He 4-Bet Me With a Deuce, Then Barely Played Another Hand

 Our Uber Driver Didn’t Speak English… So Lappin Spoke Louder

I’d never been to Castellon before, or even Valencia where we flew into. Lappin’s plane from Rome landed at almost the same time, and after I cleared security my phone was telling me he was only 80 metres away (yes, we have Find A Friend tracking on each other’s phones). We toyed with the idea of trying to navigate the Spanish rail system, but ultimately decided €90 split between two for an Uber was the play.  

David couldn’t remember the name of the hotel he’d booked for us, but knew it was right beside the casino, so he told me just to type Casino Castellon into the app. This turned out to be poor strategy because there are two casinos in Castellon, Casino Castellon, and the other one where the actual event was, which is actually in Grau. We realised this as we approached Casino Castellon, and realised we were still miles from our hotel (the name of which David had retrieved). Our non English speaking driver was unbelievably patient with her two non Spanish speaking passengers. David did that thing where you realise the person you’re speaking English to doesn’t speak a word of English so you….rephrase what you just said using different English words, louder and more vehemently. Meanwhile I’m struggling with the app to figure out how to change the destination on a ride that is in progress. I managed to complete that task before David found English words our driver understood, and we were merrily on our way. I gave our driver a hefty tip for her patience. 

The main event 

I late regged this not quite at the end of the reg period (recently I’ve been experimenting with entering about an hour before max late reg, trying to spin, knowing I can do a max late reg bullet if it doesn’t work out) and got off to a great start almost 5x of my stack at a very soft table. I then got moved to a tougher table, and played a few interesting hands against the same maniacal villain.

Hand 1: Folding AKo to Retain a Double Average Stack

I raise AKo utg to 4500 at bb2k playing 135k. A good reg playing about 100k flats utg1. Another decent player shoves hj for 29k. The chipleader on the table playing over 250k looks at all the stacks for a while, and then flats. It folds back to me (bb, a German former pro, tank folded tens he said later).

I was very cognisant of recent study I’d done showing that in these spots we tend to have either slightly better than the price threeway (typically about 35%) or be in awful shape (if we run into AA or more likely another AK) with less than 22%.

The big blind told me afterwards he folded tens because he thought all the ranges were uncapped: he’d been at the table since the start so would have a better idea than me of the other ranges.

I folded fairly quickly. Another consideration was edge passing: in such a soft tournament getting the lot in with only slightly better than the price needed didn’t seem great when I can just fold and retain a double average stack.

Results: UTG1 snap folded, shorty had QQ, and held against chippy’s very optimistic 88. I made a mental note that chippy was too wide moving forward

Hand 2: Too Strong to 3-Bet Bluff, Too Weak to 3-Bet for Value

This happens a while later. In the mean time the chip leader has maintained a VPIP of almost 100 so now I know he’s way too wide. He opens lojack to 4K (bb 2k) and I flat ATo. Even against someone as wide as him it didn’t feel like it was strong enough to three bet for value, and felt far too strong to threebet bluff. The reg in the small blind makes it 21k off about 60k. The opener flats and I now fold a hand that does very poorly 3 way.

The flop comes J high and they get it in with the reg’s JTo (so he squeezed very light, obviously responding to how wide he knew chippy is) and the chipleader’s AJo which holds. Again, this seems like a very loose call to a squeeze that size so it reinforced my impression of the chipleader.

Hand 3: Jack Sinclair Said “When They Put the Big Chips In They Always Have It” — But He Had a Deuce!

Chipleader opens hijack to 6k at bb3k now playing about 350k. I have AQo in the small blind playing almost 200k which seems like a pretty trivial threebet (to 24k) against villain. He thinks for a while before making it 72k.

My thinking now was although he’s loose, this is the first 4 bet I’ve seen him make. I was instantly reminded of something my friend Jack Sinclair always says about overly loose recreationals: “it doesn’t matter how loose they are in terms of opens or calls, when they put the big chips in they always have it”. He hadn’t four bet 88 or AJ earlier when he had the opportunity so the obvious question is “does he ever haves worse hand than AQ?”

I tanked for a while studying my opponent and he looked comfortable so I decided to fold.

He showed a deuce! Answering the obvious question, just not the answer I expected. 

I guess he was hoping to tilt me but actually I was thrilled because 

(1) free information

(2) knowing now he’s too wide in his 4 bets I can widen my 3 bet continue range 

The Chip Leader Who Showed a Deuce and Then Vanished

I was actually feeling great because I thought I’m going to get some great spots to double up or win big pots against him going forward in a very good slow structure. 

What happened next was the most surprising thing of all: he barely played a hand for the rest of day one and bagged up a short stack (much shorter than mine)! After he folded for the next hour I wondered if he was adjusting to the fact that he knew I’d attack his opens wider, but I think he just decided he’d had enough for day 1.

Why the day one chipleader never wins the main event

This famous article by David Sklansky years ago explains that day one chipleaders in big field events are almost never studied skilled players. Instead they are gambley overly loose players who give themselves the opportunity to be on the right side of variance. Typically, they’ll get it in bad a few times in big spots where more skilled or studied players would just fold, and get lucky. 

I was reminded of this at the end of the day when I bagged up an above average stack well short of the chiplead. Had I called in the AK spot (the run out was AKxxx so I’d have won a massive pot) and another spot with 66 I’d have won two huge pots I shouldn’t have been in, and bagged up,a massive chip lead. 

The 66 hand came late in the day. A tight player playing 25 bigs opened utg for a min raise, it folds to me in the small blind (with 66). This hand is way too weak to get in pre against a strong under the gun range, but it makes a fine flat mostly as a set mine. When you’re set mining, you want the stacks to be deep enough for the payoff to be worth it (which they are, just about, in this case) and your opponent to have a strong hand that will pay you off when you hit (you’re much better off set mining against a nit who raised under the gun than a maniac who raised the button). So I called, and the big blind who I hadn’t seen play a hand yet shoved, the opener reshoved and I obviously have a trivial fold. The hands were kings and jacks, but my flopped set would have won. 

Day 2

I started on the feature table, and after a period of card death early on saw me wither back, but I stayed patient and started to build. Being on the feature with mostly recreational players can go one of two ways typically: they all go batshit crazy running crazy bluffs and making hero calls, or they go the other way and play very straightforward not wanting to be seen making a big mistake. This table chose the latter route which is good when you’re not making hands and your profit is mostly coming from bluffs, whereas the former is ideal if you’re making hands. 

