Tommy Angelo

There was a period of a couple years, around 2000 and 2001, when there was a no-limit hold’em game every night in a poker room in San Mateo called Pacific News. The room only had three tables. One of them was used for newspaper reading and dealer break-taking and players in waiting. The other two poker tables were used for poker – one for $3-6 limit high-low hold’em (<–Yes, that’s exactly what I meant to say) and one for no-limit hold’em. The blinds in the no-limit game were $2-3-5 (you can read about the Bay Area 3-blind structure here), there were two optional kills (which can make the game VERY big) and there was no maximum buy-in. The game started at 7p.m. every night. I was one of the regulars – one of the starters. Another one of the starters – a man I learned as much about no-limit from as from any other person – was Walt Z.

Here’s a hand Walt played that demonstrated the depth of his wisdom, and savvy, and ruthlessness. Walt was in the big blind position, but he had not posted his blind yet when the dealer started dealing. This is a very common situation. I’ve seen it thousands of times. Usually what happens is, when the dealer deals the second card, the player in the big blind is reminded to put his blind out. But sometimes that doesn’t happen, in which case, when the dealer or a player realizes that the big blind has not posted yet, someone says to the big blind, “Don’t muck your hand! You’re in the big blind!”

And sometimes none of that happens, and the big blind, thinking he is first to act, does actually fold. And then someone says something for sure. How it gets resolved at that point, well, it can get gnarly, and it’s not relevant to the story, so let’s move on.

Here’s what happened on this hand. Walt was in the big blind. When the dealing began, Walt was busy talking to someone standing behind him. The dealer dealt both cards, and Walt had still not posted his blind. Then Walt looked at his cards, and folded his hand, about a foot or so in front of him. The dealer said, “Wait! It’s your blind!” Walt was a little embarrassed, and he took his cards back and posted his blind. I’ve seen it work out this way many times, especially when a very experienced player makes the mistake. It’s a courteous way to handle it because it keeps the game moving and no one gets upset.

Here’s how the betting went. It was folded around to the button. The button, the small blind, and Walt all had about $1000. The button was a tight player, and a smart player, plenty smart enough to take advantage of Walt’s telegraphed weakness. The button opened for $30. (The minimum opening bet was $10, so $30 was a normal sized opening amount.) The small blind was another tight, smart player, plenty smart enough to know that the button’s range could be extra wide here because of Walt’s premature fold. The small blind made it $100. Walt looked a little confused, and he raised it to $400.

Right then I knew exactly what had happened. I resisted the urge to stand up and bow reverently toward the Walt.

The button, who as it turned out had AQs, shoved all-in. The small blind folded. Walt called with – have you figured it out yet? – pocket aces.

It was probably accidental that Walt did not post his blind at the right time. Then he looked at his cards quickly and discreetly, saw that he had pocket aces, and now, in full awareness that it was his big blind and that he had not posted it yet, he folded, knowing that the dealer (or someone) would point out that it was supposed to be his blind, and that it would then be perfectly fine and normal for him to grab his hand back, laying a deadly trap from whoever happened to be unlucky enough to be moving around before the flop.

Here’s a picture I took on my way to Vegas.  (You can click on these pictures for full size viewing.)  I was on the left side of the plane, heading south. I think this picture is very cool because of the low altitude. My flights to Vegas start out going north from San Francisco Airport, then they break into an immediate 180 degree turn directly over The City and head south, giving me a view of home while the plane is still climbing. I estimate this view is from 8000 feet.

If you head east for about three miles from my place, to where the land casually merges into the bay, you’ll see an art installation I call Polehenge:

The poles are different lengths, but they are all the same height.  I mean, the ground has its ups and downs, but the tops of the poles don’t.  I mean, if you sat a huge sheet of wood on top of these poles, it would be level.  The result is eye candy from every angle.

Polehenge is in Silicon Valley, so it’s not too surprising to find out that these poles are implanted in a high tech landfill.  Mountains of trash are covered with earth, in typical landfill fashion, but they do it in a way that recreates wetland, right down to the bugs and birds. Lots and lots of birds come by and act like everything is normal. They pretend not to notice the occasional platter-sized metal plate sitting a couple inches above the grass from which exudes little geyser sounds — pshhhh — pshhhh — evenly spaced.  It’s methane belching from below. It’s the earth farting.

Swans and pelicans and geese and grebes and dozens of other kinds of big birds and small birds and fast birds and slow birds and birds birds birds from all over the place come here.  Way too many kinds for me to want to learn all their names.  Most of them spend some of their time floating around so I just call them all ducks.  Some of them zoom around in formation just barely above the water and they remind me of the Starfighters that Luke and his friends flew in Star Wars.  I can picture George Lucas sitting in a place like this 40 years ago, watching these birds doing their impressions of fighter jets, thinking, hmmm.

They made a walking path so that I can come and visit the ducks up close.  I call it the duck walk.  Along the main path there are these little offshoot paths that lead down closer to the waterways where the ducks hang out.  At the end of each offshoot path there is a two-tiered wooden deck about the size of two doors.  I sit on these decks.  Sometimes for a long time.

One day I was sitting on this deck and something funny happened.

