My Journey As A Professional Poker Player (63 Viewers)

Poker Zombie said:
Wanna be more useful?
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Nope.

To be honest I was trying to not be too obvious about the connection as I gather the caller was trying to remain anonymous. Also in a podcast app there’s kind of a table of contents with direct links to segments which should make this really easy for readers of this thread. I’m now gathering not everyone on here uses a podcast app. If you listen to podcasts, I highly recommend Pocket Casts. Dangit, I hope that wasn’t useful.
 
I wasn't trying to hide who I was, I have posted numerous times as myself in poker facebook groups about the Cubans.

cubans.jpg
 
Anthony Martino said:
So last night kinda kicking myself. Playing 2/5 PLO with $10 rock and limped button after other limpers holding :ac::2d::3s::3c:

BB recently won 50k for 1st in a hold em tourney and has generally been very aggressive, pots it to $70

I started with $1,500 and I'm up to $1,900, but am covered by Villain and a few others

Everyone calls, so with a suited Ace on the button I call as well
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I'd say this was your biggest mistake right here. Little pairs are poison in Omaha, and this one even overlaps your suited ace. Essentially, this hand needs quad 3s or nut clubs, or it's nothing worth pressing. Barely even worth a limp in the first place.

And then the flop was crap too, despite giving you a set. Straight possible, and filling up likely gives you an underfull, which is probably behind if you get any real action. Exactly the kind of hand you can expect to catch with 33 in Omaha.
 
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Listening to the podcast right now. Good stuff. Kinda surprised you didn't mention the example where they whipsawed everyone with the raise from the button straddle and backraise from like T842o.
 
Jimulacrum said:
I'd say this was your biggest mistake right here. Little pairs are poison in Omaha, this one even overlaps your suited ace. Essentially, this hand needs quad 3s or nut clubs, or it's nothing worth pressing. Barely even worth a limp in the first place.

And then the flop was crap too, despite giving you a set. Straight possible, and filling up likely gives you an underfull, which is probably behind if you get any real action. Exactly the kind of hand you can expect to catch with 33 in Omaha.
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Oh I know pairs under 77 can get you into a lot of trouble in this game, it was essentially the suited Ace, being on the button and having a pretty multiway pot that sparked me to continue preflop.

As it stands, on the flop EVERYONE checked to me. Since the raiser was OOP and checked, I'm not expecting anyone else in the field to be going for a checkraise here, but just in case I only bet $125 rather than the full pot which was somewhere in the neighborhood of $350. I figured it was enough to elicit folds while also not committing me should someone up and checkraise in that spot.

Here were the odds on the flop and turn, so I had him in pretty rough shape, but my failure to not bet big on the turn is what hurt me. And given how he bet the river, it looked like a bluff that was trying to pounce on me if I had missed a draw, kinda hard to put him on the gutshot. And if he had a strong wrap on the flop I don't expect him to take a check-call line

He had six outs to beat me (four 8's and the two remaining Kings) and just happened to bink the perfect river.

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Just got to the part about the cheating incident at the WSOP.

The discussion they had about it reminds me of my own experience of catching a cheat, and the discussion we had about it here. Specifically, they call out the staff on blowing the opportunity to definitively catch the cheat in the act, by making it obvious they were on alert about his behavior.

I took the opposite approach in my case, watching the cheat carefully for many sessions until I saw clear evidence of cheating, and occasionally reporting to the host. I didn't call him out on fiddling with the deck or any of it because I suspected he was using it as subterfuge, and alerting him would just make it a game of cat and mouse. Instead, I pretended everything was normal until he hung himself.

I took some flack for that in my thread. Lots of people thought I should have loudly protested his "fidgety" riffling of the stub or his taking the stub under the table, and insisted he strictly follow the rules on those things. With a person I believe to be an honest player, sure. Not with a suspected cheat. I think that logic holds solidly in my case, in the WSOP case, and in Anthony's case.

