Split Wheels

They say if you play cards long enough, you'll see every possible situation. Have I seen every lowball situation? I don't know, but I've seen a lot.

For example, I casually mentioned during a recent session that I had split a pot the previous week when I had a pat bicycle. One of the regulars, who I know plays a lot of lowball, said that not only had he never split a pot with a bicycle, he had never even seen it happen. Have I been playing too much cards? I have split the pot with a bicycle four times that I can remember, and I know there have been other times that I can't.

A big pot for me at the time took place in the early '80s in Palo Alto's Cameo Club, the no-limit lowball house that regularly featured some of the biggest games in California. I was in the small game, $4 bring-in, three traveling blinds: $1 on the button, $1 small blind, and $2 big blind. "Small" game was relative. Pots could be in the hundreds of dollars, much larger than the same size limit game. The game had a center dealer. I had more than $700 in chips, after starting with $600. Cal was the other big stack, also with around $700, and the reason I had bought in for that much. Other stacks ranged from as little as $20 to maybe $400.

I opened for $6 to the left of the big blind. Although the nominal minimum bet was $4, or twice the size of the big blind, you could open for any amount greater than $4. I often opened for other than the bring-in because I liked to sow confusion and build bigger pots. Many no-limit players would open for the minimum when they were drawing and for more when they were pat, particularly with other than an excellent pat hand. Such players might as well have been wearing signs that read either "I am drawing" or "I am pat," information that is very useful to knowledgeable players. Anyway, my hand was A-2-3-5-K, a one-card draw to a wheel.

Everyone else folded until the action got to Cal, in the cutoff seat. He raised $14, bringing the bet to an even $20. This is normally a standard raise in a no-limit lowball game. It usually means the raiser has a hand he wants to protect, a pat 8 or 9. He has the best of it against a one-card draw, but he would not be unhappy to have the opener fold so that he could take down a small pot right there. If the opener reraises, he hasn't invested enough that he can't still get away from the hand. A reraise at this point from the opener could be as little as $14, but would more likely be in the range of $40 to $100, depending on what the opener was trying to accomplish: suck the raiser in for a bit more, power the raiser out, or leave the raiser unsure of where he stood. I was the tiniest bit suspicious of Cal's raise. When he held a vulnerable pat hand, say an 8 or 9, he would raise an opener's bet by more than three times the bet. With such a hand, he would have raised my $6 open by $25 or $30, enough to discourage me from calling by making me think I wasn't getting immediate pot odds for the call. I had a feeling I would need to beat a good hand. This made me all the more want to make the call, because I knew if I made a good hand, I could make a lot after the draw. If he had an 8 or 9 and I made a good hand, he would not call a large bet, and I would not have had positive expectation on the original call. Of course, I could always win the pot by bluffing, but that was another story, and also one I didn't think was applicable in this case. It was also possible that Cal was raising on the come – that is, drawing to a good hand himself – but I thought that very unlikely. When Cal was deep, I had never seen him raise one player on a draw.

All three blinds – the dealer, the small blind, and the big blind – folded.

I called the raise. The dealer asked in turn how many cards each of us wished. This was standard practice: don't deal replacements until finding out how many each was drawing. I asked for one, and Cal said, "No cards."

My card was the miracle 4, giving me a wheel. I wanted to get maximal payoff on my hand. I bet $60, nearly 150 percent the size of the pot. I didn't go for any of this tricky stuff that some of the players try, betting a minimal $4 to look like a "protection bet." The trouble with that was when the second player raised after the draw, and the opener now came back with his entire stack, it was clear that the opener had done, in a game with the sevens rule, the equivalent of sandbagging with a monster. A good player who knew which players were capable of such a move could then get away from their hands, and the tricky player didn't win as much as he might have by playing the hand straightforwardly.

Cal thought for a moment or two, and then raised $100, leaving himself with maybe $550 in chips. The raise wasn't large compared to my bet, and I knew he had a big hand but didn't want to scare me off. If I had a 7, which was what he hoped, I wouldn't be able to lay down a $264 pot for another $100. This confirmed for me that he had a big hand, and I knew I didn't have to play cute at all to trap him. Without hesitation, I reraised all of my chips, pushing in six stacks of $100, plus another stack of about $70. Cal immediately said, "I call," and the house dealer started counting the chips to equalize the bets.

I looked over at Cal, smiled, and said, "We're going to split this pot, aren't we, Cal?"

"We are if you have a bicycle."

I showed my hand and he spread his, and of course I was right.

You should never go out of your way to look at another player's hand. However, if a player prematurely exposes his hand, it's OK to act on the information so gained.

