Rappin'

[peterbirks]

Trouble is a-brewin' in Las Vegas. I walked back down the Strip at 2am this morning, and the feeling I had was very different from even a year or so ago. I passed two sets of mounted police and a considerable number of metro police cars. It also appeared to me that there were several "brothers" hanging about whose entrepreneurial skills were directed towards the pharmaceutical retail sector.

The problem is, you can't really say "I felt uncomfortable" without being accused of racism. Why should a collection of young black guys trying to sell CDs outside Bally's, or another collection of black kids practising nigga rap (their phrase, not mine) by the Harley Davidson cafe, or a considerably greater number of youngsters (probably sub-21) with gang-type clothing be of concern to me? I wasn't going to get mugged.

Well, I guess that, if I want this kind of atmosphere, I can go shopping in Lewisham Town Centre on a Saturday afternoon. It's more fun if everyone is completely relaxed. I didn't have that feeling last night.

++++++



English groups making a living out of their music being played in Las Vegas lavatories:

Snow Patrol (Excalibur)
Coldplay (Excalibur)
New Order (Flamingo)

++++++++++++

I continue to run nigglingly bad, despite winning three small sessions out of three yesterday.

While passing a couple of hours in the Excalibur before heading to the Mall, I went two hours without winning a hand, but then I won three in quick succession, to finish a few bucks up.

In a five-hour session at the Bellagio, I had to ask myself "did I run bad here?"

On the plus side, I flopped two sets and got paid off reasonably on both of them (in one, I limped in MP1 with 33, got raised by AA, and flopped the 3. Normally I would throw 33 away there, but perhaps, with six people seeing a single raise flop, limping is positive ev in this kind of game). in five hours, that's one more set than mathematically I have a right to expect.

On the down-side, I didn't see a flush or a straight on those five hours, and three times that I had AQ and raised I hit top pair, and three times I lost. I'm trying to work out how to minimize the damage with this kind of hand when they go wrong. For example, I don't continuation bet if I miss, unless I only have two opponents or fewer. But if I raise and I get two people calling me on a flop of QJx, all clubs, I don't see what else I can do but force the pace and hope that I don't get outdrawn (or that one of the opponents has QJ or the set).

I also managed to have AK and flop Kxx against KK. Incredibly, I got away from this on the turn, and the set of kings managed to lose to a diamond flush that hit on the river. What a game.

So, another very marginal win. Dispiriting, again. The quality of opponents wasn't laughably low, with most players in the session having some idea what to do. But it was still relatively loose.

And then I headed over to the Flamingo to wind down the night and, despite two hands in succession that cost me $100 pots with sickening rivers (note to self, if top pair top kicker is in front on the turn against two opponents, it will never be in front on the river), I still managed to get the best win of the day in a couple of hours' play. At this table the play was truly dreadful, and you can only take a couple of hours of it before you feel a desperate need to scream at someone who makes yet one more comment on a hand that is so laughably wrong that you wonder if you have walked into the land of No Idea. I mean, some of these people actually thought they knew what they were doing. It wasn't, "I'm just here to have fun". It was "I win in my home game. I wonder if I can win here?" They then promptly limp under the gun with something like Ace-Ten off, call a raise from behind them, call a flop of KQT rainbow (four players), call a turn of KQTx (four players), hit a jack on the river and scoop a $100 pot (I wasn't in that particular hand, btw). They then make some muttering about "I was getting the implied odds" without any concept that they were most likely pulling to a gutshot to tie the pot, that an Ace would quite likely do them no good, and that even a 10 might be beaten by a set of Queens or Kings. As far as they were concerned, an Ace or a 10 would be a "winner" and the top straight was a top straight.

"There's no such thing as a bad win", someone will say, just a few minutes before someone says "now, if it had been no-limit...."

Aargh.

Comments

[countingmyouts.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately you do not drink, Peter, because that is the tonic for playing in those Flamingo games. Instead of gritting your teeth at the ignorant commentary of the "hometown home game pros", you laugh, even out loud at those comments. And even while under the influence, your skill level still is more than adequate for those 2-4 and 4-8 games.

Keep your chin up, mate. Wasn't there some saying that Nick the Greek had about losing and gambling?

Michael

Hi Pete - a simple poker question

[oldgrumpy.livejournal.com]

When you are playing poker in Vegas how many players, typically, will be playing at the same table?

If we say 9 plus you just for the sake of debate.

Surely you would expect - particularly if you play for several hours -to win 10% of the hands if all the players were equally skillful.

If you win less than this perhaps it means you have below average skills and so on.

Re: Hi Pete - a simple poker question

[(Anonymous)]

Very very foolish words, man. A tight player might only play 10% of starting hands whereas a super-loose donkey might be seeing the flop virtually every time. When multi-tabling online it's no big deal - a playable hand will still be along fairly often. On a slow live table you might only see 40 hands/hour and play half a dozen. The point is that you are more likely to win the pot when you do play as you are waiting for strong hands. The downside is that with a little run of short-term bad luck you can easily not win a hand for hours and go on tilt from sucked out on once too many times.

There's no getting away from the fact that if everyone else is playing loosely you should lower your own standards - but tight players find this emotionally difficult. Perhaps easier is to lower your re-raise criteria trying to force a pot down to as few players as possible.

matt

Re: Hi Pete - a simple poker question

[oldgrumpy.livejournal.com]

Sorry you are going to have explain this a bit more.

