Getting Lucky at Lowball

I got lucky three times in a recent lowball session. Each illustrates a poker precept. I cite the first here.

This occurred in the $20-limit game I haunt. Bets are Northern California's single-limit style, but the principles apply to any game.

On my left sat Oscar, a very straightforward player. Oscar usually plays in a fashion that exactly mirrors his cards. He rarely bluffs. When he raises before the draw, he has either a pat hand or a good one-card draw. He would never raise after the draw with a bust. If he has the blind, he generally raises with any decent one-card draw – that is, any 7 or better or a good 8 if he has the joker. I've never seen Oscar play a snow. In lowball, a snow is a pat-hand bluff. Many lowball players like to raise and then stand pat with a full house or three of a kind, as long as all the cards are little, because with five low cards unavailable for their opponents, those opponents are less likely to have pat hands or to make their draws. Some lowball players like to have a hand full of nines and eights when they make this play, reasoning that if the opponent passes after the draw, they (the snowers) can bet with relative impunity, because it is unlikely the opponent has passed a calling hand. Some players pick any garbage hand with which to snow, but in general, making the play holding four or five paints is slightly more risky than with a hand replete with otherwise unplayable low cards.

Oscar had been losing all evening. He was stuck more than $1,000, a large amount for a $20-limit game. He had just bought another $100 stack, and on his big blind, had $60 left. Everyone passed to me, in the middle blind. I had a pat hand, 9-7-5-4-2. Oscar raised. Normally in this situation, I would do one of two things. I might just call and stand pat, hoping that Oscar was drawing. I would check after the draw, and then fold if he bet, because, as I said, Oscar rarely bluffed. He even said so. "They always call me when I'm bluffing, so I hardly ever bluff." If Oscar missed his hand, most of the time he would just show the hand and surrender the pot. If he caught a 9, he wouldn't even bet it. Now, if Oscar raised and drew a card, he'd often be drawing to better than a 7-5; if he made, for example, a 9-6, he had a bet coming after I passed, but he'd never make it. Passing and folding was, then, a good strategy in such a situation. If I had a hand like 9-4 and Oscar raised, I usually would draw a card. Of course, with my 9-7, if I stood pat and Oscar stood pat behind me, I would just give up. I'd check and then fold if he bet. And he would bet most eights or better, although he might show down a rough 8. My other choice would be to draw a card when Oscar raised in this situation, and I would do so if I caught an indication that he was going to stand pat. I normally would not reraise, an option that many lowball players exercise when they hold a pat 9 and are raised, hoping that the opponent is either drawing all the time or, if he holds specifically a pat 9, will then break that hand and draw a card. In my experience, lowball players hardly ever break pat eights in that given situation. Anyway, my reason for not reraising was that, due to the aforementioned straightforwardness, I could lose the minimum when I was beat. The trouble with reraising with a 9 is that when you're beat, you lose four or more bets on a hand that could cost only two.

But I saw that Oscar had only one bet left after having raised. So, I reraised, knowing that if he already had me beat, the most I could lose was three bets. If he was drawing all the time, I would make the maximum I could on my hand with no further risk. And since Oscar would raise in the given situation with any drawing hand, the odds were more than 4-to-1 in my favor that he was drawing. (There are about five times as many one-card draws as there are pat hands; some of those pat hands include cards that wouldn't be considered part of a one-card draw.)

As soon as I put my reraise in, Oscar ruefully showed me his cards and folded. He had three paints and two other miscellaneous cards. He was trying a desperation play, totally out of character. Once I reraised, though, and he had only one bet left, he could not follow through. He had absolutely nothing to draw to and had to give up. If he'd really had a two-card draw, he'd be getting money odds – better than 5-to-1, including the dealer blind – to draw, but then he'd have never made the play with a two-card draw. He just would have drawn. The fistful of garbage, as a capper to a long streak of bad cards, had "inspired" him to snow.

So, what is the principle here? Always have enough chips in front of you for the game. If you get short, a lot of your options go away. Had he still had $100, five bets, he would have gotten away with the play. I would not have reraised, because that would not have put him all in. I would have just called and stood pat, and he would have stood pat behind me. I would have checked, he would have bet, and I would have folded. Instead of losing two bets, he'd have made two bets, a difference of four bets. As it was, since he had let his stack grow short, instead of losing two bets, I made two bets, also a difference of four bets.

You'll have to wait for the next installment of this potboiler to learn about the other fortuitous events.