| From his reaction, you’d have thought I’d said, "Hey, you butt-faced moron, can’t you see you’re standing in front of us." With a very exaggerated motion, he moved a little to the side, and said, as if he were addressing a king, "Is THAT ok? You’re sure this is alright? I wouldn’t want to cause any trouble." The words dripped with sarcasm. I was already sitting down when he responded, and I nodded at the first question, not realizing immediately where he was heading. As it continued, I said quietly to my fellow watchers, "Wow, quite a reaction." "What was that?" he asked, flexing his biceps (and a few muscles in his head) for emphasis. Now, I’m 6’3, about 220 pounds, and not in such bad shape myself. This guy looked a little stronger, but it wouldn’t have been a mismatch. Except I’m also 43 years old and am smart enough not to get into pointless fights with pointy-headed morons, not unless I really need to, so I did the next best thing. I laughed at him. You can find my "10 Basic Rules of Gambling" in Chapter 40 of Casino Gambling the Smart Way, and those rules are worth a review before any casino trip. In a poker game earlier today, I re-learned (the hard way, as opposed to the smart way) a long-forgotten addendum to Rule #3. Before we examine this sad and instructive tale, let's make sure you're up to speed on the original rule. Rule #3 states that "if you don't know who the fish (sucker) in the game is, it's you." Although primarily a poker rule, it applies to any situation where you're risking your money against other individuals, rather than against a casino. This means that anytime you play a skill game like poker, backgammon, gin, or bridge, engage in pari-mutuel betting at horse or dog tracks, or compete against others in some kind of betting pool or tournament, if the likely losers aren't apparent to you, you'll probably be one of them. Although this no doubt happened to me many times in the early days of my poker career, it has happened only once lately. A couple of years ago I sat down in a 15-30 Texas Hold 'em game in Atlantic City, and after about 20 minutes I asked myself, "OK, where is the free money at this table? Who are the bad players?" I didn't have an answer. There were no bad players. So I got up and moved to an easier game. Probably I wasn't the worst player in the game, but it was clear that there were no easy marks, and without an easy mark, playing poker in a casino which charges you money just to sit in on the game (in this case, $14 per hour) is a losing proposition. To beat that $14/hour "house rake," there have to be some players—at least one—who are likely to lose. This doesn't mean that the fish WILL lose, or that you will win, but to have an edge, that's what you look for. Arriving for today's game, I experienced a feeling roughly analogous to learning a prospective blind date had been a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model before she got her Ph.D. in philosophy and had written several books about how to be warm and kind to your fellow human beings: a very promising beginning. Why so promising? Sitting in my favorite game was a guy I had previously labeled the "Worst Player in the World." Of course, he wasn't actually THE worst player in the world. But for a game of this size, he was very, very bad—completely out of his league. I'd learned this in a previous encounter. The last time I'd played with this fellow (let's just call him WorldsWorst), he had lost about $4,000 (quite a bit in a game of $15 and $30 bets), and had played just about every hand (which is practically the only way you can lose $4,000 in a 15-30 game). What made the night even better was that Fate had decided to favor me and I caught a lot of cards. The bulk of WorldsWorst's money went home with me. Usually I go home at a reasonable hour, regardless of how I am doing, because I know my play deteriorates when I get tired. That night I had decided, while WorldsWorst was off on one what would prove to be nine or ten separate trips to the credit card cash machine, to stay until he left. He was the livest "live one" I had ever encountered. Given a choice between the blind date with the warm, brilliant, supermodel and another game with WorldsWorst… well, I would pick the date. But I would at least pause for a split second before making my selection: WorldsWorst is the kind of poker natural resource that one shouldn't squander lightly. I wouldn't play him one-on-one because I would feel too guilty about hurting him. But in a big public game where he was going to lose all his money anyway, he might as well lose some of it to me. Since there were no genius supermodels initiating conversation, I quickly signed up for WorldsWorst's game. It took about an hour before a seat opened up and I kept checking things out from my adjacent table, hoping that the other players weren't going to break him before I could sit down and get my fair share. WorldsWorst was low on chips when I got into the game, and this worried me a little, because I had no idea how long he'd been there and how many times he'd already visited the cash machine. So I was a little too anxious to play pots with him before the cards had ever been dealt. |
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