Imagine if, instead of sitting back and quietly observing, the cardroom manager had made a show out of checking the deck, or had forced them to sit in different seats or at different tables. They'd have probably not been caught yet. Maybe they'd visit less frequently, perhaps when that manager isn't around, but they wouldn't be banned. And they'd probably be working on ways to make their cheating less obvious (more conscientious hand selection for starters).
 
Jimulacrum said:
Just got to the part about the cheating incident at the WSOP.

The discussion they had about it reminds me of my own experience of catching a cheat, and the discussion we had about it here. Specifically, they call out the staff on blowing the opportunity to definitively catch the cheat in the act, by making it obvious they were on alert about his behavior.

I took the opposite approach in my case, watching the cheat carefully for many sessions until I saw clear evidence of cheating, and occasionally reporting to the host. I didn't call him out on fiddling with the deck or any of it because I suspected he was using it as subterfuge, and alerting him would just make it a game of cat and mouse. Instead, I pretended everything was normal until he hung himself.

I took some flack for that in my thread. Lots of people thought I should have loudly protested his "fidgety" riffling of the stub or his taking the stub under the table, and insisted he strictly follow the rules on those things. With a person I believe to be an honest player, sure. Not with a suspected cheat. I think that logic holds solidly in my case, in the WSOP case, and in Anthony's case.

Imagine if, instead of sitting back and quietly observing, the cardroom manager had made a show out of checking the deck, or had forced them to sit in different seats or at different tables. They'd have probably not been caught yet. Maybe they'd visit less frequently, perhaps when that manager isn't around, but they wouldn't be banned. And they'd probably be working on ways to make their cheating less obvious (more conscientious hand selection for starters).
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Indeed, they've been getting away with it for so long you don't want to call attention to it while you're trying to catch them. You get definitive proof and then drop the hammer. I definitely think the poker room manager did the right thing there. And I totally understand why he won't reveal the exact reasons for their banning.

But I'm still salty about:

1. Him neither apologizing for this taking place or at least saying "hey Anthony, thank you for bringing this to my attention"
2. The rooms knowledge that these guys did coke in their bathrooms, cuban sandwiched other players and would reveal two side cards when they had AA as the hidden ones and claim to have a "wrap" to entice a call from a player while other players were already all-in, yet essentially turned a blind eye and permitted it to continue

So I've opted to no longer give them any of my business over this and will just be playing at the hard rock.
 
Anthony Martino said:
Oh I know pairs under 77 can get you into a lot of trouble in this game, it was essentially the suited Ace, being on the button and having a pretty multiway pot that sparked me to continue preflop.

As it stands, on the flop EVERYONE checked to me. Since the raiser was OOP and checked, I'm not expecting anyone else in the field to be going for a checkraise here, but just in case I only bet $125 rather than the full pot which was somewhere in the neighborhood of $350. I figured it was enough to elicit folds while also not committing me should someone up and checkraise in that spot.

Here were the odds on the flop and turn, so I had him in pretty rough shape, but my failure to not bet big on the turn is what hurt me. And given how he bet the river, it looked like a bluff that was trying to pounce on me if I had missed a draw, kinda hard to put him on the gutshot. And if he had a strong wrap on the flop I don't expect him to take a check-call line

He had six outs to beat me (four 8's and the two remaining Kings) and just happened to bink the perfect river.

View attachment 566079

View attachment 566080
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Clearly you were in a good spot against this hand. No doubt on that. In this specific case, you got your money in good and got unlucky.

But even post-flop, you've bottom set and got no blockers to 45 in a big multi-way pot. Of the kinds of hands people are continuing with past the flop, KK95 with a gutshot is way at the bottom of that range. More often, you should expect to see oversets, flush draws, wraps, combo draws, and of course the straight.

The action from the turn to showdown is all more arguable, since you're heads-up with all that context. I could make a case that you'll find yourself stacking off into a timid 45, 66, or 77 a lot on this turn. That's the thing about trouble hands, right? They get you in trouble.
 
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Anthony Martino said:
Indeed, they've been getting away with it for so long you don't want to call attention to it while you're trying to catch them. You get definitive proof and then drop the hammer. I definitely think the poker room manager did the right thing there. And I totally understand why he won't reveal the exact reasons for their banning.

