Going to H.H.

No, I don’t mean Hell-in-a-Handbasket. I want to discuss Hand Histories. C.C. has a interest in them of late. A lot of blogger use them. If a magician was also a poker player, he’d understand hand histories. His stock in trade is deception.

Part of the reason I have disdain for them is I don’t read them well at all. As far as cards go, I am a very visual animal. I can ‘get it’ when Pokernews uses their graphic hand net applet. It is a bit better when someone goes to one of the sites that adds the suit icons in and does the hero/villan bit to protect the innocent.

There are two types of hand histories. One that tells you everything after the fact or one that leaves you guessing. Depending on the site, you may or may not see the full showdown. If you go out swinging, you won’t see more than XXXXXX muck cards on many sites; others show those who went to the showdown and lost. In the ‘good old days’, PokerRoom used to show all the down cards in their histories. You got info on who had what when they folded or called down to muck. Talk about getting great reads!!!

You see hand histories in the forums all the time. Occasionally, someone will post a part and not disclose the continued play. It is among the better ways to seek advise. But, it still leaves the responder out of context. You have no feel. It is like my telling you the teams 4-spot tried a drag bunt and stuck out. Should I call the manager a bonehead? A hand of poker is like a pitch in baseball. It is a bit of data that means little in determining the whole.

On Poker After Dark a while back some players discussed a hand that had just played. I think it was Boat over Boat. The genius professors of poker debated why so-and-so should have laid down the hand. Gus Hansen put it in perspective with the comment who in their right mind would lay down Queens Full or whatever the losing hand was without a working crystal ball.

We listen to Sexton give a nice commentary and tell us what a great lay-down or call that was or how the bonehead was neatly deceived. Well, it is true, I guess. You need the same faith in being right or wrong to make either play. And the line between genius and sucker is very fine and may have nothing to do with the cards you hold.

Hand histories can be very instructional. Fuel55 occasionally pulls that off. The best I’ve seen have come from Shirley Rosario’s blog; but, they are very infrequent. It isn’t the hand history but the thing that was involved as the play progressed that make a hand history great and that only comes from the person playing the hand. And, who won the hand really doesn’t mean squat; what you are getting is a look into the mind of a fairly complete player’s thought process.

Besides calling an all-in play, there is little that is black & white at the poker table – ring or tournament. Everything we know about ‘advanced play’ is doing something without the nut hand. A post-oak bet that fails leave you looking like you sprouted gills. Calling an obvious top 3 hand bet with 36 suited or not can be genius; but not against a player you know capable of laying down that hand. As a hand history, both those plays and a host of others look and are deceptive in the extreme.

If you go to Taylor “Green Plastic” Caby’s site you get stream of conscious videos. You see the hand as if you were sweating a friend or the real time play without access to the hole cams. Unless there is a showdown, you only know what Taylor or one of the other teachers on the site had. They have samples up of the concept and they charge for complete access. Try that with a pile of hand histories.

ADDENDUM:

Our blogging friend Felicia is doing better. Her illness is still under serious treatment and the hope is that they can prevent the pancreatic problems from being chronic. But, the good news is that it is no longer life threatening and she does have a semblence of a life.

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Take a look at Linda’s blog today. Then Google ‘Chip and Pin’ and take a look. (Chip and Pin is the next generation; we are still mag stripe and pin. The new technology is already in Europe.) It is scary. Linda is very lucky that her bank didn’t call her a negligent individual. (I’d have love to been a fly on the wall if that happened.) They are doing it to many people and saying the individual was at fault where the technology itself is the culprit.

The strip on our cards and the pin number assigned are stealable but many banks are taking a harder line and saying that the individual must be at fault. If you use a debit card instead of a credit card, you also have less protection. The type of fraud that is being perpetrated is not a forgery and those old protections are not available to us.

I have a Chase credit card. I am not saying they are better than others but I did get a call from them one morning asking if I had made a particular purchase. I hadn’t and they rushed me a replacement card. It wasn’t a large purchase but it did trigger their fraud possibility routine in their computer. It also points out that these companies know a lot more about you and me than we’d suspect.

It is only going to get worse. RFID credit card availability is in process. We won’t even have to open our wallet at the checkout. That info will be transmitted through the air from our credit cards and can be intercepted by the person near us. He may look to be talking on his phone while it records our entering of the pin. This system will be even more insecure and with many banks taking a hard line it will be a nightmare for many people being scammed.