The Clock-Tease

Last Saturday I went to Ventura again. There were two rather bizarre situations regarding rules that happened at my game. I'll end this post with the telling of the first one, and then I'll report on the second strange thing in the next post.

As luck would have it, my arrival to the room gave them enough players to start a brand new 1/2  game, so they did.  I bought in for the $100 max.

The game started quietly enough. After one player limped in, I raised to $7 with Ace-Queen off.  Only the limper called. The flop was all low cards, and as I reached for chips to bet with after she checked, she immediately mucked.

I limped in with 8-7 of clubs and a guy made it $11. It folded back to me. I know I probably should have folded, but I decided to make call.  The flop came Queen-10-9. I checked, expecting him to c-bet, but he checked behind. The turn was a blank and again it went check-check. But the turn was a 6, giving me the straight.  I bet $20, expecting him to fold. But he went into the tank and finally made the call. He didn't show when he saw my straight. Another player—an Asian no less—said he also had 8-7 and had folded because $11 was too much. I felt like saying to him, “You're a better player than I am,” but I wasn't sure how it would be taken, so I kept quiet.

With pocket 10's, I raised to $4.  That's a fairly common raise size in this particular game. I got four callers and the flop came Queen-10-X.  A lady donked out $4. It folded to me, I made it $12, and it folded back to her. She tanked for a while and then folded and I took the pot down.

I got pocket Jacks in the small blind and there were many limpers, so I made it $12. I got two callers. The flop was 10-high and I led out for $20.  The lady on my immediate left shoved for $23 and the other player folded. As I was grabbing my three dollar chips to call, I looked at the dealer and said, “Should I think about this for awhile?” A few players laughed and the dealer said to me, “Well, I'm sure some people would.” I would have made that joke under almost any circumstances, but there was actually some context to it. The player on my right had been taking an inordinate amount of time to figure out his bet sizing whenever he wanted to raise. He would count his dollar chips and recount them and restack them. I was actually losing patience with this guy, and I could tell the dealer was too. I'm sure the dealer was thinking of this character when he gave his response to my joke question. We’ll get back to this slow player in the next post. The board blanked out, and my Jacks were good. She showed Ace-King and said she was trying to get lucky. Hmmm, I'm thinking she probably should have just shoved preflop after my raise, but what do I know?

I guess I was up about $60 or so when the fireworks began. I looked down at my old friends, the dreaded pocket Kings. I was in late position, and before it got to me it was raised to $7. Now the player who had raised had just gotten to the table. I'm pretty sure I never seen him before in my life. He looked really young, but later he said that he had been playing poker for 15 years and he sort of made it sound like he was a grinder, not just a rec player—but that was after this happened. He didn't really look old enough to have played poker for 15 years. In fact when he said that, a lady said, “Oh you must have started playing when you were 10 years old.” He laughed and thanked her for the compliment. But at this precise moment I hadn't heard him say a word and he'd only been at the table for a few minutes. This was either his first or second hand and he had bought in for the maximum $100.

At first glance though he did sort of give off the appearance of a grinder. There were no sunglasses, but he did have earbuds. The thing that made him look unusual to me was that he was wearing a wool hat. It was an absolutely picture-perfect 72⁰ Southern California day outside, making the hat seem a little ridiculous. Let's call this guy “Wool Hat.”

It folded to me and I wasted a little time in taking a $20 stack, adding a buck to it, and pushing forward a bet of $21. There were a few players left with cards and they all quickly folded. As soon as it got back to Wool Hat, he started talking.  “I just got here.” Huh? What the hell does that have to do with anything? I didn't say anything at all. I think it was at this point that I heard him say for the first time, “Are you sure you want to do that?”

What am I supposed to say to that? Obviously I can't take the bet back, in fact, I said that.  He must have repeated each of the lines I've just quoted at least once maybe more. So after the second time he asked me if I was sure I wanted to do that, I said to him,  "They won't let me take the bet back.” In hindsight I wish I had thought to ask the dealer if I could take the bet back. Then when the dealer said of course not, I'd go back to the guy and say “Sorry, I tried."

I don't know what game he was playing, but it was just kind of weird that he was acting like he was taking it so personally that I had three-bet him. Had he never been three-bet before?

Anyway, he did call and we were heads up.  And then, as he put his chips out to call, but before the dealer put the flop down, he said, “Check in the dark.”

The flop was 10-9-8, rainbow. I checked behind, which was probably my first mistake. I have to admit his little act had me confused. I had no idea what kind of player he was but certainly a set with any of those cards was in his range, and for all I knew any two pair there was possible as well. Hell, he might have had Queen-Jack and flopped the joint. I even considered the possibility that this character could possibly have played Aces this way just to set a trap.

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The turn card was another 8. He checked, this time not in the dark. I bet $20. Rather quickly, he announced “all-in." Here's where it gets interesting. Before I had at any chance at all to react to is bet, he said, “I'll give you 30 seconds to act before I call the clock." Then, as soon as he said that, he corrected himself and said, “45 seconds.” Well thanks for that concession, pal.  BTW, in all my years of playing poker, I don’t think anyone has ever called the clock on me.