But I'm still salty about:

1. Him neither apologizing for this taking place or at least saying "hey Anthony, thank you for bringing this to my attention"
2. The rooms knowledge that these guys did coke in their bathrooms, cuban sandwiched other players and would reveal two side cards when they had AA as the hidden ones and claim to have a "wrap" to entice a call from a player while other players were already all-in, yet essentially turned a blind eye and permitted it to continue

So I've opted to no longer give them any of my business over this and will just be playing at the hard rock.
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I'd contend that the cardroom could have banned them on the blatant collusion alone. It did seem they were into something worse, but between the obvious whipsawing and the ham-handed code language, the manager could've preemptively decided they were bad for the game and kicked them out. That was enough for me to call them cheats; the card-marking was just gravy.

I think there's an additional step here that isn't being followed, which would make the discovery of the card-marking much more valuable: coordination with other cardrooms. Apparently they do this when it comes to pit games, but not so much with poker. It might not be necessary to spread the word about some local yokels who do sloppy collusion stuff, but these guys are clearly a dedicated card-marking operation, and they're making the rounds at any rooms that will let them in. Getting the word out would stop them in their tracks, and save a lot of people a lot of money.
 
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Jimulacrum said:
Speaking of all this, aren't there laws against what these cheats did?
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I don't believe there are any laws in Florida that specifically make it illegal to cheat other players in a poker game. Florida law is pretty unfriendly to gambling - for instance, gambling debt is not legally enforceable here.
 
Schmendr1ck said:
I don't believe there are any laws in Florida that specifically make it illegal to cheat other players in a poker game. Florida law is pretty unfriendly to gambling - for instance, gambling debt is not legally enforceable here.
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That's unfortunate.

I can kinda understand the position that government shouldn't take on the responsibility of moderating gambling debts and transactions. That's a lot of specialized debt and transactions, and it takes an agile, specialized bureaucracy to wade through it all.

But clearly the effect of shirking this responsibility is that the gaming institutions end up being less than secure affairs, and they earn a reputation as such, which hurts basically everyone. It's not an accident that most home games are cheeseburger stakes, while bigger games tend to gravitate toward a casino setting. If you can't be confident that you have "security" via trust in your players, then it's best to have an actual security team.
 
Jimulacrum said:
That's unfortunate.

I can kinda understand the position that government shouldn't take on the responsibility of moderating gambling debts and transactions. That's a lot of specialized debt and transactions, and it takes an agile, specialized bureaucracy to wade through it all.

But clearly the effect of shirking this responsibility is that the gaming institutions end up being less than secure affairs, and they earn a reputation as such, which hurts basically everyone. It's not an accident that most home games are cheeseburger stakes, while bigger games tend to gravitate toward a casino setting. If you can't be confident that you have "security" via trust in your players, then it's best to have an actual security team.
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The biggest games in the Tampa area are private ones so they can invite the whales and keep the pros out
 
Jimulacrum said:
That's unfortunate.

I can kinda understand the position that government shouldn't take on the responsibility of moderating gambling debts and transactions. That's a lot of specialized debt and transactions, and it takes an agile, specialized bureaucracy to wade through it all.

But clearly the effect of shirking this responsibility is that the gaming institutions end up being less than secure affairs, and they earn a reputation as such, which hurts basically everyone. It's not an accident that most home games are cheeseburger stakes, while bigger games tend to gravitate toward a casino setting. If you can't be confident that you have "security" via trust in your players, then it's best to have an actual security team.
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Agreed, though there could be general fraud laws that might be applicable to cheating. I'm not sure.

Maybe I can summon @PokerXanadu for a better answer. He knows Florida gambling law better than anyone else I know, but I don't think he's been on PCF in several months.
 
Schmendr1ck said:
Agreed, though there could be general fraud laws that might be applicable to cheating. I'm not sure.
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Most states will rule exactly the same as California did with the Postle dumpster fire. The law doesn't give them a means to adjudicate what WOULD HAVE HAPPENED in a gambling scenario if it were not for the cheating. There is just no real way to make anybody whole here.

