weather, and that the guy who lead the migration back to MN is taking all kinds of flak for landing the gaggle in what looks to most of the birds as fucking winter.

I think it may be affecting some humans as well. There was one gentleman in my local card room who seemed to be quite confused by the extreme fluctuations in weather conditions. I had seen him before and think I may have even played with him, but wasn’t sure. Naturally I assumed he was just awful at limit hold’em. I would soon learn that I was either correct in my assumption, or he was being affected by the weather in such a way that he played as bad anyone could ever play this game. For example….

Someone raises in early position, I 3bet with two black 8s, the specimen in question calls 2 cold in the BB, and the initial raiser calls. Flop comes AhQs7d. They check to me, I bet, the BB calls and the other guy folds. The turn is the 5c. He checks, I bet, he calls. I now hate this hand and really hate this guy in the BB because I know he has a Q and I know he ain’t folding it and why would he ever have a Q in this spot unless he has exactly KQ which he should fold to a 3rd barrell from me but I know he’s too stupid to realize that and this sucks. The river is the 4s. He checks, I give up and check behind. He says, “I was setting you up for the check/raise” as he rolls over the 32 of clubs for a running 5-high straight. Splendid effort there Merlin. This living, breathing, human indictment of the American educational system put $180 in the pot with the nut low, and not a red cent when he had the 2nd nut high. His hand went from being “12 below zero and windy as hell”, to “83 and sunny with a light breeze”, yet he put in all his money when he was freezing his ass off and none when he had sunny skies.

I’m sick of this fucking weather.

Check out the new MoneyHater poker discussion forum.

It seems that just about everyone has a blog these days. I am not sure if this is good or bad, and I do not really care. The fact is, lots of people write stuff and for some reason people read it.

A good friend of mine loves to read blogs. Every night he takes a lap or two around the internet and peruses a variety of blogs. I am not exactly sure how he goes about this process, but given the fact that he fastidiously squares his pen with the edge of his desk every time he sets it down, I am sure there is a very precise, borderline neurotic method to this nightly ritual. I do not know all the blogs that he reads, but I do know that a good deal of them are written by poker players.

I am not much of a blog reader. The vast majority of blogs that I am aware of are ones written by people that I know, and since I know these people I figure I don’t need to read their blogs to figure out what is going on with them. I am not much of a blog writer either.

I have probably read 15-20 blogs written by poker players at one point or another, and lately I have been reading a few with some regularity. I wish I could say the reason I read these is because they are very well written and insightful, but I cannot. This is not to suggest that I have never read a well written/insightful blog. I have, but those blogs didn’t make me laugh like these recent few do.

These blogs are written by guys who think that they are professional poker players, but haven’t the foggiest idea of how to (a) play poker or (b) be a professional. I’m not sure why I find their misguided confidence to be so funny, but I do. I guess it’s like a guy who claims he is a meteorologist explaining to you how he knows the earth is flat. How can you not be curious how that story goes?

These few bloggers remind me of a guy I used to see a lot on campus at the U of M when I was in school there. He must have been 20 years old and was in excellent shape. He would roller-blade (shirtless) around the quad area in front of the physics building during high foot-traffic times. Students were everywhere, but this did not deter him as he clearly loved the audience. He would do laps and soak up the attention that he apparently didn’t get from his father.

His loop would take him up a handicap ramp onto a large, flat concrete area that was on one end of the quad. He would blade across this area, and then instead of taking the ramp back down the other side he’d actually go down the stairs. Backwards. Fast. It had to be tough to do, and was absurdly dangerous. He would get to the top of the steps and quickly turn so that he was now going backwards and boom-boom-boom he’d bounce down the stairs. When he got to the bottom he’d turn around and start going forward again, sweat glistening on his shirtless torso as he weaved through students for yet another glorious, testosterone driven lap.

You know that feeling that you have right now, that little twinge inside of you that says, “I sure hope the next sentence details how this macho jackass fell in front of all those people?” Well, that is how I feel every time I read one of these blogs.

All I ever wanted was to be your spine.

Check out the new MoneyHater poker discussion forum.

MHOTW has been neglected by me. I have no excuse. I will be the first to admit that the main cause of this is pure laziness. That said, I see people treat their money with such disregard that all these horribly played hands start to look the same after a while. When they all look the same, it becomes difficult to pick one. How can you pick the cutest puppy out of hundreds? It is tough.

People often approach me with hands that they feel are worthy of MHOTW honors. A few days ago, a nice guy who I regularly play with suggested to me a hand where two guys went 37 bets on the flop. The board was J94 with 2 spades. One player had JJ and got all-in on the flop. The other had 44. Clearly the guy with 44 screwed up massively. We’ll get back to this in a moment.

