Poker Perambulation

It is one of the attributes of youth. Joe Speaker sees it in his son and blogs about it. Even those of us with hair in more places can revert to youthful exuberance. Yes, I do it from time to time myself. Humans seem to revert to optimism in a default manner that force reeducates us once again. It is a poker table standard, too, it seems.End a session and sit at the bar or hit IM with your tale and a staple is ‘The Big Fold’ the we or our opponent made. They can become the stuff of legend or the highlight from two hours of WPT editing. Intellect triumphs over our normal optimism. All to often what is exposed is our human fraility.

At no-limit it is the deceptive bet that pulls us in with a misread. At limit is happily putting in the 4^th raise. Or letting the rounds cap and cap without the nuts. We let one hand define our session. When we come out on top, it’s one of those ultimate joys.

In the flop games it is a fairly simple process to determine the nut hand. Much of the complaining is the great starting hand that didn’t make one much money. The other side of that is the demigod like non-nut that occasionally loses a big pot. If we’re lucky, it happens on a one outer on the river. But, often the guy had it when we blundered. Yeah, maybe we were unlucky. But, it is dangerous to let a hand define our session with just a ‘nice’ hand.

At the stud games, things aren’t as clear. It isn’t hard to have a concealed hand People may think you are betting what your ups represent and you have a completely different hand. When three down cards play at the end, it is often the sign of a loose player. But the pot odds can make that as righteous as any other call. Or the outs were enough and more.

I watched (fortunately) such a hand yesterday. Four players capped on 4^th street. They did it again on 5^th and in lost a player doing it on 6^th. After capping the last street, the hands were displayed:

• Quad Jacks
• Flush
• Full-House

Now I’ve had all three of the above hands and been beat in all three. Yes, I’ve had my quads go down in flames. After the hand above, I typed in something like: “Happy I wasn’t that stupid” and the guy with the boat took umbrage. We discussed it and finally agreed that the danger of the situation was totally ignored in the betting. And we returned to a friendlier chat.

The secret to the situation was the guy with quads. He actually made the hand in 4 and was the ’smart’ player when 4^th street was capped. He was also on of those Loose Cannons we all want to take down; the one that raises with anything and has a luckbox shoved up his lower orifice. You see people play back at him with middle strength or a chase and get clocked by him. That was less typical than most but nobody bothered to think and then try to control the size of the pot. And, with two of the hands showing pairs, the flush guy was more the total optimist than Joe’s 5-year old. Both of them had used a read of the loose cannon to play into his success as often happens. In stud, it isn’t as simple as being able to lay down a high pair in Hold’em.

Pokers mix of psychology and odds makes for strange bedfellows. Often we use the mix to our advantage. Other times we fail. The failure isn’t tha one so much relates to the collection of cards that come out in the hand history as it is to our inability to control pot size properly. Nowhere is that more true than in a limit game.

If you friend looks at life as a glass half-full, I can see why he is a great guy to have a few beers with. He’s going to liven things and help make you a pair of happy drunks. If you can, get him to the tables with you. After, you should be able to retain the friendship by buying him a few more beers – but with his money.

(Tomorrow, we take the other tack.)

ADDENDUM:

(Never enough Uranus humor is there?)

Up Uranus Revealed

Every 900 year or thereabouts our outer planet – after Pluto got taken behind the woodshed – displays its rings in a unique, up fashion. That’s what just happened. Silly plant revolves sideways to our scheme with rotation occurring close to the galactic plane. Its 15 rings merge in this interesting shot and also proving we’re not the only blue marble:

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 5:50 am and is filed under Journal, Poker Philosophy. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.