"Gsquadstyle" is my hero!

....and "SantaLovesMe" is a helluva a feller too! Either one of these guys could have made a dumb move that would have cost them (and me!) a lot of money. But they didn't. They played it cool, God love 'em.

I was playing on PartyPoker this morning, at one of their "Bad Beat Jackpot" tables, when these two players were involved in the most amazing bad beat I've ever witnessed. And because I was sitting at the table when it happened, I got a cool $12, 426.

If you are unfamiliar with bad beat jackpots, let me explain how the one at PartyPoker works: Fifty cents from each hand that sees a flop goes into the jackpot. There are dozens and dozens of these bad-beat tables, so the Jackpot builds fairly quickly - I'd say by about $25,ooo every day. The jackpot builds until it is won by a qualifying bad beat - a hand of Quad eights or better that loses! To make it even tougher, to qualify for the Jackpot both winning and losing hands must use both their hole cards. How unlikely is this? I haven't figured out the odds, but I'd say it is about as likely as hitting two hole-in-one's in a single round of golf. Astronomically unlikely. When this particular jackpot is hit, 30,000 is taken out as "seed money" for the next jackpot. Of what remains 50% goes to the bad beat loser, 25% to the hand winner, and the remaining 25% is split between anyone else who was dealt cards in the hand.

Here's how this mornings bad beat went down:

I was playing at a six-player table with .50/$1 blinds. I was dealt a suited queen under-the-gun, and folded it. The next guy (Pumuking, who has a very amusing picture of a monkey as his avatar) also folds. Next is hero #1, Gsquadstyle, who has 10s 10h. He could have killed this whole thing right here with some kind of stupid over-bet, but instead he raised what was the standard $3. Lovely! The button (Slevin K) folds. SantaLovesMe is in the small blind and he has a very good hand - Ac Kc, but one that is vulnerable if he doesn't hit the flop. So he raises to $9.50. The big blind (VictoryCica) folds. It would have been pretty gutless of Gsquadstyle to fold here, and thankfully he doesn't. He calls.

The flop comes: 6c Qc Jc. SantaLovesMe flopped an ace high flush while Gsquadstyle is holding only a pair of tens. If SantaLovesMe makes any bet here, it is almost certain that Gsquadstyle would have folded...but SantaLovesMe is thankfully not that stupid - he knows enough to check the nuts. Besides there is a possibility his opponent has a set, so the the bad beat might come into play. I could kiss SantaLovesMe for that check. Gsquadstyle also checks, of course.

The turn is the 10c. This gives SantaLovesMe an unbeatable royal flush, but it also gives Gsquadstyle a set of 10's. I like to believe that at this point both players were only thinking about the possibility of a bad beat and making sure they didn't fuck it up. SantaLovesMe checks his royal flush (good boy!) and Gsquad bets about 2/3 the pot. This is NOT a mistake on his part - remember, since the flop there has been no betting, so Santa might have pocket 7's for all Quadstyle knows. This bet is a way for Quadstyle to sense if there is a possibility of a bad beat, and if not then he might as well scoop up the pot right here. Santa, you will not be surprised to hear, calls.

Now comes the river. There is only one ten left in the deck; the ten of diamonds, but if by some miracle it comes then ladies and gents we got ourselves a bad beat jackpot!

The river is the 10 of diamonds. A royal flush over quad 10's.

The players who folded pre-flop like myself get $12,426 each just for being there. SantaLovesMe (Yes he does!) gets $49,704 and the appropriately named Gsquadstyle gets $99,408 for hitting runner-runner quads and losing.

And I doubt I will ever see a hand like that as long as I live.

Poker Software

If you play poker online, you can use software like PokerTraker to gather statistics on your play as well as the play of your opponents. According to PokerTracker, the program "imports the hand histories that poker sites write to your computer. It then parses the hands and stores poker statistics about the hands into a local database so that you can look at every possible angle of both your and your opponents' poker game."

A friend of mine got a trial version and, while he was amazed at the amount of information available to him, is still unsure if it is worth the investment. I suspect all serious on-line players use some kind of software of this nature. Why wouldn't they? Still I have my reservations.

On a purely emotional level, I think it takes some of the fun out of the game. Win or lose, I know I don't have anyone (or anything) else to credit or blame. Poker is an individual vs individual game, and the introduction of computer analysis just spoils it somehow. I know this is kind of petulant of me. And maybe it's dumb to "bring a knife to a gun fight". I suspect that poker software is really now just part of the game - if all players are using it, then it is still an individual vs individual game, just a much more complex one where your success is not only based on poker skills, but the ability to quickly interpret and apply raw data to a specific situation. A more complex game - but still a game. My dislike for the software might just be laziness on my part - I don't want to do the work of having to analyse statistics!

But I also worry about statistics misleading me. If I have a good read on a situation, the statistics might lead me to make a wrong decision. Of course this could easily, and more likely, go the other way - that the statistics would likely keep me from making bad decisions.

I just don't know.

I'm hoping those of you reading this post will leave comments offering advice.

When to call without the best hand

Being a nit, I have always believed it is never wrong to fold a hand when I believe my opponent is holding a stronger hand. This is common sense, right? Only donkeys make calls like that, right? Well it's not so simple. The instances are not very common, but sometimes you should make the call even when you are certain your opponent is holding better cards than yours.

I was two hours into a live $50 buy-in tournament. We had started with 5,000 in chips and blinds of 25/25, but the blinds were now 800/1600 and many smaller stacks were in danger of being blinded off. I had a stack of about 25,000, which was the most at my table, (there were two other tables going as well) and so when it folded to me in middle position I thought it was worthwhile to take a stab at stealing the blinds. I had a tight image and my monster stack made it unlikely that anyone would wish to tangle with me. Holding KQ off seemed good enough, so I raised it to an even 4,000. Everyone folded except the big blind, who pushed all-in for a total of 4,500. Now I knew that this guy would not be making this move with anything weaker that what I had, but it would have been wrong to fold. The pot was now 9,300 and it would only cost me another 500 to call, giving me 18-1 pot odds. I knew the odds of winning the pot were slim, but the cost was so relatively cheap and the reward so relatively great that calling was the right thing to do. My decision was even more clear-cut because my opponent, being all-in, could not force me to put any more chips into the pot and the fact that everyone else had folded meant that no third person could muddy the waters. My big stack also meant that the loss of an additional 500 was not going to cripple me. So I called. As I expected, he had a better hand than mine; AK. His hand held up and he won.

Did the fact that I lost mean that I made a bad decision? No. I don't think I made a bad decision to call and I don't think I made a bad decision to attempt the steal in the first place- I think in a majority of cases my steal attempt would have worked, I just was unlucky that one of the four players after me had Big Slick. And I think that against the range of hands a short-stack will bet his tournament life on, KQ will suck-out enough times to be profitable at 18-1 pot odds.

Better players than me are very good at knowing when it is okay to call when behind. The example I gave here is pretty clear-cut, but knowing when such calls make sense is one of the things I need to understand better if I am going to be a better player.