Lowball Plays

Winning extra bets in lowball often involves being aware of situations as they arise. If you just play the cards you get without observing what is going on around you and how that is likely to affect what happens in the immediate future, you can miss extra bets.

Big Jack was on the button in a $20-limit game. Jack is a fairly straightforward player who likes to show that he is "one of the boys" by gambling it up when it seems that he has the best of it, and he prides himself on his liberal play. He's not all that loose, actually, but when a tight player gives a crying call with a rough 7, Jack likes to say that if he gets any 7, he raises it every time. (Some tight players like to draw attention away from their own tight play by calling attention to it in other players.) That's not quite true that Jack automatically raises with a 7-6 when anyone bets, but he does raise sometimes with that hand. He also likes to bet blind when he's drawing one card to any hand – even an 8, which is the worst one-card draw he ever makes – and players behind him are drawing two, and sometimes when he's drawing to the nuts and players behind him are drawing one, presumably to worse hands. Betting blind in these situations is not optimal play. Since it shows a profit overall, however, Jack likes to do it. (The play is profitable when a player who would not have called with, say, a facecard calls because Jack bet blind.) You can always do better by betting or checking based on knowing what card you caught. Betting blind is popular among some action players or those who want to give the illusion of action.

Big Jack opened the pot. Loose Lucy called in the middle blind. I had the big blind and 4-5-6 and two facecards, and called.

Lucy drew two and checked, I drew two, and Jack drew one behind me.

I looked at the cards I caught and saw they were a 7 and an 8. I frequently bet when I make a two-card 8 in this situation, particularly since Jack calls with a jack or better when a two-card draw bets into him. I know that if he raises in that spot, he can beat a straight 8, because I have never seen him raise after the draw on a bluff, so I can easily lay the hand down for a raise. I'll get called with more hands than will raise. Lucy also calls liberally. If Jack didn't call in that spot, Lucy would call with anything from a small pair on down, so betting was definitely a play with positive expectation. But if Jack did call, Lucy would overcall only with an 8, or possibly a smooth 9.

I could see that Jack had left his drawn card facedown on the table, and was conspicuously not looking at the card. I knew what would happen if I passed; Jack would bet blind. He wouldn't announce he was doing so, as many do who want to draw attention to their loose play, and anyone not paying attention wouldn't realize what he was doing. But I knew that if I passed, I was going to see a sure blind bet. I was about a 2-to-1 favorite to win a blind bet from a one-card draw. If I bet, though, Jack would call maybe half the time, and I would lose a certain portion of those. It was better to win two-thirds of a bet made every time than something less than two-thirds of a bet called only half the time. I checked and, as I expected, Jack bet, still leaving the card facedown on the table.

Lucy called. She was observant enough to notice what Jack was doing, that he was betting blind, and would be calling with almost anything. Her hand was about 10-to-1 – that's a very unscientific guess – in favor of being worse than mine. My overcall was easy. Jack turned over his card. It was a queen, and he didn't bother to show the rest of the hand. If his card had been small, he would have shown the whole hand, and taken the pot. I immediately turned over my 8-7-6-5-4. I didn't want to embarrass Lucy by forcing her to show her hand. If she had called with a king, she could quietly throw it away after seeing my cards. If she had made a better hand than mine, no problem, she'd show it. I would have lost anyway by betting.

By checking when I knew Jack would bet blind, I had increased my expected value on Jack's action, and had gotten the added bonus of a call from Lucy that I would not have gotten by betting myself. Actually, I still might have gotten her call, since Jack would not have called after seeing his queen, but then I would not have gotten the extra bet from Jack. Had I bet, Jack would have looked at his card. If I knew for certain that Jack would raise blind if I bet – some players actually do things like that, even when they know the bettor has looked – obviously, I would have bet. But I knew he would look if I bet, so I checked. This way, I got an extra bet, and I also increased my chances of making at least one bet.