40 hands per hour + "you can easily not win a hand for hours" means, again just as an example, that you might go 120 hands without winning.

But somebody must be winning the hands?! There must have been 120 winners at some point.

You must, again roughly, have had the best hand 10% of the time with ten players. 12 best hands of the 120 of which you win just one?

Err!

Re: Hi Pete - a simple poker question

[(Anonymous)]

Maximising the number of hands won and maximising winnings are very different things.

Take your 120 hands on a ten player table example and assume for maximum simplicity that there's flat betting; every hand that you want to play costs you ten dollars but you don't have to put anything in if you don't want to play. If everyone played every hand to the end (putting in $1200) then everyone would indeed expect to win 12 hands ($1200). Let's say you're running a little bad and you would only have won 6 of the hands; you end up with a loss of $600. Better to identify the good starting hands (where your chance of winning at the end is greater) and play the twenty or so good starting hands you get over this 3 hours (putting in $200, maybe winning only 2 of those).

The point, after that long-winded (and not exceptionally accurate) explanation, is that a good argument can be made that the biggest losing strategy in a game is to try and win as many pots as you can. The thing is that by going after winning every pot you will lose a lot of money along the way.

Re: Hi Pete - a simple poker question

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Not all pots are created equal, Martin. Indeed, thinking in terms of pots is misleading. What you need to think of is the expected value of each action that you make.

One of the worst things a player can do is to try to "create value". Every action you make at a poker table, be it fold, check, bet, call, raise or reraise, has a true expected return. Unfortunately, poker being poker, it's usually impossible to know with absolute certainty what the true expected return is. This is because you do not know what your opponents' actions will be, even if you know what cards they hold.

It's for this reason that the "right" mathematical play in a very weak game might not be the play that maximises your return.

So, if everyone played all hands to the end, you would win 10% of pots (on average) and the money would just go round and round, with the house taking a cut.

How, therefore, do you give yourself an advantage? The obvious answer is to not play your worse hands (fold), thus reducing your investment there, and to increase the size of the pots when you have a better hand than average. You do this by rasing.

Suppose you were in a game and you folded half your hands, while your raising increased the size of the pots by 10% from 20 bets to 22 bets. And (in this ideal world) you won a fifth of those hands where you raised. Each hand you folded cost you (on average) a fifth of a bet.

So, in 100 hands you now lose 10 bets from the 50 hands you fold, 88 bets from the hands you play but lose (40 hands at 2.2 bets a hand) and win 198 bets from the hands you raised (and won). This changes your return to 100 bets over those 10 hands.

However, because the game is mathematically uncertain, this doesn't happen. You end up only winning 8% of total hands, having folded some that you would have won. This costs you two hands ouf the 10, or roughly 40 bets. But, no worries, that still leaves you 60 bets to the good, even though you have won only 8% of hands. The other players have won an average of 10.22% of hands each, but have lost an average of 4 bets per 100 hands.

The alteration in pot size when you win is wat makes the difference.

Re: Hi Pete - a simple poker question

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Well, that makes sense. Apart from the "bets per hand" thing, which probably still makes sense, but my ability to do simple maths seems to have gone down the toilet. I assume that it still makes sense.

I seem to recall one early theme in GH being "bet to the pot" rather than "bet on your hand." For poker idiots like myself, this is possibly the most important thing to learn. (Particularly if you're brought up like me on any number of Westerns featuring steely-eyed gamblers, attended by voluptuous blondes, carrying two fully-loaded Colt '49s and a wad of Confederate scrip, easily convertible to gold bullion. Absurdly unrealistic, on reflection. If you'r actually a steely-eyed gambler, you won't be able to see the damn cards, will you?)

I use "to" rather than "against" on purpose. Betting "against" the pot (or pots, in a limit game) seems to me to be an attempt to turn the game into a purely mathematical process. Which no-one ever does.

Everyone turns complicated things into a metaphor that they (think that they) understand. Mine, being a comms engineer, is the metaphor of a protocol stack. I would view "the pot" as being at the bottom end of the stack. Above that, you've got the terms of the hand (who's blind, etc). Above that, you've got your initial starting point (whatever you're dealt.) Above that, you've got the question of how you weigh up the players' "game faces" (see, for example, your post from three days ago or so). And above that, well, that's where the process of betting happens. That's where you make decisions.

It seems to me that, if you concentrate entirely on the odds of the pot, the starting conditions, and the cards you're dealt, you're probably not playing up to your possible game. (I presume that this is what poker players mean by "tight.")

I would imagine that the basic issue with poker is the question of how to balance the underlying three levels with the two on top. I don't think that a "picking hands" strategy works under these circumstances.

On the other hand, I'd be very interested to know the number of Vegas players who don't understand that, in the end, you're actually betting your judgement against the amount in the pot and the value of your hand. Are there tables out there reserved solely for people without High-School Equivalents? Or, better still, PolSci Majors from minor universities such as Kent?

Re: Hi Pete - a simple poker question

[countingmyouts.livejournal.com]

"There's no getting away from the fact that if everyone else is playing loosely you should lower your own standards - but tight players find this emotionally difficult."

Never have truer words been spoken, Matt. It is a must to loosen up in those types of games and it really is hard for some tight players to come to grips with it...