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Long-time listener Tony Neuman wrote to us about a hand that he played in a home game against a brother, and we discussed it on Episode 267. Now he’s on the air to follow up with a discussion of straddling, image, wild small-stakes games, and how to deal with a player who may have a gambling problem.
Happy New Year!
I was disappointed by discussion on dealing with a possibly problem gambler in Tony’s home game.
I think it is important to try and put yourself in the other person’s shoes. How would YOU want to be treated? I don’t think many of us would want near strangers making judgements about us or decisions for us.
Family and closer friends may have the perspective and understanding to discuss his gambling with him. IMO others should let adults be adults.
Rant2112,
Could you say a bit more? I’m not sure I fully understand your issue with the discussion. Granted, we can’t know for sure if this is truly a problem gambler or not, but I can say his attitude towards gambling is far enough outside the norm of our group (and obviously this is a group of poker players we’re talking about ?) that people felt uncomfortable enough to make it a topic of conversation after our last game.
As to how I’d want to be treated, it’s hard to answer because he’s not a regular to the game, so I don’t know what I’d want in a similar situation. Given we don’t really know this guy, what are you suggesting we do?
Tony
EDIT – Please don’t read this as harsh. 8)
I thought the discussion was entirely patronizing — kind of like when politicians make gambling illegal because we aren’t adults who can make our own decisions.
Also, as I said in my earlier post, there was no discussion about the other guy’s perspective. It is important to consider the other side’s perspective.
I strongly, strongly doubt that you would want to be uninvited or ghosted from a poker game because the people, who you don’t know well, think you might be a problem gambler.
IMO you should continue to invite him as long as y’all enjoy having him come. If you end up getting to know him better then you can bring up problem gambling as it is appropriate.
Rant,
Good discussion here, and don’t worry, I don’t take anything too harsh, especially online 🙂
I’ve thought about your comments above, and honestly, I’m not sure how bad I’d feel just dropping off a list. It’s actually happened to me before, and I sorta look at it like, “well it’s their game, so they can do what they want.”
What I think you have a stronger point on is that we did not consider the other player’s POV. And what I thought the complicating factor was is that this guy in particular is a rando we invited off a poker website to begin with. If it was a regular to our game, I think it would feel more comfortable to just pull the person aside and talk to them. To be honest, I’m pretty naive around worrying about game safety, but I think Nate made a solid point around considering that… especially if this guy is making bets with a bookie, which we flat out told us he IS doing.
What I like about this though is the good discussion. This is why Andrew, Nate and I wanted to talk about it on air, and I appreciate that you’re bringing different thoughts to this.
Tony
I ran a low stakes home game for a little while and we had one player who was hopelessly terrible at poker. It made me uncomfortable to take his money because it didn’t seem like a fair fight.
I would often soft-play him when we were heads-up but this can only possibly be appropriate in a friendly cash game. And, I’m not entirely sure it is OK at all.
So, I totally understand that this is an uncomfortable situation – especially at ‘normal’ stakes where the money is more likely to mean something. But, I think people want to be treated like adults who can make their own decisions.
This was what I originally thought – the part about “…treated like adults who can make their own decisions.” And as I said in interview, it’s highly likely that this guy is just going to go lose it elsewhere if he doesn’t lose it to us. There’s a case to be made though for game safety (mentioned in post above, so sorry for being repetitive), and that if our risk of an issue increases from 1% to 3% with a game like this, is that a risk that’s worthwhile? In my opinion, it’s not. Now, the larger issue is how do we deal with it. My inner Minnesota says ignoring him and just not inviting him makes the most sense, but I understand how that feels pretty weak.
Thanks again for chiming in – it’s good to know you’ve had similar challenges.
Most of the players you will meet at a poker table have a gambling problem, even the winning players. If you have always been a winning player, then you will never had to make a decision to stop playing or carry on. Many of the losing players you will find at the table were winning players for years before the games gradually got tougher.
As for the sports betting guy, how do we know he isn’t hustling? He hasn’t had to do much to convince everyone that he’s a complete fish and a degenerate. I’m sure if he were to ask if any of you wanted to play him for considerably higher stakes, plenty would take him up on the offer. If so, it really hasn’t cost him much to create this situation.
If you confront him about his issues with gambling, after only seeing him lose a few hundred bucks and talk about sports bets that he may not even have actually put on, then you are basically saying to him “We think you are poor and stupid. You can’t afford to lose even a few hundred dollars and need to be protected from smarter people, like us, as you have zero chance in this game.”.
That’s probably not going to go down too well. Is there any issue that you (Tony) would be happy for this stranger to make a judgement about you and for him to make an intervention in your life? Suppose he told you that he thought your girlfriend was too smart and attractive for you and that it would only end up with you getting hurt should you stay together as she is bound to leave you for someone better in the end. Therefore, he is going to do what he can to break up the relationship and help you out. It’s really not so different.
J Holmes,
To be fair, if someone told me my girlfriend was too smart and attractive for me, I’d likely be somewhat offended, but the most upset person would probably be my WIFE! 🙂
Honestly, I’m not sure that I agree with your premise here around most players having a gambling problem and that everyone becomes a losing player eventually. I suppose it depends on how one defines “problem gambling.” To me, it’s first and foremost about betting more than you can afford to lose. And then the next level is probably some form of addiction and spending too much time playing, even if your winning, that other parts of your life suffer. So if I have $500 in “entertainment money” and want to spend that on a weekend trip, or want to take it to a poker game and see what happens, what’s the difference? Does choosing poker somehow make me a “problem gambler?”
