What is Ed trying to say? Maybe it's just that I don't get poker.

[elfs]

Ed Brayton tells a story about a woman playing poker and her confrontation with a young, brash asshole at the same table with her.

To understand this tale, you have to grasp the concept of the "bad beat pot." The "bad beat pot," as I understand it, is a pot maintained at larger casinos that is divided at a poker table among the participants if a hand that unquestionably should have won (and casinos have differing ideas of what "should have won") is instead beaten by someone with an even better hand. Half the pot goes to the loser, a quarter to the winner, and the remaining quarter is divided up among the other participants, with one extra divvy being allocated to the house to seed the pot again.

As Ed tells it, this woman had been dealing with a foul-mouthed player at a table of five all afternoon. The game was "small," only a couple of thousand dollars on the table all told. Finally, after a particularly frustrating round, the young man turns over four jacks, undoubtedly the winning hand, and says loudly, "Beat that, bitch."

The woman calls the floor manager over and asks him what the house's bad beat pot is worth. He informs her that it's $350,000. She says, "Well then. I fold." And reveals that she had four queens-- surely a bad beat. In doing so, she denied him his winnings of the bad beat pot, which would have been $175,000.

Ed calls this "the best poker story I've ever heard."

I don't get this story. When you play poker in a casino, the people at the table aren't your only opponents. The house is just as much an opponent as the others, right? Your objective, when you go to play poker, is to leave with more money than when you entered. Everything else is secondary. This woman not only lost the money she'd put into the pot that round to the jerkwad, she voluntarily gave up $87,500. Not only that, but she denied the other three people at the table $21,875 each.

This woman leaves the poker table poorer and with four cases of bad blood against her. I can't begin to imagine the rationale for doing so.

I don't know if the story is true. I also don't see why other people admire this story. As near as I can tell, this is a case of what sociologists call "egalitarian dynamics in storytelling." By repeating this story with admiration, Ed is signalling to his readers (his tribe, in our environment of evolutionary adaptation, the thing his brain is still evolved to consider) that he admires this woman's willingness to sacrifice what is (for me at least) an immense amount of money in order to enforce a social norm: politeness.

This is a very common trope in fiction: whether or not there's anything to be gained by the protagonist's actions, token slaps to the face of the antagonist, even at real cost to the protagonist, are satisfying messages between author and reader that both of them support and celebrate an egalitarian norm.

Ed's story falls precisely in that vein, but it doesn't make sense. She didn't enforce it, only stuck her tongue out at it. She paid a price, and generated ill-will among the others. I can't help but think that this story only appeals to us because our instincts still assume a zero-sum game, and the idea that money is dirty, and in this case ill-gotten, and so the price she paid is worth more than is apparent.

But I'm not superstitious. And normally, neither is Ed.

Comments

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Good at math, bad at sociology? Why do you assume a zero-sum game in which "your objective, when you go to play poker, is to leave with more money than when you entered. Everything else is secondary."

Clearly she has a different objective. "Cheating" the ill-mannered opponent out of his half-share of the big pot is more psychologically satisfying. And I am not convinced she engenders the ill-will of the other people at the table. If only for greed-related reasons (if they were not themselves annoyed): while playing the bad beat pot, she may "reward" the others with a small portion of it, but that simultaneously denies them a chance at winning the biggest possible portion -- one half -- some time later that night. (I assume the post fills slowly and empties infrequently).

The story makes perfect sense as a satisfying revenge fantasy, an impotent and wasteful gesture, with the added frisson of reversing the expected gender relations. If you don't feel that, it's because you've clearly out-evolved our primitive monkey brains :)

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

And I am not convinced she engenders the ill-will of the other people at the table.

Oh, you bet she does! Have you ever seen a table full of jackpot-fevered idiots when a showdown misses the jackpot, e.g. by one of the cards in one of the hands being counterfeited by the board? Their disappointment and malice knows no bounds.

