Power Play

(20/40 Limit Hold 'Em @ Diamond Lil's)

I wish I could say the hero of this hand was me, but it wasn't.  I mucked preflop, and was just an observer.  The hero was kid named Caine, or Cain, or Kane; I'm not sure. But, hey, let's just call him The Man.  He earned it.

And the other guy I'll call Coffee, as that's close to what they call him, and I'm not sure quite what his name really is, or how it's spelled.  An older gent, though not quite so old and decrepit as me, and I'd guess he comes originally from someplace East of Italy, and West of India.  Kind of a Groucho Marx look, wire rim glasses, thinning hair combed straight back.  Nice dresser.  Big talker, even though he never seems to say anything meaningful.  He did say he's an engineer and works for some Chinese company in Texas.  Or something.

Coffee is a wildman.  Plays 80% of his starting hands, marathon sessions, cold calls 2, 3 or 4 bets with anything, gives up his blinds, well, never, and makes some of the wackiest bets, raises, and even FOLDS, that you ever saw.  He's one of those few opponents where I have to pass on that concept of "trying to get inside the other guy's head," because, well, this guy is out there where the busses don't even run.

He's also kind of a PITA (Pain in the Ass), because the dealer always has to tell him when it's his turn to act.  If he's talking to a waitress, or masseuse, or on the phone, or buying chips, or stacking a pot, or babbling on to nobody in particular about why he did what he did on the last hand, or scratching his ass.... WHATEVER, the action stops dead when it reaches him, and he needs to be prompted to act.  Often more than once.  And he always seems to be doing one of those things at those moments, and tends more to keep doing it, wants to finish, before finally acting on his hand.  Somebody probably woulda killed this guy by now, if he weren't such a Producer.

He likes to get the $1/minute massage, for 30, 40, 50 minutes, then again an hour or two later.  The other day, seated beside me, he inexplicably offered to treat me to a massage! WTF?

"Me?" I asked him.  "In public?  With my clothes on?  Not happening," I said.  "But thanks anyway."  The masseuse laughed.

Anyway, in this Power Play hand, the Play of the Day, maybe Play of the Month, The Man bets the river, on a board with all small cards, and Coffee raises him.  The Man doesn't hesitate at all, and re-raises.

How often do you make a River Bluff Raise?  You know, raise on the river with nothing, hoping to make the bettor fold a better hand.  Now that's REAL poker.  Against a tough opponent who is capable of making the laydown, a River Bluff Raise should be a powerful play.  Right?

But in the games I play, my opponents generally are anything but tough, and most times they don't give it up when they should.  If they flop top pair and get raised on the turn, you almost always have to show them a hand on the river to take the pot. They just don't lay down.  In fact, some of the worst chip-burning mistakes I've made in these games, repeatedly, was trying to run over guys who aren't going anywhere; aren't gonna lay down.  So maybe the RBR should be part of my toolkit, but it really isn't.  I keep looking for an opportunity, but every time I think I may have one, then consider it, the chance my opponent will actually fold seems too close to zero.

Coffee, however, won't hesitate to bet the river, or even raise it, with nothing.  Gets caught all the time, too, but that doesn't slow him down much.

So like I say, he raised the river here, but got re-raised right away.

Coffee shows his Ace Ten -- Ace high, no pair, and mucks it.  Caught bluffing again.

Thing is, Coffee was bluffing with the best hand, but he didn't even know it!  The Man shows 76, a worse no pair, a busted straight draw, and takes the pot.  How often do you River Bluff RE-RAISE??

Wait, let's put that question differently: how often (in a LIMIT game) do you see ANYONE raise the river, get re-raised, and fold?  Almost never happens, right?  The river raiser is almost always gonna call a reraise, unless he was bluffing in the first place, and for The Man to read that, and successfully RE-BLUFF, seemed quite remarkable to me.

He didn't seem to think so. The other players loudly expressed their surprise when he even showed the re-bluff, but he just said...

"C'mon, who didn't know he [Coffee] was bluffing?  You all knew, didn't you?"

It was just awesome, and won my instant and complete admiration and respect.

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The Man put a little hurt on Mrs. Rock in a different game a couple days later.  Open raised UTG with pocket deuces, and flopped a set against her unimproved pocket Kings.  Ouch.

