Overheard at the Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw

$2500 was the entry fee for the 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball Championship.  Frank Kassela (pictured) the 2010 WSOP Player of the Year was in seat three at my table.

This event is one of the few times players get to play old fashioned Draw Poker albeit, the lowball version. In this incarnation, not only do the players strive to make the lowest ranking poker hand (2,3,4,5,7 with no flush), they are allowed three draws to achieve it with a betting round after each one.  The game is played with a limit structure utilizing a button with Small and Big Blinds.  The first two rounds of betting, before and after the first draw, are at the level of the Big Blind followed by betting rounds at double that amount after the second and final draws.

While waiting for the tournament to begin a player, a Mr. Wachtel I believe, walked up and offered Frank Kassela a "last longer" bet for $2000 which Frank happily agreed to, the qualifier being that the winner must finish "in the money" in the tournament in order to collect.

At this tournament, I also had the pleasure of dealing to David Sklansky, author of several of the foremost books on poker and its strategies.  During a pause in the action I asked the grey bearded poker authority why 5 Card Draw High wasn't in the mix of tournaments at the Series.  His amusing and curious answer was that it used to be a bracelet event, however, the player who last won it was so good that they decided that due to a lack of competition they would simply discontinue the event.

David Sklanski, winner of 3 WSOP Bracelets and the last player  to  win  a bracelet for 5 Card Draw High (1982)

In 1983 the only Draw Poker games at the Series were of the lowball variety and 5 Card Draw has not been in the mix since.  I used to have a lot of respect for David Sklansky.  I have read most all of his books.  Now I really like him.  Funny guy that Sklansky, clever sense of humor. LOL.

Follow up note: Neither Kassela nor Wachtel finished in the money in the 2-7 Triple Draw.

Timmy Louie

Timmy Louie is one of the sharper dealers in our crew.  He can deal all the games in the ten game mixed event and gets a kick out of dealing the higher buy-in events and working later in the tournaments.  One day last week when assignments were being made he could be heard saying, "Wait a minute, guys.  I didn't sign up to work with green chips.  No way.  No green chips in my contract."  The green chips are the 25 chips that are removed from play after the first several levels of most of our tournaments.

The hand of the day in the $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha championship tournament was dealt by Timmy Louie.  It was a five-way all in gambler's paradise described by Poker News:

Prepare yourself for some mental gymnastics. PLO is a gambler's game, and if you've ever wondered why it's called four-card bingo, this ought to explain it.

The hand started like any other. Dario Alioto opened to 5,200. Emil "whitelime" Patel called from middle position, and Aaron Schaff called from the hijack. David Ewing in the cutoff only had 29,800 and tried to go all in. But Patel pointed out that he could only raise to 29,000, so he took back his 800, laughing about how it was going to change everything. Then the small blind, EPT Grand Final winner Ivan Freitez, cold called, and things started to get interesting. Alioto called as well, putting the action to Patel. He surprised everyone by repotting, putting himself all in for around 140,000. Oh boy.

Schaff called all in for about 105,000 . Ewing tossed in his last 800. And all eyes were on Freitez, who had everyone but Alioto covered. After a minute of thought, Freitez moved all in as well. It was 158,400 for Alioto to call. With four people all in in front of him, he could only shrug and make the call.

By this point, half of the players left in the tournament were crowding around the table and everyone was shouting at the dealer about how best to pull in the chips and separate the side pots. Five minutes in, the dealer was still counting stacks. The players couldn't wait any longer for showdown and started flashing their cards to each other. Somehow, no one had aces. With the floor calling for calm and the crowd closing in on the table, it was finally time for showdown and a board.

Ewing:  - covered by everyone (5.84% to win main pot)*
Schaff:  - covered by everyone but Ewing (22.01% to win main pot)*
Patel:  - covered by Freitez and Alioto (27.47% to win main pot)*
Freitez:  - covered by Alioto (21.42% to win main pot)*
Alioto:  - (19.7% to win main pot)*

At long last, the flop came . Schaff was the only one with a spade draw, and Freitez hit two pair. The  on the turn gave Schaff a flush and Freitez a set of fours. He could scoop the whole thing if he hit a boat. The river was a total blank - the . Schaff took the main pot and the smaller side pot, eliminating Ewing. Freitez took the rest, knocking out Patel. Alioto started shouting at the floor about needing to pay off an extra 20,000 to Freitez that wasn't in the pot. Finally the floor quieted him, the dust settled, and the chips were restacked.

