his eyes that rested on his cheekbones where the skin was drawn tight, as if he might have liver trouble from too much drinking. Maybe poker is changing in America? Maybe the old romance is dying, and there’s going to be a new spirit of living right, sleeping well, eating carefully, taking exercise, thinking about ‘strength and focus’ at the table? Or maybe it’s just Huck.
Hell, he doesn’t care about The Cincinnati Kid anyway. ‘People have made the connection, but I haven’t read it,’ says Huck. ‘I like books about chess.’
♠
I don’t know if Huck Seed wins his $10,000 upside-down bet, but he doesn’t win the 1997 World Series. The title goes instead to a screwed-up, debt-riddled drug addict.
It is a miracle. Stuey ‘The Kid’ Ungar won the World Series in 1980 and 1981 (back to back, just like Johnny Chan), then dissolved into a swamp of cocaine and hookers. In his first victories, he was a beautiful Jewish boy with rock star looks and a blazing poker talent. By 1997 he is broke, skeletal, mashed up with jaundiced skin and a disintegrating nose. His old friend Billy Baxter buys him into the World Series main event – one of 312 runners – and, incredibly, Stuey tears through the field to win it for a third time and collect $1,000,000. This is like a film. The old racehorse, the old athlete, washed up and crippled in early middle age, giving it one last shot and making it first past the post as the fireworks explode in the sky.
By Christmas, Stuey’s done his share of the money on drugs and sports betting. A year later, he refuses to let Billy Baxter put him in the 1998 World Series, because he can’t bear to show up in his state of collapse. He spends a few months wandering around the card rooms, begging for money from anyone running good. If he gets any, he spends it on crack. In November ’98, he’s found dead in a cheap motel room, aged 45.
I buy an old picture of Stuey, from the glory days of 1980, and put it on my bedroom wall.
A PAIR OF SIXES
So, with jacks, you are more likely to see an overcard on the flop than not to see one. With nines and below, it’s pretty much a certainty. Your opponents might not necessarily have hit these overcards, but your own hand becomes much trickier to play.
The main reason to play small pocket pairs in a cash game is the chance of hitting a set: the economics of cash-game play mean that you can afford to see a lot of flops with the occasional big pay-off in mind.
In tournament poker, you can rarely afford to leave chips behind. You can’t just throw a pair away because the flop brings nothing but overcards. If you’ve raised pre-flop, you can bet out when anything comes – but, if the flop is unsuitable, you are now bluffing. You may be bluffing with the best hand, but it’s still a bluff: pretending you like the flop, or that it’s no threat because you started with a huge hand anyway.
Six-handed at a tournament table, a pair of sixes pretty much IS a huge hand. Before the flop, you’re certainly entitled to believe that your hand is winning against the other five hands out there, at least until an opponent tries to tell you different.
So, what to do with these two sixes under the gun? It’s annoying to be out of position. If I get a caller behind me, I’ll have to act first on the flop.
Let’s make a small raise, try to make my hand seem bigger than it is. If I’m forced to bet out later on a king-high flop, I don’t want to have made this cripplingly expensive for myself.
Blinds still 8,000–16,000; I make it 35,000 to go. Just a little over the minimum. Emad Tahtouh calls in the cut-off, and the others pass.
Flop comes: 9♠ Q♣ Q♥.
Short of seeing an actual six, or some cute little 3 4 5 draw, this is as good a flop as I can hope for. There are only two cards for Emad to have hit – I’m going to assume that he’d have re-raised before the flop if he had a pair himself. The problem is, he could easily have called with something like TJ, KJ, KT, and decide to get busy with a straight draw. A clever little check-raise will keep him in line, if he has that in mind. I check.
Emad bets 50,000.
I make it 200,000.
He calls.
Hmm. I would have preferred him to fold there. His total chip stack is about 900,000 to my 750,000: he could afford to flat call with a straight draw to knock me out on a later street, but he might also flat call with a queen in his hand.
Turn card brings 10♦.
Now I hate it. With KJ, this card makes Emad a straight. With TJ or KT, he’s made a bigger pair than sixes. Or he could have had a queen all along, or 9T, or K9, and has had me since the flop.
If I check now, that’s giving up the pot without a fight. Aggressive Emad will bet with anything if I show weakness, and I’d have to pass.
If I make a small bet, he’ll come over the top for the exact same reason.
If I move all-in, he can’t call with only a nine or a ten in his hand. But he can call immediately with a queen, or a straight, so it could be a suicidal move.
I think I have to check and pass.
I check.
Emad moves all-in.
All-in! That’s an unexpectedly big move. Now I start to consider calling. If he’s got a full house, a straight, or three queens, why does he make such a huge bet to scare me away? I ask him this question out loud. He replies, with seeming frankness, that he’s nervous of what I might be holding. I think that’s actually true. He looks unsettled and twitchy. He is moving and talking a lot.
So maybe this is a total bluff? It’s certainly sized like one. But then . . . bluffing with what? He’s got to have SOMETHING. There’s no flush draw there for me to beat, and with a straight draw he’s probably paired the ten.
Now I’m onto my third thought . . . this all-in move is DESIGNED to look like a bluff. That must be it. He doesn’t have a full house, but he knows that I don’t either, and he thinks he’s winning. Emad’s got a straight, or at least three queens, and he’s trying to do basic ‘reverse psychology’: an oversized bet to suggest weakness, hoping to find me with aces or kings and unable to pass them. I mustn’t fall for that old trick.
I pass, with a flirtatious little sigh of defeat, intended to seduce him into showing me his hand. That works surprisingly often: if I smile enough, sometimes people feel sorry for me and flash their hole cards as they muck them.
It works! Emad flashes a KQ, saving me a gruesome half hour of wondering whether I missed a chance to double up. I don’t really know why he showed the hand – maybe it was in a spirit of friendliness, or maybe a more calculated attempt to set me up for later bluffs – but either way, I’m grateful. Makes it easier to clear my head and concentrate on the next case. If my girly sigh was a factor in flipping the cards over, so much the better.
The
