Why Didn't He Want to Take My Money?

This is from a session very early in my trip from last month.  I’m going to talk about this session more in a future post, but I felt this particular hand was so unusual that it deserved it’s very own post.

It was a 1/2 NL game and I had worked my $200 buy-in up to around $300.  The action at the game wasn’t great, but I’d caught a few cards and had won a decent pot catching a guy’s bluff.  At the other end of the table there was this Asian man with a lot of chips.  He was totally not the stereotypical Asian player.  He was one of the tightest players at the table—maybe the tightest.  I really couldn’t remember a lot of pots he’d played, and when he did play, he was content to limp in or call a raise.  Couldn’t remember him ever raising himself preflop more than once or twice—if that.

For most of the time, he had about the same average-sized stack, he didn’t really do anything that could have changed his stack much.  But by the time this hand started, he had a really big stack, way more than my measly $300.  Listening to my voice notes now, I didn’t make any note about how he had gotten his big stack and suspected he may have won it while I was taking a restroom break.  It is possible that I did see the hand and didn’t recall it by the next day when I made my notes.

Anyway, on this particular hand, I found myself with the dreaded pocket Kings.  Pretty sure it was the first time that I had seen them for the trip.  But before it got to me, the Asian fellow had opened for $15. That was an unusually large opening raise for this table, $8 to $10 was the typical opening.  And as I said, I was hard pressed to recall this guy making a preflop raise of any size. 

The next guy shoved—but only for a total of $16.  It folded to me.

Now, pretty much 100% of the time in that situation, I’m going to re-raise. That was certainly my inclination.  But then I gave it some more thought.   You don’t have to three-bet there.  I’ve seen plenty of players just flat with Kings preflop.  I just don’t do it myself.  And I’ve had so much success with Kings, you know.  And I was looking at this guy’s huge stack and my little $100 profit and thinking—do I want to risk that with my ultimate jinx hand?  And I really thought that there was really a very high probability that the tightest player at the table had the one hand that beat me.

You could say I was experimenting with how to play Kings.  Or you could say I was scared of those damn Kings.  But I ended up just calling the $16.  The Asian man of course threw in another buck and the three of us saw a flop.

It was all lowish cards, two spades.  I did have the King of spades.  He led out for  $35.  Pretty good flop for me, unless he had the one hand I was worried about pre-flop.  I just called, hoping I guess that he was c-betting with an Ace-King type hand and would not continue on the turn.

The turn was a medium rank card—and another spade.  So now I had a draw to the second nut flush.  He didn’t check.  Instead he put out $75 and I went into the tank.

Sure, he could have had Jacks or Queens.  He could have also had Ace-Queen or Ace-Jack of spades and I’d be drawing dead.  I was still thinking he mostly like had two Aces—but did he have the Ace of spades?  I took quite a long time to think it over. 

And then, while I was still thinking, from across the table, I saw the guy, ever so subtly, lift up one of his two hole cards and flash it to me.  It was Ace of spades!

Well, I think I was leaning towards folding anyway, but that clinched it.  I folded.  Note:  Yes, it’s entirely possible his other card was an offsuit King or Queen and he did that to get me to fold a hand that was behind his.  But nothing I had seen from this guy all day gave me any real reason to think that.

Since there was still a showdown to come—against the guy who was all in for $16 preflop—the guy flipped over both his cards. He had a red Ace to go with his Ace of spades.  So he had exactly what I had put him on the whole time.

I was relieved. The guy had possibly saved me some money by showing me his card. And honestly, I cannot figure out why he did it.  Why did he not want to take my money?

Is there a thought-process that showing me the Ace makes me more likely to call?  Like I would assume he was doing it because he did have Ace-King or Ace-Queen off and I should call (or raise) with my pocket pair?  Is that what he was thinking?

Otherwise, he’s just showing to get me to fold. But why?  What is he afraid of?  If I already have a flush—if I have King-Queen of spades—am I ever folding there?  Knowing he has the draw to a better flush (or maybe he already has a better flush) am I ever folding?  He would love for me to call if he had Ace-Jack of spades, right?

Am I folding a set?  He only showed me one card so I don’t know he has a flush.  He has a draw to it, at the least.  But if I have a set, I have a draw to a boat.  Am I ever folding a set on the turn there?

It seems to me his showing me the Ace of spades was designed to get me to fold the exact hand I had—pocket Kings with the King of spades. 

So my question is….why didn’t he want to take my money?  We had had no conversation at all.  So it wasn’t like we had become fast friends and he was doing me a solid out of friendship.

Any thoughts you might have on why he didn’t want my money will be appreciated.  I’m grateful of course.  But baffled.

By the way, the river card was a total brick—not a King, not a spade.  My Kings would have lost to his Aces.  

Was Colossus II a Disappointing Sequel?

The World Series of Poker is well under way.  The first “major” event was the return of Colossus.  As you will recall, I played in the very first Colossus event last year (see here and here).  This year, I’m not in Vegas yet so obviously I didn’t play in it.  Honestly, even if I was able to be in Vegas now, I would have skipped the event.  And apparently, I’m not alone in thinking that I could afford to miss this tournament.  The turnout was less than last year’s.

That is the subject of this post.  Was Colossus II a disappointment—attendance wise, that is?  Was it just another case of the sequel not being as good as the original?  Or would that be the wrong takeaway?