Results:

David Ewing - eliminated
Emil Patel - eliminated
Aaron Schaff - 348,000
Ivan Freitez - 227,000
Dario Alioto - 351,000

Devilfish came over from the next table to add his two cents. "There's a cash game later, guys, and you're all invited."

*calculated at twodimes.net

Just for the record...

Maybe it is the competition.  Barry says he plays better and wins more against good players because they know when to fold.  I on the other hand tell Barry that I play better against bad players, just because they make more mistakes.

The $1- $2 No Limit Hold'em game at Green Valley Ranch is a good example.  We headed down there last night after work to relax a little after our day of grinding out 14 downs of Pot Limit Omaha.  People kept betting into me with inferior hands.  I just kept calling and winning.  It all started with jacks.  I raised to $8 pre-flop and got two callers.  The flop came out king high so I checked and caught a third jack for free on the turn.  A player bet into me and I raised.  After a blank fell on the river, he checked to me and I bet about the pot and he called with the pair of kings that lost to my set of jacks.

A few hands later I woke up with QQ and made a healthy raise to $15, I think and got called by three or four hopefuls.  A king showed up on the flop along with two tens.  I didn't really even notice that there were two diamonds there also.  I didn't like the king too much, nor the tens but made the continuation bet anyways.  I got a caller, so i figured I better shut it down.  Check, check and I caught a Queen of diamonds on the river.  I was so excited about catching a card to beat somebody with a king or a ten that when he bet $40 into me, I just called.  I was just so happy to have made a winner that it didn't occur to me to raise.  Silly me.  When I called he flipped over an ace high diamond flush and the whole table realized that I could have probably won his whole stack with a raise on the end.

After that beginning, I cooled off a little and kind of treaded water for a few orbits before catching a set of sixes against Johnny, the local bully.  When Johnny had a hand he would make it $30 to go.  Mostly, I suppose, with A-x or small pairs.  I flopped a set of sixes with an ace on board and Johnny bet $25 which met my raise to $50.  He called.  He then led out for $50 on the turn and I made it $100. Johnny called. The board paired tens on the end giving me an uncomfortable sixes full of tens made more uncomfortable when Johnny put a stack of 20 red chips in the pot.  I called the $100 and Johnny showed a weak two pair "Aces up" that lost to my upside down boat.

This was a great result but generally, I don't like having upside down boats.  They usually sink.  When you make sixes full of tens and you bet, most players with weaker hands will fold while an opponent holding tens full will call or raise you back.  It puts you in a situation of not getting paid by any hands worse than yours and getting called only by hands that beat you.  In Poker, the desire is to have just the opposite situation where a better hand can fold to your bet or a weaker hand than yours will call.

I am sure that a more skilled group of players would have lost a lot less to me over the course of the evening.

And just for the record, Barry also took home enough profit to buy us a steak dinner at Smith and Wollenski's.  He didn't, but he could have.

And I'm a player, too?

Yeah, but you wouldn't know it from my play.  Tried the 2:00 Deep Stack tournament and lost half my stack on the first hand I played with top pair.  Outkicked.  Blinded down then won a race, then lost a race.

Won back half my entry playing 3-6 at Sam's Town but lost a wad playing No Limit at Monte Carlo and followed up by losing two buy-ins at the WSOP $1-$3 No Limit game ultimately whiffing a 3-way all in with a straight draw - flush draw - straight flush gut shot draw.  The winner had a pair of eights.  I simply suck.  I'm just getting frustrated by seeing these guys hit the table wearing gold Submariners, flashing stacks of hundreds and raising me $50 on every $10 "information" bet that I make or worse, check-raising me $150 when I pot the flop in position with second pair.  The worst part is watching them dump $300, $600 or $1000 on the table with loose play and seeing everybody else flopping sets or straights or hitting draws.  When the "Push Monkeys" as Barry calls them are giving it away, I can't find a hand to play.

