Shadow Boxing

I played $15-$30 hold'em last night at the Oaks.

Rich is a smart, aggressive, tricky player who is tough for me to outplay. On that basis, I don't like to play at the same table as him. At the same time, he tilts easily. If someone puts a bad beat on him, he starts steaming and muttering about how they shouldn't have been in the hand in the first place or something similar. He gets mad if people beat him by playing badly. In other words, he embodies a lot of my own darker tendencies at the table. This can make it fun for me to play with Rich, because once he starts to tilt, it becomes easier for me to step out of the role of tight-player-on-tilt and let Rich occupy it. And when I do this, I find it difficult to resist the temptation to make sport of him.

(This is surely one of the reasons why so many players treat Phil Hellmuth as such a goat. Phil has a famously bad temper – he's the John McEnroe of poker – and has a very high opinion of himself. When he busts out of a tournament and storms furiously out of the room, hundreds of players project their bad-temper and arrogance onto him, and confidently comfort themselves that they aren't like that at all, no, not one bit.)

Last night I was winning, but I had taken a few bozo beats, so I was tending towards tilt. Fortunately for me, players with worse hands had outdrawn Rich a few times, he was losing, and he was radiating his annoyance.

For one hand, Rich was in the small blind in seat three. A crafty gambler in seat five opened the betting by limping in. The action was folded around to me, on the button, in seat one (the player in seat two was away from the table). My hand was the the 5 and 6 of hearts. I trailed in, Rich threw in a chip to complete his bet, and the player in the big blind rapped his knuckles. The dealer burned and turned a flop of 7 6 3 rainbow, with one heart. I had second pair with a weak kicker and a gutshot straight draw. There were four small bets in the pot.

Rich was first to act; he bet out. The player in the big blind folded. Crafty Gambler called, and I chose to try to play for a free card: I raised. Rich reraised (no free card for me, unless Rich wanted one too). CG cold-called the two bets, and I called after him. Thirteen small bets – six and a half big bets – were now in the pot.

The turn card was the ace of hearts, and I had picked up eight more outs to make a winning hand. Rich checked, and CG bet. It was a sure thing that he had an ace in his hand. Calling here was a no-brainer: I was getting the right price to call for the heart draw alone, my straight outs were probably good, as would the two remaining sixes, and my second pair might possibly hold up if I hit it. Rich also called, clearly not happy with his situation. The pot now held nine and a half bets.

The river card was a black seven, for a board of 7-6-3-A-7. Rich checked, and CG checked also, presumably because he feared I held a seven in my hand. I rapped my hand on the table and announced, "Two pair."

CG turned over his hand: the ace and eight of clubs. I mucked my hand unseen. So did Rich, and he went into a slow burn.

"You cold-called two bets with an ace," he said. "Nice hand!"

I couldn't resist the temptation. "If you don't want people to draw out on you, you shouldn't price them in; you should price them out."

"What are you talking about?" Rich shot back. "Do you think I should check-raise? Either way he has to call two bets with an ace as his only out."

The next hand was underway, and Rich was in it. I kept my mouth shut and did the math in my head: With four bets in the pot, CG was getting 5:1 for his first call of one bet; and with my raise and Rich's reraise he was getting 11:2 (5.5:1) to call again. On the other hand, if Rich had checked and raised my bet, CG would only be getting 7:2 (3.5:1).

There are compelling reasons not to talk about strategy and tactics at the table, but Rich on tilt was too tempting a target. When we next had both folded before the flop, I said, "If he's getting the right price to call your first bet, then he's getting the right price to cold-call the next two."

"That's completely wrong! His only out was an ace! How can you say that?"

"I'm saying that if he was getting the right price for the first bet, he would still be getting the right price for calling the next two. It's an 'if' statement. A conditional. It's logic, which is part of math."

Of course, I knew very well that CG had not been getting the right price to call that first bet, even if his kicker would have been good if he had spiked it instead of the ace. I wasn't going to say that, however. I also knew that if Rich had held the hand I now thought he had -- an overpair to the board -- he would want to price both CG and I into the hand, not price us out. Rich seemed to be missing this point, and a lot of others as well.

"If you think that the pot odds of catching an ace are that good," Rich said, "you're a moron."

Now I was kvelling: Rich thinks I'm a moron who can't do math! And he'd lost track of the difference between pot odds (what the betting action offers a player) and probability odds (the likelihood of the event happening). You can't ask for more than that, and besides, he was acting just like me! What a wonderful opportunity to give my shadow a few kicks in the butt!

An opportunity came shortly later. Seat two vacated, and I moved into it, right next to Rich. Connie Hyun sat down in seat one, and waited for the button to pass. When it was my button, with Rich in the small blind, Connie posted three chips to get a hand.

The player in seat seven limped in. The players after him folded. Connie looked at her cards, thought for a moment, then checked. I had pocket threes in my hand. I limped in also. Rich completed his small blind, and the big blind checked. I got my dream flop of 2-3-K. Rich bet out, and everyone else dropped out. I called Rich's bet. The turn was a mid-range blank – call it a 9. Rich bet again, and I called again, figuring I could jam him on the river no matter what it was and make the most I could out of the hand. The actual river card was perfect for me: another king, giving me a full house of treys over kings The only hands that beat me were KK and 99 (unlikely given the preflop action) and K9. Rich bet one more time. I raised him. He reraised me. I put in the fourth bet. Rich called me, muttering something about "Kings full?". I showed my hand, and he mucked.

As I was stacking the chips from this hand, Connie asked me, "Would you have called me if I had raised?"

"Hell, no," I said. "You need to get seven and a half to one to get the right price to call with a small pair."

Rich couldn't resist his chance to show me he knew more math than I did. "It's eight and a half to one," he said.

I kvelled again. Rich was forgetting the difference between probabilities and odds. (There's one chance in 8.5 that a pocket pair will flop at least a three of a kind; and that works out to odd of 7.5:1 against.)

Rich and I are very much alike as players. We both think we're smarter than everyone else, and we're both wrong. We tilt in the same way, and we both have a tendency to write other players off as morons, even when they clearly aren't.

The things that provoke us in others are part of our own shadow.