While we were chatting about this hand, I explained that it is tough for me to choose hands for MHOTW because people play hands terribly all the time. No sooner had I said this than the following hand transpired: Bad player raises, worse player calls with T6 of diamonds, I call on the button with 76 of clubs. Flop is J85r. The bad player bets, the player with T6 now calls. This player does not have ANYTHING, yet he has called this flop bet.

The guy with 44 went way too many bets it the eyes of most people, and I would agree, but I think the guy with T6 is infinitely worse. Allow me to explain. In poker, there are many levels of thinking that can go on. The first level is “what do I have?”. The second level is “what does he have?”. Many players cannot get to the second level, and the guy with 44 clearly didn’t. That said, he got the first level correct. “I have a pair, I can call this raise.” When a 4 comes on the flop, he likely thought “I have a set. A set sure is good. Time to put in some bets.” Both of these thoughts are on the first level, but they are correct.

The guy with T6, however, got even the first level wrong. He decided for some reason that calling two bets cold with this thing was a good idea, and then even managed to call a flop bet when he had NOTHING. What is he thinking? I have no idea. I wish I could answer, but I cannot. This is equivalent to someone asking me, “What is it like to be a tree?” I cannot answer, for I have never been a tree, nor have I ever been dumb enough to play T6 in this fashion, thus I am unable to speak intelligently on either subject.

The most puzzling part is that Mr. T6 seems to understand some things. For example, he can count how many outs he has, and will often make complaints like “I had a gutshot and a flush draw and I couldn’t hit one of those 12 outs”, but he will then turn around and call a raise with K4 of diamonds, and then 4bet it when someone behind 3bets, peel a T62r flop, watch the turn check through when a 2 hits, and then check when a 4 comes to beat AQ and AK. It is like watching someone who seems to be in complete control ride their bike down the street, but then for some reason which defies all logic they turn and run squarely into a parked car.

MoneyHater now has its own poker forum. If you want to discuss limit hold’em hands with the best minds on the planet, this is the place to be.

http://www.moneyhater.com/forum/

I have been haunted by the 3s lately. It seems that every time someone needs a 3, regardless of how horribly bad they have played their hand, it comes. In the past 3 days, the 3s have wrecked me. I have 3 examples of the 3s.

First is a live hand where I have two aces. This happens to be my favorite hand. So, when someone raises in late position, I understandably increase the betting to 3bets from the small blind with my aces. It is, after all, my favorite hand. The BB decides that this would be a good spot to 4bet with, you guessed it, 33. I know, you’re thinking “why would anyone ever do that with a hand that only has 33% equity against RANDOM hands, much less hands that people have CHOSEN to play, especially when the original raiser will never fold anything and if either of them have a big pair, he can’t have more than 16% equity?” I don’t have an answer for you, but I am sure he figures he can make up a TON of equity if a 3 hits. This seems reasonable. Anyway, BB 4bets, the other guy calls and I just call because I am sneaky and have clearly overestimated BB and assumed he’d have a hand here. Of course it comes 345 and I lose a lot but not as much as I should have, thankfully, as I bet the river and he inexplicably just called, on a board of 34589.

The next hand is also from a live game. I am in the SB with red T8. 2 guys limp in and it comes 984 with two clubs. No one bets. The turn is a red 5. I now bet, and a guy with 62 in the BB calls. I know, you’re thinking, “why would anyone ever call that bet with a maximum of 8 outs (2 of which make a flush) when they are only getting 3:1, in this tiny pot and aren’t even closing the action? ” Again, I don’t have an answer for you, other than maybe BB thinks I’ll go crazy on the river if he makes his hand. I know, you’re thinking “But you can’t bet most rivers given his turn line, much less go crazy, so he’ll never make up the money that he put in so bad on the turn. Not to mention you may fold if he makes his hand but the flush hits. Gross.” Again, I have no answer for you. Sorry. The river was a non flush 3. I checked, he bet, and I called and lost to his straight.

The last hand comes from a 50/100 game online. Many assume that in such a game, the players must be much more skilled because of the fact that the game is so big. This is not the case, as will become evident in a moment. An awful player limped in with A2 of diamonds, some guy raised and I called on the button with 44, both blinds called. The flop came down T54r. The preflop raiser bets, I raise, the blinds fold, the A2 guy now decides to check/3bet, the initial raiser folds and I call because now I get to raise the turn and raising the turn with a set is so much fun. I know, you’re thinking “why would that guy do that on the flop with just a gutshot and an overcard that may or may not be good vs. two guys who clearly like their hands?” My answer would be, “same reason he limped in preflop.” The turn comes a queen, he bets, I raise, he calls. Guess what the river was?