I suppose it is a form of going "on tilt".  I get frustrated with not getting goods cards, so I wind up shoving a bunch of chips into the pot when I get a good starting hand, then following up with bluffs that have little chance of success when I miss.  Usuallly the other guy has the hand I am representing with my bluff.  My thinking seems to go like this:

I need to bet to make that flush draw pay to get there.  Now that the flush draw came in, I'll bluff like I got there, and I get called by the guy that actually did.

 Great read, huh?  It's almost as good as my squeeze play.  A squeeze play is made when an aggressive player makes a standard raise and gets a call, the squeezer (usually in the small or big blind) is last to act and makes a raise of four to five times the size of the original raise.  When it works, the original raiser is someone who often raises light and has a big range.  The assumption is that the caller has a weak holding because he would have re-raised with a strong hand.  When successful, they both fold.  It is kind of a corollary to the idea that if someone raises from the big or small blind, they should have a very powerful hand like a pair of Aces, Kings or Queens in the hole because why else would a player be willing to play the hand, now with a big re-raised pot, out of position?

I've got to play with better discipline and make better decisions.  I need to pick my spots better and when the situation doesn't fit, walk away rather than talking myself into trying to get lucky.  At the table, it is tough to do.  I sit and watch pot after pot pushed to hands that I would never play.  It's tough to play against the Push Monkeys, but while those guys seem to steal a lot of pots, they also go broke a lot.  They suffer big swings.  I just need to figure out how to scoop up my share when they have a downswing and avoid them when they are on a rush.  But careful, because even the Push Monkeys get Aces occasionally.

The Unabomber

Before getting down to the final table, Phil Laak (pictured with me dealing) and Eric Seidel were eliminated on one hand by David Benyamine.  Phil is always very amusing.  He played this entire tournament while reading books between hands.  All of the books he read were books on playing 7 Card Stud High-Low 8 or better.  At the time he was eliminated, he was reading the section of the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide that dealt with 7 Card Stud High-Low.  That chapter in the book was written by Ted Forrest who was at an adjacent table and eventually finished fourth in the tournament.

Stud 8 - Final Table

I took this photo of the new ESPN Final Table arena just before I dealt a down.  The dealer in the photo is Mark Cain.
For a while we were streaming live on the Internet.  Three dealers share the duty rotating positions every 30 minutes.  One is in the box dealing, another is standby and escorts any players busting out over to payouts to assure they go through the procedure to get paid and the third is on break.
I was able to deal one down (30 minutes) but when it got back to me there was a dinner break for the players and after they returned my shift was over and we were replaced by swing shift dealers.

This was a star studded final table including Phil Hellmuth, Ted Forrest, David Benyamine and last year's Main Event runner up John Racener.

Phil Hellmuth holds a record eleven WSOP bracelets and won the Main Event in 1989.  Some people criticize him for having only been able to win tournaments in No Limit Hold'em events but Phil has been working hard to debunk that line.  Earlier in this year's WSOP he made the final table of the 2-7 No Limit Draw Poker championship and after having the heads-up chip lead, lost the bracelet to John Juanda.  In this 7 Card Stud High-Low Championship he arrived at the final table with below the average in chips, but made a run at the title eventually finishing runner-up for the second time in two weeks.

Norm Chad

Norm Chad plays as well as comments

I was able to get a table to get an assignment to deal day two of the $10,000 entry  Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship.  Norm Chad, ESPN Poker analyst and commentator sat to my right in the number eight seat.  In addition to commentating, Norm also likes to play a little poker and is often seen playing his preferred game, Seven Card Stud.  This tournament was filled with name players, people you would see often on televised poker shows like High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark.  


Last year I also had Norm at one of my tables and I told him a joke I made up about Phil Hellmuth going back to Wisconsin to sell "Poker Brats".  Now, of course, you need to know a little about Phil Hellmuth to get the joke.  (You can skip this if you are a die hard Poker fan and live in the midwest.)  Phil Hellmuth is known to be one of, if not the one and only greatest tournament poker player alive, however, his ego sometimes gets him in trouble as he pouts and rants and acts like a child when he loses, earning him the knickname, "The Poker Brat", coined by Norman Chad.  Phil also grew up in Wisconsin, home to the world's greatest source of Bratwurst, served at most all Wisconsin sporting events and more popular around there than hot dogs.


