ESPN Appearance

As I predicted, my huge post-flop coin flip against David Baker made Tuesday’s ESPN broadcast.

I’m pretty happy with how I came off, though I wish I hadn’t been calling for cards. I don’t ordinarily do that, but when the cameras are on, I always feel like I need to say something. They refer to Baker and me as “two savvy pros”- depending on how closely they read the bio that I sent them, that may or may not be an intentional pun.

Oh and I like how they refer to Baker’s Queens as “the best hand” while he’s got a 36% next to his name, and I’ve got 49% (before Sallas folds, that is).

22 thoughts on “ESPN Appearance”

  1. It mentioned you were from Catonsville, MD in the broadcast. Is that the case? If so, I grew up in COlumbia and went to Mt. St. Joe.

    • It’s true. My father is a MSJ alum, and actually my uncle is a CPA in Columbia. My mother still lives in Catonsville, so I find myself there a few times a year.

    • Yeah he did, even though the guy had just told him he has KQc 🙂 To add hilarity, the Qc would have given the other guy a boat

  3. omg what a lucksack 😉

    Oh and…there’s calling for cards, and then there’s yelling for cards and/or needling the dealer to give you the card you want. Big difference. I don’t have a problem with the first.

    • Yeah, that was pretty silly. When I do call for cards, I try to call for interesting ones. In this case, the Qc would give me a flush but give him a bunch of redraws to boat up on the river. I don’t want to get greedy and call for the stone nuts!

      • The other guy had said he’d folded KcQc, and you had just commented on how much that sucked like 5 seconds before you called for the Qc. Anyway, everyone does seem to call for cards that give them the lead but their opponents outs or that give themselves a ton more outs without giving them the lead. I blame Negreanu. In this case the Qc would have made the EV exactly 50/50 lol.

  6. Re: the best hand thing: As a philosopher you of course understand equivocation–the fact that the same word or phrase can mean different things. This is obviously the case here. When some people say “the best hand” they mean something like “the best made hand” or “the best poker hand given the cards that are out”. The poker cognoscenti, on the other hand, almost always mean, “the hand with the best equity”. So while a pair of queens is best in the first sense, your jacks plus flush draw is best in the second sense.

    Even the use of the word “hand” is equivocal in poker. Sometimes in live play I’ll say, “nice hand.”. To which a smartass always replies, “I didn’t have a nice hand, I was bluffing.”. But “hand” can mean 1) your starting hand (so, AA is the best hand), 2) your five card poker hand (so, a royal flush is the best hand), 3) this current poker hand (as in, “i’m leaving when this hand is over.”) So if I say, “nice hand,” I’m not commenting on the quality of your starting hand nor of your poker hand. I’m saying that you played this current hand of poker well.

    Recognizing that the same word means different things helps to settle many arguments and difficulties.

    • Actually, there was no ambiguity or equivocation here. The commentators clearly note that Brokos is “favoured with the flush draw” before saying “David Baker with the best hand, pocket Queens”.

      This illustrates that even though they can read the percentages, and understand that the AJc was ahead that point, they still place weight on “made hands” and hand strength at an imagined poker game where there are no turn and river cards to come. This is big mistake.

      In fact, the whole concept of a “made hand” is wrong. Every hand is a drawing hand – you are either drawing to hit a card to beat your opponent, or drawing NOT to hit a card that will beat you. These two types of draws are identical, yet for some reason, people give more weight to the positive draws than the negative draws – even when the negative draws have MORE outs or a higher percentage chance to win.

      • @Nomanr: Yeah, the whole made hand idea is a useless distinction, of course, for the reasons you said.

        But what I meant was that that’s what people must mean when they say “best hand” of an obvious equity dog. They must mean that QQ beats JJ simply speaking, so if the world were to come to an end right now, here on the flop, that the QQ would beat a pair of jacks. They think for that reason that the jacks need help to win the hand, without considering the fact that the QQ actually need more “help” not to lose the hand.

        Maybe equivocation isn’t the right thing to say here. When the commentators say “best hand” they are saying that QQ is superior to JJ, without considering the equity at all, because hey, a pair of queens beats a pair of jacks, it says so right here on my poker hands ranking chart. When we say that the pair+FD is “best”, we’re saying it’s superior, all things taken into account.

      • That’s pretty much how I think about it. I get what they meant by “best hand”, but for the reasons that many commenters have pointed out, this is not a meaningful concept. In fact, it’s a misleading one that causes a lot of players to value “made” hands with little hope of improving over “draws” that actually have much better equity against a calling range in many situations.

  7. Regardless of the equity %s – QQ is the best hand when the money goes in. QQ > A high

    The draw may be an equity favorite to win, but referring to the ‘made’ hand as the best hand is correct.

    22 vs 45cc on 6c7cQd – 22 is currently the best hand even though a significant equity underdog to win.

    • @ChrisM said, “…referring to the ‘made’ hand as the best hand is correct.”

      Well, sort of. That’s my point here. The correct answer to the question, “Which hand is best?” is this: “It depends. Best in respect to what?”

      Do you mean best with respect to how the current five card poker hands compare to each other? Then QQJ76 is better than JJA76 because a pair of queens is better than a pair of jacks. (In philosophy we would call this “best secundum quid”, or “best according to a certain qualification”.)

      Or do you mean best with respect to total equity? Then AJ (top pair + flush draw) beats only a naked pair of QQ, because the AJs will win more often on this board. (In philosophy we would call this one “best simpliciter”, or “best simply speaking”.)

      I can see why people would say the first one, but finally the only one that affects our bottom line in the long run is the second; it’s the best hand simply speaking.

    • QQ is not the best hand if it has less equity. Poker does not end on the flop, so the concept of a “best hand at this point” does not exist. If you start talking about “best hand if the action were to end here” you stop talking about NL Holdem.

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