smallchou.com/blog

getting ready for the jump off of a four-day weekend, so without a lot to blog about, a semi-interesting poker hand:i was playing in a 6-player no limit hold’em sit-and-go the other night on full tilt when the following hand took place.

Seat 1: SSkterprep (1,220)
Seat 2: Donald Leroy (2,000)
Seat 3: smallchou (1,435)
Seat 4: Kanill111 (2,135)
Seat 5: yourgonnapay (860)
Seat 6: hkyfrk (1,350)
SSkterprep posts the small blind of 40
Donald Leroy posts the big blind of 80
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to smallchou [Ks Td]

under-the-gun, i picked up a very marginal hand, but here’s some additional context: the table had been playing very tight and so i had changed gears, stealing a few blinds and raising a bunch of pots. the player on the button (hkyfrk) seemed like a relatively solid and aggressive player, but on the tight side. with such a marginal hand like KT, i would generally muck under-the-gun, but instead…

smallchou raises to 240
Kanill111 folds
yourgonnapay folds
hkyfrk calls 240
SSkterprep folds
Donald Leroy folds

i made my standard 3x the BB raise and got a caller by the player on the button. that troubled me a bit because he was probably calling with a hand that was better than mine, such as overcards or maybe a medium-pair. he certainly wasn’t the type of guy who was going to go nuts with AK in a big spot, so he could even be playing that for a smooth-call.

*** FLOP *** [Kh Qd 6s]

this seemed like a reasonable flop to me. a pre-flop raise and a continuation bet of about 2/3 the pot felt right as i might be able to take down the pot if he didn’t hit it. with a marginal kicker like T, i would be happy to take the 500 chips and run.

smallchou bets 350
hkyfrk calls 350
*** TURN *** [Kh Qd 6s] [4s]

he smooth-calls there, which was an interesting decision (more on that later). i started thinking about the hands he would smooth-call with: he either a) thought i was overplaying the hand and he wanted to lock me up on my bluff to take it away later, maybe with a marginal hand (a Q, a 6, or a medium pair), or b) had a big hand that he wanted to milk at this late stage (AK, KQ, 66). i did feel like an AK or a KQ would have raised me in that spot though, so i had a feeling i was still good, especially when the blank hit on the turn.

smallchou bets 845, and is all in

with less than the pot left in my stack, i went ahead and put him in on the turn, thinking that he was likely to call it with a lot of losing hands. if he had 66 and trapped me with it, so be it. if he didn’t call, then all the better as i was able to take down a large chunk with a marginal hand.

hkyfrk calls 760, and is all in
smallchou shows [Ks Td]
hkyfrk shows [Ad Qc]

obviously you all know how the hand ends, as he spikes a 5-outter on the river. but i think the really interesting part of this hand is thinking about it from his perspective, so let’s walk back through the hand from his head:

a frequent-raiser, who hasn’t shown his cards lately but has raised about 3 of the past 4 hands, has raised to 3x the BB from under-the-gun. it’s folded to me and i pick up AQ on the button. now seeing as there are only blinds left in the hand, i have a couple of options. i can re-raise here, but it might make a lot more sense to call as we’ll probably be two-handed and i have position on the raiser. if the flop doesn’t hit me and he continues with his bet, i can lose little on the hand. if it does hit me and he continues (or if i think he’s on a bluff), i can put pressure on him with a re-raise.

the flop comes QK6 rainbow. and he proceeds to bet out about 2/3 the pot. that’s a relatively strong continuation bet. he could certainly have the K, in which case folding is a must. with 5 outs and 2 cards, i’m at least a 4:1 underdog. but he’s been playing so aggressively, he could very well be on a bluff or semi-bluff.