I initially got the idea to do this post on Thursday, the first day of the event.  When I saw the reports of the number of seats sold for the two flights that made up the first day, I was thinking that turnout must have been a huge disappointment.  And I started thinking of all the reasons why this was happening.

I’ll get back to that but now that we know how many people actually turned out for the event, it is obvious that “huge disappointment” is a totally inaccurate assessment.

But was it slightly disappointing, at least?  I’d have to say yes.  Let’s look at the numbers.

This year’s event drew 21,613 making it the second largest tournament field in poker history.  The first was of course last year’s Colossus, which had 22,374 entrants.

OK, that’s not much of a drop off.  But I heard they were expecting to break 30K players this year and if that’s true, then it is a disappointing turnout.

What’s important to note is that they added two more starting flights this year.  So they could have handled 30K players, where as last year they wouldn’t have been able to.

Last year, the Day 1’s  were on Friday and Saturday of the first week of the series (two each day).  This year, they were on Thursday, Friday and Saturday of that first week, again two a day.  I think they were anticipating pretty much maxing out each flight.

That would have been 4400-4800 each flight.  Thus, when I saw they “only” had 3,249 for Flight A on Thursday, followed by a much smaller field of 2,153 for Flight B later that day, it sure looked like a big disappointment.

But to a great extent, adding two more days just spread out almost the same number of players over six flights rather than four.  That was better for the players, and I guess for the staff as well, but probably not what the WSOP was hoping for.

The impact on the entire Vegas poker scene was way down too.  Last year, they had to use every single table in the Rio for Colossus or some other bracelet events.  They even used half of the Poker Kitchen for tables. No cash games at the Rio meant that cash game action was spread out over town and there were 3-4 hour waiting lists at many rooms to get into a cash game.

From what I could tell, nothing like that happened this year and I think the WSOP venue was able to run cash games most of the time (except maybe for part of Saturday). Thus the other rooms were busy, but not swamped. 

The turnout picked up on Friday (3,770 & 3,099) and then a huge turnout on Saturday (4,855 & 4,487). 

So, although not the turnout they hoped for, still an incredible number of players for a single tournament, to say the least.

But if we’re honest, it was on some level disappointing.  So why didn’t they exceed last year’s numbers even with two more starting flights?

I have a few theories. 

First, the novelty from last year was gone.  I’m sure a lot of players who played last year didn’t feel the need to play again (like me), either because it was more of a “one time thing” or because their experience wasn’t so good. 

As I reported in those posts I’ve linked to, it was kind of fustercluck last year.  Although they did an incredible job under the circumstances, there were still a lot of glitches—starting with having to change the number of levels played on Day 1 and having to change the start times of the afternoon flights.  One glitch from last year I unfortunately didn’t have to deal with was that there were incredibly long lines at the payout window for those lucky enough to cash.  I’m sure this left a bad taste in the mouths of some of those who got paid.  I’ll bet that’s one reason people who got paid last year may not have returned.  That and the other glitches I mentioned last year.

And for those who didn’t play but were thinking of it, remembering all the stories of the glitches from a year ago may have dissuaded them from playing this year.

Ironically, by adding the two starting flights and getting a similar number of players, I think they were able to do away with most of the glitches, so that was a bad reason I guess for people to decide not to play.

And they fixed the payout problem by having each starting flight have its own individual pay outs before the flight ended.  If you made it to Day 2 you cashed, but the money bubble hit during Day 1, and thus people who cashed but busted Day 1 could collect their money right then and there, reducing the lines for the pay outs. 

They also made it simpler by not letting people register for more than one flight at a time.  You couldn’t register for a second flight until you busted from the current flight you were playing.  No doubt that made things go smoother. 

I did read some complaints on Twitter that there issues on Day 2 as they kept reaching another pay jump on the pay scale—apparently they were stopping the clock and playing hand for hand for each jump.  Can anyone confirm that?

Anyway, I wonder if a lot of people—whether they played last year or not—figured out that the odds of surviving such a huge tournament were so overwhelming that their tournament dollars were best spent elsewhere?  That’s probably the main reason I wouldn’t have returned this year even if I had been in town.  It is just way too big a crapshoot.  And once I had the experience one time, I didn’t need the thrill again.  Also, I believe there are a few more lower priced bracelet events this year, so there are more options for the low-rollers to play for a bracelet than last year.

And then there was the revised structure.  I mention that in my post here, where I linked to the article here explaining the new, almost turbo-like structure of the event. Can’t be sure how many people read this article—or maybe just figured out on their own that structure was much quicker—and decided that there was not enough value in the tournament to play in it.  But I’m sure the new structure had some effect. 

Now I realize you readers come to my blog expecting detailed posts about long tournament runs, and must be disappointed that I don’t have one for you this time (since, you know, I didn’t play).  So, if you want to read about a nice tournament run in Colossus, I’m giving this link hereto my friend Don’s write up. I’ve mentioned Don numerous times, we’re pals from the days when PokerAtlas was All Vegas Poker. For some reason, Don calls himself “Dave” in his summary. As you can see, Don actually won a free seat to Colossus and it paid off for him.  I think you’ll enjoy his reportage of the event. 

So that’s it.  Do you think the turnout for Colossus II was disappointing?  And if so, why do you think turnout was off?  Please share your thoughts. And if you played, let us know how it was and how you did.