"You can keep playing," said the dealer, "but there won't be any Bad Beat Jackpot."
"What's the point?" said the guy to my left.
At Greektown hitting the Bad Beat Jackpot requires losing with four-of-a-kind to a better four-of-a-kind or a straight flush. I played over a million hands of poker online last year, all of which are recorded in a database. When I did a search for hands that would have satisfied the Bat Beat, I found a grand total of zero. I do seem to remember once losing with quads versus quads though, so maybe I messed up one of the filters. In any case, when you're talking about live poker where you play 30 hands an hour, there's not much difference between zero in a million or one in a million. It's not going to happen.
Plus, it's not that much money. The Bad Beat is currently a little over $100,000. If I remember right, the loser gets half of that, the winner gets a quarter, and the rest is split up between the rest of the table. Don't get me wrong, it'd be nice, but we're not talking about set-you-up-for-life money.
Psychologically though the Bad Beat is brilliant. It takes one of the worst outcomes in poker (you make a really great hand but end up losing a huge pot) and makes it into one of the best. On an emotional level, to someone who doesn't understand the odds, this makes the whole idea of playing poker more appealing. Of course, the Jackpot is funded by money taken out of pots, not all of which gets paid back, so ultimately it's a losing proposition just like every other bet you make with the casino.
So okay, it's a cute promotion, a clever marketing idea, not that big of a deal, right? Nope. It's the single most discussed topic at the poker table and the primary driver of many players' decisions. If the table breaks down to less than five players, the cutoff for awarding the Jackpot, the majority of players will refuse to play for that reason. And many players assign too much value to starting hands, pocket pairs and suited connectors, that are capable of hitting the Bad Beat.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Suck Out
1-2 No Limit game, Greektown Casino. I open to 15 under the gun with aces, next guy to act raises to 35, everyone else folds. He has about 450, I have him covered. I raise it up to 110 and he calls quickly but not very happily. Flop is Kxx, he lunges forward with his whole body and shoves about 100 in chips into the pot, out of turn. After being warned by the dealer he sheepishly takes his chips back. I check and he makes the same bet. I feel pretty strongly that he has exactly KK. It makes so much sense. But can't he have AK? Maybe even KQ suited? Could even be QQ or JJ played very badly, or a weird bluff. He just called a big river bet against me with ace-high, so he thinks I'm full of shit. Can I really fold aces with a 1.5 pot-sized bet left on the flop? I can't. I go all-in. He calls.
"You have kings?"
"Yeah."
We both flip our cards. The turn is a seven. I don't really see the river, I just hear the table go nuts. He stands up, stares blankly at the table for a few seconds, and walks away. I rake in a $900 pot.
1. Sometimes the biggest pots are the least interesting. There are points where both of us could have played differently, but all the money was going in regardless. Poker is a forest. You learn which plants are good to eat and which are poisonous, how to hunt certain animals and avoid others, but sometimes while you're walking through the forest you get struck by lightning. There's not much you can do about it.
2. I'm told that, according to quantum physics, there exist many alternate realities*. In most of them I don't win that pot. I watch my good session go sour. I take a walk outside and try to figure out if I'm in the right state of mind to keep playing. Maybe I quit or maybe I keep playing. Maybe I go into a tailspin and lose all the cash I brought that day, or maybe I rebound and get back ahead. But today I don't have to deal with that. Today I get to be Nate who won a $900 pot. It's pretty fun.
*As far as I can tell, the work of quantum physicists has mostly to do with balancing complex equations, but the effect of quantum physics on the rest of us is to give quasi-scientific justification to vague, spiritual and/or metaphorical statements, e.g., "Everything is energy." That and the atomic bomb I guess.
"You have kings?"
"Yeah."
We both flip our cards. The turn is a seven. I don't really see the river, I just hear the table go nuts. He stands up, stares blankly at the table for a few seconds, and walks away. I rake in a $900 pot.