I don't believe this story the smallest iota; but if it happened, I guarantee you the woman had to be escorted to her car by security to protect her from angry attacks, and no one would ever sit down with her again in that cardroom.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Oh, you bet she does! Have you ever seen a table full of jackpot-fevered idiots when a showdown misses the jackpot, e.g. by one of the cards in one of the hands being counterfeited by the board? Their disappointment and malice knows no bounds.

I gather from a comment below this one you play poker at casinos IRL -- your understanding of the feelings involved is certainly more sophisticated than mine, since I have never seen a table full of jackpot-fevered idiots, nor do I understand the rest of that sentence except as a collection of well-formed English words strung together :)

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

Bad beat pots commonly go *only* to the loser. Are you certain that this house had the breakdown you mention?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's the way Ed described it in his post.

[cadetstar.livejournal.com]

Bad beat pots in both casinos I've played at work as Elf describes, though one was backwards (the winner of the pot got the 50%, while the loser got 25% and nothing seeded back to the house).

The casino that I played at the most usually had its bad beat go off at least once a week, so it never got a chance to get much over $12,000 (and was capped at $15,000 IIRC).

-Michael

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

In that case, yes, I agree wholeheartedly. Stupid. I can understand not wanting that much money on the table, with the brash braggart having 2x the next largest stack, and the sum of the rest of the players combined...but there's nothing saying she'd have to stay there. Take the winnings, move to another table.

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

What Elf describes is pretty standard. I've gotten a table share of bad-beat jackpots a couple of times, and once got the winner's share of a substantial one.

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

I know it's common. However, the casino I worked at didn't give any of it to the winner of the hand.

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

Getting even (or more maturely -- making a point) is *often* worth far more than the cost involved.

In this case she didn't even have to lose something she already had -- only the expected outcome of a different choice.

Money is rarely my #1 motivator. I could easily imagine doing the same.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

And my understanding of poker is that when you fold, you don't show your hand either.

[halloranelder.livejournal.com]

When you fold, you don't have to show your hand. Obviously she wanted to show her hand, otherwise there was no purpose in it.

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

Story doesn't work. All it takes is one bystander at the table, hungry for the table share, to say "I want to see that hand," and the woman's hand is tabled, and the jackpot awarded.

[halloranelder.livejournal.com]

Nope.

The moment she folded, she was out of the game. According to the rules of poker, if you fold you do not need to show anyone your hand. The only person who must show their hand is the person who raised last in the last round of betting. Everyone else who calls is paying money to see their hand. Once they have seen it, then they decide if they want to show their hand.

Of course, if they don't show their hand, they can't win the pot.

[charleshaynes.livejournal.com]

Alan is right, you're wrong. Alan plays poker, so do I, and we both know the rules about when a hand is dead, and who gets awarded a pot.

However Alan is wrong that the story doesn't work. She can just muck face up. Once her hand touches the muck it's dead. (Modulo some bizarre corner cases that shouldn't apply in this situation.)

BTW there's no such thing as "the rules of poker." The house rules can and do vary in significant ways from casino to casino even within one city, never mind from state to state or even more from country to country.

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

What? You can fold, then show a winning hand, and it still doesn't win -- you folded. halloranelder is quite correct, down to who *has* to show on demand and who may fold face-down. In every casino I've been in, and definitely at the one I dealt poker at, once you say "fold" or "pass" your hand is *dead*, even before it hits the muck. If you muck face up, it's ambiguous: did the dealer see the win and declare it, ending the hand before it hit the muck?

However, the bad beat rules may vary from casino to casino. Does the hand have to actually win? That's *usually* the case, but I'm sure some casinos have rules about exactly this sort of scenario. Also, in many casinos, people at the table *may* insist upon seeing any/all hands that made the showdown, but it's certainly frowned upon to insist unless they were the last raiser.

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

It all comes down to whether or not the action was complete.

If the guy bet and the lady folded, there's no jackpot eligibility since there was only one hand in at the showdown. If he bet and she called, then the hand should be eligible for the jackpot.

By the way, Alan plays poker professionally. I have in the past. Charles plays seriously. You can certainly consider all three of us subject matter experts.