During a lull in this year's action I mentioned to Norm that he didn't use my line about Hellmuth going back to Wisconsin to sell Poker Brats.  He laughed out loud and told me that he liked it, but it didn't make the broadcast.  He said, "But, I wrote it down!"  I told him I was honored.

The Buzman Deals a Final Table

OMG they went with a Ten Game Mix

HORSE was not enough, so they added a limit draw game, 2-7 Triple Draw, Pot Limit Omaha and No Limit Hold'em.  That wasn't enough to satisfy the "All -a-rounders" so they also added No Limit 2-7 Single Draw and Badugi.  Badugi?  Yes, Badugi.  Pronounced buh-DOO-ghee.

Badugi is a triple draw, lowball game where the best possible hand is A-2-3-4 using all four suits.  If a card is paired or a suit matched, the card is not used and player only has a three card hand.  Any four card hand beats any three card hand, so A-2-3-3 loses to an A-2-6-K Badugi (four suits).  I think the math guys just wanted to have a new set of pot odds problems to confound the feel players.  I guarantee you that they have figured out how big the pot needs to be to draw two to a nut Badugi with two draws left.

I still have a problem with adding Badugi to the WSOP while marginalizing 5 Card Draw, the game seen played by Nicki Arnstien in Funny Girl and preferred by Bret Maverick in the classic western television series.  Wasn't it 5 Card Draw being played when Nicolas Cage lost Sarah Jessica Parker to James Caan in Honeymoon in Vegas?

How can they leave 5 Card Draw out of the Series?

A lot of dealers are avoiding the Ten Game.  They haven't dealt the games and they don't want to make mistakes at the table and be berated by the players.  I have learned all of the games.  I just haven't dealt many of them for two or three years.  Actually, it doesn't take long to get into it and most of the oddball games are fairly easy to deal.  There are some specific rules relative to procedure when you run out of cards in the Triple Draw and Stud games but I dealt the mix all day yesterday and Stud 8 for 5 hours the day before and never ran out of cards.  The fact is that in tournament play, conservative play is rewarded, so play is tight and rarely goes past the first betting round more than three handed.

Common dealer mistakes in mixed games:

Putting out a flop in a Stud Game
Forgetting to stack the pot in a High Low game
Keeping track of how many hands of a game have been played

There are some things that help.

To assure that you don't put a flop out in a draw or stud game, collect the antes and place them in the center of the table in the space where you would spread the flop if you were dealing Hold'em.  At the WSOP there is a box drawn in the center of the table for just this purpose.  If it is filled with chips, you just won't have any place to put a flop, so you will automatically deal the next up cards to the players.

The players don't really mind if you don't stack the pot until later in the hand.  It gives them a chance to see players across the table.  There is actually a lot of time to stack the pot in a seven card game and because you allow players to leave the bets in front of them when a betting round becomes heads up, it is usually not an issue.

Keeping track of the number of hands is a matter of routine.  A stack of non-playing chips are used by the dealer to track the number of hands. When playing a game where eight hands of each game are to be dealt, the dealer will have eight counters in the well and at the beginning of each hand one chip is to be moved from one stack to the other.  I find the one I screw up most often is the first deal of a game.  The counters are a new part of the routine but you must incorporate it into the deal process.  In 2008 Mimi Tran insisted that I move the counter chip after I put the cut card out to cut and deal but before I cut the deck.  Ever since, I have it imprinted in my brain that whenever I put out a cut card, before I cut a pause a beat and think, "Is there anything I need to do before I start dealing?"  The only two things I need to check are collecting the antes and moving a counter chip.  Routines are a dealer's friend.

H.O.R.S.E.

Today's primary event is the $1500 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. Tournament.  This is a tournament the more seasoned veterans love.  They feel they have an advantage over the younger players because of their experience playing a wide range of games.  In this event, they will play eight hands of Limit Hold'em followed by eight hands of Omaha High-low, followed by eight hands of Razz, then 7 Card Stud, then Stud High-low (8 or better).