1. Sometimes the biggest pots are the least interesting. There are points where both of us could have played differently, but all the money was going in regardless. Poker is a forest. You learn which plants are good to eat and which are poisonous, how to hunt certain animals and avoid others, but sometimes while you're walking through the forest you get struck by lightning. There's not much you can do about it.
2. I'm told that, according to quantum physics, there exist many alternate realities*. In most of them I don't win that pot. I watch my good session go sour. I take a walk outside and try to figure out if I'm in the right state of mind to keep playing. Maybe I quit or maybe I keep playing. Maybe I go into a tailspin and lose all the cash I brought that day, or maybe I rebound and get back ahead. But today I don't have to deal with that. Today I get to be Nate who won a $900 pot. It's pretty fun.
*As far as I can tell, the work of quantum physicists has mostly to do with balancing complex equations, but the effect of quantum physics on the rest of us is to give quasi-scientific justification to vague, spiritual and/or metaphorical statements, e.g., "Everything is energy." That and the atomic bomb I guess.
Friday, August 26, 2011
The D
Years ago, in Vegas -- not for poker, but for an ultimate frisbee tournament, in the hotel elevator...
Woman (seemingly drunk, head tilted slightly upwards): So, you like the D?
Nate: What?
W (sd, htsu): You like the D?
N: What?
W: You like the D?
N (realizes he is wearing a Detroit Tigers cap): Oh. Yeah.
Elevator stops. N exits awkwardly.
I'm not sure why this stuck with me. Something about how she said "the D" I think, the repetition of those meaningless (then) syllables working hypnotically, like a watch swinging back and forth. "You like the D?" A koan.
Yesterday I moved my bed into my new place in Detroit, a fifth-floor loft across the street from Greektown Casino and directly above Niki's Lounge, "the place to find all the beautiful people in the city." I've assured my mom, who is afraid I'll be stuck up for my poker roll, that I'll either be in my apartment, in the casino, or sprinting across the street.
After a few months of lounging around, it seems like time to get serious about something, and for now that something is live poker. Unfortunately, it's a big pay cut from online poker. No matter how bad the players are, there's no way to overcome going from 1000 hands/hour to 30 hands/hour. With that in mind, commuting 45 minutes each way from Ann Arbor to the Detroit casinos wasn't going to work, so I bit the bullet and got a place in the city.
So, you like the D? I'm not sure if it's the kind of place you can like. From some angles, it looks like a city; from most, a ghost town. The young transplants are unbearably hip, the outlook almost unbearably bleak. The people who are trying are trying very hard indeed. They have some good BBQ. Well, I'm just getting to know it.
Woman (seemingly drunk, head tilted slightly upwards): So, you like the D?
Nate: What?
W (sd, htsu): You like the D?
N: What?
W: You like the D?
N (realizes he is wearing a Detroit Tigers cap): Oh. Yeah.
Elevator stops. N exits awkwardly.
I'm not sure why this stuck with me. Something about how she said "the D" I think, the repetition of those meaningless (then) syllables working hypnotically, like a watch swinging back and forth. "You like the D?" A koan.
Yesterday I moved my bed into my new place in Detroit, a fifth-floor loft across the street from Greektown Casino and directly above Niki's Lounge, "the place to find all the beautiful people in the city." I've assured my mom, who is afraid I'll be stuck up for my poker roll, that I'll either be in my apartment, in the casino, or sprinting across the street.
After a few months of lounging around, it seems like time to get serious about something, and for now that something is live poker. Unfortunately, it's a big pay cut from online poker. No matter how bad the players are, there's no way to overcome going from 1000 hands/hour to 30 hands/hour. With that in mind, commuting 45 minutes each way from Ann Arbor to the Detroit casinos wasn't going to work, so I bit the bullet and got a place in the city.