I get to see people play super bad whenever I sit down at a poker table. If people aren’t playing super bad, I’d have to find another game, as why would I want to play with people who play good? Thankfully, people play super bad. I am used to this and have come to expect it. On occasion someone will exhibit a level of incompetence that jolts me for some reason. Perhaps I had not seen such utter incompetence in a while, or I thought a guy played OK but then he goes and does THAT. Whatever. I have seen just about everything when it comes to bad play. It is not new to me, and I have become numb to it for the most part, yet I still appreciate it for its inherent beauty.

Recently I experienced something I cannot recall ever having experienced before. Two players, one awful, the other marginal, but both with grossly inflated perceptions of their respective poker abilities, get involved in a pot where they both play really bad. They then engage in a slightly heated debate about who played their hand well and who didn’t. Each had to make several decisions in the hand and each got more than half of their respective decisions wrong, but neither understood this and thus were passionately arguing their case. It was surreal. I felt like Galileo having to listen to people explain how they know that the sun revolves around the earth. They are dead wrong, yet not only do they think that they are right, they have a bunch of ‘evidence’ to support their claim that they will cite with beaming pride. What can you say to someone like that? Well, you can’t say one word without having to follow that word with at least 50 more that they probably aren’t going to understand anyway, so I kept my mouth shut and observed in stunned, giddy silence the spectacle that was unfolding before me. Thankfully these guys are merely incompetent yet arrogant poker players, as opposed to incompetent yet arrogant structural engineers, airline pilots or heart surgeons.

“The proper way to perform open heart surgery is to have the patient lie on his right side. You want him on his right side so that his heart is close to you. If he lies on his left, you have to dig more deeply to get to the heart, and that is bad. We want the heart close to us. Granted, we will have to amputate the left arm in order to get at the heart, but having no left arm is better than being dead. Plus, most people are right handed so their left arm is more likely to be expendable.”

“You are wrong. It doesn’t matter what side he lies on, because the heart is actually in the middle of the chest. The heart being on the left is only true in cartoons and Hallmark cards. Since losing a limb is a very serious thing, it should be up to the patient, not the doctor, to decide which limb is lost. Duh. You call yourself a heart surgeon and you don’t even know THAT?”

I hate online poker. Hate it. My mother would cringe if she heard me say that. “Bobby, hate is a very strong word”.

I understand that I toss that word around more liberally than perhaps I should, but that does not change the fact that I do indeed hate online poker. I even feel that ‘hate’ is inadequate to describe the depths of disdain I feel for online poker. I make money playing it, but if online poker were sitting on a bench eating an ice cream cone, I would careen off of the road and run it over without a second thought. I would do it harm.

It is like exercise. We know it is good for us and sometimes we even enjoy doing it, but if we never had to do it again it and could still live the way we wanted, we’d be thrilled.

In live poker, you get to see who your opponents are and they get to see you. This is not the case online, which creates an environment of anonymity that has a two-pronged effect.

First, some people feel they can speak freely (via a ‘chat’ box where one can type things that the whole table can read) without any reprisal. Profanity and insults are tossed about with reckless abandon. One of my favorites is when one player calls another player, whom he cannot see and likely knows nothing about, a ‘nigger’ or ‘jew’ or a ‘fag’. I have been called all of these things and more, in spite of the fact that I am a heterosexual white guy whose mother was a nun and whose dad was inches from the priesthood. Thankfully, no one has called me a fat, out of shape jackass with greying hair, as that may actually irritate me given that it hits pretty close to the mark.

Second, people tend to do things they may not do if they had to face a bunch of guys staring at them with “what the hell were you thinking?” looks on their faces. When a guy in a live game plays a hand like a moron (assuming he knows he indeed did play it like a moron), he usually looks embarrassed and like he wishes he could disappear. It’s like singing in the shower. No one wants to get caught doing it, because it is rarely pretty.

Online games also are extremely aggressive, and typically mindlessly so. Imagine a boxer trying to kill a fly by punching it. Lots of flailing about and fury, but no dead fly. Even the guys who allegedly win money are prone to spazztarded fits of mindless aggression. If you told me that the other players were actually blindfolded 2 year old boys, with those plastic hammers that 2 years old boys have, pounding on the mouse/keyboard, I would believe it.

Recently I played a hand vs. a guy who knows who I am, and thus should know that (a) he could never beat me and (b) I don’t ever fold anything ever. He raised with Q6o on the button (questionable in the first place), I 3bet the SB, and now he decides to 4bet with this thing. He is only a 51/49 favorite to win the hand, and that is if my hand is RANDOM. When I 3bet, the following are true (a) my hand is not random and (b) I ain’t folding anything that beats Q-high. Why on earth would anyone choose to put in MORE money in this spot? Same reason one would try to kill a fly with an uppercut.