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

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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