I played last night in a weekly tournament at a (relatively) local dive bar called the Yorkshire Pub. Jayson had told me about it last week and said it was good so it happened fit into my schedule to go check it out and I was pleasantly surprised. It was a very well run tournament – the organizers knew what they were doing and all of the dealers (as near as I could tell) were very friendly and somewhat skilled. The structure of the tournament was also good – a $30 buyin and unlimited $15 rebuys during the first hour of limit poker, then a one time add-on after the break and no-limit holdem after that. The rapidly escalating blinds and relative short stacks made for a format that required some fast play and a little early luck, but the relatively cheap dollars involved made for something a little more fun than it was pressure-packed. Jayson also promised lots of bad players and dead money and there certainly was plenty of each.

One aside – an easy way to generally evaluate the quality, or experience, rather, of strangers’ play is by taking the inverse of their propensity to drop ESPN poker lingo into their conversations with other players. When someone goes on and on about “pocket aces” and “ducks” and getting “beat on the river”, that’s usually a sign that they think they know more than they really do. I call this “first level” poker lingo because anyone can pick it up quickly, and if I sit down with strangers who start talking like this it’s usually a good sign for my chances. However, if I meet a stranger who correctly knows that “aces up” and “aces full” mean two different things or who can properly tell the difference between having a set and having trips, then I’m a little more wary when I first go up against them. There were lots of the former type at my table last night and only a little bit of the latter, so it was a nice situation. That is, it would have been nice if I had been dealt some cards.

As with all tournaments you have to catch cards to succeed and I didn’t catch any cards. In fact, I didn’t scoop one pot all night and the best starting hand I ever had in the two hours I played was J9s. That particular hand hit the flop fairly hard and ended up with 14 outs on the river against what I correct figured was KK held by the guy across the table from me, but I missed my draw and mucked against his bet and that was my only chance to really garner some chips and start rolling in the tournament. Around 10:00 I purposely threw the rest of my chips into the pot and gave up and went home.

I will say though, that I was pleasantly surprised by just how good a tournament it is and I am likely to play again someday soon.

John and I were bouncing around some thoughts on NL stragey before a tournament he played in last night. I reminded him of an old gem:

Let’s say you turn a 4-flush (9 outs, or 20% chance of winning or 4:1). You have $500 in chips, the pot is $50, and your opponent has $100. You opponent bets $38 and all but tells you he has a pair. If you call, (and make the assumption that he will call your bet if you make the flush*) you are getting implied odds of $150:$38, which is is worse than 4:1. This calculation is simply pot ($50) + turn bet ($38) maximum river call due to stack size ($62) = $150 versus the $38 you are currently pondering. It is bad for you to call because his short stack keeps you from getting the implied odds you need.

The corollary to this is if you are that opponent, then it is a very smart move to bet >$37 to “protect” your hand.

Moral: When making decisions in NL poker, the stack size of all players needs to be factored into the process.

* note we made the assumption that the player w the made hand would call on the river, which isnt a bad assumption. Factoring in the possibility of the fold only makes a call to the $38 an even worse move. While intuitively obvious, it is a common mistake to do otherwise.

Wow – looks like I’m 10 days late with my report for my Minnesota trip.

I did indeed make it to Canterbury Park when I was in Minneapolis last weekend (Mar 19-21). I was pretty busy hanging out with friends and participating in other wedding activities but I did get in a little bit of poker for a couple of hours late on my first night in town (Friday).

The simple answer is that if we had a legal cardroom like that in Houston I would probably be there every weekend, but compared to Vegas or Atlantic City this place isn’t worth a special trip. I’m not going to say anything here about the details of the place itself – you can read all about the limits and rules and huge (huge!) crowds elsewhere. One weird thing that I did notice is that all of the chips in any particular game are all identical. There’s no coloring up or mixing denominations – a $300 buy-in gets you three hundred $1 chips. I thought this was slightly unusual and quite inconvenient, especially if you were to be a big winner.

As far as my own experiences go, I arrived around midnight and put my name on the list to play every game in the house from 3/6 to 8/16 and then wandered back to the cage to cash a personal check because I only had $20 in my pocket. When I found out that they wanted to charge me 6% (!!!) to cash that check I headed for the exit as quickly as I could. On my way out of the parking lot I decided to stop at a convenience store across the street to get a drink and happened to notic an ATM machine from my personal bank, so I took a little money out (at no cost this time) and drove back across the street and quickly got into a 4-8 game. I played for an hour with no spectacular or memorable occurrences to speak of and left after an hour with a $6 loss for my efforts.

Bottom line – if you ever happen to find yourself in the Twin Cities with nothing to do at least there’s somewhere you can go play poker.

My March Madness post from March 25 reminded me of a poker phenomenon. In my March Madness example, 32 other guys each filled out a bracket that, on its own, had a lower EV than yours. However, collectively, they created a situation that decreased your EV significantly. Since all EV sums to zero, they share the EV you gave up, with many/most/all of them flipping from negative to positive EV (at least one must flip).

In poker, this same situation is referred to as “the schooling of the fish” and it happens all the time in 3-6-12 no foldem holdem. It is discussed at an excellent resource that I suggest you read.

I have a mathematical example to illustrate this, which will be in my next post

I am bouncing around the idea of poker on Apriil 2 at Casa Friou. Express your interest via comments below.

As always, 50c bb NL Holdem

Off topic:

March Madness….as you know, I have been busy with my other website during March (/early April) Madness. A few interesting thoughts on filling out brackets:

http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/%7Eiase/publications/1/10_49_kr.pdf

http://www.lionhrtpub.com/orms/orms-2-01/hoops.html

http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=15053

http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/000146.html

http://probasketball.about.com/library/weekly/bl_2003ncaatournamentstrategy.htm

One thought that is mentioned is some of these is that there is an incorrect notion out there that the odds of correctly picking a bracket perfectly (the very scenario CBS will pay you millions for) is 2^63, or 9.2 with 18 zeros. This is wrong. That is the correct calculation if all wins and losses were equally likely (like a coin toss).

Consider the simple case of 1 game. Do you believe the odds of guessing correctly is 50%? Surely if Kentucky plays FA&M, Kentucky will win 90% of the time (if not more). By using the strategy of always picking Kentucky, you will be right 90% of the time, not 50%. If you flip a coin to make your choice (heads, I pick UK, tails I pick FAM), then your odds (pre-coin flop) are 50% of picking the winner of the game. But you did not use a coin to make your decision, you used your head.

Thus, the odds of getting the bracket perfectly correct is better than 2^63. What is it? Hell if I know, but I know it is better than 2^63.

So, the way to maximize your chances of getting the bracket perfectly correct is to pick all favorites. Note that the “favorite” would not always be the lower seed, as Vegas has two “dogs” as being favored – Louisville and Western Michigan.

But that is the way to maximize your chances of having a perfect bracket. Interestingly, this decreases your chances of winning a pool. Consider a pool where 33 people enter. You pick all favorites. Each of the other 32 people pick exactly 1 first round upset (each one picking a different game, thus covering all 32 first round games) and otherwise have an identical bracket to you. As long as there is at least one first round upset, you are not in first place.

So, your only way of winning is to nail the first round perfectly. Which although you have a greater chance of nailing it perfectly than the others, it is still a very remote possibility.

This is the mathematical explanation for what most bracket veterans already know – you gotta pick some upsets, BABY!