Proposition Bet in <i>Stuey</i> Offers Many Lessons

As I mentioned last issue, I served as the technical advisor for the recently completed movie based on the life of three-time World Series of Poker Champion Stu Ungar, Stuey. I also had a role playing myself as one of the ESPN announcers for the 1997 World Series of Poker (in reality the announcers were Phil Hellmuth and Gabe Kaplan, but in Hollywood they turned it into boxing announcer Al Bernstein and me).

I was impressed with how much movie director A.W. (Tony) Vidmer was able to make with what was a relatively low budget by today's Hollywood standards. It didn't hurt that he got The Sopranos' Michael Imperioli to play Stu, and Karate Kid/Happy Days star Pat Morita to play high-stakes gambler/sportsbook operator "Mr. Leo."

The movie is currently making the film festival circuit while looking for a distributor, but I suspect eventually they will find one who will turn out to be happy with the decision. I think anyone who liked James Caan's The Gambler will like Stuey, and it will probably wind up making more money than Stu Ungar did, but that prognostication isn't my focus here.

Instead, I want to follow up on last issue's column, "Beware of Smart People Bearing Propositions," because there is a scene in the film involving an at-the-table poker proposition, and it's the kind that you could run into someday yourself.

A young Ungar was merely watching as a friend pulled off a rather bizarre move. The friend must have come from the Mike Matusow school of poker, because he entered this no-limit hold'em pot with 7-2 offsuit (the worst starting hand in hold'em, but if you're playing the man rather than your cards, your cards don't matter too much; Matusow doesn't play this hand often, but he drew a lot of attention when he almost succeeded on a big bluff with it at the 2001 WSOP final table).

The preflop action is a bit hard to follow (on this day, unfortunately, I wasn't on the set, and the film's action goes beyond the script); it appears that "D.J. Clutter" (the propositioner, whose name has to be designed to evoke "T.J. Cloutier"; the Texas drawl adds to the image, although there isn't a strong physical resemblance) has raised preflop out of the small blind, only to get called by his intended victim ("Mario").

The action then gets easier to follow, and it appears the 7-3-3 flop has helped D.J., but the help seemed more of a trap when we find that Mario (clearly not based on "Super" Mario Esquerra) had started with two kings (why Mario didn't raise to start, rather than limping, or why he didn't reraise preflop, we aren't told, but the way Mario plays the rest of this hand, it seems easy enough to believe he could make either or both of these mistakes).

D.J., under the gun, opens for $5,000, and Mario raises an odd amount, $5,000 more. D.J. flat-calls, with Ungar's voice telling us he's planning on making a move. Somehow, the perfect card for a particular kind of move hits the turn: a deuce. Without a pair on the board, this would have been a lead-changing card, but as it is, it only improves D.J.'s draw: He still has sevens and threes with no kicker.

D.J. senses an opportunity, and leads right out for $20,000. Mario seems thunderstruck, and virtually announces his own hand by saying, "You got pocket aces!"

"No, Mario, I don't have pocket aces," D.J. says. "But if you give me one of those hundred dollar chips, I'll let you turn over either one of my two holecards."

With more than $40,000 already sitting in the pot, $100 does indeed seem like an awfully cheap price for any kind of information, and were I in that situation, I would gladly pay the hundred (or 0.25 percent of any no-limit pot), even if I suspected the idea was to manipulate me, because I'd be aware of the attempt, and I defy anyone to pose a situation in which I wouldn't be wise to pay this trifling sum for the information (assuming, of course, that I was giving any consideration to calling or raising).

Mario pays the $100 without a thought, and points at one of D.J.'s cards. D.J. reveals the 2, and Mario immediately "recognizes" that this means D.J. has turned a full house (if Mario selected the other card, he would have "recognized" that D.J. had flopped a full house). Mario mucks his hand and leaves the table, and D.J. then completes the maneuver by showing the remaining players what he did (I know many players who could not resist showing off in this spot, but a great player wouldn't show it in case he wanted to use the "move" again).

In this case, Mario fell for the proposition, but it wasn't paying the $100 that did it. If you think about it, there is no way that D.J. would have been willing to reveal a real full house for a mere $100, unless Mario was a pet sheep and he wanted merely to shear him, not kill him.

The only way this move makes sense is if D.J. wants to create the impression that he is letting Mario off the hook, which could be correct under the right long-term circumstances … but showing the move after Mario leaves seems to end that line of thinking, because D.J. has to know that word of the move will get back to Mario.

So, let's go back to what Mario should have been thinking when he saw a deuce. If it can't be a full house, and he knows he had an even chance of seeing the other card, he should have been able to figure out that the other card was either a 7 (more likely) or a 3 (much less likely, because D.J. wouldn't want to risk really showing Mario his trips).

Nonetheless, with all that money on the line, Mario does what many of us do, fail to think the situation all the way through. There is no point to paying for the information unless you are going to take the time to evaluate it properly (there's also a second line of thinking that says the mere offer to see either card should have suggested 7-2, but for a measly $100, Mario shouldn't leave this to chance).

The failure to take the time for proper evaluation is Mario's mistake, and if D.J. is enough of a "people guy" to make this bold move, he has to do it knowing full well that Mario isn't capable of thinking past the obvious. If that's the case, it isn't clear that Mario has to take this kind of a risk: Someone who isn't capable of thinking past the obvious should wind up losing all of his money anyway.