So, you like the D? I'm not sure if it's the kind of place you can like. From some angles, it looks like a city; from most, a ghost town. The young transplants are unbearably hip, the outlook almost unbearably bleak. The people who are trying are trying very hard indeed. They have some good BBQ. Well, I'm just getting to know it.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Messages from the Brink
On February 11, 1963 Sylvia Plath was found dead in her kitchen. She had put her head in the oven with the gas on. Ariel, her collection of poetry, was published posthumously in 1965. The poems, many written shortly before her suicide, dealt with depression and death with an intensity and authority owing both to her brilliance as a writer and the circumstances surrounding her death. She wrote, it seemed, from the brink of death, and knew and expressed things that no living person could.
Amy Winehouse died on Saturday. Her 2006 album "Back to Black" explored drug addiction and abuse, most famously in the single "Rehab." The causes of her death haven't yet been announced, but no one has much doubt they are drug related. For Winehouse's friends, family, and fans her death is very sad. At the same time, it lends a degree of credibility to her music that is almost unheard-of for a pop artist these days.
In 2011 everything is bullshit, but especially pop music. Everything we hear has been Auto-Tuned, packaged, market-tested, honed down to a smooth cog in a machine designed to extract money from us as efficiently as possible. While some of this music is enjoyable, none of it feels very true. There's just so much between the artist and the listener. Beyonce came out with "Single Ladies" years after Jay-Z put a ring on it. A stellar song, it nonetheless screams "target demographic" from the first line ("All the single ladies! All the single ladies!"). I'm not saying, of course, that every song needs to be biographically accurate. Just that you can often feel a certain amount of calculation and bean-counting going on. But after Winehouse wrote "Rehab," she really went to rehab. Someone who willfully hurts herself, the thinking goes, need not be suspected of bullshitting us to help herself.
But this is starting to sound like a whole lot more bullshit. Self-destruction can be as manipulative as anything else (suicide attempts as cries for help, etc.). And if the only way to declare your authenticity is to hurt yourself, that doesn't leave a lot of range for self-expression, does it?
Amy Winehouse died on Saturday. Her 2006 album "Back to Black" explored drug addiction and abuse, most famously in the single "Rehab." The causes of her death haven't yet been announced, but no one has much doubt they are drug related. For Winehouse's friends, family, and fans her death is very sad. At the same time, it lends a degree of credibility to her music that is almost unheard-of for a pop artist these days.
In 2011 everything is bullshit, but especially pop music. Everything we hear has been Auto-Tuned, packaged, market-tested, honed down to a smooth cog in a machine designed to extract money from us as efficiently as possible. While some of this music is enjoyable, none of it feels very true. There's just so much between the artist and the listener. Beyonce came out with "Single Ladies" years after Jay-Z put a ring on it. A stellar song, it nonetheless screams "target demographic" from the first line ("All the single ladies! All the single ladies!"). I'm not saying, of course, that every song needs to be biographically accurate. Just that you can often feel a certain amount of calculation and bean-counting going on. But after Winehouse wrote "Rehab," she really went to rehab. Someone who willfully hurts herself, the thinking goes, need not be suspected of bullshitting us to help herself.
But this is starting to sound like a whole lot more bullshit. Self-destruction can be as manipulative as anything else (suicide attempts as cries for help, etc.). And if the only way to declare your authenticity is to hurt yourself, that doesn't leave a lot of range for self-expression, does it?
Friday, July 8, 2011
Title Blog
Bad Teacher opened this week. I don't know if it's any good, but I do know what it's about: a bad teacher.
It's just the most recent case in a spate of bluntly named movies. The trend seemed to start with genre-mashup-parodies like Scary Movie and, more depressingly, Date Movie and Epic Movie. Their titles served to indicate their membership in the genre-mashup-parody genre, as well as suggesting some kind of archetypal status, maybe as a curative for their soul-crushing banality.
