The game is Texas Hold’em Poker. There is one goal, to accumulate chips. In David Sklansky’s words, ‘the object of the game is to make money [...] That’s the way the game is scored.’[1] The villain has the same goal, and knows yours. Hero and villain meet equal across the felt. I take my seat at the table without privilege or class, it is only skill and chance that influence the game.
I am going to tell a hand that I played some time ago in a tournament. I am the hero, on the dealer button with advantageous position on the rest of the table and the blinds are set at 75 and 150 with a 15 chip ante.
The action slowly folds to me, leaving only me and the two players that have posted the compulsory blinds. Brushing the felt with a sweaty palm, I collect the two cards dealt in front of me and carefully peel one corner at a time, guarding them from the greedy glances of the two players left to act. They are the ace of clubs and jack of diamonds; a strong starting hand, especially from this position on the table. I would be expected to be opening the betting with much weaker holdings than this. The big blind posted is 150 chips. I have 9275 chip stack and carefully carve out a raise of 375 from the lower denominations, gently dropping them in front me, signalling the raise.
The player in the small blind, eagerly squeezes his cards to see the strength of his hand. With a jut of his chin, he flicks the cards back to the dealer, folding from the pot. The big blind obviously thinks better of his holding. Impassive, he drops another 225 chips on top of his posting and the dealer scoops all our chips with a cupped hand and slides them into the centre of table. But the chips aren’t strictly ours anymore; they belong to the pot and that’s what’s up for grabs.
The dealer thumps the table, burns the top card from the deck, and lays the first three communal cards into the centre of the table, one at a time. ‘Nine,’ he says with the first card. I don’t watch the cards being dealt, my eyes are fixed on the villain for any reaction he might let slip. ‘Eight.’ The villain glances at me, he will see nothing of use; another reason for not watching the flop is to prevent any tells being observed from your opponent. The third card sounds a scraping flick as the dealer pulls it from the deck, ‘Jack.’ With it, the villain quickly shifts his gaze to his chips and back to the flop. Arms crossed in from of him, he lifts his fingertips and gently taps his forearm, checking the action to me.
The flop is co-ordinated, nine and jack of hearts with the eight of clubs, meaning that my opponent could easily have some equity in the hand. The logical range of cards that he has to defend the big blind with include a lot of combinations of middle-strength cards, sevens to kings and suited connectors; he is likely to have a draw, either to a straight or flush, and may already have a weak pair, maybe two pair or better. My pair of jacks with an ace kicker is beating most of that range; my equity in the hand is somewhere around seventy per cent. I bet 540 chips, a little on the larger side, to protect against any draws he could have and to extract value from his weaker hands.
The villain wastes no time and carves out a raise to 1280 from his stack, he gives them a light toss out in front of him and resumes his crossed-arm posture. Making this bet, the villain is representing a strong hand, either honestly or to steal the pot, knowing that my range includes a lot of hands that would either miss this board completely or be too weak to continue. With top pair however, near the top of my range, I’m not folding.
The dealer scoops the chips and shunts them over into the pot, now bloated up to 3520 chips. He thumps the table, burns another card and peels the turn card off the deck.
‘Deuce,’ the dealer says. The villain, once again glances at the chips in front of him and slowly taps his forearm, turning towards me.
The turn card is the two of diamonds which changes nothing on the board; no draws are completed by it and the villain scarcely has twos in his range. What he is more likely to have is a hand that is suited hearts, a hand that includes a ten, queen or seven that could improve to a straight—king-ten, for example would need a queen or seven, or queen-eight would need a ten—or made hands like queen-ten, that already have a straight, or nine-eight for two pair. This range is narrowed by the information collected from the action on the flop; they are the only hands that would logically take the betting line that the villain is playing.
I consider betting again to protect against the draws on the board, as my holding still has sixty per cent equity against his amended range. If the villain re-raises my bet again, however, it would be gross with so many river cards that could complete draws—a queen, ten, seven, six, five or heart. The check, on the other hand, would disguise the strength of my hand and go some way to limit any losses incurred if the villain is at the top of his range with a made hand or gets there on the river.
The dealer, for the last time, thumps the table and flips over the river card, ‘King.’ The villain remains indifferent, then unfolds his arms and pushes his entire stack into the middle. The dealer carefully counts out all the chips, and announces the amount at 8020; I’d be all-in to call, putting my tournament life on the line.
The river is the king of hearts, which, when combined with the huge over-bet shove made, alters the villain’s range. First off, it makes a flush possible, and his range includes some suited heart hole cards. With a flush he would be confident enough to commit all those chips, knowing the strength of his hand is almost always winning a showdown. It also means, conversely, that any other hand stronger than my pair of jacks would never do this since they would be worried about their opponent having the flush. Those hands—the two pairs, a pair of kings made on the river, even a straight—are removed from his range, leaving only flushes and weaker hands that he is turning into a bluff. He is representing the flush, so he either has it or he doesn’t. I just have to decide whether his story checks out.