You couldn’t see me from the main path because I was at the right end of the deck, behind the bush.  I was facing the water, sitting very quietly and very still, and I could hear everything.  I could hear the sounds coming from the mouths of two people walking on the main path.  I could hear their volume go up as they moved closer.   I could hear the sounds of their clothing and I could hear the sounds coming from the ground when their feet were on it.  I heard them stop at my little offshoot path.  I heard one of them slowly walk toward the water, toward the birds, toward a surprise.

Then I heard the sound of feet making a quick stop on the gravel path.  Sounds came from the organism in the form of gaspy, high-pitched, sudden words.  “Oh!  I’m very sorry to have startled you!”

It was at a $2-5 blinds no-limit hold’em game in Vegas. The waitress came by. Several players ordered adult beverages. I was in seat one and the waitress was standing behind seat five, so it was well heard when I said to her, “I’d like a glass of milk please.” There were a couple subtle chortles.

When my milk arrived, the player next to me, who was gone from the table when I ordered, asked me what it was.

“Milk,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, “I thought maybe it was some sort of coconut concoction.”

“Nope, just milk.”

Ten minutes later, I had 7-5 on the button. One player limped. I limped. The small blind completed, and the big blind checked. Four players. I had the smallest stack with $500.

The flop was 9-5-5 rainbow. The three of them checked, and somewhere in my mind I think I was thinking of the verb version of my drink, so I checked too.

The turn was a ten, putting two hearts on board. The small blind bet $25. The next two players folded. I called. Headsup now.

The river was the ace of hearts. The small blind bet $40. I called.

“I have an ace,” he said, and I turned over my hand.

At that moment, one of the chatty players who had been paying attention to this hand said to me, “What’s your name friend?”

“Milk,” I said, deadpan.

That was very well received, and my name was Milk for the night.

(This blog post is an article that is in the October 2008 issue of BLUFF Magazine.)

The Butoff

Words lag behind what they label. For example, the blogosphere was well past infancy before the word “blogosphere” existed. Bad beats were around long before the term “bad beat” was. And “the universe” was here for billions of years before it got its name. So it’s no surprise, given how fast poker is changing and growing, that we are always running behind. That’s why I have taken it upon my magnanimous self, in the spirit of public service, to help us stay caught up, by making up words (or reassigning them) when I notice one is missing.

Most of the words I come up with are like defective genes; they don’t get passed along. Now and then, I coin one that spreads, such as The Hijack seat. And I’m the guy who redeployed the words Twotone and Monotone to refer to non-rainbow flops. Some other children of mine that are surviving in the wild are Table Poker (non-internet poker), Sixth Street (the action after the hand is over), Mum Poker (it’s just what it sounds like), Game Rejection (a form of quitting), Reciprocality (the cause of profit at poker), and Bliscipline (bliss caused by discipline – or is it the other way around?).

And now, I give you: the butoff seat.

There’s a very big difference between butoff and all the other words I have made up in that I didn’t make it up. It came to me. I mean that literally. It came to me in an email from Matts Quiding. All I did was recognize the glorious potential contained within a typo. Here’s the pertinent part from Matts’ email. He was asking me about a betting situation in Limit Hold’em, and I quote:

Hand 9
Betfair – 4-handed
I have 10h-8h in the BB. Very loose cannon who now seems to be raising every hand opens from butoff. Loose-aggressive who realizes this three-bets on the button, SB folds. I’m in the BB. My play here? My calling range for situation?

I saw “butoff” and I did an internal happy dance, which is typically followed by an urge to write to everyone I know and exclaim that I have yet again come across the coolest thing ever. See, I knew instantly what “butoff” meant, what it had always meant, what it was meant to mean. I knew what it was that existed before the word, and now, there was the word, and it was good.

Butoff: A pre-flop position that arises at table poker when the player in the cutoff seat looks left and sees that the button is going to fold. The player in the cutoff will now be last to act for the entire hand and he knows it, even though he doesn’t actually have the button. His position is the butoff. (The abbreviation for the butoff is BO, which fits nicely, as it should, between the abbreviations for the cutoff and the button, thus: CO – BO – BN.)

These are some of the major milestones that have shaped my life: 1) The big bang happened. 2) The solar system happened. 3) Led Zeppelin happened. 4) I happened to notice that the best seat in the house is the one to the right of a tight player who reliably telegraphs his pre-flop action.

So I started moving to the right of guys like that – and looking left a lot – which effectively gave me the button about one and a half times per round. Looking left is huge because when it makes a difference, it makes a huge difference. When I’m in the cutoff and the button gives me the button by indicating that he is folding, I might call when I would have otherwise raised, I might raise when I would have called, I might call instead of folding, and I might raise instead of folding. Those are the biggest strategy alterations possible! Caused entirely by a look left.

You don’t have to believe, like I do, that looking left is in itself totally awesome. The way to think of it is like this: Would it be more profitable for you to not look left? If you think the answer is no, then that means you think that looking left is at worst a freeroll. And if you’re any kind of gambler, you’re supposed to love freerolls.

Okay, for all I know, you might think this is the dumbest idea since nearly-sliced bread (like they serve in restaurants these days). The butoff seat might die right here, right now, and never get reproduced in our meme pool. So be it. All I know is that if you’re sitting on my left and you have the button, and I look over and see that you are about to fold, I know what I’ll be thinking – butt off!