We got moved off the feature before the bubble, but the table continued to play passively clearly prioritising just getting into the money, so I kept the pressure on, took the chip lead on the table, and got through the bubble with twice the average. 

Unfortunately, the post bubble period couldn’t have gone much worse, as I barely won a hand and kept running into big hands. I bust on a table that included Barny Boatman. Barny is always great fun to talk to and on this occasion among other things we talked about my latest pet theory: contrary to what they believe, most poker players are running above EV. My reasoning here is that poker is a zero sum game, and 

 players who are genuinely running below EV are more likely to quit while they’re behind (either because they’re demoralised or broke) and winners are more likely to keep going. 

Shoutout to my buddy Jonathan Rees who took down the event, and my enemy (but also co-author) Barry Carter who made the final table. 

The high roller

I hopped into this just after busting the main, got a stack going, then took some hits, and navigated the bubble short. It was a high quality final table that included Party ambassador Natalie Bromley, 888 ambassador Ian Simpson (who has been on a heater recently and ended up winning this too) and several other good players. I’ve been on a bit of a heater myself specifically in these Party high rollers recently, my most recent ones being a 5th in Birmingham, 4th in Madrid, 2nd in London and a win in Glasgow. On this occasion, I bust in 7th after Ian Simpson sucked out on me blind on blind. I had a great time though and played with some great people, including tour regular, Simplify Poker member and student of mine Luke Bird. 

While I’m doing shoutouts, big one to another Simplify Poker  Academy member Paul “the Rock” Romain who took down a side event. Great to see a happy Paul with a smile on his face. 

 

Overall, it was a really great trip in a lovely chill location that felt like a smaller friendlier safer version of Barcelona. The casino staff and the poker room were great, and the Party staff and ambassadors always do a great job making everyone welcome and creating a fun atmosphere. The only problem I had was because I ended up playing long days, and because there were no dinner breaks or anything longer than 15 minutes (due I believe to concerns that the restrictions on opening hours made it difficult to have enough time to have long breaks and ensure the tournaments finished before the casino had to close) I basically went the whole trip without a proper evening meal. That’s a minor quibble though, and I would definitely recommend this stop to anyone considering it, and hope to be back myself. 

The next stop on the tour is in Cork. See you there!

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Poker Used to Reward Memory of Bad Habits: Why That Changed

We interviewed Jason Wheeler for the Chip Race podcast yesterday. It's a great all round interview with someone who has been around for 20 years and understands all facets of the poker industry so I recommend giving it a listen when it airs in a couple of weeks, and he made lots of interesting points, but one that really caught my attention as something I hadn't really considered before: he said that since the arrival of solvers, specific exploits against weaker players have a shorter shelf life. In his words, in the old days they'd go on making the same mistake over and over every night, maybe not even realising it was a mistake, whereas nowadays they can just look it up in GTOWizard or whatever when they go home.

It got me thinking: can you think of any other non obvious ways solvers have changed poker? I asked this question at the Simplify Poker academy and got some interesting responses.

John Campbell:

May seem obvious when I mention it, but so many players are aiming to be unexploitable and not thinking through the dynamics of exploitation of player tendencies which Jason is clearly aware of.

The relationship between unexploitability and profitability are not proportional, skirting the lines between playing against GTO types, Nits, Maniacs, and LAgs is something that a lot of players forget when the become lost in the sauce of solver theory.

I think the Player profile feature on GTOW will make node locking more practical in the coming year for keeping people in touch with playing in the real world. Maybe they could create a feature that tells us our player type, Then Jason would have even more to complain about! I'm sure I'd be some sort of LAg, Maniac, Glass cannon, Fish Hybrid!

Funnily enough, the first ever HUD I used (pre PokerTracker) which I don't remember the name of used to do this, using Hellmuth's animal classifications.

Martin King:

Bit of a left field one, but solvers allow me to overcome empathy issues at the table.

Back in the day, Moneymaker era, I'd have serious trouble making exploits that I knew took advantage of someone's weakness. Or if I knew that person really needed the cash I might take a chop or fold a marginal hand that I'd never do these days.

Being able to rationalise my actions as part of a learned mathematical game strategy, it takes the emotional baggage away from the gamble.

That's something that gets raised by a lot of my one to one students. Especially female players.

Martin continues:

Solvers also do a lot of knitting.

I remember playing poker for at least a decade where the general rote was one liners and isolated heuristics. There was some joined up thinking, but only when ideas naturally together.

Solvers mean that even the most basic players come to the table with a game plan, because you can't learn solver-ism (I'm coining that) in a linear way.

Eg preflop bluffs selection. Back in the day it would simply be whatever whim took you in the moment (most hands could be rationalised), or a Brunson suited connector hand as a semi-bluff. You raised or 3-bet preflop, that was your bluff move, if it failed, then c'est la vie and hope the flop saves you.

These days there's a formulated post flop plan, even at the most rudimentary basic solver-ism level. 'This is the big blinds board' or knowing that being OOP comes with significant EV loss, and them going hand in hand with the BTN not betting range on low connected flops, and wielding their positional advantage more freely.

It's just a lot more joined up, and when you see a player having an understanding for one side of the coin, you need to expect they still do when the coin flips.

Barry Carter:

I would imagine that tilt is less of a thing now. Whereas both you and I agree that solvers 100% can become mental game crutches for a lot of players, I think a lot of mindset issues would come from the uncertainty in poker. Solvers give players, at the very least, a sense of certainty (even if the player might actually still be wrong).

Judging from how well your books with Jared are still selling, I suspect there's still plenty of tilt around.

What other differences do you think solvers have brought?

If you want to join in discussions like this, sign up for the Simplify Poker Academy.

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On the occasion of my daughter's wedding

 This is the Father of the Bride speech I delivered at my only daughter's wedding:

People hate really long wedding speeches, so I’ll try to keep this short. As the father of any daughter will tell you, it is one of the great love’s of any man’s life,  particularly when it’s an only daughter. It differs from other great loves like mother, or wife in many ways: not least because you know your daughter from birth. 

