The Prophet

Just yesterday I posted about Mr. Contemptible earning his title when someone said they saw him spit on the cardroom floor a couple times.  I could hardly believe it, but then I sat next to him recently, and saw it for myself, twice.  

NFC.   No F'ing Class.

So when the cardroom manager said he was getting all new carpet, I jokingly advised him to alert Mr. C, and tell him to clean up his act.

Halloween Night, and there's C at Table 1, Seat 2.  First time I've seen him since the new rug went down.  Busy, busy room, big crowd, and the manager's at the podium, talking to a floorman.  I'm standing 6 feet away, catch his eye, and he gives a nod that says:  "Be with you in a minute."
  
Take your time.  I'm just looking for a laugh, and expect to find one by reminding him to remind C to don't be spitting on the new carpet.

And why do I want to say that?  Why do I want to put the guy down?  I mean, it is what it is:  A PUTDOWN, and I guess the only real reason we ever do that is so we can build ourselves up, at the same time.
   
"Look at that idiot!  Can you believe he's [whatever] ?  He's such a fool!"
  
And along with that there is always the unspoken but implied addendum: 

  "...and I'm NOT!"

I usually try to be better than that.  But damn, a guy like C is such an easy target, it's nearly impossible to always be good.  Especially for me, where making people laugh is just another favorite hobby.

All this is running through my mind while I'm waiting.  Not much traffic in there, so it circles around a few times, unimpeded, and I decide to be good, and pass on the putdown, for now.

Manager's still busy, but I catch his eye again, smile, shake my head, say "Never mind," and walk away.  End of story.

Well, no.  Not two minutes later, I'm still nearby, and bossman is yelling at C:

   "Hey!  If you ever spit on my carpet again, you'll be out of here!"

Yes, believe it or not, the prophecy came true, and the boss happened to look over at the table just in time to see C do his nasty thing.

Later, Mr.  C moved to another game, and got promoted to Mr. G, as in GONE.  Got himself 86'd, again, for cursing the dealer.

For The Record

I also posted yesterday about a confrontation months ago with Mr. C over some blatant non-English dialog during a hand, and Can't Get No Satisfaction when I sought recourse from the floor.  

Well, that floorman departed shortly thereafter, and it sure feels to me like nowadays there remain few, if any, DL players who think of poker as a Team Sport.

In other words, if Game Integrity was ever a problem at DL— and I don't think it ever really was during my years there— but if it was, well, I don't think it is any more.

I also mentioned a couple guys who sometimes like to sneak a peek at another player's hand, after-the-fact.  They've pretty much put a stop to that, by imposing 20 minute Time Out for the offense.

Probably my only complaint any more is those few players who, once they decide to fold it, like to expose their starting hand to their neighbors, or maybe to the other end of the table, depending on where they sit, relative to me.  

Seriously, it sometimes seems like a couple guys do that just to annoy me.  So I annoy them right back, point, and call out:

  "Exposed cards, dealer, please show all!"

Bottom Line is that anyone who has been avoiding the DL Games based on an old reputation might want to take another look.  New management seems to me quite serious about game integrity.

MIA Repatriation Week

Dustin, The Kid From Pullman who moved to Dallas last year, was back in town for some kind of event at his WSU Alma Mater recently, and got the MVP Hero's Welcome Back treatment at DL.  Damn shame he was only in town for the weekend.  Nice of him, though, to spend so much of it with us.

Then, I came in the other day to happily find three players who had each been Missing In Action for a couple months or more, all back in town, back in action, and sitting in the game:  Seahawks Jersey # Ox55, Portlandia Baby Huey, and Ms. T.

Sadly, I wasn't in the game.   Sat on the board and on the rail a short while, then a second 20 started, and it was 2 hours before I got to the main game.  By then T was gone, but it was good playing with Tony Mac and Huey, and I was glad to see them back.

This week also marked return of the world's only chronically short-stacked poker pro, when Mookie apparently ended his self-imposed 6 month exile to the Mucks Spread games.

Year-End Superlatives

Fastest Dealer:

LyLy, aka Speedy.  Clocked repeatedly piching 18 cards, to 9 players, in 4.7 seconds, start to finish.

Funniest Thing Heard This Year:

Narcissus Cullus and Winky Tourette in a dustup at Table 1.  Somebody says something, and OMG, you know what happens when one guy disrespects another.  They stand up, but the floor steps in and dissuades anyone from actually swinging, and calm is restored.  I was in the second game, Table 10, missed the words, and only saw the "almost fight."

I get to the main game an hour later, Winky is long gone, and somebody brings up the incident again.  "Yeah," Narcy says, "I woulda kicked that motherfather's ass, if I wasn't still on probation."  And he wasn't kidding.

Funniest Thing Seen This Year:

Late evening, full game, no board, and Leisure Suit Larry comes in.  He's First Up, but wants to gamble RIGHT NOW, so he offers to pay $200 cash to anyone willing to give up their seat.  Ducky takes him upon that right away.

Most Shocking Thing Heard This Year:

Shocking not just for what he said, but also, especially, for who said it.

Hint:  Only one regular DL 20 Player is over 90 years old.