Another time, also at the Cameo Club, in a $4 game, I had just sat down with $100 in chips. Suzy was on my right, putting me in a very favorable spot, since she was a superlive player. She played almost any hand, and hated to be out of a pot. She opened for the minimum. I had a pat 8-6-3-2-A, almost always a raising hand, and, against this "loosey," a mandatory hand to be played to the fullest. I raised $20.

All the others folded. Suzy put all of her chips in the pot, another $80. Naturally, I called, and with the intention of standing pat no matter what Suzy did. She was quite capable, when first to draw, of standing pat on a jack or 10 high, hoping to get the other player to "break" – that is, throw the top card away from a pat 9 or a better 10 than hers. A 10 was questionable, but I had never broken a 9 against Suzy, and I won much more often in that situation than I lost.

As I said, Suzy liked to play, and it was often with any old "rag."

After I called, the house dealer prepared to give out cards if anyone was going to draw. Instead of saying "no cards," though, Suzy just spread her cards on the table and said, "I have a wheel." She had become so excited about this extraordinary pat hand that she temporarily forgot that she was supposed to hold her cards until the other player made his decision. As soon as I would either say, "I'm pat, too," or announce my draw, then would be the normal point to show the cards. But because she was momentarily flustered, she showed her cards prematurely.

In this situation, I have seen players spread their own losing cards and say, "I guess you got me. I have a pat 8 and can't draw to the hand."

Even if I had a terrific tell on Suzy and knew that she had a pat 8 beat, I would normally draw only one card. (I did not have a terrific tell on her. I just knew that most of the time she put a lot of chips in the pot, she didn't have a very good hand. Since she plays almost every hand heavily, her average hand is somewhere around a 10.) Because she spread her cards prematurely, however, I knew that the best I could hope for was a tie, and only by drawing two cards. The odds were certainly against me, but any other way I had no chance of retrieving anything.

That was a peek I couldn't avoid, because she spread her cards right out on the table. It was perfectly legitimate for me to look at them, particularly since she announced her holding before I said anything, because she was acting out of turn. To act in turn, she would have had to hold her cards until I acted.

Some players would say the ethical thing for me to do would have been to turn away before I saw her cards and say, "Don't let me see your hand; I haven't acted yet." Or, since I couldn't avoid seeing the cards, to say, "Well, if I had not seen your cards I would have stood pat. I'll be a gentleman and pretend I didn't see them and stand pat, also."

You'll have to decide for yourself how to act in such circumstances, but I'll tell you what I did.

I quickly discarded the 8 and 6 as if I'd been planning to draw two cards all along. You guessed the rest. I caught a 4 and 5, giving me a tie. It was not quite a miracle, of course, but still about 59-to-1 against. I got half of a pot that would have been all Suzy's had she not gotten carried away. I saved $100 that I otherwise would have lost.

The other two hands that I can remember were in the $20-limit game at Garden City. One was relatively mundane. Bill Z opened. I had the big blind, and drew to three spokes (three wheel cards) and caught the other two spokes. Bill was pat. I bet, he raised, I reraised, and so on. After about five bets each, I knew what was going to happen. Bill paused a moment, looked at me, and said, "Do you have a wheel?" "Yup," I answered, and he stopped raising. "Wouldn't you know?" he complained; "I finally get a pat wheel and have to split the pot." I didn't mind.

On the other, which happened within the last month, I killed the pot on my button. That is, I looked at A-2 as my first two cards and added $15 to my $5 dealer blind, doubling the stakes for that hand to $40 from the normal $20 limit.

The livest player opened for the $40 from a middle position. Unfortunately, he had only $70, but I knew I was going to get those chips. He had had more than $700 half an hour earlier. John C, an action player and a fine fellow with whom I love to gamble, called from the small blind. The big blind folded, and then the action got to me. I had already looked at the rest of my cards when the live player opened; I had a pat wheel. I raised. The live one put in his remaining $30, creating a $20 side pot. John called the raise. John asked for one card. He often raises when drawing one card, but he knew that I acted behind him and was well aware of how he played, so he apparently was playing cagey. It turned out that it did not matter.

The live one took two cards. I, of course, stood pat.

John bet, I raised, John raised again, and so did I. John said, "I have to raise." "That's fine," I said, "so do I." John said, "I have to raise again, Michael." At this point, I knew what was going to happen – again. It's funny how, except for that freak draw against Suzy, I have always known before the betting quit that I was going to split the pot. This time, I said the words. "Do you have a wheel, too, John?" He just turned over his hand, I showed mine, and we split the live one's $70.