Razz is a lowball limit game dealt like 7 Card Stud (two down, four up and a final down card) and the lowest possible hand is A,2,3,4,5.

Seeing that the stud games have lost popularity to the flop games the old grinders get to flex their Stud muscles against a generation that grew up on Hold'em.  Before the Internet brought us on line poker, the home games I played were always varieties of 7 Card Stud or Draw Poker.

Speaking of Draw Poker, I find it conspicuously missing from the WSOP.  Five Card Draw Poker, the game played by Wild Bill Hickok when he was shot in Deadwood holding those famous eights and aces; the game depicted in A Big Hand for the Little Lady and widely seen in movies and television shows for generations is missing from the World Series of Poker.  The only variants of Draw are Deuce-to-Seven Lowball No Limit and Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw.

If 126 players are willing to pony up $10,000 to play the 2-7 Championship, I am convinced that many more would support a classic game of Five Card Draw.  After all, isn't the five card poker hand of Draw the basic fundamental for all other poker games?  I think it should be included in the World Series of Poker.

Limit

I am dealing the Limit Hold'em Championship final table this evening. It should be streaming video from 6 pm EST until it is over - like 10 Hours later. Find link on WSOP.com

Pot Limit again

I find it odd that they schedule the $10,000 buy-in Pot Limit Hold'em championship on Friday June 3rd, then they follow it a week later with a $1500 buy-in Pot Limit Hold'em event.  You would think they would try to build up to the big buy-in events by having the less expensive one first.  Hmmm.I suppose they are very different in that the $10k had 249 players all with enough bankroll to fund the entry while the $1500 had 765 entries and the field had a lot of players with smaller bankrolls taking their "Shot".  The total prize pool in the $10k is over two million while the $1500 had about half that and it spreads the payouts over 70 players.

Latest update is that Lillian and Mary (my wife and daughter) are flying in Saturday.  I'm working 1 to 9 but might be able to get an early out and see them when the land.  I was able to swap a work day and get Sunday off to celebrate Mary's 21st birthday.  We have tickets to Love, the Cirque/Beatles show at the Mirage.

Now to figure out if there's any way to get Monday off.

Oops! Pot Limit Day

Work was kinda cool today if you like dealing to a room filled with the Poker players that you often see on television.  My first table at the $10,000 Pot Limit Hold'em Championship included Annette Oberstadt,  Jason Mercier, Sam Stein, Josh Arieh and Beth Shak  I later dealt to Daniel Negreanu, Phil Laak, Jennifer Tilly, Men Nguyen, James Ankenhead, John Juanda and Hoyt Corkins.  Several others like Mike Matusow, David Benjamine and Eric Lindgren were at adjacent tables.

I thought it was interesting that they played the Pot Limit version of Hold'em tighter than they played No Limit.  Of all the Poker celebs mentioned above, the actress Jennifer Tilly was doing best by end of day building up a tidy stack of chips.

After work we headed over to the Venetian and found a $1-$2 Pot Limit Omaha game to our liking.  I blew a few hands early to get down a buy-in and then almost lost all of that before things began to turn around for me.  I hit a few sets that held and Pocket Aces held up for me and after a few hours I was back to even.  Feeling pretty good about my turnaround I started playing more hands and calling more raises with weaker holdings mistakenly thinking that the cards had turned in my favor and I wanted to press the advantage.  Ha.  It took a few hours, but I wasted the entire stack chasing second place hands and calling bets on the end with hands that could only beat a bluff.  Obviously, I didn't snap off very many bluffs.  Glad I didn't bring any more of my bankroll.

I must say that Pot Limit Omaha is a lot more fun to play than Hold'em.  With four cards in hand there are just  so many more possibilities, but you have to be very sharp.  If you aren't paying attention to how each hand develops from the opening raises, you can get crushed.  Because of all the draws, hands may often be behind, but favorites to win with two cards to come.  Win a few of these coin flips and your stack can grow quickly.  Lose a few and you're headed to the ATM.

Tight - aggressive is the way to go.  Maybe even loose - aggressive before the flop but very tight after.  The objective, as with all Poker, is to win the big pots and lose small ones when the cards don't go your way...