Every deputy assistant vice president has a tell
If you’re bad at something, better to find out early than late. Especially if not doing so comes with a price.
At Control Your Cash, it’s not exactly news that we think gambling is for idiots. Technically, we’d argue that poker isn’t gambling in the sense that keno and roulette are. Skill obviously factors into poker, at some level.
Therefore it stands to reason that the most successful poker players are the ones who learned it from an early age and applied themselves to their craft, right? Just like athletes?
Well, there’s one big difference. Serena Williams spent her childhood banging a ball against a wall (or sparring with the ready-made opponent one bed over), but she only paid for her lessons in sweat and bruises. It didn’t cost her anything out of pocket.
Improving at poker, on the other hand, costs money.
Yours truly moved to Las Vegas as an indestructible 20-something, armed with a mathematics degree from a fairly demanding college and convinced that he was going to hit every poker room on the Strip and use his logical mind to leave a gaggle of impoverished opponents in his wake. Sophisticated me would start off methodically, conquer the visitors and send them packing, move up to the locals, vanquish them, build my confidence and my winnings, then eventually go pro and make millions just for playing a game.
(NOTE: This is not a bad beat story we’re making you sit through, we swear. Nor will we tell you about the fish that got away, nor how our fantasy football team got screwed.)
On slow weekday afternoons, the casinos offer “free” lessons. The instruction is free, the stakes are real. I sat down at a learning table that held a dozen rube tourists who didn’t know a railbird from a kitty. The puzzlement in their eyes was all the incentive I needed. When one of them asked the dealer whether a full house beats a straight, I started salivating. That I knew barely knew the rules myself and didn’t know strategy at all was a non-issue.
I bought in for $20 and drew two low, unsuited cards. The flop* came up and I wagered $5, even though I knew I had close to the weakest hand at the table. There’s no point in sitting in a gambling hall and not gambling – I could have done that at home – so I gambled.
The dealer dealt the fourth community card. The card didn’t help my chances, but I placed a relatively gargantuan $10 bet. I went all-in with my remaining money on the fifth and final community card.
I held a pair of sevens. The best possible hand anyone could have held was a flush, and if anyone did, he wasn’t betting heavily enough for someone who had only a small chance of losing.
No one folded, including the two players who held worse hands than me. Our winner held a pair of pocket 10s. Most of the money she won in that pot was originally mine. She looked confused as the dealer pushed the chips toward her. “Really? I can take these? And exchange them for cash if I want? Or walk out of the casino with them and security won’t chase me? You sure?”
I wanted to stand up and scream at my fellow players. “Do any of you understand the concept of folding? Here’s how it works: you look at your cards and know you’re not going to win the hand, so you cut your losses before being obligated to wager more. Oh, and there’s something called ‘bluffing’, too. That’s when someone with a poor hand – me – bets so much that you assume he must have a great hand. Which I was doing. And none of you bought my bluff! Why the hell not? You people can’t possibly be so smart as to know that I was bluffing, given that you were all too dumb to fold. God, you’re exasperating!”
The dealer reminded me that if I wanted to be in on this next hand, I needed to cough up some more. Which would have been impossible. I walked out of the poker room dazed, trying to recalculate my steps. Could I have won that hand? No, because my idiot opponents wouldn’t have folded. Is every hand going to be like this? I always have to hold the best cards to win? Well, I’m not going to hold the best cards more often than anyone else will, so to win I’ll have to rely on my opponents’ psyches. But they don’t have psyches, they’re robots. And they weren’t even programmed to make intelligent decisions, just to bet and bet until the game ends. This is retarded.
I was right about that. It was.
Most players play to the death. Not out of bravado, but because they don’t know any better. Or they assume everyone else will, which means they have no choice but to mimic the crowd if they ever want to win a pot. To get past players like that and advance to the level where people bring math skills and psychoanalysis to the table, you have to be lucky enough to win more than chance would dictate. And that’s a price of entry that most of us shouldn’t be willing to pay.
Leave professional poker to the guys you see on ESPN2 late at night – the ones with the funny nicknames, horrible wardrobes, disjointed personalities and grotesque physiques. If you want camaraderie coupled with a chance to win money, invite your friends over and keep it amateur. In the long run, you’ll neither profit nor lose. And you won’t have to pay a cut to the house.
*Leaving much out, this refers to the first three of five cards the dealer deals face up in the middle of the table. Each player also receives two cards of his own, and creates the best possible five-card hand out of the communal five cards plus his own personal two cards.
**This article is featured is the Totally Money Blog Carnival #16-Easter Edition**