After checking the turn, my hand is under-represented, which would make a scary river card a good spot for the villain to bluff, since he would think that my hand is too weak to risk a big pot. According to Sklansky, ‘if your opponent bets when there appears to be a good chance you will fold, that opponent may very well be bluffing.’[2]
The peril is great. The villain doesn’t give off any obvious tells and to call is to put everything at risk. His range is polarized. He can only have a flush or a bluff, and bluffs make up the greater portion of his range. I’d love to call out a bluff from the villain. And besides, I really want to see those cards. But, if I’m wrong...
Bill Chen advocates a mathematical approach to poker: ‘Rejecting mathematics as a tool for playing poker puts one’s decisions at the mercy of guesswork.’[3] There is ‘a “correct” way to play every hand; the way that, on average, will win you the most money.’[4] I can safely say, statistically, that of the remaining hands in his range, two thirds would not have made the flush. So, I would have to call all of my chips, 7670, to win the pot of 11,190; the odds are almost one-point-five to one. So, if I found myself in this identical situation three times, called each time, losing one and winning two, I would still net a profit. What remains uncertain, however, is whether he would then turn all of those hands into a bluff. And besides, the villain is telling a good story.
I put him on the flush and make the fold.
There is no showdown. I do not know what the villain was holding; I did not win the pot. This is where the psychological aspect of the game of Poker comes in. A hand that you fold, because you are unsure of the outcome, can eat away at you and affect your ability. In another hand, I might call with the worst of it out of frustration, or I might fold hands that are winning. Poker requires a certain mind set, a long-term approach, that Ian Taylor argues for: ‘If you are playing for the long term, you will not really care about the results of one session, and especially not one hand.’[5]
I still, to this day, really want to know what that that particular villain was holding. There is always a desire for some sort of closure, just as one craves in fiction and life. Peter Brooks argues of literature that ‘we read in a spirit of confidence, and also a state of dependence, that what remains to be read will restructure the provisional meanings of the already read.’[6] It is the same in Poker, every hand is a puzzle, an exercise in logic and reasoning, a plot to be understood. The terminology, as you may have already noticed, is heterogeneous to the Story. Every hand has a hero and villain making gambits, they follow a formulaic structure, you just don’t always get the ending.
In the moment, I perceive the call as a gamble, but this is in fact incorrect. I will, over time, win more chips making the call in this spot, than I will lose. The very classification of poker in relation to the sphere of gambling is sketchy at best. Although, poker rooms are for the most part found in casinos, one judge in the US ruled that poker is not gambling, that it is not subject to the same gaming regulations as something like roulette, in a case where a man had been running a card room without a gambling licence.[7] What afflicted me most in the hand was the perception of Poker as gambling. Its artifice is one of vice, played in darkened smoky rooms by undesirable characters. In the contemporary game, this is to the contrary. People like Danielle Anderson, a stay-at-home mother, for example, play professionally as a means to support their families.[8]
It is a feeling of gambling, as turpitude, that affects me. Taylor notes: ‘Emotions can cause you to make sub-optimal plays that you would not otherwise make.’[9] Dealing with emotion is usually the distinction between a winning and losing player, between the professional and the gambler. Ole Bjerg advocates that the ‘beauty of poker is revealed at precisely those moments when strict logic, calculation, rationality, and even justice fall short. And the ability of truly great poker players is the ability to seize these moments[.]’[10] The irony derives from the fact I am attracted to Poker precisely because of its removal from gambling, as a skill game. Perhaps it is that very hesitance to gamble that holds me back.
Bet Raise Fold, dir. Ryan Firpo (918 Films, 2013)
Bjerg, Ole, Poker: The Parody of Capitalism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011)
Brooks, Peter, Reading For The Plot (London : Harvard University Press, 1992)
Chen, Bill and Jerrod Ankenman, The Mathematics of Poker (Pittsburgh: ConJelCo, 2006)
Secret, Mosi, ‘Poker Is More a Game of Skill Than of Chance, a Judge Rules’, New York Times, 21 August 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/nyregion/poker-is-more-a-game-of-skill-than-of-chance-a-judge-rules.html?_r=0 [accessed 15 May 2014]
Sklansky, David, The Theory of Poker, 4th edn. (Las Vegas: Two Plus Two, 1999)
Taylor, Ian and Matthew Hilger, The Poker Mindset (Dimat Enterprises, 2007)
[1] David Sklansky, The Theory of Poker, 4th edn. (Las Vegas: Two Plus Two, 1999), p. 5
[2] David Sklansky, The Theory of Poker, 4th edn. (Las Vegas: Two Plus Two, 1999), p. 240
[3] Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman, The Mathematics of Poker (Pittsburgh: ConJelCo, 2006), p. 3
[4] Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger, The Poker Mindset (Dimat Enterprises, 2007), p. 23
[5] Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger, The Poker Mindset (Dimat Enterprises, 2007), p. 23
[6] Peter Brooks, Reading For The Plot (London : Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 23
[7] Mosi Secret, ‘Poker Is More a Game of Skill Than of Chance, a Judge Rules’, New York Times, 21 August 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/nyregion/poker-is-more-a-game-of-skill-than-of-chance-a-judge-rules.html?_r=0 [accessed 15 May 2014]
[8] Bet Raise Fold, dir. Ryan Firpo (918 Films, 2013)
[9] Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger, The Poker Mindset (Dimat Enterprises, 2007), p. 53
[10] Ole Bjerg, Poker: The Parody of Capitalism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), p. 246