My opinion may be different from everyone else here, but I don't think the Cubans are the ones people should be suing. The card room is not offering the game for free. They make money off of this. Shouldn't they be held responsible for providing a secure game? Didn't quite a few people know something was up with the two of them, but the card room did nothing until you made it obvious to the card room that you knew something wasn't right here? Would they EVER do anything about it if not for you? That is what I would try to go after.
 
tabletalker7 said:
Most states will rule exactly the same as California did with the Postle dumpster fire. The law doesn't give them a means to adjudicate what WOULD HAVE HAPPENED in a gambling scenario if it were not for the cheating. There is just no real way to make anybody whole here.

My opinion may be different from everyone else here, but I don't think the Cubans are the ones people should be suing. The card room is not offering the game for free. They make money off of this. Shouldn't they be held responsible for providing a secure game? Didn't quite a few people know something was up with the two of them, but the card room did nothing until you made it obvious to the card room that you knew something wasn't right here? Would they EVER do anything about it if not for you? That is what I would try to go after.
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The problem is proving it. All of the information is in their hands, it could just disappear

Oh, we don't have any footage of them cheating, they just broke our rules of ettiquete and are no longer welcome

Plus, if I sue a card room, how long before other rooms ban me to protect themselves and now I have to move to another area to play?
 
Anthony Martino said:
The problem is proving it. All of the information is in their hands, it could just disappear

Oh, we don't have any footage of them cheating, they just broke our rules of ettiquete and are no longer welcome

Plus, if I sue a card room, how long before other rooms ban me to protect themselves and now I have to move to another area to play?
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Ok let me change that then - If a place is making money off of me AND I have to tell them that their game is dirty and they need to look into it, I don't bother. I tell everyone else playing there (off to the side somehow so it isn't obvious) that their game is dirty and I don't back there then. This place doesn't deserve to be in business, and they need to be shut down.
 
tabletalker7 said:
Ok let me change that then - If a place is making money off of me AND I have to tell them that their game is dirty and they need to look into it, I don't bother. I tell everyone else playing there (off to the side somehow so it isn't obvious) that their game is dirty and I don't back there then. This place doesn't deserve to be in business, and they need to be shut down.
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I stopped going and the word is already out amongst the regulars that I'm the one who prompted the Cubans finally getting picked off
 
So just an update on why I've been so quiet lately. I had been dealing with sciatica that had gone away about 3 weeks ago. Had been going to the gym (not daily, but regularly) and was feeling better.

Last Friday the sciatica flared up again. This past Monday it was really rough, because we had a 1 hour drive each way and I was in constant pain. I wound up going to an Urgent Care spot near home when we got back. They gave me a steroid shot in the arm (were going to give me something else that began with the letter "T", can't recall what it was, but they were all out) and prescribed muscle relaxers.

After three days of muscle relaxers I wasn't seeing any relief, it was actually getting worse. It got so bad that I couldn't find a comfortable position to lie down at night. On my back with heels and buttocks against the bed, on either side, pillow under legs, no pillow under head, pillow between legs. I was in pain regardless.

The same with sitting down. I could stand and ambulate just fine, maybe with a little soreness, but not too bad. Hell, I was even able to take it easy on the elliptical at the gym with no pain. But within a minute of sitting down, especially in my car, the pain would flare up and be almost unbearable.

On Monday the pain was in my lower right back and then my upper right thigh. But by Wednesday it was shooting down my leg into my foot! Wednesday night I stopped with the muscle relaxers and took Excedrin and was able to get some relief to the pain, enough to get a decent nights sleep.

Went back to the Urgent Care near me (if you followup on your visit within 10 days there's no additional charges) and they prescribed a steroid pill to take and said I should also look into physical therapy to help me correct whatever is causing the pinched nerve and assist with pain management.

So at least I'm able to move around, but sitting and lying down are both difficult (and some of my favorite activities, lol!) So haven't been able to hit the poker room or even sit at my computer much given the situation.
 

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