There's an argument that D.J. wants to be sure he gets Mario's money, rather than one of the other players, much as everyone at my 2003 WSOP championship starting table quickly targeted one of the players (in case he knows me, his seat number will go unwritten). Given such an elementary approach by Mario, this isn't an unreasonable way to look at the situation.

In the event you're now thinking about trying something like this yourself, I would first suggest that you abandon the notion unless you figured out what D.J. was doing long before I explained it. I'd also suggest that you take a step back and think about the play's setup. It made for entertaining theatre, to be sure, and because this movie targets not high-level poker players but a much larger audience, that's appropriate. Nonetheless, there were quite a few holes in this "move." Can you name them?

First, although making a move with 7-2 is fine if you know your intended victim (note that we can't give D.J. credit for having a tell on Mario that indicated he had limped with a big hand, unless D.J. also knows that Mario won't reraise him preflop, although this too is possible if D.J. is good enough and Mario is predictable enough), choosing to make the move when out of position and facing five or six limpers, as well as the big blind who has yet to act, is an entirely different story.

This isn't yet too bad, though, because if no one has anything, D.J.'s raise can take the pot then and there, and if someone has limped with aces (limping with aces is dangerous enough; limping with kings is far more dangerous and hence far less likely), D.J. can always throw his hand away; he's not yet committed for a big number.

Once the 7-3-3 flop arrives, though, D.J. leads out for $5,000, and is taking a risk that Mario will raise him out of the pot then and there. Again, if D.J. knows Mario well enough, this is still OK, and sure enough, Mario makes a limit hold'em-like raise of only $5,000 more.

By calling here, D.J. has to be sure he can outplay Mario no matter what card hits the turn; if it's a big card, that isn't so easy, although we can say Mario wouldn't have the imagination to bet big unless he actually hits his full house, and that D.J. can probably spot a tell if that's the case (D.J. is sounding more and more like T.J. as we go forward: We're assuming an awfully high skill level).

What can D.J. be hoping for on the turn? Realistically, only a 7 really improves his hand (no "move" will be necessary then). Worse yet, only a deuce gives him the potential to try this "pick either of my holecards" move. A 3, a 4, a 5 … none of those is going to help D.J. at all if Mario happens to pick his deuce rather than his 7.

I guess we could go really far and say that D.J. knows Mario always "goes to his left" when picking a card, but this is really stretching it.

If the turn card is indeed something useless like a 4, where can D.J. go with the $10,000 he already has invested here? He can't use the "pick either holecard" play, that's clear. Possibly he could offer to show one specific card, the 7, and if Mario is dumb enough to "know" that the deuce filled D.J. up, he might be dumb enough not to ask how much a look at the other card costs instead, or to assume that D.J. has pocket sevens. This seems much riskier, but poker experts rarely go broke by assuming very poor play by a very poor player.

In "real life," D.J. would have waited until he had position; that's much more important than something else D.J. would have wanted: a hand that, even assuming weakness, still had a better chance of making something than a 7-2 would.

Even finding out at the last minute that the scene was going to include much more detail than the original script showed, we would have been able to set up the hand so that D.J. had these advantages, if we'd wanted to, but the 7-2 makes the bluff more dramatic, and D.J. can't use "Irish position" (the Irish are OK with my using this phrase!) to lead out at Mario on the turn if he has position.

What it ultimately comes down to is either assuming that D.J. was truly great and Mario truly awful (possible enough) or acknowledging that the film sacrificed some technical accuracy for drama. Any lawyer who has ever seen a lawyer movie, any doctor who has ever seen a doctor movie, or indeed anyone whose chosen field is the subject of a film can tell you that these sacrifices are almost inescapable if the film is targeting an audience of nonprofessionals.

As for you, and your own desire to take part in either end of a proposition like this, I suggest that if you regularly read my column for technical help (rather than my sense of humor, storytelling, or some other nontechnical matter), you almost certainly aren't good enough to try a move this bold, at least not for this kind of money: Given the relative lack of experts, I usually aim my columns at intermediates and midlevel advanced players.

If you find yourself on the other end of such a proposition, I suggest it is perfectly OK to pay a tiny price for information: If the price is tiny enough, there doesn't even have to be much chance that the information is helpful. Just be careful enough to make sure you can think problems like this all the way through.

If you have any doubt that you're capable of doing that, or if the information seems to cloud your thinking rather than clear it, you'll do well to pretend you'd never seen the card, and to make whatever play you'd have made without it.

Remember, the information seller certainly didn't sell the information so cheap because he wanted to pick up 0.25 percent of the pot (or, for that matter, 1 percent, 2 percent, or 5 percent): He did it because he was convinced the information would lead you to an incorrect conclusion. That's so even if that incorrect conclusion is supposed to go several levels deep, something like, "He's showing me either card because I'm supposed to think it's a full house and fold, so actually he doesn't have a full house and I should call, but he knows I'd figure that out, so actually he really does have the full house … phew!"

In case you're thinking you can avoid such trouble simply by not paying the $100 (or 0.25 percent), you're wrong: If the D.J. at your table thinks he can pull a fast one on you, he can just show one card without even charging you for it! His goal is winning the pot, not the relatively tiny $100. He charges for the card only to make his move seem less suspicious.

Last issue you learned how smart people beware other smart people bearing propositions. This issue you've learned, I hope, how smart people can spot information traps, and can escape them before their jaws snap shut on their bankrolls.