Fiona was born on the 23rd of May in the year (redacted). I was woken from my slumber that morning by my wonderful wife who had wonderful news: her water had broken. Less wonderfully, that meant we had to go to the hospital right away. I asked if it could be postponed to let me sleep a bit longer. Apparently, it could not be. 

When we got to the hospital, Fiona very kindly postponed her first appearance for several hours which allowed me to catch up on my sleep, much to the chagrin of the nurses who were a lot less reasonable in my view. 

It was my first time witnessing child birth, and I kind of dreaded it after witnessing lots of screaming scenes in movies. However, I needn’t have worried: my two favourite ladies made it the most drama free arrival one could imagine, and my main memory is that when I said Fiona was unexpectedly beautiful, Mireille (high on laughing gas) quipped “Future rose of Tralee”. 

The following day they’d both decided they’d had enough of hospital, and I carried Fiona under my coat in a sling or whatever you call those things back to our apartment. 

So….that’s the first two days covered, on to day 3….maybe this speech won’t be as short as you all hoped. 

Fiona was the lowest maintenance baby you could ever imagine….she never cried, raised her voice, or complained. She could amuse herself easily, lying on her back crinkling paper. If you forgot to feed her there might be a little moan after a while, but that was it. 

She seemed to enjoy listening to music. She would listen peacefully as I worked at my computer with the radio on. An early favorite was 2 Unlimited’s “No Limits”. As soon as she heard the opening bars, she’d squeak, and extend her little arms, the universal symbol for “Lift me Daddy, it’s dancing time”. For those unfamiliar with the song in question, it has a rather fast driving beat which meant I probably shook her more vigorously than was wise, but as far as we know….no brain damage. 

We moved to Paris just before she turned 1, and she decided it was time she started walking. She started to add words later: her first was “baby”, which initially I thought was uncharacteristically self centred until we realised she was referring to me, copying the word her mother used. We were very popular socially in Paris with my coworkers but quickly realised it had nothing to do with us and everything to do with Fiona and her ability to charm visitors. The main highlights of my days in Paris were when it would come time to put her down for the night. She marked the occasion every night by improvising a new song, which followed a formula: lots of nonsense words and pointing at different things in her eyeline, but always ending with the word baby pointing at me. As the year went on, she started to concede we weren’t all going to start using her nonsense words, and replacing them with the actual words for whatever she was pointing at. 

For most of our time in Paris, we lived in one of three houses behind a gate in Nanterre. The gate reassured us not to worry too much when Fiona started wandering outside, as her adventurous nature prompted her to do. She got to know the neighbours before we did. When we finally invited the nice English couple who lived next door and they saw Fiona they laughed

“Oh. She’s yours. She comes into our house through the cat flap all the time”

We moved to Germany when she was four. By now she was very verbal in two languages, and she added a third quickly. In fact, I’m pretty sure she was talking German by the time we landed in Germany.  

As Fiona grew older, I realised just how much of her personality she’d inherited from me beyond her love of music. Her ferocious competitiveness, her fiery intolerance of fools and her low boredom threshold were all things I could relate to. I also realised she inherited my calmness in a crisis when she fell off a wall and broke her arm. As Mireille  ran around screaming in panic at the sight of the bone jutting out of the arm, Fiona was calmness personified

“I think you should probably take me to the hospital, mam”

Her interest in music persisted. One of my happiest memories is bringing her to a Robbie Williams concert. Her arm was still in a cast from the accident. My friend Mark Plati was Robbie’s bandleader at the time, and was able to get us up onto the stage beforehand. Fiona had her heart set on Robbie signing her already well signed cast. As we waited, we caught the attention of support band Ash, who made a fuss of her. Lead singer Tim signed her cast, at which point the drummer offered to do the same and was told in no uncertain terms that would not be necessary or even welcome, as space had to be left for Robbie Williams. 

For the most part our musical tastes aligned very nicely, like the time we went Lansdowne Road for a Red Hot Chili Peppers/New order concert where I’m pretty sure she was the youngest person there by several decades. The one time I cringed when she told me who she wanted to see next was Avril Lavigne. I instantly pictured how out of place I’d look in a sea of skater boys and pre pubescent girls but I did what any decent father would do: I delegated that one to her older brother Paddy. Sorry Pad. 

When she left home to go to college in Limerick, I got a text from her late evening. She was playing in a poker home game with a bunch of lads and had a question:

“Dad….is it true you’re not allowed to check raise on the river?”

For the non poker players among you, the check raise is the most sneaky and aggressive move in poker, where you lull opponents into a false sense of security by checking to imply you have a weak hand, and then when they bet, you pounce with a raise that can bruise the fragile male ego to the point you start inventing rules to stop it happening again. I assured my ferocious daughter there was no such rule, and I’d never been more proud of her. 

Whenever I think of Fiona, a lot of F words come to mind. Feisty, fierce, ferocious, at times fucking terrifying but also unscrupulously fair, and a wonderful friend. In  Enda, she has found the perfect foil to her fire, the temperance to her tempest, the gentle stream to her storm. Those who know Enda know his defining characteristics are gentle decency, quiet strength and patient kindness. When I think of them, I picture Enda as a gentle stream in which the feral creature that is our daughter can splash about. I imagine nobody knows just how fiery Fiona can be better than Enda….but if not….well it’s too late now son. 

To Fiona and Enda, may you have long and wonderful lives together, and we look forward to getting to know our new in laws the Kelly’s.

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A tricky spot and action clocks

The situation

5 left in an EPT tourney with a €1k buyin that got a 337 runners, and stacks are

HJ (hero) 6 BBs

CO 7 BBs

BN 10 BBs

SB 12 BBs

BB 30 BBs

Hero is dealt KQo but before we act CO moves all in and Button folds (both out of turn). The EPT rule is if we change the action by raising, CO retains all options (fold, call, raise) but if we fold or limp they must jam. So what are we doing? Hero estimates they have somewhere between 45-50% equity versus CO jamming range.

