OK, time for a poker post.
I've been playing in a weekly poker game just a few blocks away from my house. Small stakes poker with several guys recently graduated from Loyola University - Maryland. I've only lost money in one of 5 sessions, so I think I'll make sure I keep playing at this game.
One hand in particular struck me as funny. Three players involved.
---Rhodes, a fairly tight player who occasionally goes all in with nothing for the fun of it.
---Jake, a loose player who's favorite hand is 97. He calls it 'the cab' because when he plays it, people end up calling a cab to go home with their last dime.
---Eric, a player who will play great hands and bad hands alike. You never know what he'll have.
Blinds are .25/.50. Everyone buys in for $20 in chips to start. Early on, Jake raises to $3. Rhodes behind him decides to go all-in. Eric quickly calls the all-in. Jake is now left with a decision. He was the original raiser and now two people have pushed all their chips in behind him.
Interesting reads that I got while I was watching Rhodes and Eric. Rhodes was very quiet. Usually a sign of a good hand. Also, he sat back in his chair which is another tell. Normally, these guys wouldn't give off those kinds of tells, but Rhodes had a few drinks, so those tells usually show up a bit easier in that case. Knew he had some sort of a pocket pair most likely.
Eric was much different. He was standing up and bouncing a bit. He also was talking to Jake, trying to convince him that folding was a good idea. In a normal game under these circumstances, this kind of behavior means that the player really wants him to call. However, knowledge of the players in this game allow the book to be thrown out the window when Eric says, "Jake, if you call and suck me out, I'm going to be pissed!"
Immediately, this tells me exactly what's going on. Eric has a hand that he believes is better than Rhodes' hand and he doesn't want Jake to call. If Jake calls, there are simply more flukey things that can happen with the cards and Eric's win percentage drops quite a bit.
Jake hears Eric say this and, of course, decides to call against what I would consider better judgement. Here's what everyone flips over......
Rhodes: JJ
Eric: QQ
Jake: 44
So Eric is pretty far in the lead, but Jake has created a problem by bringing more losing possibilities for Eric into play. Eric is extremely aggrevated that Jake would gamble with a measly 44 knowing that he was definitely beat by either Eric or Rhodes and probably by both of them. The flop comes.......A........K.........4.
Everyone not involved in the hand busts out laughing. Eric screams 'NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!'. The last two cards are not a Q or a J and the pot is scooped by Jake, taking down a pot for roughly $65. Jake still has not lived that one down, but he walked away with a lot of cash on a terrible play gone good.
Two things about this:
1. Knowledge is power. If you learn to understand the other player's tendancies, you can figure out what you're generally up against. Poker is a great study in human psychology. For example, I know that if one of the guys in the game is shaking his knee up and down, he's got a monster. I actually like to sit next to him at the table because then I don't even have to look at his knee. His knee just starts bumping against mine and I immediately know to fold. This kind of study also helps me in life in general. I am much more able to get a feel for people and determine how sincere or truthful they are in their actions or words. You'd be amazed how different things seem when you start to understand human nature.
2. Math is all-powerful in poker. It allows you to make decisions when you are unsure of things. The above hand is an excellent example of that. Luck is going to happen in poker. But you can mitigate it's randomness by determining the win percentages in the hand. In this case, Jake had a win percentage in the 10% range against these other hands. In this case, the 10% hit for him for a $45 profit. However, if you repeat this scenario 10 times, Jake would only win 1 out of those 10 times. So while he will win $45 once, he will lose $45 9 times assuming all things equal. So Jake's expected value is $45 - $405 = -$360. Moral of this story is that you want Jake to call every time with that hand in this situation because you're going to make a lot of money in the long run off those type of bad decisions.
I'll probably get into other poker theory as I go along, but I wanted to give some of the people that don't know much about poker some insight into how much is involved in decision making in a hand of poker. Too often, after hearing about a hand like the above, people say that poker is just a game of luck or chance. There is some luck or chance involved, but a greater understanding of both human nature and math can allow you to gain an edge over other players that are at the table. Even playing without money, there is still a lot that can be learned through the game of poker.