now here is where i think the player makes a mistake: his options should really be raise all-in or fold here. he’s facing a big bet, with an overcard to his pair on the board. if he thinks i’m bluffing, he should really raise here to take the pot down. he has no reason to think that i’m a COMPLETE maniac who is going to bluff off all my chips, so raising will put the maximum pressure on me, which is vital considering that i’ve been raising a lot of pots. in fact, if he raised my bet on the flop, i would probably lay the hand down with my marginal kicker (KT). raising would allow him to represent a big hand to me (which i had started to put him on before the flop), making a perfect story to sell his bluff. and really, all his chips are getting into the middle after the turn anyway, so why not give himself some extra fold equity?

instead, he chose to smooth-call me on the flop, meaning that he committed to calling off his chips after the turn. this is just another situation where raising your opponent, when you’re not really sure what you want him to do, is the perfect play. i think he made an enormous mistake by never taking control of the hand and calling as an *cough* 11-89 underdog.

then again, he’s the guy who won the hand, so what do i know.

oh, by the way:

*** RIVER *** [Kh Qd 6s 4s] [Qs]

poker = awesome.

ok, honestly, this Mavericks Outrage is why i cannot, under any circumstances, root for the dallas mavericks from here on out. i just can’t stand it when professional athletes and coaches make ridiculous sarcastic comments like:

“You grab, you don’t get suspended,” Johnson said. “But the rule is clear: You punch, you get suspended. So, next time, grab.”

um, hello. you are recognizing that your player punched a guy in the nuts. or even better:

Terry called the league’s decision-making “very inconsistent.”

um, hello. you PUNCHED a guy in the genitals. in the nuts. i’m sorry, but anybody who doesn’t understand how wrong that is has to be female. or mike chen. hitting below the belt is just off-limits, unless you’re mike tyson.

i understand that everyone is still amazed that reggie evans did not get a suspension for grabbing chris kaman’s underparts, but these are exactly the same kinds of arguments that i used to get from my players when i was coaching. well, minus the whole genitals part. new rule, for these childish nba players and coaches: when you punch another basketball player in the nuts, you lose all rights to complain about anything, inconsistent or not. period. end of story. i think that’s fair.

and why didn’t reggie evans get suspended? well, there are only two people in this world who know what happened inside chris kaman’s shorts, and the nba commissioner’s office is not one of them. but we have video documented evidence of jason terry flipping out and ringing the berries. what are they going to do, NOT suspend him?

i don’t even like the spurs that much, but at least they aren’t whining nut-punchers. go spurs.

as an asian-american and (pretty much) the biggest sports fan in the world, i found today’s ESPN.com article on asian athletes to be interesting. have a read…

i was once talking to someone about playing in a no limit cash game in las vegas, when he asked me how much i generally buy in for. i told him about 40-50 big blinds usually seemed reasonable for me. his reaction fell somewhere between shock and “this motherfucker is crazy”. after all, wouldn’t buying in for $200 at a $2-$5 no limit table at the wynn (where there is no max buy-in and people regularly buy-in for $1000) be complete suicide?

“why would you leave yourself so short-stacked? that just seems crazy when everyone has so much more cash on the table. you have no power.”

we’ve been trained, by espn and the wpt, that big stacks are power in no limit hold’em. the logic is that, without a big stack, you will constantly be crushed by players raising you out of hands while you wait for premium cards to “get your money in good”. yes, this is always true for no limit hold’em tournaments where the blinds escalate and the ratio of a stack to the big blind is anywhere from 10-30. in these situations, a poker player isn’t only playing against the other players, but also against the blinds (which always seem to be chasing him) and the threat of death (elimination). when you’re getting pushed around by a big stack in a no limit hold’em tournament, you’re really getting pushed around by three different factors. it’s these factors that often make raising on the button with K2 suited late in a tournament correct. in a tournament, the big stack is always best.

let’s take an example: i’m on the bubble of a tournament, with only about 10x the big blind left. a late position big stack raises to 4x the big blind. it’s folded to me. i’m on the BB and look down to see Ad2d. what exactly do i do? i’m handcuffed by his raise. i can fold, letting myself get even shorter. i can move all-in (when he would be mathematically bound to call with almost any two cards) as a favorite over very few hands and risk my tournament life. or i can call the raise, committing another 3rd of my chips to the pot, pot-committing myself for all my chips. calling and then folding on the flop after a bet would pretty much be suicide.

