"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.