A Pre-Dawn Error by Lee Jones

The problem: Eastbound flights from the West Coast often leave at the butt-crack of dawn. This allows the traveler to have some meaningful part of the day left upon arrival in New York, Washington, or Atlanta, and/or make their connection to London or Frankfurt. The result of this scheduling paradigm is that my flight out of San Francisco left at 06:00 – a time fit for neither man nor beast.

To make things worse, I was staying with my son and his fiancée in Berkeley on the far side of the Bay. So, I needed to walk into the check-in area of SFO at 05:00, get to the airport to drop off the rental car at 04:45, and leave the house at… ye gods.

And then the obvious solution hit me like a ton of bricks: All night poker session! Artichoke Joe’s card club is in San Bruno, virtually at the end of one of SFO’s runways. I could just head over late the night before and play poker until it was time to drop the car. That was actually a lot more appealing than the three-ish hours of sleep that I’d get at my son’s house.

I wandered into Artichoke Joe’s at about 01:00 ready to settle in for a nice three-hour Limit Hold’em session. I wasn’t interested in wagering stacks when I hadn’t been to sleep and wouldn’t be sleeping. No, the $6-$12 Limit Hold’em game looked perfect; I could play that in my sleep and, truth to tell, had done so more than once before.

I got my cup of coffee and started folding. By the time “The Hand” came up, I was up or down half a stack; I honestly don’t remember. A hyper-kinetic guy bounced into the recently vacated cutoff seat and posted just as I got the button. There were a couple of calls and then the newcomer raised with only a brief glance at his cards. No doubt, he was here to gamble.

I discovered Tc-9c and happily called; there was a big multi-way pot brewing, my hand played well in wide pots, and I had the button. What wasn’t to love? Well, my relative position with respect to the raiser wasn’t great, but poker is a game of compromise sometimes.

We got one of the blinds with us and the flop came Q-7-2. All clubs. Yahtzee. Not surprisingly, it was checked to the raiser who, not surprisingly, bet. Sometimes predicting the action in this game is like predicting yesterday’s newspaper. I had already anticipated that sequence and had already decided I was going to just flat call his bet and bring in the rest of the field if I could. I also wanted to get the raise in on the turn where it would be the most painful to any big singleton clubs.

Much to my delight, the blind and one of the front-side players called the bet.

The turn was black, which made me a bit nervous – recall that it was probably 02:30 by now. But, it was a spade and non-pairing. So far, so good. Once again, they checked to the cutoff and he did as he was supposed to: bet.

Now it was time to de-cloak; I slid out 12 chips and announced the raise. I was amused to see that the muscle memory of quickly cutting 12 chips into three four-chip stacks was still deeply ingrained in my left hand (though, I will hope, not quite as deeply as a Lester Flatt bluegrass guitar G-run).

The two guys in early position quickly bailed – they’d just been calling because, well, that’s what they do. Cutoff snap-called. “Okay, that’s a set or the ace of clubs,” I thought to myself.

The river was a beautiful, well, whatever it was. It didn’t pair the board and it wasn’t a club. Cutoff checked and snap-called my bet. I turned up my cards and said, “Ten-high flush.” He pitched his cards toward the muck.

And this is where everything went wrong.

Now the #3 seat, who had been in the pot earlier said, “Let me see his cards,” pointing to the two that cutoff had just sent muck-ward. The dealer shrugged and picked them up. Oddly, she did not ritually tap them on the muck as old-school dealers will do.

Anyway, she flipped up his cards. Two. Red. Threes. No trey anywhere in sight on the board.

I wanted to throw up.

Ladies and gentlemen: do you know why players are permitted to request to see a called hand at showdown? To prevent collusion. Not, as many people seem to believe, so they can get a line on the other’s play. Of course, the hoodie-wearing iPod-IV’d crowd seems to take every chance they can to twist the rule to their strategic ends. What’s weird is that the guy asking was middle-aged and didn’t seem like the type – I think he just didn’t know his manners.

Needless to say, the cutoff was appropriately embarrassed. He stood up from the table and wandered away to lick his wounds. When he came back half an orbit later, he was substantially more subdued and, wait for it… he played tighter. He wasn’t going to let the #3 seat have another chance to make him the fool.

But he needn’t have worried; the fool was in the #3 seat. I almost took him aside to read him the Riot Act, but my better judgment prevailed. I’d be wasting my breath anyway and just had another hour before I had to leave for the airport.

When you play online, we’ve all come to the realization that people can and do watch every one of your hands that makes it to showdown. Whether this is good for the game is a matter for a different article. But what is true is that a thin veil of discretion and decorum still covers mucked hands in live poker. In fact, the WSOP has codified this position by saying that if a player asks to see a mucked hand, it’s only with the floor supervising the revelation. Their clear point is that if you’re asking to see a mucked hand, it better be because you suspect funny business.

I’ve said this before and I imagine I’ll say it again: If your opponent mucks his cards, don’t ask to see them. Quietly stack your newfound chips and move on to the next hand. The marginal information you might gain from seeing his cards is nothing compared to the chance that you will embarrass him into either playing better or leaving the game. Let his poor play be a matter only between him and his conscience.

And this goes double if you weren’t in the showdown. If you don’t think any cheating was done, then keep your trap shut. If you do suspect cheating, then you should be talking to the floor anyway.

My last few orbits were as dead as the hour. The cutoff, who seemed likely to wake up the pre-dawn game, had learned his lesson and quieted down both physically and tactically. Yippee.

It was a good trip to the West Coast; I loved seeing my kids and really did enjoy the wee-hour session at Artichoke Joe’s. I just wish the #3 seat would learn some live poker manners.

Lee Jones has been in the poker business since the late 1980s and an executive in the online poker world since 2003. He is also the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which is still in print over 15 years after its initial publication.