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05.05.11
The Secret Decoder Ring
posted by Absinthe | 10:24 AM
Between May 8 and May 18, this blog (well, probably more accurately, this Twitter feed) will be veering sharply back into technical poker territory. Not Bill Chen technical, but I’ll be throwing around a lot of shorthand and jargon and more than a few inside jokes. You should feel free to ignore all of it. I guarantee it won’t improve your life. If you don’t follow poker, the details won’t mean any more to you than a cricket box score would to me.
If, however, you should feel some pressing need to tease out the sordid details of my irrelevant poker tournament travails, then read on, and I’ll try to give you the secret to turning a curious set of statistics and cryptic remarks into a narrative. I will fail in this, but at least I’ll be able to say I told you so when you at-reply me with “DUDE WTF STOP TWEETING NUMBERS AT ME”.
Chip counts (e.g. “9K/13.5K” or “T9000″): In the latter example, I have 9000 in chips. Not dollars, hence the T rather than the dollar sign. (The chips are a way of keeping score, and don’t have any intrinsic value. They do not, in this instance, represent nine thousand dollars in actual money that could be spent on college tuition.) In the former example, I also have 9000 in chips, but I’ve provided an additional bit of information, which is the mean chip count, or value of “par” – that is, the number of chips in play divided by the number of players remaining. This gives spectators an easy way to calculate how I’m doing in comparison to the rest of the field. 9000/13500 = 2/3, so I have 2/3 par. Ideally you should be above par as much as possible. Frequent followers know that this rarely happens to me. Get used to thinking in small fractions.
Blinds and antes (e.g. 50/100 or 300/600/75): The forced bets made by the small blind and the big blind, followed by the ante required of every player – the latter usually coming in later in the tournament. This gives rise to another important calculation: “M”, the ratio of a player’s chip stack to the amount in forced wagers made every round of play, generally every 9 or 10 hands. 9000 in chips looks pretty good at 25/50 blinds; the button could go around the table 120 times without you playing a hand before the blinds ate up your stack. But later on, at 600/1200/200, you have less than 3 orbits to make your move. If you know the value of par, you can also see how much trouble the rest of the field is in too; the lower the M of a par stack, the faster the eliminations are going to come.
Cards, Pocket (e.g. KK, Ac8s, 27o, KTs): In hold ‘em you get two pocket cards. Then, unless they’re kings or better, you throw them away. If for some reason you are foolish enough to play a hand weaker than that, you can tell your audience precisely what you’re holding, with a level of specificity appropriate to the situation. Suits are usually irrelevant unless someone has a flush or a flush draw, when they suddenly become the only thing anyone cares about.
Cards, Board (e.g. AK2, KsJs7cxx, 952 rainbow): The cards the dealer turns up on the flop. To be followed by a turn and a river, if the hand goes that far. Capital letters or numbers are the rank of the card, small letters are the suit (when relevant), and x can mean “this card was unimportant” or “I was busy playing Angry Birds and didn’t see this one” or “I knew I was drawing dead so I was already at the bar”.
T0, Busto: See IGHN
Donkey: A player who’s much worse than you are, but somehow just played much better than you did.
x Outs: The number of cards remaining in the deck that will turn the tables on your opponent(s) and give you the winning hand. Whenever the number of outs is such that the losing player had as much as a 30% chance of winning the hand, but none of those outs were dealt, it is a goddamn crime against humanity and OMG these people play so bad.
El Doble: To double your stack in one hand. Phrase coined by Easycure. Nearly always punctuated with an exclamation point, as it represents a crucial point in a tournament, because it is unusual to double your stack without being at risk of elimination yourself.
xx Remaining/Left: How many players are left in the tournament. Assuming you’re still in the tournament yourself, the smaller this number is, the better.
Bubble: The point at the tournament in which only one more player must be eliminated for everyone remaining to be guaranteed prize money. A chip-gathering opportunity for some, an agonizingly slow grind for others. Generally the point at which everyone makes the stupidest plays. See also Bubble Boy, the person unfortunate enough to go home empty-handed after hours or days of play.
IGHN: I Go Home Now. This is not an auspicious acronym.
MHIG: My Hand Is Good. This one is better.
Ship It, One Time, One-ball Me, HoldholdholdHOLD, etc: Phrases which, if used without irony or any hint of self-awareness, mark the speaker as someone who has yet to discover a useful purpose in life.
Tilt: A bout of irrationality and instability, usually brought on by a failure to realize that if people didn’t do stupid shit that sometimes pays off, there wouldn’t be a game.
Push: To open the betting or raise a previous better by pushing your entire stack into the middle of the table. To be all-in. Synonymous with shove. A method frequently employed by short stacks near the end of the tournament. Sometimes when my stack is tiny you’ll hear me singing “Won’t you take me to … Pushytown?” under my breath.
Not My Day: An attempt to claim that one played well, but couldn’t overcome a run of bad luck. This, of course, is bullshit at least 90% of the time. The 10% when it’s not is when I say it.
Snap: To call (or, occasionally, raise) with absolutely no delay taken for thought. Represents a very strong hand, poor impulse control, or utter contempt for one’s opponent.
And that’s all you need to know. More than you need to know. Probably I left out some important things but if you’re all that interested you’ll figure it out as we go. I won’t take it personally if you unfollow me the 30th time I post something gobbledegooky about what a shit move I made in the dull middle stages of the fifth tournament in three days. But yes, there are people who want to know this stuff, and they constitute as loyal a readership as this blog is ever likely to have. Plus some of them sent me money, and I feel obligated to keep them in the loop. It’s a good way to spread misery around, which is the purpose of a blog anyway.
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Topics: Poker | 3 Comments »
May 5, 2011 at 10:39 AM
Whatever the opposite of losing is, go do that.
Several times.
Like people owe you.
Good luck.
May 5, 2011 at 1:01 PM
Good luck!
May 6, 2011 at 12:29 AM
I’m sorry I ran across this, because if I actually read it and understood any of these terms, your tweets from the tournament floor would cease to be lovely abstract poetry and instead become (to me, at least) just a bunch more sports commentary. I prefer the delightful opaque mystery.
But good luck, or break a leg, or whatever anyway. I’m sure you have many more custom cakes in your future. Cheers.