but what about cash games? i’ve often thought that it is a huge misconception that the biggest stack is always best. and then i listened to The Circuit interview, with Gabe Thaler yesterday in which he echoed my thoughts. thaler’s contention, seconded by joe sebok, is that in a no limit cash game, being the small stack is not necessarily a disadvantage. in fact, he believes that it can be a great position to be in.

in a no limit cash game, two of the three factors that push on a tournament small stack are taken away. busting out of a cash game or getting a stack that’s low in relation to the blinds merely means it’s time to re-buy. in a cash game, the term “small stack” rarely means 5x the big blind. it usually means 30-40x the big blind, and this is a big difference. without the pressure of elimination, players have time to wait for a big hand and can still get paid out substantially for it.

taking our previous example, seeing that bare Ad2d on the big blind in a cash game as the “short” stack is a whole different story. now i have 30-40x the big blind. chances are, i just pitch these two cards into the muck without even thinking about it. i’m not pressured by the fact that i am running low on chips in relation to the blinds. i can wait for a better spot. now what happens when i actually look down at AA instead of A2? i have a ton of different options against one player (smooth-call, min-raise, standard raise, move-in to like a steal, check-raise the flop all-in), with the potential to double-up. and really, that’s all i want. i can just sit around waiting, with the sole purpose of doubling-up.

on the other hand, being the big stack in a cash game means that you have all of that money to lose. yes, you can put pressure on your opponents by raising often, but if they’re smart they will play back at you when they have the goods, making you susceptible to becoming everyone’s banker. pushing people around in a cash game isn’t quite as easy because you don’t have your two henchmen to help you (blinds and elimination). you’re the guy who everyone else is looking to trap or double-up through. they’re much more likely to flop a hidden set and milk your top pair for a big score. they have enormous implied odds because you can completely fund their double-up.

that’s not even mentioning the psychological aspect that barry greenstein raises in his book. greenstein says that he always buys in short to cash games because it builds better discipline and focus in his play.

the argument against this school of thought (made on The Circuit by Gavin Smith) is that you want to be the big stack because you always want to get maximum value when you make a big hand. if i flop a straight against someone’s two pair, i want to get ALL of his money in one shot. the only way to do that is to have him out-chipped. and yes, this is true, but it also means that you need to be making tremendous decisions after the flop, all the time. you need to extract maximum value from your big hands and escape with minimal damage from your second-best hands. most of all, you need a wild and crazy enough image to get action when you want it. that seems like a pretty tough way to play for me.

at the end of the day, the wonderful thing about poker is that there’s no one way to win money. but i do think that for the player who isn’t positive he can always make the right post-flop decision, being the “short” stack in a no limit cash game has its advantages. in some ways, it’s possibly more “powerful” than having a large stack. you have all your options available and one goal in mind: double up.

when i was at stanford, we would often remark about “being in The Bubble.” this is not to be confused with The Internet Bubble (of my high school years), when venture capitalists were supposedly wrapping up $100 bills in thick wads and throwing them at would-be entrepreneurs (or so i’ve heard). no, The Stanford Bubble refers to the seemingly self-enclosed world of the stanford campus, where students are not only oblivious to the outside world, but often also to the weather outside of Sweet Hall.

it was with that in mind that i read josh kopelman’s post (that has been generating some online buzz in our “bubble”) 53,651 the other day, in which he effectively points out the self-enclosed nature of michael arrington’s techcrunch readership. as kopelman puts it, the chasm between web 2.0 companies and “the real world” is large:

Over the last several weeks, I’ve been on several phone pitches from west-coast companies that are looking to be the “flickr of XXXX” or “like del.icio.us but YYYY” or “the Digg killer”. It got me thinking – how many people outside of the valley have ever heard of these companies? I asked a bunch of local (Philly-area) acquaintances and the answer came back loud and clear: none – nada – zip. People here have barely heard of Myspace and Craigslist – let alone any of the “hot” Web 2.0 companies.

i was reminded even more of this when my good buddy john lincoln sent me a few photos (through e-mail, not flickr or photobucket or skeedelkalamazoo, mind you):

the point? kopelman is right. web 2.0 companies need to spend more time thinking about users. not users who read techcrunch and click around on every new site that’s mentioned, but real users outside of this silicon valley bubble. what does that mean? it means making things easy. not easy because mr. lincoln of kotzebue, alaska can’t figure it out himself, but because mr. lincoln of kotzebue, alaska would much rather spend his time shooting down tasty birds.

there are a lot of great technologies and ideas floating around in the web 2.0 world. the problem is that real users (outside of the techcrunch bubble) don’t care about the technologies. and they shouldn’t. and they’ll only care about the ideas when they’re more than just ideas. youtube isn’t “online video publication,” it’s watching videos. myspace isn’t “social networking,” it’s connecting with friends. and google isn’t “page ranked web-crawling,” it’s finding shit. we’ll see who else gets there.

products that i think are on the way? flock, riya, flickr, last.fm

i was spending some lunch time thinking about the demo i saw at sharpcast last evening, which spurred some interesting thoughts about their business (a quick note on that: seems like their competitors will be as much omnidrive and the online storage companies of the world as it will be mobile services startups. after all, users are going to care about access to information everywhere; whether they’d like that to be on all their devices all the time or just in some central accessible place is an interesting question to bet on).but anyway, as i was thinking about sharpcast i thought to myself “hmm, wouldn’t this be a nice chance to go look up some blogs on the topic?” after all, isn’t a web 2.0 company like sharpcast exactly in the sweet spot of today’s blog search engines? shouldn’t technorati and (the newly-launched) sphere be able to hit home runs if i just type in the word “sharpcast”?so i went ahead and quickly typed ‘sharpcast’ into the respective sites, and i was struck by something. i’ll just show the photos first (with some key red highlighting), and you can tell me who you think has a more effective user experience:

go ahead and look a little closer if you want, i’ll wait.

now let’s forget, for just a second, about the relevance of the results (um, by the way technorati, might need to work on that), and think about just the human-computer interaction. considering the business of a search engine is to provide the most relevant results as easily as possible to the user, which interface seems like it’s better focused on that goal? there’s a reason that people preferred the google interface to that of countless dead search engines.

now i realize searching in blogs is an inherently difficult process. things are time-sensitive and fast-moving. but instead of throwing your hands up in exasperation and littering the interface with invented functionality (tags), grotesque and irrelevant “sponsored links”, and a completely absurd banner ad, wouldn’t it be a good idea to think about what the USERS want?

with a search engine, users want results and they want results that make sense. two things. that’s it. it feels like technorati’s almost saying, “um yeah, we’ve got some results for you, but wouldn’t it be better if you looked at all of THESE things? especially since they make us money?” considering the average internet user doesn’t even know if he’s interested in searching for blogs period, i think that might be a bad idea. but that’s just me.

bottom line: sphere’s interface is beautiful and usable (designed by the folks at adaptive path), which means they’re already removing one of the impediments to people using a blog search engine. now it’s up to them to try to remove the other impediment: finding great content that actually adds value to the users.