Analysis

OK, let's consider the options

1. Fold: CO now has to jam, and if everyone is calling correctly, he gets it through over 70% of the time, and gets called about 27% of the time (mostly by the big blind with a slightly wider range than he's jamming). So we probably ladder about 12% of the time, the CO doubles 15% of the time (really bad for us and we have to post bb and ante next hand), and the CO picks up 2.5 bbs the rest of the time (also pretty bad for us)
2. Limp with the intention of calling the jam if nobody else does: We are committing 6 bbs to a pot that will be 14.5 bbs, so for CEv the equity required is 41.4%. To this we add risk premium which is 6.2%, so we need 47.6%. We are about 2% short of this
3. Jam ourselves: this is the play if we didn't know CO has a hand strong enough to jam. Of course if we jam they get their options back, and should only call the hands they're supposed to. The problem is that that's just over 7% of their total range, but about 35% of their jamming range, so we have way less fold equity than normal. KQo doesn't make that much as a jam and knowing we are getting called 5 times more often by a strong CO range almost certainly makes it unprofitable.

However, with future equity knowing we have to post 2 bbs next hand, 2 is almost certainly the best option. I confirmed this by running a node locked HRC sim (so CO has to call his open jamming range) which now has KQo outperforming fold (by a narrow margin) and shove (by a wider margin)

Final question

Do you think you could make this decision in 80 seconds? That's all David Docherty (the player in question) had: 20 seconds, plus two timebanks worth 30 seconds each. I hate shot clocks on final tables for this very reason.

David's view

So I think the first interesting thing is my equity against his range. I considered I was roughly 45-49% in-game which seems to be accurate, but I'd also add that there's no way he's inducing anything or mixing 22 or folding any ace or folding KTo, T9s or any of the suited kings that are mixing. All of that considered, I think my equity will go up a percentage point or 2 from the just over 45% you ran the spot with, which should only make limp calling more favourable and the other two less favourable. I think jamming ourselves is clearly the worst of the three options, not just with this but maybe with any hand? Let's say we have AJo and want to induce vs the misclick but don't want a 3 way all in because we'd have to beat both players. I don't think the range that overcalls both jams will change significantly assuming he still sticks it in, and if he folds to my jam I think I'll get called lighter because my opponents will be able to deduce that my hand wants fold equity.

I think ultimately what these results are telling us is we do best when our opponent is all-in with his widest range and having to run his equity. If we fold with any hand that's in that 45-49% delicate equity range then we give him the opportunity to chip up while we'll be putting a third of our stack in blind next hand. If we jam, we give him the chance to fold and we may bust ourselves while not significantly changing our position within the tournament given we're definitely not getting a walk next hand. If we limp, we get full information on the rest of the table's hands, get to fold our way out of a potential cooler, still have a protected range, and can win the chips of the person at the table whose chips we desire the most.

Results

David won the hand, crippling the other guy. Then next hand was faced with another ridiculously decision (and no timebanks left now).

The next hand

David doubled through the cutoff in the previous hand, so he's now big blind and the stacks are:

UTG 1 BB

CO 10 BBs

BN 12 BBs

SB 30 BBs

BB (hero) 14.5 BBs

UTG puts his last big blind in, and it folds to the chipleader in the small blind who shoves. We have ATs in the big blind? Call or fold?

To make matters worse, there's a shot clock and we burned all our timebanks last hand, so we have 20 seconds to decide.

Analysis

This is another ridiculously close spot. I ran the sims and before I give the results I want to talk about some misconceptions people have about this spot:

1. UTG should jam any two: not true. Because the rule is BB first, if he folds this hand, next hand he gets to post his last big blind as a blind (no ante), so it has the same value. Therefore, he has no reason to shove a below average hand. In the ICM sim I ran, he therefore only shoves top 40% (a bit tighter than average because of the chance he might ladder this hand)
2. Yes but future game: Some people thinks because of future game UTG should go wider than ICM. The reverse is actually true: in the FGS sim he only shoves top 31%? Why? Because winning next hand is far more valuable than winning this one. If he wins this hand he's still pretty much committed next hand, and one of the big blinds he wins is worth a lot less than a big blind to him because it has to be anted. If he wins next hand he gets another whole orbit to find a good spot, and more chances to ladder
3. The small blind should shove any two: Not true. Obviously when he shoves the big blind has to call tight, but the downside of the disaster it is when we run into a top 5-10% hand compared to the upside of taking on URG with lots of dead money doesn't make shoving any two a good thing. Shoving 32o here loses $272 in the long run.

Because we are second in chips, our risk premium against chippy is now massive: 18.5%. We don't just need to be ahead, we need to be ahead by 18.5%. Is ATs? No. but it's super close so in practise you can go either way. In the ICM sim, calling ATs loses €58 in the long run. Some good players told me they'd call because they win the tournament more often, and therefore think it can be justified on future game equity grounds. In actual fact, running the SIM as FGS (with a depth of 4) rather than ICM does make the call profitable (+$696). 

In my experience, when players, even good players, talk about future game, they're only doing it to justify what they want to do anyway. Guys who play for the win will always say "I call because that wins the tournament more often", while guys who love a ladder will say "I fold and lock up a ladder". In actual fact there is a line, which the computer can calculate without factoring in emotions like "I love winning tournaments" or "I hate busting tournaments").

Action clocks

Some organisers enforce the "act out of turn, get an automatic penalty" rule rigidly. EPT apparently does not, as no penalties were imposed after the hand on the two players who had acted out of turn. By contrast,  some other rules that I think aren't as important (like the nebulous one that if someone is persistently using too much of their shot clock, floor is called and they're on a 5 second clock from then on: I hate this because it's now on the dealer to define what too frequently and too much is, and does it really matter all that much if someone uses 16 seconds every hand?) are enforced rigidly. There's another rule I hate which is if most of your stack is in, the dealer has to call the floor and you're on a 5 second shot clock. That also is poorly defined (dealers weren't able to tell me what exactly constitutes "most of the stack", it's a matter of judgment). I'm not sure every dealer is qualified to make that judgment. Think of Jon Kyte's spot at WSOP: he genuinely had a tough decision with most of his stack already in (and in fact ended up folding). Imagine if they only gave him 5 seconds to make that decision?

These things falling within the realm of dealer discretion also opens up the possibility of unconscious favouritism. I had a spot ITM of the mystery bounty where I decided the correct play was to just call a raise 7 way keeping slightly less than a BB back, and see if I could flop equity before putting the rest in. I didn't, and now facing a bet I had to work out what equity I needed (roughly 6%) and if my hand had that even after missing. I ended up folding after using all my time. In that case, when the dealer realised I'd put 2 of my 2.95 bbs in pre, she looked towards the floor as if about to call them to put me on a 5 second shot clock, but then looked back at me, and smiled as if to say "I'm gonna let this one slide". This is a dealer I like very much and get on very well with, so nice for me, but not nice if I'm a random the dealer doesn't know or someone they actively dislike, and decide to call the floor. Another dealer I'm friendly with warned me privately about the "using too much of your clock every hand" rule after dealing to me where I was doing that: again I suspect they'd just have called the floor if they didn't like me.