More recently the convention has spread to movies of all genres. Bad Teacher, Friends with Benefits, Prom, and Babies are just a few examples of successful recent movies with whack-you-over-the-head titles. I assume the convention has to do with selling the movies and more specifically an anxiety that people won't see a movie if they can't figure out exactly what it's about within four milliseconds. The idea that the unknown can be more alluring than the known has apparently been rejected.
Meanwhile the book industry has taken naming in a different direction, but with a similar motivation. Rather than the shotgun blast of ____ Movie, books have embraced catchy titles girded with pedantic subtitles that spell out exactly what the book is about. Like movies they banish any trace of mystery, they're just not into the whole brevity thing.
It's just the most recent case in a spate of bluntly named movies. The trend seemed to start with genre-mashup-parodies like Scary Movie and, more depressingly, Date Movie and Epic Movie. Their titles served to indicate their membership in the genre-mashup-parody genre, as well as suggesting some kind of archetypal status, maybe as a curative for their soul-crushing banality.
More recently the convention has spread to movies of all genres. Bad Teacher, Friends with Benefits, Prom, and Babies are just a few examples of successful recent movies with whack-you-over-the-head titles. I assume the convention has to do with selling the movies and more specifically an anxiety that people won't see a movie if they can't figure out exactly what it's about within four milliseconds. The idea that the unknown can be more alluring than the known has apparently been rejected.
Meanwhile the book industry has taken naming in a different direction, but with a similar motivation. Rather than the shotgun blast of ____ Movie, books have embraced catchy titles girded with pedantic subtitles that spell out exactly what the book is about. Like movies they banish any trace of mystery, they're just not into the whole brevity thing.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Busto
I busted out of my first (and it's looking like only, for this year at least), World Series event last night. It was the 1k No Limit Hold'em event. I had some butterflies before it started, but once the cards were shuffled up I quickly got comfortable. I got my starting stack of 3k chips all the way up to 30k, mostly playing solid poker and getting dealt some good hands. I ran one big (but high percentage, I think) bluff that worked and profited from opponents spazzing out in some weird spots.
In the hand I busted out, I took an aggressive line that I'm confident would win chips on average, but was probably too risky for that stage of the tournament. I ended up getting all-in with 88 against AQ pre-flop, about a 55-45 favorite, but I lost the hand and was out. If I had won I would have had a big stack and been in a great position to go deep into the tournament. I definitely made some mistakes, but overall I was pretty happy with how I played. I thought I might play too timidly because I don't have a lot of experience in big tournaments, but if anything I was over-aggressive. I could have picked my spots a little better.
Going in I didn't really expect much -- only 10% of the field cashes, and of those only the top few make a lot of money. Still, it started well and I was starting to think maybe things would really go my way. I woke up at 7:30 the next morning not knowing where I was. Then I remembered and was disappointed again. Then I went back to sleep until noon.
In the hand I busted out, I took an aggressive line that I'm confident would win chips on average, but was probably too risky for that stage of the tournament. I ended up getting all-in with 88 against AQ pre-flop, about a 55-45 favorite, but I lost the hand and was out. If I had won I would have had a big stack and been in a great position to go deep into the tournament. I definitely made some mistakes, but overall I was pretty happy with how I played. I thought I might play too timidly because I don't have a lot of experience in big tournaments, but if anything I was over-aggressive. I could have picked my spots a little better.
Going in I didn't really expect much -- only 10% of the field cashes, and of those only the top few make a lot of money. Still, it started well and I was starting to think maybe things would really go my way. I woke up at 7:30 the next morning not knowing where I was. Then I remembered and was disappointed again. Then I went back to sleep until noon.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Oh the Humanity
This probably isn't interesting if you don't play poker, but I have to relay a hand I saw played today. It was three players to the flop and all three flopped a set on an innocuous board. The action from there:
Flop: checks through
Turn: bet, call, call
River: checks through
No one else at the table seemed very surprised.
Flop: checks through
Turn: bet, call, call
River: checks through
No one else at the table seemed very surprised.
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