ODDS . . .AND ENDS

                                               

 

            Can a player lose with four aces?  Definitely!   Many of us have seen it happen.  What about losing with a straight flush?  Personally I have never seen this occur, but it is a theoretical possibility.  How would you feel holding the seven of spades when a Texas Hold ‘Em board revealed the eight, nine, ten, jack of spades and your opponent just went all-in with more money than you have? He might have the ace of spades or he might have the queen. Then again, maybe he has no spade at all but is hoping that you are not holding the nuts. 

 

            Okay, one last question: can a player lose with a royal flush? “No way,” you would be inclined to reply.  “That is the one hand that cannot be beaten.”  Well, you might be mistaken.   Depends on where you are and with whom you are playing.  Poker, after all, is  a game of conventions, not rules.   In France, where I spent 30 years at the game, a few of my opponents thought no hand should be considered perfect.  Ergo, concluded these logicians, every player must be vulnerable.  Thus it was decided that a royal flush would come in second best to four deuces.  Viva la France!  What other nation can claim Descartes as a favorite son?

           True, we played mostly draw at the time. Later, when lowball took over, nary a soul bothered to point out that an unbeatable hand (ace-two-three-four-six in our case) could indeed exist.  By the time Texas Hold ‘Em became the belle of the ball, perfection and reality had become more or less intertwined.  Don’t ask me what would have happened if a flop included a pair of deuces and ten-jack-queen on suit with one player  holding the other two ducks, and another holding the missing ace-king. The French might shy away from fisticuffs, but they can stretch a verbal confrontation to limits unimaginable anywhere else.

          For sure, we all play odds of some sort.  If not card odds, then pot odds or edge odds or some other intangible that will influence our decisions to fold, raise or follow.  Experience - call it deja-vu - also plays a role.   All this is fine and dandy in games run by respectable parties such as Nevada casinos, but what happens in a private game when things start to go weird? Add one skillful  manipulator to a table and you will suddenly witness an abnormal amount of losing flushes, full boats, even quads.  In no time at all, those odds in your head will turn into meaningless formulae.  At least that's what happened in one of my games -  over there on the Seine.  Happily, like most card sharks, our prestidigitator didn't know when to stop.  With greed outweighing intelligence, he came close to breaking the table.  Even his confederate (one of our pals, alas) could not control him.   This particular mechanic happened to be a compulsive horseplayer who needed   cash to pay off his racetrack debts.  By the time we caught him (by sheer coincidence) it was nearly too late. Few of us felt like playing poker anymore. I guess we were saved by summer vacation rather than by a snapshot confirming there was a thief in our midst. Never during the many months the bastard was at our table did any of us suspect the unusual run of cards was due to skillful fingers rather than to a series of mathematical aberrations.  Doubtless that is because  unpredictability is part of the beauty of poker.  When Phil Helmuth makes an asinine remark such as: “take away the element of luck and I would win ever hand,” he is denigrating the game we love.  If  "impossible" situations did not arise we might as well play go fish or mumble-de-peg.  Just make sure they do not  occur too frequently or you too might end up renouncing private games in favor of playing on the Las Vegas Strip.