Pissed at Crist

[SoCalMan2]

One thing I forgot to add about my Pick three payoff bad beat, it occurred on a Friday night (which was this track\'s big night -- Garden State) and it involved the largest stakes race it offered that week.  So, if there was a pool to be large at this track, it was that one.

Poker bots and collusion (mostly the latter) are something I was very concerned about when I started playing online. If I have been a victim of collusion, I haven\'t noticed it and it doesn\'t happen often enough to prevent me from winning. Supposedly the poker sites monitor the betting action and certain \"moves\" trigger red flags for review. They also look for certain players being on the same table too often as a \"suspect\" sign. It\'s in their best interests to keep things honest because they are making a fortune and any sign of collusion etc... could literally blow billions based on recent IPOs and profits etc...

[magicnight]

I\'ll have to check, but you may have moved up in C\'s book with that one.

[HP]

SoCalMan wrote,

\"Last month, I lost three times in one night with pocket pairs higher than another pocket pair (twice I had AA to QQ and once I had QQ to 99). All three times we were all in before the flop. All three times the lower pair tripped up. We all know that a higher pair is a prohibitive favorite over a lower pair, but that tripping up happens. For it to happen three times consecutively is a longshot but within the realm of consideration.\"

I have to say I have no interest in playing poker (although I like watching it on TV) -- but I am interested in how odds are figured.  What you are describing does not sound like a longshot to me...

In this example, you say the higher pair is a prohibitive favorite in this situation and I would agree that this is how it is conventionally figured (the stupid thing would\'ve popped up on the screen and shown you as having a....75% chance or so of winning).  

However, I think this is wrong because....aren\'t your odds of flipping another Ace EXACTLY THE SAME the other players odds of flipping another Queen?  In other words, before the flop, there are two aces and two queens, so both of you have AN EQUAL CHANCE of getting trips (2-in-however many cards are left, right?  Those odds are exactly the same...).  So in reality, you are absolutely NOT a prohibitive favorite.  The more accurate assessment would be...IF you hit your Ace you have a MUCH BETTER chance of winning...but your chances of getting the Ace are EXACTLY THE SAME as him getting his Queen.  

I know this is a horse racing board, but this particular example was interesting....  I think you were unlucky, but you were not a \"prohibitive favorite\" going into the flop...regardless of what that stupid percentage calculator thing-y says...  

HP

[magicnight]

HP - What about if neither pair trips up? That significant chance gives the edge to the higher pair, because all else (between those two, anyway) is otherwise equal.

[HP]

Of course that\'s true...  I replied to this post because I just skimmed this article about aggressive playing in no-limit and the guy was saying there were a lot of situations where he HOPED the other guy had pocket Aces because pocket Aces may think his chances were better than they really were...  I\'m probably paraphrasing this badly...  HP  

[TGJB]

Okay, I\'ve been biting my tongue (ouch), but I have to say something because it\'s pretty obvious, and I don\'t think anyone else mentioned it.

While I haven\'t played a lot of hold\'em, I played an awful lot of high-low. The big difference between poker and betting races is the question of leverage. In most poker situations, the relationship between what you can win and lose on one bet is limited in scope-- especially in hold\'em, where most situations are heads-up plus some negligible antes (sp?). In horse racing, this is not true at all-- winning a photo can get you 5, 10, 30 times your money, and in the case of a pick six, who knows what.

This means there is an awful lot of randomness in our game, way more than in poker, where risk/reward is both limited and pretty quantifiable. When there is a carryover, it\'s random just which races will be part of the bet-- it might be that included is the race with the only winner you could not possibly have, or it might not. A couple of things like that can turn your whole year around, one way or the other.

Likewise, let\'s say you are involved in 10 coin flip situations in the course of a  month-- photos, or calls which are 50/50 for the stewards, or for you in deciding whether to use a horse in exotics or not, or whether to play just tris or supers (#*^% BC Classic). Or to play at all. If in one month it goes your way 6 times, lose 4, the plus two might translate into 30 betting units. The same thing in poker will mean 2-3 units, either way.

Note-- the poker comments here apply only to regular games, not tournaments. There the leverage can be extreme.

[HP]

Really, MY tough beats at the track or at the card table are the worst of all tough beats, and everybody else\'s tough beats really aren\'t that bad.  And horse racing is better action than poker.  There, I said it.  HP

[SoCalMan2]

That is the type of thing Doyle Brunson says.  What he means is, if there are a bunch of players in, and he has gone in with suited connectors (say 6-7 of hearts), then he hopes that the flop is something like A-4-5 with two of them being hearts.  In this situation, he wants somebody to have made trip aces (and hopefully somebody else to be holding AK) because they believe they have the nut hand (and they are leading at that time).  However, he has two chances to get one of 15 possible cards which will help him.  If he does not get the magic card on fourth street, but he gets a 6 or a 7 (of which there are 6 left in the deck) he then gets 5 more cards to help him on the river (the other two of what came up plus the other three of what didn\'t).  On the river, he might have 20 out of 44 cards to help him -- almost even money.  There is a risk on fourth street that, instead of a 6 or 7, one of the A,4,or 5 came up at which point he is dead unless he has the 4,5,6,7 of hearts (in which case he has only 2 out cards).  If there were a lot of players before the flop and then, after the flop, the AAs bet aggressively with the AK calling, then he knows if he makes his straight or flush chances are he will win a big pot which will overpay him for the risk he is taking (although there is a risk that the AK is also of hearts which is why he likes making the straight better).  His theory is that he wants to win big pots and steal antes.  The problems with high card hands (like AA and AK) is that they are obviously good hands and it can be hard to win big pots with them because so many people are afraid of them and yet they are vulnerable to being beaten by drawing hands in multiway play.  The beauty of having low suited connectors is that people are not as afraid of them as they are of the big hands. If somebody has AA and trips up with them, they are not acting afraid, they are betting aggressively.  When you have a chance at a monster hand, that is the type of opponent you need in order to get a truly big pot and that is why you might hope somebody has AA.  Apologies if I somehow bastardized what Doylee meant, but I think I landed in the general vicinity.

