Genius Or Madness?

September 1, 2009 by Nick Wealthall

Nick Wealthall The endlessly fascinating thing about poker is that there are so few options in the gameplay but that it produces such a subtle, complex game. After all you can only ever bet (or raise), call or fold – 3 or 4 options; even a monkey could do it – actually some do, PM me I’ll send you their screen names.

It’s for this reason that plays in poker can look like genius or horrible donk moves depending on your point of you – after all a raise is a raise it doesn’t come with the internally monologue of the player making it attached.

I’ve been thinking about the finnnneeee lines in poker a lot this month. It all started with a hand Durrr played on poker after dark. His opponent Bob Safai had bet all the way with top pair, top kicker and Durrr had called with a flush draw before missing on the river. Bob checked the river which is like a red rag to a bull when playing Durr – actually it’s a bit like a red rag with a big picture of a Bull with a no bulls sign over it and the words ‘I hate bulls’. Durr thought for a bit and decided to bluff but no ordinary bluff – he bet $133k all in into a $39k pot; a huge over bet. Bob Safai didn’t think too long before tossing his winning hand into the muck.

What do you instinctively think of this play –is it genius or madness? He needs Bob to fold roughly 80% of the time for it to make money – what do you think of it now? Obviously Durr thinks he knows his man and knows the situation or he wouldn’t be making the play. By the way I’ll pause while you rush off to make a note on Durr’s account saying ‘check to him to induce bluffs’ so you’re fully armed next time you play him. Here’s the kicker to this hand though – if you were playing in a $0.05c/$0.10c game and you saw exactly the same play (with relative money of course) what would you think? Guy’s a donkey – clearly; actually a monkey donkey, what a horrible bet.

Obviously this hand and this thinking had wormed its way into my subconscious and was lurking their waiting for its moment to pounce as only a few days later I ended up making a similar play. The observant reader will note the subtlety and cleverness with which I’m linking myself to playing like Durrr….not sure I can back this up.

I was in a hand with another regular player in my games. I have over 2000 hands on him in my tracker and have a really good read on his play and respect him as a decent, solid thinking player. Before this hand we didn’t have a huge amount of history though – I like playing my big pots with people that are as far away from decent, solid thinking players as possible. I’d called him in position pre flop with 98s. I floated the flop on a low board then picked up my flush draw and a gut shot on the turn. He bet again and, even though we were fairly deep, I can shove here a lot of the time. I decided to just call on this occasion and instead of the low red card I needed I got a black jack. He thought for a bit then bet just over half the pot. I hardly thought before bluff shoving my chips in.

As soon as I’d done it I regretted it. All the likely draws had missed, worse than that it was a really tough spot to represent a big hand – after all it was a low drawy board, if I did have a big hand, like a set, I’d usually have raised to protect it and give myself a chance of stacking him before the river. To make the bet even less likely to succeed he was getting just over 2 to 1 on his call. As his time bank inched down I knew I was – in the words of one of the top online players – boned beyond belief…. I am a donkey.

And then as if by magic, he folded. And that lovely little animation where the chips slide into my avatar was happening. Yahtzee I’m a poker genius.

I think what happened was he levelled himself a bit – he knew I wouldn’t ever be making a move on him in that spot so even though I wasn’t repping anything and he was getting a great price he knew I had to have a monster of some kind. See I am a genius – except that in the moment I didn’t know any of this pressed the button and got lucky – so I’m a donkey. These really are fine lines aren’t they. It’s okay though I’ve sorted it all out if you’re not sure whether something was genius or madness just check out who has the chips – so Durr and me…both geniuses. Right….right?! I’ll be honest it’s mostly me I’m trying to convince.