A Nod is as Good as a Wink to a Blind Horse

A Nod is as Good as a Wink to a

Blind Horse

I love that phrase. It's the name of a Faces (with Rod Stewart) album, but it's also an old English expression that has something to do with subtlety and is related to another expression, "There are none so blind as those who will not see."

Having said that, I can now say that these expressions relate only tangentially to a lowball situation I want to describe. I used the first one just because I like it.

A bridge expression comes closer to what I mean. "A peek is as good as a finesse." Where the first expression has relevance is the corollary to the second – that is, make use of what you see.

Seeing an opponent's card can be worth more in lowball than almost any other game. Of course, seeing one card is worth a lot in hold'em, because that's half the hand, but seeing one card is not worth nearly as much in, say, draw poker. Often, just one card can define a whole lowball hand. Seeing a wheel card (any ace through 5) doesn't provide much information, of course. For this reason, most lowball players often deliberately put a wheel card in the door so that they won't accidentally give anything away about their hand. This is because at some point, a lowball player usually picks his cards up and holds them in his hand. Even if the hand is held properly, with only the doorcard visible, that one card can still be seen by one's neighbors.

Unsophisticated players sometimes put a 6 or higher in the door. That gives away a lot about a hand. Obviously, for example, a hand with a 7 in it cannot end up being a 6. If you see a 7 in a player's hand and that player bets, you can safely raise with a 7-4 and relatively safely with a 7-5. You might not want to raise with either of those hands if you had no knowledge of the other's holding. While a 7-4 might be worth a raise, you might not want to lose three bets on it if the first bettor reraises.

Seeing a facecard is even better, because you know that player is going to draw. You might not raise before the draw with a 9, for example, because if the opener reraises, you're in trouble. You might just throw a rough pat 9 away rather than risk losing several bets on it. But if you know your opponent is drawing, any 9 has the best of it, and you might want to try to win a few bets with it.

Seeing an 8 or 9 can be of tremendous value, too. You can put in multiple bets safely before the draw with hands you might otherwise risk only two bets on.

I had the big blind, and Jay had the middle blind. Jay plays all sorts of weird hands. He plays pat tens against multiple players. He frequently opens or calls with two-card draws. He sometimes plays three-card draws out of position. He opens or calls in almost any position to draw to eights and nines. He bets his pat tens after the draw into one-card draws. He bluffs a lot, even in situations when it's clear someone will call. Of course, he also plays his good hands, which means that he gets called a lot. When he gets a lot of good hands, he wins a lot.

As Jay picked up his cards, I caught a flash of a queen, which he hadn't bothered to transfer to the back of the hand. I would never go out of my way to look at anyone's hand, but he picked the cards up clumsily and anyone on either side of him could hardly miss that queen. But I was looking at my own cards at the time, so he didn't realize that I'd seen the inadvertent exposure. I have good peripheral and tachistoscopic vision. No one else played. Jay opened. Just before opening, he rearranged the cards, shifting the queen to the back of the hand. This was normal for him. Whenever he played a hand, he usually rearranged the cards in some order that suited him.

My cards were 9-9-8-8-4, not much of a lowball hand. Normally, I would not make the blind good (throw in the extra $10 to play the hand), even with Jay opening. If he stood pat, even though he might be on one of his tens, I would really need to draw four cards to save losing two bets on a hand I shouldn't even play. Well, one and a half, since I already had half a bet in. But since I now figured Jay would draw at least one card, I decided I could draw two to the 9-8-4. I was getting 3-to-1 for my call, and was not that much of a dog against his typical draws.

The house dealer asked how many cards we wanted, and Jay surprised me by standing pat. This was wonderful! He was on a snow.

A snow in lowball involves standing pat on any five garbage cards as a bluff. Some lowball players like standing pat on small full houses, or small trips or two pair in which all the cards are low. They figure that having five low cards makes it harder for the other player to end up with a good hand, since fewer low cards remain in the deck for the other to draw. (I sometimes hear players say after they've been caught on one of these bluffs, "The odds were in my favor. There were no low cards left for her to catch.") What these players fail to take into account is that the deck contains 32 cards 8 or smaller – 36 when you consider that most players call with nines – which leaves plenty of cards with which to make a hand. Some combination involving all eights and nines is popular, also, because then a player who passes presumably is less likely to call because he is less likely to have passed an 8. Four eights is a magnet for some players. Fortunately, they don't get this hand very often, because playing it pat is likely a money loser. I think some lowball players feel obligated to play these otherwise unplayable hands because they get a great thrill from showing a full house or four of a kind down after no one calls. Heck, they like showing it down even when they do get called. They probably rationalize the loss as good advertising.

How could I best play this situation for maximum profit and minimum risk? I could stand pat behind him. Even though he would realize I didn't have much of a hand (because I didn't raise), he might think that I had something like a pat 10, and would give up on his snow. If he passed, I would bet, and win one bet. What made it risky, though, was that he might just pass a Q-J-10-X-X, if that was what he held, and get stubborn and call, hoping to catch me on a bluff. I wanted something surer. He has called me before with some pretty strange hands, some of the times catching me in a bluff. If he bet and I raised, he might take it into his head to reraise. If he had something like that Q-J-10-X-X and decided to just call my raise, which he well might do after my failure initially to raise, I would lose three bets. If he got stubborn and reraised, I would be taking a terrific risk by raising once more. None of those scenarios was optimal.

I could draw one card and raise him if he bet, but again, he might be suspicious of my not having raised before the draw if I had that good a draw, and again call me with his pat queen.

I thought my best option was to draw two, a perfectly legitimate action from someone who makes the blind good (calls the extra half bet to take a cheap draw). Accordingly, I asked the dealer for two cards.

As I expected, Jay bet. I looked at my draw cards for a few seconds, a rather depressing two fours. I raised. Jay didn't even make me worry by pretending to decide what to do with the hand. He just quickly dumped it. Whatever his snow hand was, he decided to give up on it. It probably wasn't a fistful of small cards, given that one of the cards was a queen. He had probably just planned on a cheap steal with five random garbage cards, but a hand that didn't otherwise contain a legitimate draw. If he'd had a two-card draw, he would have straightforwardly drawn the two cards. He likely had something like what had concerned me, Q-J-10-X-X, but it could just as easily have been two big pair. Whatever the hand was, though, my three fours was not a winner.

Instead of losing my $10 blind, I had made $40 on the hand, a difference of $50. And I had been able to do it with a normally unplayable hand due to Jay's momentary inattention while picking up his cards.