The bottom line to me is that this is a private, home game. We’ve curated a pool of players that we like playing with, and I’m not sure how much we need to justify our judgement about this guy. If you had a guy at your house who dusted off $1,000 in three months (playing $0.50/$1 blinds), is calling down $100 bets with 3rd pair against the tightest player at the table, and then is telling you about bets with his bookie, what obligates us to invite him back?
You are right, he could be running some sort of hustle. I certainly don’t know his bank account and what he’s actually betting on. However, it’s also “my game,” and if I deem a player is potentially increasing risk to the game, even if small, why can’t we just not invite him back?
To more seriously address your last point, these two situations are very different. If a stranger told me what you said above, my reaction would be extreme indifference. Why do I care what a stranger says about a relationship I have? This is VERY different than inviting someone into your home with money on the line.
Getting it in with 77 is not such a bad thing to do in a regular live cash game, as a one-off move. Firstly, when Tony made the bet that committed him he might have easily got villain off a hand that had roughly 50% equity against his. Presuming villain doesn’t fold AK/QQ+ Tony is still flipping against a significant part of his opponents range. More importantly, the regular players have just seen him do something absolutely crazy preflop. If Tony never does anything like that again (at least not for a long while), he’s going to be getting it in good a great deal in the near future at least. What regular is going to fold even pocket jacks preflop, after seeing something like that?
2 years down the line, when Tony’s image is now utterly solid again, he can make another move like this and if his opponent folds preflop then he should flip the mid-range pocket pair over and make sure everybody at the table knew what just happened. If you only ever have AK/QQ+ (or an even tighter range) in that spot, than how difficult is it really to play you? People don’t forget crazy bluffs in a hurry and losing one buy-in to completely change the regular players’ perception of you is not the end of the world – particularly if you play each other a lot.
J Holmes,
I didn’t go into all the details on the show, but although I agree with you that getting it in with 77 isn’t necessarily bad in a live cash game, the way I did was utterly boneheaded. It was a $2-$100 spread limit game (max bet $100) with $1/$2 blinds. I limped UTG with 77. A number of players limped, and the loud guy in BB raised to $20. I then MAX RAISED to $120. Everyone folded to BB who then REMAXED to $220, and I capped it all in for ~$250 total.
I actually think my idea to back raise is fine. But maxing it is stupid because a raise to $70 would have accomplished the same thing. Further, my call of his re-raise is at best flat-out gambling and at worst, setting money on fire. In these games, which tend to be pretty loose-passive, a re-max is going to be AA or KK a very high percentage of the time. And not knowing anything about this player, I should have just folded. Because this was at the casino where I’m largely an unknown, it won’t take long to rebuild my rock-solid image (ha!), but yeah, I think I’m pretty comfortable saying I butchered this one!
For what it’s worth, this would have been a MUCH BETTER play in my home game where the players know each other. In fact, there are some specific players in that game I could imagine making a play around, because to you last point, we do know each other and I could exploit some of those players’ tendencies. But here against a random, my thinking was about as deep as “it’s his first hand, so he can’t possibly have 77 beat.” Not exactly thinking-poker on that one 😉
One other thing, I’ll bet that the reason Tony looks back with such horror on how he played pocket sevens in that hand has little to do with losing the money. It’s the loss of face among his peers that would have stung the most. When you are playing a live game, your job is to convince the others that you are a bad player and not a good one. This was just one hand yet it is highly likely that his regular opponents thought that Tony was a strong player before the hand but felt they had made a mistake in appraising him afterwards. That’s very powerful. Your job is to make money, not win the respect of people who are trying to take yours.
J Holmes,
Honestly, this has nothing to do with losing face. I’m pretty unconcerned about what others think about me. I may work to curate an image, but I don’t get too hung up on these more ego-centric aspects of the game *most of the time*. My goal is to leave the session with more money than I started with. Like any decent player, I never play perfect, I often play pretty-good, but I sometimes blow up. The 77 hand was a blow up. But as I said on the podcast, I think being able to say that out loud to myself allowed me to quickly get over it, move on, and ultimately have a winning session despite this 125BB mistake. I rarely blow up in this way, so I think in a roundabout way, that’s what was so strange about this. As mentioned above, I limped, a guy raised, I max re-raises, and he re-maxed and I basically said “well, he could have AK, so I guess I might as well put it all in.” I didn’t think, I just had a brain lapse. But that was driven more by just trying a play than worrying about loss of face.
I’m sorta glad it happened. If the guy had a hand like 99, he likely would have folded to my max re-raise, and I wouldn’t have learned such a good lesson from it.
Thanks for your comments J, and if I can answer any more questions for you, let me know. I’m always an open book on these types of things!
Tony
enjoy your podcast. but really miss your trip reports, been a while…
Tony, I remain unconvinced (both regarding the sports-betting guy and the 77 hand), but I appreciate the time you put into addressing everybody’s points at length. Most guests wouldn’t bother and it’s definitely to your credit that you yourself did, so thanks.
Thank J – and I appreciate a fair, well thought-out disagreement (especially online – lol!). For what it’s worth, I think it’s less important if I played the 77 poorly or not, and more important that in the moment I thought I played it poorly and rather than tilting, just told myself “you butchered that hand” and moved on. It was actually quite freeing to be able to say that vs stewing and kicking myself.
I plan on more closely following the show threads in this forum in the future, so I’m sure I’ll see you around