One unintended consequence of these rules is because they are taking up so many dealer brain cycles, and because floor is running around imposing 5 second shot clocks on people, it's distracting from more important tasks. I noticed the amount of basic dealer errors increased dramatically once the shot clocks were introduced (after late reg closed) and they started having to focus a lot on the time rules, and for the first time ever at an EPT I saw floor forget to make important announcements like blind level increases (because they were too busy running around putting people on 5 second shot clocks). I'm in no way blaming the dealers (which I said in my last blog are the best in the business) for these errors: they're inevitable when you now place an additional load on them to operate the shot clock for every single action of every player, and also monitor players over several hands for using a nebulous "too much of their clock", and putting "most of their stack" in.

The worst example of this I saw at EPT Barcelona was in a hyper where every player just had 15 seconds to act (with a couple of 15 second time bank extensions). This was far too little time for many recreational players (and this was the most rec heavy field I played), and even the dealers were getting flustered. Almost every hand had a significant player or dealer error.

The 5 second clock

In my view, this rule is really problematic. It seems to be the view of the floor at EPT that if somebody leaves a small amount of their stack behind then it must be for the purposes of stalling. This is not at all the case: I've written several blogs trying to explain the benefits of the "leave one big blind behind" that aren't just "stall for a pay jump". David told me he witnessed a player bet all but one big blind on the river, be put on a 5 second shot clock, and also be told if they did it again they'd be put on a 5 second shot clock for every decision every hand. This is pretty ludicrous in my view: for example, often the correct play with the nut low on the river is to bet all but one big blind (intending to fold to a raise). Players should be free to use that play without risking being put on a 5 second clock for the rest of the tournament.

The vibes

I understand completely why tournament directors are tempted to introduce action clocks. They tackle the problem of stalling, which is one of the things recreational players hate the most. In fact I'd go so far as to say if you ask recreationals if they are in favour of action clocks, a healthy majority would say yes, to cut down on stalling. They'll go on believing they like action clocks until they suddenly have a huge decision and 15 or 20 seconds to make it, or they get their hand killed before they can make their decision.

It's not lost on me that in the hand I started this blog with, two players folded out of turn. I saw it time and time again: as soon as the action clocks came in, players were paranoid about using too much time, and acting out of turn by mistake if the dealer or another player even glanced at them. It also completely changed the atmosphere at the tables: tables which had been friendly with everyone chatting suddenly became grumpy morgues where players didn't feel they could commit brain cycles to chatter or any other distraction. The last table I played on at the festival was one of the grumpiest ever, with half the table tilted by rulings given against them for acting out of turn, or in one cases taking one second too long to act.

Corners and headers

I love football to the point I used to be a referee. It's a near perfect game, but two of the imperfections is that corners and throw ins are a case where the penalty doesn't fit the infringement. Only 3.3% of corners are scored, so defenders have a strong incentive to concede them if they judge the xG of an attack to be greater than 0.033 (which is pretty much every attack). Throw-ins are even worse: the team awarded the throw in doesn't retain possession from them much more than 50% of the time. This is why some teams are deliberately kicking into touch from kickoffs.

FIFA is obviously aware of these problems, and attempts were made to address them when I was a referee. For corners, they tried to make them tiebreakers when games finished level on goals (so if a game finished 1-1, the team with the most corners won). The problem? When they trialed it at junior football level, they found it completely changed the game, with teams deliberately "scoring" corners to try to win the game on corners (in the same way that when gaelic football changed the rules to make shots that passed over the crossbar the tiebreaker, teams now started shooting for points rather than goals). 

The proposed solution to the problem of throw-ins was to allow the team awarded a throw to kick the ball. The problem? This went too much the other way: the allure of effectively getting a free kick from the touchline meant teams adjusted and the game became one of trying to bounce the ball into touch off an opposing player.

Unintended consequences

The above examples show what often happens when the rules are changed to solve a particular issue, but the unintended consequences fundamentally change the game for the worse. I believe this is true of the action clock: once it's introduced, live poker is a different game, rewarding experienced players used to making quick decisions. Bullet chess is fun, but no serious chess player thinks the world championship or any prestigious over the board tournament should be decided in a minute. Action clocks introduce an additional work load on dealers and floor staff, and additional pressure on players, leading to more mistakes, more frustration, more arguments. They remove much of the ability of players to pick up and act on physical reads. How long did it take Mike to pick up on Teddy KGB's Oreo cookie tells in Rounders? A lot longer than 20 seconds.

In my view, action clocks change what used to be a gourmet live poker experience (EPTs) into an unsatisfying fast food one. Talking to one player at the end of the festival, he agreed that action clocks almost completely ruin the live experience, and he went further than me saying 

"Given a choice between a festival with action clocks and one without them, I'm picking the latter every time going forward".

As soon as he said it, I thought "I agree".

 I agree.

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Barcelona: A chip and no chair, and an invisible man

 Outside of Vegas, and possibly London, Barcelona is the foreign place I have played the most poker. It’s hard not to love the place with its easy pace of life, excellent array of places to eat, and sun and sand. 

Seniors

My first event was the Seniors: in fact, I timed my arrival to get there in time to play it from the start. As much as I love a late reg, I think there’s particular value in being there at the start of Seniors. 

My record in Seniors is quite different from my record in other tournaments. It started abysmally, albeit over a small sample: I think I failed to cash my first ten. Small sample or not, I think I played those early ones very sub optimally, with a basic game plan of trying to run them over with or without the cooperation of the deck. I remember one in Barcelona after I’d learned the hard way patience and nut peddling are better strategies in these where I folded for three hours, before picking up kings in the big blind. By the time it got to me, under the gun had opened for 6x, and the entire table except for one player (nit) had called. With 50 big blinds out there already, I considered shoving my 100 big blinds, but eventually decided to raise to half my stack, reasoning that if anyone were to call such a ridiculous bet it would be the worst player at the table, and I could get the other 50 big blinds if he caught a piece (or thought I hadn’t : you heard a lot of “I put you on ace king” in those days). I still think that’s good strategy, but sometimes the worst player at the table in a seniors is….almost everyone. I watched in horror as they all called, an ace flopped, and now I have to check fold. 