[HP]

I think you\'re right on the money, although I wasn\'t reading Doyle B.  So my question is...do you still see yourself as such a monster favorite in those hands you lost?  I would\'ve made you a ... slight favorite.  HP

The correct way to play is to try to protect you top pair and made hands by betting enough to make the pot/implied odds too low for drawing hands to call against you. If they are stupid enough to call anyway, they WILL draw out and beat you sometimes but in the long term you will win money from them under that scenario. If they fold, you take down the pot right away.

High cards play better against fewer players.

Small suited connectors and small pocket pairs play better in multi-way pots because you won\'t hit the set, STR8 or flush that you need to win very often, but when you do you want the pot to be big to make the odds high enough to profit over the long haul. The huge hands win a very high percentage.

Pocket pairs will also play OK head ups.

[SoCalMan2]

You always know that an overpair can lose to a lower pair tripping up.  In my case, there was extremely heavy betting before the flop on all three hands (this was no limit hold em), so chances were there were good hands out there.  In all three cases, I ended up head to head against my opponent before the flop (i.e. all other players folded) with all our chips in the pot.  The thing that is a long shot is that one player will lose in this situation three times in one night with the lower pair tripping up.  I expect it to happen from time to time, but not three times in three hours.  This is not as bad as a lot of horse racing beats, but it was bad enough that the third time I was head to head all in with somebdoy, the rest of the poker room stopped to watch the hand and people were talking abuot it the rest of the night.  I was just in the same poker room today (a month later) and nobody mentioned it (and nobody even mentioned it the next week).  It was a bad beat, but not colossal.

[SoCalMan2]

TGJB

This is a very good point.  To illustrate it further, a poker bad beat is in some ways like a bridge jumper complaining that he suffered a bad beat. Maybe he was 98% likely to win and he was betting $10,000 to win $500.  Maybe the bet made sense....in the long haul, he will profit.  However, when the few times come in that he loses, can he fairly say he suffered a bad beat?  I mean they go to the trouble of running the races for some reason, right?  They go to the trouble of dealing a river card, right?  It is called gambling, isn\'t it?  Whenever there is a bridge jumping situation, I always look to see if there is a reason to think the horse might not run.  I have cashed some huge show bets as a result (I recall my best was at Belmont one July.  It was a sprint stakes, something like the True North.  I think Richter Scale was a prohibitive favorite in a short field.  There was obviously goign to be a huge negative show pool.  I even forgot who I won with, but I had big show bet on a horse that paid something like $43.60 to show in the five horse field when Richter Scale ran out like it looked like he could -- it would have been one of those magical moments in the old days when you used to hear -- \"prices okay!\")

I realize the bridge jumper example might be an exaggeration, but what the poker bad beat guys are complaining about is when they are getting even money or 2 or maybe 3 to 1 when their chances of winning might be say 90%.  Yes, they are getting a great bet, but in the few cases (10%) when the other guy wins, are they justified in complaining it is a bad beat? I mean if there is no chance for the other guy to win, there is no game at all.  All games need a little bit of uncertainty to even exist, to then complain about that modicum of uncertainty seems a bit contradictory.  

Granted, that modicum of uncertainty hitting at a bad time (WSOP or your shot at a million dollar pick six) can be very unfortunate, but this whole debate started with poker players (e.g. a Daily RACING Form Columnist) saying that poker bad beats are worse than horseracing bad beats.  In the end, I do not know if I even want to win such an argument.  I mean what do you win for it?  Nothing!  The knowledge that you are a bigger loser?

But, recall the title of this thread -- Pissed at Crist.  This whole thing started because a poker column in the horseracing newspaper had the temerity to tell the horseplaying audience that their bad beats aren\'t really bad beats and that poker players have it much worse.  Has anybody read Fornatale\'s column? I mean what did the horseplaying public do to deserve this assault in the Daily Racing Form.  It would be one thing if these columns actually wrote about poker and helped people\'s games, but these columns are embarrassing and not up to the standards we should expect in the DRF.  The first three can be summarized easily -- don\'t go on tilt after a bad beat (and in Fornatale\'s case, \"to all you horseplayers, you do not know what a bad beat is anyway, so it really shouldn\'t trouble you anyway\").

[davidrex]

 


Richibee,

Did you ever think your digust with drf as to their decision to print a column on poker would cause such a bevy of conversation??

And its not even remotely related to your message!...Then again I think it shows the devoted horse player just how popular and profitable poker can be to those of us that have been gambling for decades.

The poker folks treat us square...don\'t gouge..don\'t make up the rules as they go along...no trainers or owners or jockeys to steer you off course.

With that said ...its still not anything like the ponies.

[Silver Charm]

The world is going to hell in a hand basket. Poker reviews in the DRF written by none other than Kurt Paseka.

Last seen running nude through the Saratoga infield after losing a bet.

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