Poker is…

Poker is a game of people not a game of cards.  It’s interesting that the mechanics of the game are becoming second nature; almost boring in a way.  I can imagine that players go through stages, in much the same way a musician learns to play.  Let’s say you’re learning to play piano.  The first thing you need to learn is the mechanics – what keys to press at what time, and so on.  Eventually it becomes second nature, and you’re able to insert your own unique style into the music you play.  Once you’ve mastered the mechanics, you can start to become creative.

I believe poker is the same.  Once you get the mechanics down, in other words, once you start to grasp how to play the cards from all the different positions, when to raise, when to fold, when to check/raise, and how to extract the most money from the table that you can, based on mathematical advantage, then you can start to focus on playing the players.  It isn’t until you get the mechanics down, when those decisions become easy and fast, that you can start to integrate additional information about the people you’re playing against into your decision making processes.  Well, you can certainly do that while you’re learning the mechanics, but I think it becomes significantly easier once those decisions become automatic.

As an example, I’m playing today at a Laggy table.  This comes from the acronym LAG, which stands for Loose Aggressive – meaning people tend to play too many hands, and they tend to raise a lot and play very aggressively with their hands.  On the surface this seems like a good game – on average you’re playing better cards than your opponents, but it’s also more difficult to read your opponents – most of the time they can have almost any two cards!  Also, forget about limping in with a weak hand that you want to play inexpensively; you can almost guarantee somebody is going to raise, and at least 5-6 people are going to see the flop.  The pots are large, but it costs a lot to make your hand.  As a result, the size of your chip stack goes way up, and way down – in other words, it’s swingy.

Back to my example…  Early in the night I’m in late position with Ace Queen offsuit, and 3 people limp in, and one person raises.  I’ve been playing with the raiser (we’ll call him the Villain) for about an hour, and I know that he raises with almost anything.  I had just watched him cap (the maximum, or 4 bets) preflop with Ace 6 offsuit about 20 minutes ago.  I know he’s a LAG, or loose aggressive player, so I decide to reraise him and make it 3 bets to go from late position.  The 3 early position limpers all call, and he just calls my reraise.  (Interesting – I had just watched him reraise/4 bet with Ace-6 offsuit, which is one of the worst hands, so what could he possibly have that is less than this, which he isn’t willing to do the same with?)  The flop comes Ace of Spades, Queen of Diamonds, Queen of Clubs.  Wow – I don’t have the best possible hand, but I have the 2nd best possible hand!  Early position limpers all check, Villain bets, and I call.  I could have raised, but here’s the thing – the early position raisers *might* call one bet, but are more likely to fold to two bets.  I want them to stay in, so a check here seemed like the best way to make the pot as big as possible.  If I raised here, the early position limpers might fold, and I would only get two more small bets into the pot, where by calling I’m getting *hopefully* 3 more small bets – possibly even more if one of the early position limpers has an Ace and intends to check/raise!

Well, the early position limpers all call again, and the turn is another Ace.  I now have the absolute best hand possible, with Aces full of Queens.  One of the early position limpers bets out (WTF???) and the Villain raises.  I sit there with a stunned look on my face I’m sure – I can’t believe what has just happened; I’m sitting on the absolute stone-cold nuts, and I’ve got at least 2 players showing aggression in the pot before me!  I’m practically drooling with anticipation of the chips I’m going to stack!

I decide that I have nothing to lose (and a LOT to gain) by reraising at this point – people are still going to put more money into the pot anyway, and there’s a chance the betting might get capped after me!  So I reraise, making it 3 bets to go – early position limper calls, and the Villain reraises to cap it.  Of course I call.

The river is a Jack of Diamonds.  Early position limper checks, the Villain bets, and I raise.  Early position limper calls, and the Villain calls.  I show my cards and they both muck (discard without showing their hands).

I swear that the other people at the table were almost as stunned as I was.

Great hand – great flop, and great turn.  I absolutely LOVED playing that hand!

Now in sharp contrast, later on I’m in middle position with almost the same hand – Ace Queen offsuit, and it is raised from under the gun (early position) by someone who I know to be a good player.  Almost the same number fo callers, but this time I fold.  FOLD?!?!??  Yep.  I folded.  I wasn’t afraid of the limpers – I was afraid of the raiser.  This was somebody who was better than the average players at the table, and who I figured probably had a big pocket pair – something like 10s or Jacks, maybe even Aces, Kings, or Queens – or even Ace King.  He would probably also raise with Ace Queen, but maybe not out of early position.  At any rate, all of those hands beat me – even if he would raise with Ace Queen, it’s at the bottom of the range of hands he would raise with, so statistically, I’m beat already.

I can’t remember the board, but I remember when it was all done he was stacking the chips.  I made a good decision by folding after his raise.  Of course it’s true that the board *might* have played out similar to the way it had before – where an Ace and two Queens gives me a full-house on the flop; however, that only happens once in a very very great while.  Statistically, that almost never happens, and I’m not playing the game hoping for such flops – I’m playing the game statistically, and in this case, knowing my opponent helped me to make the best decision.