It may not have worked on that occasion, but my record in seniors since is insanely good. I cash most of the ones I play, and final table more of them than most people cash them. When I do make the final table, I usually make it to the final four, though I have yet to win one. That’s not to say they’re as insanely soft as they were when I first started playing them. Seniors these days study harder and smarter a lot more than they used to. If I were to characterise most seniors events these days, I’d say that the average recreational is a lot more studied than in non seniors events, but they also contain a lot less pros than non seniors events, so overall they’re still significantly softer. 

On this occasion it was fairly smooth sailing until the final table, and I was reasonably pleased with my fourth place finish and cash for €19k that meant I was, in the words of Willie Elliot, “freerolling the festival”

A new format and missing the Seniors High Roller

Stars unveiled an interesting new format in Barcelona they’re calling “no bubble” tournaments. The idea is straightforward enough: it basically borrows the milestone concept and takes it into day one of a regular tournament. In this case, if a player reached 6x the starting stack at any point on day one, they bagged for day two and left.  Simple enough, but one question it raises is “what happens when there aren’t enough chips left for anyone to reach 6x?”

David and I initially assumed the remaining players played on until one player had all the chips, and they bagged whatever amount that was and advanced into day two as the shortest remaining stack.

This, however, was not the case. What would actually happen (and I say would because what actually did happen is the last player to reach 180k was the last player in the flight, which will probably happen about half the time in practise) is that all the players would play on until one player had all the remaining chips but they would

(1) not be allowed to bag them and advanced into to day 2 (they would instead be eliminated from the tournament)

(2) not even receive a full min cash but only whatever fraction of it their stack divided by 6x starting represented

A chip and no chair

The idea of a player being eliminated when they still have chips seems like an anathema to me. One of the beauties of tournament poker is the whole “chip and a chair” concept: the idea that as long as you have even one chip left, you can still win the whole tournament. I played the event not realising this was the case and can tell you I would have been a very angry bunny if I was the last player standing with, say, only 4 starting stacks instead of the required six, and was told that not only was I eliminated from the tournament, but also my reward for multiplying my stack by 4 was to get less than the buyin back. 

I spoke to a number of people whose opinion I respect like Tobias Leknes, Matt Savage, David Docherty and a few others who shall have to remain anonymous and they universally agreed the only sensible thing to do is less the player advance to day 2 with whatever stack they have. Tobias pointed out that the current rules incentivize the final remaining players to collude to ensure that one of them ends up with all the chips, as those chips are much more valuable still in the tournament than being cashed out at a heavily discounted rate. 

That one concern notwithstanding, I think this is an interesting innovation I’d like to see tried again in the future (but I skipped the second one because abuse of this rule and wouldn’t play one that doesn’t allow the lady player standing to bag and advance). 

In retrospect I was a bit annoyed with myself for having played this event which prevented me from playing the seniors high roller, which I feel is one of the best spots if not the very best for me personally at the festival. 

Satellite success

It’s not exactly a secret I’m pretty good at satellites. My success rate in the new fangled milestones might not be as high as in the more traditional ones (I doubt anyone’s is: they don’t have the same possible skill edges) but it’s still pretty damn high. On this occasion I won two EPT main event satellites (and would have had a third if my Kings had held against tens). Although I don’t think I’ll be playing many EPTs going forward for reasons I’ll explain in a future blog post, when I do I’ll definitely be prioritising satellites. 

PokerStars Open main event 

This one I was very happy to bag on one bullet (I had two to fire from online satellites), and I actually got a good spin going on day 2 mainly thanks to a wild French player who I dubbed “the invisible man” because he showed up in a hoodie, sunglasses and a mask that left none of his face visible. There’s wild and there’s wild: to give you an idea of what wild meant in this case he

(1) open shoved almost half the hands he was dealt for 100 bbs+

(2) reshoved T3s over a UTG open in early position

(3) called a 20 bb jam in the small blind with 76o

(4) defended his big blind with 94o and jammed for 25 times pot on an AKJ board 

I was lucky enough to be dealt JJ when he open jammed T9o UTG, and got some more donations. Unfortunately while he’d arrived at the table as one of the chipleaders in the whole tournament, he didn’t last very long even though he ran like God on the table. We were all sad to see him go, and after he left a series of bad outcomes saw me bust well into the money but well short of the big prizes.

EPT main event 

After those early successes, I hit a mid festival slump with a lot of near bubble experiences. I fired my two satellite bubbles in the EPT main event. I decided to skip day 1A to concentrate on the satellites. My early reg bullet on day 1B was maybe the most uneventful of my career. I record all my hands in big events like this to post and dissect on Simplify Poker, but this thread won’t make for riveting reading. I won the very first hand with a cbet, but that would prove to be the only time I was above starting stack. I lost a chunk with second best hand in a 3 bet pot which knocked me back below 20k, and an unsuccessful river overbet bluff left me with less than 10k. I got it back up to 20k at dinner, but then basically got dealt out. 

My second bullet was a max late reg Day 2 one. I got a pretty rough table draw with Brock Wilson to my immediate left and Matas Cimbolas to his immediate left, but still managed to get to 60k and beyond several times. Then I got dealt out for one entire 90 minute level, which pushed me back into jam or fold territory, and I ended up jamming KJs into JJ and not getting there despite flopping a flush draw. 

Giving it back

Going into the last couple of days it was actually possible I could end up with a small losing trip (it shows how quickly buyins can mount up that even when you start with $30k in cashes you can end up down) due to a series of bricks that mostly resulted from people catching 1 to 3 outs against me on the river if I bricked everything I could play, but I had a good last full day. I cashed the mystery bounty on one max late reg bullet, then cashed the 1K freezeout also on one max late reg bullet. There’s a lot of nuance to max late regging a mystery bounty where the bounties are in play before ITM, and you have two considerations pulling you in different directions:

(1) you’re much more likely to be able to nit it to the money because of the high attrition rate 

(2) you are however incentivised to gamble more even before the bounties come into play to put yourself in a position to chase them

Specifically in the Stars ones, the mystery bounties make up only a third of the prize pool, and are not massive because of this and the fact they come into play earlier than in most mystery bounties, meaning they’re worth in average not much more than a buyin (and therefore a starting stack). It’s probably impossible to solve for the different incentives so maybe it should just be a matter of personal style and preference whether to take a swashbuckling approach to gamble up a stack that lets you chase bounties, or a more cautious approach that will lock up at least the min cash a lot of the time. I decided to play a looser style at the start to try to be competitive for the bounties when they arrived, and got up to over 100k on a few occasions but then lost all ins to the point it was fairly clear I should probably just fold into the money (which I did) unless I got dealt premiums (which I didn’t). 