And I can't use that word even in my no-class blog, so let's just say it's a filthy and horribly misogynistic pejorative that's a little shorter, but way worse, than "bitch."  And it starts with C.  OK?

Afternoon game, Ms. T in Seat 2, Ducky in 8, and Old Dirty Mouth in 9.

T and Ducky heads up, she checkraises the turn, and he folds.

Dirty leans over towards Ducky and puts his hand up to his mouth, as if to speak in confidence, privately.  Yeah, right.  I got headphones on, in Seat 5, and hear him loud and clear.  He asks Ducky:

   "So how do you like having that [Shock Word] run over you?"


The dealer heard it, too, and she gasped too, like me, and looked down, embarrassed.  Ducky didn't react. He's an ESL guy, and I honestly don't think that word is part of his vocabulary.

Random is Random

24 years ago next month, I set out to learn all and everything about Blackjack.  The first book I bought came highly recommended, mostly because it had originally introduced the simple High-Low counting system. 

The book was How to Play Winning Blackjack, by a smart IBM computer guy named Julian Braun.  Turned out that several other books published later were better, but at the time, for a beginner like me, Braun's book seemed pretty good.

Until I got to Chapter 15, Money Management, that is.  There I found discussion of "...the way the cards are running at any given time," and advice like:

"...The secret is your ability to recognize a streak as close to its beginning as possible, and the end of it as soon as possible, so you may retreat quickly."

Wait, what?  That can't be right, I thought.  

Here I've been learning a scientific and mathematically sound system for counting the cards played, evaluating how the probabilities of random events in the game have changed, according to the cards remaining in play, and how to adjust my strategy and bet size accordingly.  Fine.

All that is supposed to nullify the house advantage, and create a player advantage instead.  Awesome!  I'm loving this concept.

But now the author is saying that those random events aren't really random after all?

Even as a newbie, I was starting to understand that random is random, and that streaks happen, but that thinking you can somehow detect, or identify, when a streak is "beginning" or "ending" is, well, ridiculous.  Stupid.  Why? 

Because random is random, that's why.

All that made me question credibility of the entire book.  Unfairly, it turned out.  Years later, stumbling across some biographical material on Julian Braun, I read that it was his EDITOR who thought he knew something, and took it upon himself to re-write that chapter, and insert that "ride the streaks" crap, and how furiously upset Braun had been about it.

More recently I came across some more questionable material in an otherwise pretty good poker book that I've mentioned in a couple recent posts.  At one point the "Anonymous" author makes a claim, and invites you to try it for yourself if you don't believe him.

Well I don't believe it, but neither have I tried it.  Sounds too crazy to me to even bother.  What do you think?

Mr. Anonymous tells you to deal draw poker just like you always did; deal seven five-card hands clockwise around the table, then look to see how many of those hands contain pairs.  

Then he tells you to shuffle up and deal seven hands by dealing five cards in sequence for the first hand, then five for the second hand, and so on.

Then he says that:

"You're going to be amazed at the difference between the hands dealt sequentially, and the hands dealt clockwise.

"About 40 percent of the hands dealt clockwise will contain pairs, while about 60 percent of the hands dealt sequentially will have pairs in them."

Then he goes on to recommend that if you don't believe this, you should try it a hundred times.

So far, I've tried this test zero times, and I still don't believe it.  Do you?  Do you think it should make any difference how you deal out seven five-card poker hands?  Or do you agree with me, that Random is Random?

I mean, I don't see how it could make any difference even if you ——

• Deal the first card to each hand clockwise, then switch and deal the second counter-clockwise, and keep switching.  Or not.
• Cut the deck any time you hear a dog bark, baby cry, toilet flush, car horn, train whistle, burp or fart.
• Interrupt dealing, shuffle up, then continue, after every card, or every fifth card, or any time you hear a dog bark, etc.
  
• Any combination of the above, or anything at all that is trying to "exchange one randomness for another randomness."

It seemed to me kind of unfair, or maybe call it narrow-minded, to just reject Mr. Anonymous' claim without even giving it a try.  But I'm not going to deal out however many hands it would take to prove or disprove some cockamamie theory.

Still, it bothered me.  I kept wondering if maybe I'm missing something, or am just too dumb to recognize some hidden truth in the claim that seems like such bullshit to me.

So I decided to take it to the street, and brought it up at the table a few times, explained Mr. Anonymous' hypothesis, and ran it by some smart guys who might offer a fresh idea or new perspective, maybe help me get a better handle on this mystery.  

First couple times I got nothing.  But then T.T., aka The Engineer, hit the ball right out of the park, with this answer (I'm paraphrasing here):

"Maybe Mr. Anonymous did try it 20 times, or 100 times.  And maybe his trials actually did produce the 'amazing' 60/40 difference that he describes.  So what?  

"That's not amazing at all. 100 trials would not be a statistically meaningful sample size, and proves nothing."

Bingo.  I still like Mr. Anonymous' often insightful and always entertaining books, even if he seems to not quite get the randomness and standard deviation thing.

I also suspect we may have even played with this guy at Mirage and/or Bellagio a time or three.