so an interesting thing has happened since i moved from xanga to blogger: i don’t write about personal things anymore. somehow having a *dun dun dun* BLOG as opposed to just a tiny little online journal can change your state of mind and your writing. i used to have a fine mix of opinions and reflections, and it’s something that i miss. after all, am i really so authoritative on any of the issues i discuss that random people should be taking my word for things? i mean, didn’t i predict the lakers would quickly discard of the suns just the other day?so i’m going to warn you now: there will be more reflective posts coming up and that’s just how it’s going to be. in these posts, there will be no insightful comments about watching nba playoffs, perusing web 2.0 applications, or playing 97 suited on the button for a raise against a loose-aggressive player. if you’re looking for those things, you’ll need to come back the next day, because sometimes i just need to write. then again, if you are who i think you are, you probably would rather read that stuff anyway…i was talking with a friend (we’ll say male for anonymity) last night on the phone, and he briefly mentioned that he was going to therapy. i nearly spewed my glass of sunny delight all over the kitchen table. it’s not so much therapy that is quite so shocking, but it’s the thought that THIS particular person would be seeking the professional help of a described “tall, kinda thin, balding, middle-aged, white guy.” my friend, after all, is one of the most stubborn and cynical people that i have ever met in my life. he delayed purchasing an iPod despite being addicted to music and traveling public transit daily, merely because he hates technology fads.

so what did i think? i was happy for him, because he needs someone to talk to. and if that someone needs to be a 45-year old dude named lloyd that my friend doesn’t know beyond the condescending tone of his therapist voice, then so be it. but more than that, he needs someone that understands, even if that understanding comes in the package of “and how does that make you FEEL?” well all need that understanding, if only for a little while. it can come in the form of a talk with a friend who just started work in the valley at an exciting place or in the form of a comment to “sack up” from a guy you don’t even know through a proxy. sometimes this guidance comes at the strangest of times and it makes everything clear.

or at least clearer. just for a day. honesty: the new therapy.

one of the really entertaining subplots of the nba in the past, oh, 20 years has been the conflict between LA’s two nba teams: the clippers and the lakers. there’s really no way to describe the situation beyond taking it out of the context of sports entirely.let’s say that a family has two children. one is the good child. he gets straight a’s, quarterbacks the high school football team, dates really nice girls, and his parents lavish him with attention and material love. inside, he’s actually an incredibly arrogant jerk, but his parents can’t seem to see that. that’s the lakers, one of the premier basketball franchises in nba history. a franchise where a player as transcendant as james worthy doesn’t come close to cracking its all-time starting five. they sell out the arena, jack nicholson comes to watch them play, and dyan cannon remains a pseudo-celebrity just by being a fan.

the other child is the clippers. he’s spindly and awkward, with bad grades, asshole friends, and no interests beyond hot-boxing the 1980 fiat pass-me-down daily. his parents don’t really know what to do with him. they don’t want to pour too much money into his interests because he doesn’t seem to care about them anyway and, while they say they love both children equally, it’s just kinda different. i mean, the biggest “celebrity” fan they have (in LA for christ’s sake) is the 35-year old actor that played malcolm in ‘malcolm in the middle’.

clearly the two children don’t like each other either. the older brother’s always making fun of the less accomplished son, and is always there to laugh at his failures. heck, they even share the same living space (the staples center), but the favorite son’s room is twice as nice (on game days ). the younger son’s always secretly envious of the favorite’s accomplishments.

that’s how LA professional basketball always was and how it always will be.

but a funny thing happened in the last few years. take one part acidic me-first superstar who tears up the lakers franchise. one part nice-guy superstar to put some respectability into the clippers. and mix in one part alien-faced cocky almost-superstar who does a (really bizarre) ‘i have huge testicles’ dance after he hits huge shots. and suddenly you get this: a potential second round matchup between favorite son and outcast, in which the outcast is actually favored! for emphasis:

Lakers vs. Clippers, Western Conference Semifinals

the subplots surrounding this potential series are as exciting as you can get in the nba these days. you can tell because the press is already going nuts about it.

and if you think that i might be jinxing the lakers by writing about this already, well you’re right. but i think some superstars can transcend even the jack chou prediction jinx and kobe might just be one of them. and after kobe and friends have finished off that floppy-haired fake-mvp steve nash, i’m gonna do the only thing any self-respecting basketball fan can do: cheer for the clippers.

go clips.

tags: lakers, kobe, clippers, elton brand, sam cassell, nba