Card death continued after the bubble broke, which is particularly frustrating in a mystery when you know for sure your shoves, light or otherwise, are getting called. My last two hands were unorthodox short stack play straight out of my three bigs and less playbook, which I will post on Simplify Poker and possibly here in a future blog. 

The final crossbar 

Making day 2 of the 1k freezeout gave me an unusual sweat in day two: if I lasted more than 5 hours I’d have to miss my flight. I had half average but made rapid progress, multiplying my stack by 4 in the first hour or so. At that stage I was eyeing up the 100k up top thinking that would be a good reason to have to book another flight, but I lost a massive one for double average with just over forty players left (AJ < A5) and never recovered. 

Overall though, I was very happy with my performance and play at the festival, continuing a recent run of live form. The venue itself is class, maybe my favourite casino in the world. An Irish player commented to me that the energy is so much better than in Vegas casinos, and I completely agree. It’s hard to put a finger on why that is, but they seem to get the balance right between gambling and other activities like bars and the best casino restaurants I’ve seen anywhere. Toby Stone and his team of floor staff and dealers are the best in the business and create an efficient but friendly atmosphere. Everyone from the reg staff to security to the payouts play their part in a well oiled machine. I saw several dealers skilfully deescalate potentially explosive situations expertly, and each time I thought about how much worse these kinds of things are handled at, for example, the WSOP. 

Generally, when I look back at trips years later, it's not so much how I did financially that I remember and more who I had fun meeting, and this trip will be no different. Particular shoutouts to Pargo, David Docherty, Jamie Burland (who I hadn't seen in years), Rania Nasreddine and all the players who stopped me to say how much my books had done for their games.

The attempted mugging incident

I won’t go into detail on this here as I put a video up on social media about it, but David and I were the victims of an attempted pickpocketing turned robbery with a physical assault element (David much more so than I). My video wasn’t well timed as it went up while David was still sleeping off the incident so he woke up to a flood of concerned messages from family members worried as to why they weren’t hearing from him, probably the last thing he wanted after the trauma of the night before. I may revisit it in a future blog focusing on the game theory aspect of the mugging and how they affected the decisions I made in the heat of the moment (cos that’s how my brain work: everything is GTO) but for now I will say 

(1) both David and I are very grateful for all the concerned messages we received

(2) my reason for posting about it was just to warn people visiting Barcelona to be careful and pay attention to their surroundings particularly late at night near the casino, and hopefully learn from the mistakes we made on the night

(3) the incident while quite traumatic would not stop either of us from attending events in Barcelona in future. As I said at the start, Barcelona is a great city, and this is just one dark undercurrent to be aware of so as to reduce the risk in future 

What next?

Next up for me on the live front is IPT Limerick on September 5th, and the next foreign trip is to Castellon in early October for the Party stop there. October will be a busy month live, with Killarney following hot on the heels of Castellon, and the IPO just after Killarney. Until then, I will be focusing mostly on online, content, coaching and writing. The next book with Barry Carter is currently being reviewed by beta readers and we hope to have it out sooner rather than later. Watch this space!

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My first ever poker lesson

 A different time

I was ten or eleven years old when I first saw Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western “The Good The Bad And The Ugly”. If you’re wondering how I managed to see an R rated movie at such a tender age, the answer is Brother Flannery. He was the unusually progressive headmaster of the Christian Brother secondary school in Enniscorthy (where I grew up). Mid 70s rural Ireland was a grim impoverished backward place where exposure to the wider world was limited to one heavily censored state owned TV station and two state owned radio channels that were very insular and parochial. Schools were poorly funded, relying on bake sales, student concerts (my first eexposure to rock came watching a final year student deliver a thunderous electric guitar rendition of Springsteen’s “The River” in the same concert hall where I watched The Good The Bad and the Ugly, but that’s another story) and jumble sales to raise money for anything more than the bare necessities.

It was in this environment that Brother Flannery had a brainwave that would simultaneously raise funds for the school and the cultural awareness of the school’s students. He started hustling movie distributors to let him screen movies that were no longer in the cinema on lazy Monday afternoons in that concert hall in school. He not only didn’t care about the very strict age censorship laws in Ireland of the time: he blatantly broke them, screening only adult rated movies to kids not just in secondary school but in the attached primary school too. Price of admission was pitched at the level of an average week’s pocket money, and the movies were carefully selected crowd pleasers that also felt like we were getting one over on our parents by even watching. Thus it was that by the time I entered my teens, I’d already seen Alfie (starring Michael Caine as a playboy with morals that would be deemed questionable even now, let alone back then in a country still in the iron grip of the Catholic  Church), Jaws (which scared the shit out of me and prevented me from entering the sea for many years), the Italian Job, True Grit, the Godfather and all the Leone spaghetti westerns. But it was The Good The Bad and the Ugly that lives in my memory 50 years on, and almost certainly ignited my life long love for cinema and game theory. That second one probably requires some explanation, which I’ll get to in due course. 

A different world 

From the opening scene, I felt I wasn’t just watching the movie, I felt I’d been sucked into its world, a messy dangerous morally ambiguous one with no clear lines between the good guys and the bad guys, no predictable plot line, and no guarantees that good would triumph or bad would be punished (if such distinctions could even be discerned).  No guarantees of anything in fact, other then an utterly engrossing cinematic experience that provided ponder fuel for months if not years after. 

 If you’ve never seen the movie and intend to (and you really should: Quentin Tarantino has called it the greatest movie ever made), stop reading now because I’m going to spoiler the ending. 