I remember a few months ago I had folded Ace, Ten offsuit from middle position after somebody had raised, and the flop came Ace, Ten, 3 – And the person who raised had Ace, King and won the pot.  I mentioned to the person next to me that I had folded Ace Ten offsuit preflop, and that it would have won, but that I folded because the raiser before me probabl had a better hand (and he did – Ace King dominates Ace Ten – statistically).  The player next to me said “You couldn’t get me to fold Ace Ten preflop!”

I just looked down at my chips – quite a few of which originated from his stack, and thought to myself “yep, that’s why I like playing poker with you…”

An interesting thing happened at the tables…

So about 6 months ago, I was playing at one of the casinos North of Seattle; I went there on a recommendation from my friend, The Consigliere, who said the players seemed weak/tight on average, and I could probably make some money there.  I went, and ended up sitting down next to a large man, who almost immediately started talking to me.  He seemed friendly; in fact, a little too friendly considering I don’t try to make friends while playing poker.  It’s not that I’m unfriendly; I’m just there for a different purpose.  I want to play poker.  Besides, becoming “friendly” can make it difficult to take their money.

At first the only thing that bothered me was that he talked too much.  For the most part I kind of tuned him out and focused on the game, until he started asking me personal questions, like where I’m from.  The only thing I offered was that I normally play on the East side, at The Caribbean.  (In retrospect, OOPS!)  He started talking about how he grew up in Redmond, and that he thought it would be fun to take me around to his childhood neighborhoods.  I was not interested, and intended to tell this guy to leave me alone, that I wanted to focus on poker.  He then told me that he would like to take me out some time.  I shrugged him off, and moved to a different seat at the table so that I wasn’t sitting right next to him.  Unfortunately it really wasn’t any better, being across from him at the table, he kept smiling at me and winking and stuff.  I’m not even attracted to this guy, and he’s really distracting and unnerving, so the first chance I got, when he left for a smoke break (I don’t smoke) I cashed out as quickly as I could and left, thinking I would never see this guy ever again.

Fast forward to about a week ago from today.  I walk into The Caribbean, and sit down at table 3.  Sitting directly across from me is, guess who?  Yep.  It’s him.  As I was stacking my chips, he said “I thought I’d find you here eventually.”  Wow.  I was fortunate that a seat at the main game (a different table) had opened up, and the floor supervisor asked if I would like to go to that table; I couldn’t move fast enough!

He came to my table a couple of times and tried talking to me, but I kept telling him that I’m focusing on poker.  Eventually, like the last time, I waited until he went on a smoke break, and bolted.  I explained the situation to one of the dealers, who helped me to get out quickly.  I’m so bad at these kinds of awkward social situations…

Now fast forward again to today.  Same casino, same situation.  This time, I was seated at table 1 and he was at table 3.  This time, he asked me for my phone number.  I brushed the question off, and kept playing poker.

Now tonight was kind of a bad night to play poker; not necessarily because of this guy, but mostly because there was a winter storm warning, and it had started to snow.  I drive a Mustang, which has rear-wheel drive.  I’m a little nervous in slippery conditions, so naturally I’m concerned about the snow.  At one point somebody said that it had started to snow heavily, so I got up to walk outside and take a look.  Just as I exited the casino, guess who was there at the front door smoking?  Yep.  Now I was cornered.  He asked for my phone number, and I pulled out my phone wondering what in the world I was going to do.  I remembered a phone number I had stored a long time ago for a free service called the “Rejection Hotline.”  I decided to use it, and gave the number to him.  I then excused myself saying that it was too cold outside, and went back inside.

After about 5 minutes, he returned to table 3; I could tell by the look on his face that he had called the number I gave, and he knew.  After about 30 minutes he came over to me and handed me a note.  I’m not joking; I can’t make this stuff up!  On the note, he had written the following:

“My sister will be here at 7:00pm with $200.  Will you loan me $60 until then?”

I couldn’t believe my eyes!  I had just rejected this guy in what was probably the most awkward way possible, and now he’s asking me for a loan?  I couldn’t believe it.  I decided to put the note away and hope he just goes away.  Eventually he approached me again, and asked if we could talk.  I decided that this time we had to have a “come to Jesus meeting.”

When we exited the casino, I kind of let him have it.  I told him that I wasn’t interested, and I felt bad for not handling the situation better, but he needed to leave me alone.  I then told him that I did not lend money to gamblers.  I went off – I told him that this was job for me; I’m very careful about my bankroll, and I don’t loan money to people at the poker table.  I told him that I work my butt off every day trying to take as much money from the table as I can, and I wasn’t about to loan it back to another player!  I was pretty pissed at this point.

I went back to the table – oh, it gets better, yes it does.  A woman next to me got up to use the restroom, and when she got back, she said to me that this guy (yep – him) had asked if she would pose as his sister, and tell somebody on the phone that she was bringing $200 to him.  I showed her the note he had given me, and explained the drama I had experienced.  Of course she didn’t do what he asked.  Eventually he found somebody else to borrow the money from, and sat back down at table 3 and gave it all away.  (He’s a terrible poker player.  Too bad for the sucker who loaned him their money.)

So the moral of the story is that I’m not at the tables to flirt or make friends!  If anything, I’m the exact opposite of your friend at the table; I’m looking at your chips/money, and thinking about how much bigger my bankroll is going to be with your money added to mine.  I’m not interested in socializing with people; I’m there doing a job, and trying to learn to be the best poker player I can be.

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