Actually, in rereading it, it seems there was a showdown. It's still possible for her to have mucked her hand and yet shown it.

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

Right, you basically repeated what I said.

You can add me to the "subject matter experts" list as well, as I've both dealt poker professionally and played professionally. Not that it matters much, though -- the "common rules" of poker have changed somewhat drastically in the last 40 years. All the same, it appears that we agree.

[halloranelder.livejournal.com]

When you play poker in a casino, the people at the table aren't your only opponents. The house is just as much an opponent as the others, right?

Wrong.

When playing poker your only opponents are the other players. When playing in a casino, the rules of poker are modified slightly to the normal rules so that the house still gets it's cut for operating expenses, but the casino is not a player in the game.

The casino's cut is usually a fixed amount for every hand or a set percentage of the pot for every hand. The casino doesn't care whether the woman beats the man and the bad beat pot is awarded or not. It's still getting it's cut of the action, and if the bad beat pot isn't won here it will be won at some other time, so no real change there.

Poker is not a casino game. It's a game played at casinos, but unlike games like blackjack, it's not actually a casino game.

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

elf, is there a link to this Ed Brayton story anywhere? I can ask someone.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Right there in the middle of the article!

[halloranelder.livejournal.com]

One thing you might need to clarify in your write up: the article starts out with "A wealthy woman sits down at a poker table..."

That to me changes the story quite a lot. If she's wealthy, then in my mind she's not in the game to win lots of money, she's in it to have fun. Obnoxious young kid means that she, and everyone else at the table, aren't having fun, which means her actions make a hell of a lot more sense.

[(Anonymous)]

The story may start here:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/columns/story?columnist=bluff_magazine&id=2316427

Told first-hand (player at the table) and with more plausible amounts.

[woggie.livejournal.com]

I think I'd add that if this guy was as big an asshole as this, the guy would've been collecting the ill will of all the players all the way through the game. Generally if one person is generating that much ill will, there isn't enough extra ill will to spare someone like her, and they might all actually be in agreement with her motive and outcome as revenge on the asshole.

So you see, in poker, the point of the game is not always getting richer. Sometimes the point of the game is revenge, even stupid revenge.

Poker players are weird. :)

[(Anonymous)]

I am NOT an expert poker player, and I don't know the exact local rules in this casino for the bad beat pot...

But maybe by the local bad beat pot rules, by folding and thereby losing the hand while holding 4 queens she got an extreme bad beat, qualifying for the bad beat pot? If so, she got 1/2 the bad beat pot and the obnoxious man in winning the hand only got 1/4. Whereas if she'd beat him, she could only hope for 1/4 and he could have received 1/2.

Then again, if all she did was preserve the bad beat pot from being distributed in that hand, she at least left everyone at the table with the opportunity to win the bad beat pot on future hands.

So...I dunno.

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

One thing to know about gamblers is that they often have the ability to value non-monetizable actions. I like to ask gamblers if they could set a dollar bill on fire, and almost all of them could. I ask them if they could set a hundred dollar bill on fire to make a point, and the response is usually, "Yes, if making the point was worth more than a hundred dollars."

The other thing to know about gamblers is that often money is merely a mechanism for keeping score. We also lose track of the relative value of the numbers, and that can be a good thing-- "I just lost a $50K pot" is a bit easier to stomach than "I just lost a downpayment on a house." $50K is just a number, and it loses emotional significance.

It may easily have been worth $87,500 to stiff the jerkwad. I can't imagine a situation where it would be for me, but I *can* imagine a situation where it would be worth $87.50, $875, or maybe $8750. I've made one decision in my life where I consciously walked away from about $25K after I concluded that the intangibles were worth more than that to me. I haven't regretted it for a moment.

$87,500 is, to a first order, a year's income for you or me. Giving that up to make a point is pretty unthinkable, but you can probably imagine doing it if it was $8.75.

It's unlikely, but it may also be the case that the woman got more than $87,500 in future value from the play. If she routinely plays in larger games and plays well, having that particular legend circulate around you could easily make you more than that just in people being unable to predict you.