Sunday, March 11, 2018

"I've Never Played Poker Before"

This was from late in my Xmas Vegas trip.  I was at the end of a losing session when a guy took the empty seat immediately to my left. He bought in for the $100 minimum. He was dealt his first two cards and the action came to him.  He didn't do anything.  The dealer said something like, "It's on you."

The guy said, "I've never played poker before.  You're going to kind of have to walk me through it."

Wow.  I'd never heard that one before.  I decided that I could stay a little bit longer after all.

The dealer said something like, "Well, look at your cards.  If you have good cards, you can call or raise."  So the guy looked at his cards and called the $2. 

The action got to the guy in seat 8 (the "never played poker before" guy was in seat 2), he started talking to the newbie.  "I don't know what to do here.  I don't know if this guy's legit.  You really never played before?"

The guy said, "Well, I just play on my phone."

Seat 8 was still baffled.  "I don't know…he could have a good hand and not know it.  He could have a bad hand a not know it."

Newbie agreed. "That's right."

He played a few hands and didn't win.  He tended to call preflop and maybe the flop.  Sometimes if the betting wasn't too big he'd get to showdown with very marginal hands—or total garbage. 

Sometimes he'd show his garbage hand and said, "Well, I thought I might get something."  He called once or twice with less than nothing and said, "I wanted to see what he was doing."  Well that almost sounded like he might have known what he was doing, but he didn't.  A few more times seat 8 asked him if he really never played before, and he always said he'd only played on his phone.

But he started getting talkative, especially with seat 8—and another fellow who wasn't saying anything (seat 9).  But he decided seat 9 was always bluffing (perhaps because he was Asian?).  In fact though, seat 9 never seemed to bluff at all.

He almost never took an aggressive action.  I think I saw him raise one time.  Oh he would sometimes make a opening bet, but he would never raise in response to a bet.  Once, he limped in, called a flop bet and maybe a small river bet.  At showdown, he showed—pocket Kings!  There was no Ace on the board and it was very dry.  Even I would have won more money with pocket Kings.  He played them like deuces.

So he would start telling the other players, "You can't call me….I got you beat, you should fold."  Sometimes that meant he had a hand, sometimes it meant he had nothing.  Or, in response to a bet, he'd say, "You don't have anything.  You're bluffing."  And he would call.  But then he would show up with nothing himself (and the other guy wasn't bluffing).  One time he called with something like 10-high.  He called a guy with two pair.  "I had to call you cuz I knew you had nothing."  Apparently he hadn't learned that 10-high isn't a good bluff-catcher.  He almost never called quietly.  It was like, "I gotta call you, you got nothing."

And sometimes he'd talk when he didn't have a hand.  Once or twice he would say, "Oh you have to call him, he doesn't have anything," when he wasn't in the hand.  Of course the dealer did warn him not to do that.  But they were going easy on him since he obviously didn't know what he was doing.

At one point when he wasn't in the hand (or maybe he was and there were multiple players) he said, "I think he's going for a straight."  The dealer didn't hear that but I think one of the other players told him he couldn't do that  Eventually he did get warned about saying too much about the hand again.

I did consider the possibility that this was all an act, and that he really knew what he was doing.  For what it's worth, I was pretty sure that wasn't the case.  Even though he kept winning the occasional small pot that kept him from busting.

Unfortunately, I remained card dead through all this, and there was enough action from the other players to prevent me from mixing in.  I finally had to leave as it was getting late, down about 3/4's of a buy-in.


Once again, I was unable to find an appropriate picture to go with this blog post, the pic above again has nothing to do with this post.  However, the site I stole borrowed it from had the headline for this pic as "Fitness model from Russia with ample bosom was the star of Instagram."  I'd like to think that a fitness model from Russia with ample bosom will always have a place on this blog.

17 comments:

  1. Tremendous pic. I’ve already forgotten what the blog was about.

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  2. They don't call him "Boob Rob" for nothing!

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    1. Well, I'd rather admire boobs than be called a boob.

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  3. People who act like they don’t know how to play poker aren’t really much better than those who really don’t know how to play poker. They would just play and cut the bullshit

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  4. I was a new Omaha Hi/Lo player at my local card club (The Oaks in SF Bay Area) ... I told two players next to me that I loved Omaha but really didn't know what I was doing ... I thought I flopped Broadway and I raised-raised-raised but I was planning to use 3 of my cards. The guy I was heads up with finally folded and I showed my garbage hand. The players howled that I knew exactly what I was doing and ran a brilliant bluff. I was embarrassed but I scooped the pot and didn't say anything and I tried to learn the game.

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  5. Nice pic. Appropriate for the upcoming Saint Patrick's day celebration.

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    1. Hmmm....does she have a shamrock hidden in her cleavage?

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  6. Had this once at Planet Hollywood several years ago. It was a girl that sat down and tried to play the, "I'm just a little old girl and don't know how to play." it was very clear almost immediately that she was full of it though because she was completely adept at all of the mechanical parts of the game like posting blinds, tipping the dealer, moving the button, etc. At some point she made a string bet while trying to make a big raise and the whole table pretty much called her on it because they were annoyed by her antics. That set her off and she proceeded to overbet every time she had any piece of the board and wound up donating something like $2,000 in buy-ins to the table.

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    1. Wow. That certainly had a happy ending...for the rest of the table, anyway. I hope you got your share.

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    2. I got my double-up and then cashed out to go play some pai-gow with her money and drink free booze.

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  7. I had a night I was playing a turbo tournament that was designed to last about an hour and had a total of ten players and ran into a guy that had a total misunderstanding of a bluff. Three tournaments in a row within the first three hands at the lowest blind level I stacked this guy when he was CALLING all of my raises that got all of our chips in at the river. And his showdown was NOTHING. No pair, no straight draw, no flush draw, absolutely nothing but his smile that he was proud of his play in that particular hand. And when I doubled up in level one I won all three of those tournaments with ease.

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    1. Cool. So he thought he could bluff by CALLING, huh? Wow.

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  8. The whole table was doing a WTF when the guy did that moronic move the second time and also the third time. I think somebody tapped the glass though and told him his theory on bluffing was completely wrong. And that was the end of his chip-dump move.

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