=== === === ===

Fun With Statistics

Do you keep any kind of poker log, and record your sessions?  Some players do, and some don't.  I do now, but there were times, not long ago, that I didn't, just because it was too painful.

If you do keep records, what do you track?  Just Date and Win/Loss?  That's nice, but how about hours played?  And how about drop paid (number of raked pots won), and how much came off your stack for tokes, food, drink, massage, whatever.

Actually, that last category should be subdivided into two columns: costs that you DO, or DO NOT, consider to be "part of the game."  Either way, count all chips that leave your stacks, because that's more that you would have cashed out. In other words, that, plus the drop, is the difference between your Gross and Net result.

Sound like too much trouble?  Waste of time, tracking all that stuff?  Maybe, but when I recorded all those things on Excel spreadsheets, and crunched some numbers, a very interesting statistic fell out.  So interesting, in fact, that it helped me understand what I needed to do to improve my game, and cash out more chips.  Do I have your attention yet?

Again, what I record in columns across a spreadsheet, and with one row for each day/session, is Date, plus:

A. Buy In Amount
B. Cash Out Amount
C. Number of raked pots won
D. Money off my stack- Game Related
E. Money off my stack- Non Game
F. Hours played (start & stop times)

Then, from the TOTALS on each of those columns, some Excel formulas tell me:

1. Cost of playing (D + (C x 5)) [drop in my game is $5. YMMV.]

2. Net Win/Loss (B + E - A)

3. Gross Win/Loss (B + D + E + (C x 5) - A)

4. Pots won per hour (F / C)


Are you getting bored yet?  OK, enough detail; let's cut straight to the payoff.  The surprise that came out of all this was when we compared my stats to Mrs. Rock's, and saw a similar trend repeat itself, over several sample time periods.  We saw that her hourly rate was better than mine, often way better, even though I was consistently winning more pots per hour than her.  OK, now stop, please, and read that last sentence again, unless you already picked up on the significance.

Now let's sidetrack a minute, and talk about my friend, G.A. Joe.  He used to be G.I. Joe, but the Army kicked him out, and then he joined Gamblers Anonymous.

Joe is the worst player ever.  He NEVER folds.  He goes to the river with EVERY starting hand.  Any time Joe could catch runner-runner for a straight or flush, or spike a set of deuces on the river, or even call a bluff and win a showdown with seven high, he does win that pot.  He never misses an opportunity to get lucky, and wins every pot he possibly could win.

So Joe makes two-pair, sets, straights, flushes, whatever, more often than anyone else, and wins more pots than anyone else.  And Joe loses his money faster than anyone else, too.  He will go broke chasing down everything in sight.  The thing that defines Joe as such a horrible player is that he plays so many hands that he shouldn't, takes the worst of it so often, and puts chips into the pot with a Negative Expectation so much.

This concept is easy to grasp, once you think about it.  But even then, even after they "get it," MOST players continue to think, and act (perform) like they DON'T get it.

And that's what I was doing, just a tiny little bit, but enough to make a difference.  I wasn't chasing everything, completely out of control, like Joe.  But I was— believe it or don't, up to you— WINNING TOO MANY POTS!  Just a few too many, because I was playing maybe more than just a few too many hands.  And while some of those "extra" hands came through and won, too many of them didn't.  Net result:  minus.

This was a real surprise, hard to accept, because anyone you ask would probably say I'm the tightest player in the game.  So which hands was I playing that I shouldn't?

My last couple posts talked some about that cutoff raise against a weak limper with, for example, a ragged Ace, and trying to get heads up, or maybe have just a couple callers.  Doing that indiscriminately, against a field where more likely several will play, was one mistake, and was the first place I tightened up.  I was already starting to understand why I should be making that play way less often.  After a while, and a lot of thought and discussion, we identified a couple other places where I needed to tighten up.  And also a couple where I had to LOOSEN up, too, but that's a whole 'nother post.

It's been a couple months now, and some small changes seem so far to be improving my rate.  Too brief a sample period to be sure, but I'd like to think that my game improved just a little.  Maybe enough to soon challenge Mrs. Rock's first place spot on our leader board.  So what to do now?  Find ways to improve it more, of course!