but,

Yep, that's poker.

And stop wasting your money on this addiction.

Good slice of life article. I enjoyed it.

How do I join your game?!?!? Granted some info is missing from the article (what was the flop and how much was in the pot pre-flop), but I'd be willing to bet your call was the correct move. When playing in a cash game pot odds are everything. Assuming even worst case: he flopped a set of aces, if you're holding 4 to the nut flush post flop you were probably getting 2.8 to 1 pots odds (assuming his $150 bet was at least half the pot) when you were a 2.3 to 1 dog. The call of the last $600 is a no brainer in this case. If he only held a pair of aces post flop, you were ahead. Laying down that hand would have been the mistake...not pushing with it.

Bad call. Unless there was way more than the $1,400 you mentioned in the pot then you did not have odds to make that call. You even knew the heavy breathing meant he had a hand.

I have a feeling you will get numerous invitations to join some of the other underground clubs because of this story.

Go down to your nearby book store and get Dan Harrinton's series of books on cash game play. They are worth the investment for you.

You didn't say what the blinds were, but you had the odds to make the call. You say he bet 150, you raised to 400, and he pushed all-in for $1k total? Based on that alone, there is a pot of at least $1400 ($400 from you and $1k from him) and you had to call another $600 to end betting for the hand (since Al was all-in). Right there, you're being offered 2.3:1 when your odds of hitting a flush with two cards to come is ~1.9:1. This alone makes it a mathematically correct call. Assume that their was preflop betting and blinds, and you had a no-brainer at that point.

Now, whether your raise was correct or not, I don't know. Not enough information, but by the time you were faced with his all-in re-raise, you had an easy call.

As other letters have pointed out, the $600 call was doubtlessly correct. (Roughly: with 2 cards to come, you'll make your flush about a third of the time, so as long as the pot is more than twice as big as your call, then calling is correct.)

It was a great article. I feel this guy understands a bit of my poker mind. But it was quite the head-scratcher why there was the bad math re that call. The author is obviously knowledgeable about the game. Can he possibly be playing at these stakes without the basic knowledge that odds of making a flush with 2 cards to come is 1 in 3? It'd be fascinating if that's the case, hard to believe.

Or is it possible that the author just liked the dramatic effect of saying his call was a mistake. Maybe he figured that so few Salon readers would know or care about the math. Maybe a decade ago poker enthusiasts were a tiny minority, but these days, how could anyone expect that the bad math would go unnoticed by a general audience?

Stuart

The odds might not be as straightforward as 1 in 3 on a 4 card flush draw after the flop.

It also depends on how many players there are. Heads up, yep, it's one in three or very close to that (assuming your opponent doesn't have one or two of your suit as well). But, say there were initially 5 players - that's another 6 cards out of the deck, any number of which could have been your suit.

We don't have that information so we can't really say one way or the other, but there might have been good reason to worry about staying in.

Usually we would get a sanctimonius piece from the "poor suffering" girlfriend.

First, anyone who plays has been in that position.

Second, anyone who doesn't play, wouldn't know what the hell Rich was talking about.

Third, too much info was left out. Tables stakes? The Flop?

Fourth, Rich never even says that he is playing Texas Hold 'Em, just "poker"...that is akin to me saying, "I am listening to music."

As a freelance writer and a Hold 'Em player, I suppose that would have taken too much exposition. By the same token, I think that Rich lost half of his readers by not explaining it.

Or, maybe Salon just wants to see how many card players read their magazine.

That is not to say that I didn't enjoy the article. I did. But maybe if Rich really wants to gamble, then he should take that grand to the craps table. Hold 'Em is only gambling if you let it become that.

The first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club.

And now have scrape together drug money? Or is this about noble immigrants who came to America with a dream and are now putting together tuition to an Ivy via cards? I'm Dick Gordon and this The Story.

Sometimes Lady Luck lifts her veil and smiles

and sometimes

not so much ;)

Wore really, really thin. Sports writing must be shorter -- I got a strong sense that this guy wasn't used to using two images (well, lady luck both gave and got head, so I guess that's stricly two images) in a single piece.

Yo, Buhh-ddy......

You're single and you've got no kids, so I don't feel badly about your playing. Nice to hear that you're winning more than you're losing. Everybody needs a little excitement in their life. Guess you've found yours in the adrenaline rush of the poker table.

Good luck to you.

If you had managed to eke out the flush on that $2,000 pot, the people around the table would've been calling you a genius.....

"Didja see that? He pulled that one out of his ass."

"Geez, what a pair of balls on that guy!"

That information is unknown to the author, as well. It doesn't matter if they're in the deck or in someone's hand, unseen cards are treated the same for the purposes of calculating the odds.

(Caveat: If you put someone else on the flush draw you can probably consider 2 fewer hearts in the deck. But if that person were also betting the pot odds would get better and better for you, especially since your flush would most likely take the whole pot.)