The final scene 

The movie meanders through multiple threads and several memorable scenes to a final one that many (including Quentin and me) regard as the single greatest scene in the history of cinema. Three characters stand in triangular formation in a tense standoff that will explode into a truel (a three way winner takes all shootout). All three men know that there is a considerable amount of gold buried in one of the graves, but only Blondie (“The Good”, played by Clint Eastwood) knows which grave. He has been captured by Angel Eyes (“The Bad”, played by Lee Van Cleef) but is refusing to divulge the name on the golden grave, because he’s no idiot and understands that as soon as he does, Angel Eyes has no reason not to shoot him. So a Mexican standoff initial Nash equilibrium has been reached where Angel Eyes can’t find the gold because he doesn’t know which grave, and Blondie can’t because there’s a gun on him. The third participant Tuco (“The Ugly”, played by Eli Wallach in the standout performance in the movie) has gotten to the graveyard first, only to find that the name Blondie gave him was not the golden grave but a misdirection. 

The new game to break the stalemate 

Blondie proposes a way out of this Nash equilibrium Mexican standoff where none of the men can claim the gold that appears to allow them all some possibility to do so. In return for a gun, he will write the name above the golden grave on a stone, place it in the centre of the triangle, so that the winner of the truel can claim the gold unchallenged by the other two.

Angel Eyes agrees, setting up the final truel. Each of the men stand far apart in a triangular formation and eye each other up. They are far enough apart that hitting the target with the first shot is not a certainty for all three, and each man faces a strategic decision when someone finally goes to draw their gun: who should they shoot at first? The movie pans from face to face in a series of iconic extreme close ups, as each man weighs up his options and decides. 

Game of skill

There is, however, a twist that will resonate with poker players. There’s a considerable skill differential between the three participants. 

We know from previous scenes that Tuco is the slowest draw and worst shot of the three. In discussions of the game theory of the final truel I’ve read since, the consensus is that his chances of successfully hitting the target on his first attempt is probably somewhere in the region of 33%, the number ten year old me roughly assigned him as I attempted to puzzled towards my first ever game theory solution, without knowing that it was game theory (or even the term “game theory”). We also know that Blondie is by far the best shot: in fact he’s so good there’s no chance of him missing. He’s already demonstrated multiple times he’s able to hit a hat on a head at greater distance (and even a taut rope from great distance), so he’s basically 100% to hit his first target. Angel Eyes is also a formidable and fast shot, though not as certain to hit the target as Blondie. It’s not clear which of them is faster on the draw,  but both are super fast. 

Angel Eyes, the miz reg

As the cameras pan between the three faces, they look from one opponent to the other, clearly weighing up who it is best to shoot at first. Angel Eyes has the easiest decision: he should clearly try to eliminate Blondie, his most dangerous opponent. He apparently works this out and draws first (although it’s not clear who he intends to shoot at as he’s beaten to the draw by the quicker Blondie).

Tuco, the ugly fish  

decision is by far the most interesting and complex. He knows he’s the worst shot, and the slowest draw, and the others know it too. He’s the fish in this game. But he knows he’s a fish, which is important. To work out his best strategy, we can start with a worst one. If he shoots either of the other two, he gets headsup with a faster opponent who is also a better shot, a scenario he’s almost certain to lose. So his best strategy is not to shoot at either one, but to wait to see what transpires between the other two and then shoot at the one still standing. This negates his slow draw advantage almost guaranteeing he gets at least one shot off before he’s fired on.

Blondie, the apex predator

On the face of it, Blondie ‘s best strategy seems straightforward: shoot at the biggest threat, Angel Eyes. But it’s not that straightforward. If he does that, and if he realises Tuco is smart enough to figure out he should hold back to see whether he shoots Angel Eyes or Angel Eyes shoots him before getting off first shot at the survivor, Tuco is now also a threat. It seems like he has no good solution (which is often the case in three player games): if he shoots at Angel Eyes, Tuco will get a free shot at him, but if he shoots at Tuco, Angel Eyes will. 

However, there’s another twist that will resonate with poker players: information asymmetry. 

The twist

Unknown to both other players, Blondie has a major advantage: he alone knows that Tuco’s gun has no bullets (he took them out himself in an earlier scene). Knowing therefore that Tuco is no threat, his decision is clear: shoot Angel Eyes. Which he does. 

The final twist

It is revealed that Blondie never wrote the name of the grave on the stone. Why would he? So the other two are competing for a prize they can’t win (Tuco doubly so given he doesn’t even have bullets in his gun). He was essentially bluffing, knowing the bluff in itself would always get through. 

The final final twist

Blondie doesn’t bother shooting Tuco. Again, why would he? He’s no threat: he’s just the fish in the game. You see this dynamic in soft live cash games. Several years ago I was involved in staking a skilful player in a live cash game that was incredibly soft except for one apex predator. The apex predator was incredibly charming and considerate when dealing with the fish in his game, but as soon as the other skilful player was introduced, he recognised the threat and went after them in every way he could, both fair and unfair. He was Blondie, and he recognised them as Angel Eyes, who he must eliminate at first opportunity. The fish? Let them live.  

Fifty years on

I recently rewatched the movie with my wife. As I did, I flashed back fifty years to young me, grappling with concepts like game theory, equilibrium, information asymmetry and bluffing for the first time, at a time I knew none of those terms. I realised retrospectively that that movie was my first important poker lesson, and that viewed through a poker lens, that final beautiful scene is poker in all but name. 

I also realised there’s potentially another lesson for poker in this cinematic masterpiece that meanders lazily towards its most masterful and memorable conclusion with scenes that take three to four times longer than we are used to, but in so doing ratchets up the tension to something no other western has ever achieved. In a world of fast cuts and lightning speed edits, it allows itself to dwell on a single face for what seems like an eternity, to allow the viewer to reflect on what’s happening around and inside that face, rather than rushing to a conclusion like an over excited incel on a first date. It doesn’t try to cram as much as possible into every second, but creates moments that will last forever in the minds of those who see them. 

Slow down

There may be a lesson for a poker world currently obsessed with speed and shot clocks. When we recall the WSOP main event that has just been in years to come, what will live in our memories? The rapid rushed decisions under shot clock time pressure? Or that incredible tank on the river by J3s and the call that followed it that basically decided everything? Has there been a more thrilling moment in recent poker history? And how much could have been lost if Saaskillinen had only been given 30 seconds to make the decision? 

In a world of fast food and rapidly consumed quickly forgotten pop culture, there has to be some room for movies that will live a lifetime in a ten year old boy’s brain grappling with moral and strategic complexity for the first time. 

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