WTF? I wasn't really bothered by that as much as baffled. I knew I would get enough time to make a decision, but it was really weird to threaten to call the clock that soon. But I ignored it and started thinking about whether or not I was going to call. At least I started to, but then the dealer interrupted. He said to the guy, "You can't call the clock, only I can call the clock, and I'll only call it when he's had enough time to act.”

Now I was really confused. A player can't call the clock? Only a dealer can call the clock? The dealer's never supposed to call for the clock. This particular dealer is not a kid and has been there since I started playing there. He's a solid dealer. After I thought about it a bit, I realized what the dealer was trying to say was that the player couldn't call the floor over for the clock unless the dealer first thought that I had enough time to act. Although that isn't right either, is it? I think if a player calls for the clock the dealer must immediately call the floor. But then the dealer will be asked by the floor if he thinks the player had enough time to make a decision, and in this case the dealer would say that no, I didn't have enough time to make a decision. Of course I was going to get 45 seconds before that even happened so it all was kind of moot.

So my interpretation of all this is that, although I don't really like this kind of table talk and never have, I wasn't all that bothered by this guy's schtick, but the dealer really was. I think the dealer just took an immediate disliking to this guy's whole act.

Of course, Mr. Wool Hat wasn't going to take that quietly. He started arguing with the dealer about whether or not he could call the clock and the dealer would have none of it. The dealer said that I have to be given adequate time to make a decision and that he was trying to intimidate me with his comment about calling the clock.

Wool Hat denied he was trying to intimidate me but finally quieted down, and it was on me to make a decision.  I almost spoke up and said that the guy's talking wasn't bothering me and that I didn't feel intimidated, but I decided not to say anything. I really wasn't that distracted by all this. I was distracted by the fact that I was in another pickle with my least favorite hand. Again, I had no information on this guy. A guy raises his first or second hand at the table, it could mean he's trying to create an image for himself. It could mean he's a aggressive player. Or it could mean that he got dealt a really big hand.

He started the hand with a hundred bucks so his bet was about $79; it was almost $60 to call. I had him covered. One of my big weaknesses as a poker player is that I really, really, really hate losing to assholes. Once I have determined a player is a jerk, it bugs me five times as much to lose him as it would be to any player that I didn't think was a jerk or actually thought was a nice person. I know that's bad to admit but it's true. At first I was amused a little bit by his act about my initial three-bet. But when he gave me a time limit of 30 seconds that he pulled out of his ass, and then “graciously’ gave me a additional 15 seconds. I decided that this guy was an actual dick. Thus it would have bothered me tremendously to give this guy a double up. Not because of the money it would have cost me, but because of the money he would have won.

And of course there's the other issue…it was pocket Kings. You know my history with pocket Kings of course. So calling there and losing (if I lost) would have been a double whammy on my psyche. Doubling up a dick with my kryptonite hand would have really taking its toll on me.  I can't be sure, but I think I would have been more likely to have called if I had Queens or Jacks.

After I deciding I was going to fold, I waited a little bit just to make him wait. I actually considered waiting so long that he really could have legitimately called the clock on me, and then waited for the floor to come over, waited for him to count down to the final second, and then mucked. Or even better, not even fold, just wait for the time to run out and for the floor to kill my hand. But I decided I didn't want to put the rest of the players through that. So I folded.

Wool Hat didn't show, and he stacked his chips. As soon as I folded, I started regretting it. I decided that he most likely had Queens or Jacks and that I was ahead. Of course if he had Jacks, he had an open-ender. Well that's what I was thinking for an hour at least. But after watching him play longer and seeing some of the hands he was showing down, I realized he had a much wider range than that. I don't think I ever saw him fold to a three-bet, not that there were that many. And it looked like he could open raise with any two cards, especially if one of them was an Ace. It was very possible there that he had Ace-8. Or 10-8, or 9-8. Or Queen-Jack. Or even 7-6. Or Aces.

Of course if he had a boat or even trip 8’s, would he really have shoved on the turn? Well I don't think so but maybe he would have thought that his move would look so much like a bluff that I would call.

Anyway after the hand, he couldn't let go of the dealer's comments about his calling for the clock. He asked the dealer for clarification, saying he was interested in the rules and didn't want to violate any. But the dealer wasn't particularly forthcoming. So we all noticed that when the floor person happened to walk by, he got out of the seat and had a talk with him. I could only hear bits and pieces of their conversation but he was obviously trying to get an interpretation of the calling for the clock rule. I don't know what he was told. But when he came back to the table he seemed to be satisfied and never mentioned it again.

The irony is that after this incident he seemed like a pretty decent guy after all.  He was never any trouble after that. He had friendly banter with the players on either side of him, and also with a player across the table who he got into it with in several big hands. I heard him say that he's mostly a tournament player and that he was just playing 1/2 for fun. He was telling the guy on his left hand histories from some of his tournament runs. I really don't know why he was acting so odd that very first hand, but he seemed like an okay guy after that. And I have to admit that maybe the dealer exacerbated the problem by his comment about not being able to call the clock, which obviously is incorrect.

I'll tell you about the other weird incident from this game in the follow up post, which is here.