My father was generally the parent more interested in playing board and card games, including poker, with my brother and me, but this particular story involves my mother. I meant to post this on Mother’s Day but didn’t get around to it (I did call her from Madrid, though).
Most of you have probably heard of a game called Bullshit. Play proceeds clockwise, with the first player laying down as many Aces as he can, the second player laying down Deuces, etc. The object is to be the first player to empty your hand. The catch is that you play your cards face down, the cards you lay down don’t actually have to be Aces when it’s your turn to play Aces, and you aren’t allowed to pass. This means that players have an incentive to “bluff”, laying down for example an Ace and a 6 but declaring “two Aces”, and in some cases are even required to do so.
Other players may proclaim, “Bullshit!” (or “I doubt it”, when you are 9 years old and playing with your mother) and turn over the cards you have just played. If they catch you in a bluff, you must pick up all cards currently in the pile. If they are wrong, then they must pick up the pile.
So it occurred to me during this game that I could perhaps smirk and snicker a bit while declaring, “Three Treys.” You’d have to know my mother to truly appreciate this, but when she was playing a game with her sons, her objective was never to win but to make it appropriately educational for us. In this instance, I could tell that she was torn trying to decide whether I was old enough to learn from my “mistake” or if she should pretend that she hadn’t picked up this “tell”. Finally, in a somewhat guilty voice, she told me, “Well, I think you made it pretty obvious that you were bluffing, so I doubt it.”
“Pick ’em up, sucker!” I declared proudly, revealing that I really did play three Treys and had caught her with a reverse tell. I’m not sure that I even knew the rules of poker at that time, but I was already thinking on the third level!
When my brother and I were stuck inside when it was raining on the Cape, we’d play an NFL Football board game from Time-Life books. One player would choose an offensive play and the other a defenseive play, then you’d look the two up on the chart and see what the outcome was, such as “+15 yards” or “Interception!”. In any case, it soon devolved into second level thinking, then third, then fourth, etc. Wish I knew about game theory back then!
That me be the first documented triple range merge. Ha, ha. Fun game to play even to this day.
This isn’t third level, when you played there was no other hand. It was: What hand do I have vs what hand does my opponent think I have. Poker wins.
Good post with the Mother’s Day theme in mind. Of course, I prefer last year’s when you made the video with me about what it’s like being the mother of a poker player, and talking about yoga and mindfulness for poker players:)
Thank you for the purpose of putting up An Early Poker Lesson. Fairly amazing and really fascinating to read with regards to it. I by no means thought I might come across somebody who actually (just like me personally) publishes articles pertaining to this kind of variety of information. I really loved checking it again.Thanks for your time.