Sometimes, playing situations gets me in trouble. Sometimes I can "shoot my way out" – sometimes I can't. Recently, an interesting example of such a situation that worked out for me came up.

The game was relatively shorthanded, five players. Wild Wally had just sat down, and rescued a game that looked like it was going to break. He was on my right, and had the button in this particular hand. He had just gotten up to get some coffee, and was returning to the table after the cards had already been partially distributed. Feeling an urge to gamble, as he sometimes does, he announced, "I kill it," and added three $5 chips to his dealer blind. He had obviously seen no cards, but the house rule is that you can overblind after looking at two cards. A strict interpretation of the rules dictates that the kill be made before any player has three cards. Although it is possible for the button to blind while having only two cards, even though all of the other players have three, because the dealer has not given him his third card, the button technically is not supposed to be able to kill the pot at that point. Practically, lowball players almost always allow someone to kill in that situation, particularly a live one whom they don't want to discourage from building larger pots. Wild Wally is someone no one ever tries to discourage from his wild play, particularly since he's capable of getting angry and "picking up his marbles and going home." When Wally tried to put in the kill chips, four cards already sat at his place, clearly too late to be killing the pot. I wasn't about to object, and I doubt that any of the other players would have, but the dealer – whom I wanted to kick – told Wally he couldn't overblind with four cards already out. I said nothing, of course, because the dealer was correct. The spirit of blinding should, of course, allow someone to kill a pot who has clearly seen no cards if it allows someone to kill who has seen two. The point of overblinding is to create action by allowing someone to double the betting who has yet to look at three of his cards. It's obvious that everyone else at the table has an edge against someone who doubles the stakes without having seen any cards.

Wally was determined to gamble, so he opened when everyone else folded, still not having seen his cards. Since it was a short game – actually, there were only two people without blinds – only two had to fold to allow Wally to open blind. I had an 8-6 to draw to, with an extra 6 to discard. I figured this to be the best against a blind open, so I raised from the middle blind to freeze out the big blind. Rote players would not have been so imaginative; they would have just called. My raise, while having high positive expectation, is also a high-variance play. That is, when I lose with the play, I lose more than most players. When I win, of course, I win more. Wally now "woke up" with a good one-card draw and reraised me. I was about to risk at least three bets on a hand that many tight players would risk one, possibly two. Now, I compounded the risk – extremely. I accidentally threw the wrong card, keeping the pair of sixes. I don't make mistakes like this often, but in my defense, I was coming down with a cold. Once I discovered I had thrown the wrong card and was drawing to a pair of sixes, I made up my mind that I had to bet no matter what card I caught, although I seriously considered cutting my losses, but, as the old saying goes, "Never say 'whoa' in a mudhole." Since he was much more likely to make a calling hand than if he were, say, drawing two cards, a bet here would be wasted most of the time, particularly since Wally had already indicated that he was drawing to better than the best I could make even had I drawn to an 8-6. As it was, I caught another 6, giving me three of a kind, a hand that could not possibly win in a showdown. Game theory says that if I can get away with a bluff in this situation one time out of 7, a bet here is profitable. Played properly, such a bet should be made randomly, though, and not every time. Game theory is for the long run, of course. For the rest of my life, I would likely not see this exact situation come up even seven times, let alone anything like a "long run." So, I was very thrilled when Wally showed that he had caught a queen and did not call me with the hand. I would have called me with a queen. Wally is a strange player. He makes plays before the draw that go hugely against the odds, but then sometimes tries to play well after the draw – at least "well" in the sense of not calling when someone he considers to be a solid player bets. Since I would prefer that most of the time he be more of a calling station, I had to show the hand so he'd call me next time. Thus, I had the extreme pleasure of showing him and the rest of the table that I had put three bets in to draw a card and then bet three of a kind. Mostly I don't show bluffs, but this was an unusual situation. I turned the 8 faceup, implying that was the card I had caught, and said, "Well, I missed the full house, but I figured trips was still good enough to bet."