Invisible String, Invisible Suits
A Taylor Swift song reminded me to look for what isn't there.
The following post is real. However, my previous post on hearts being the most neglected poker suit was an April Fool’s Joke❤️
A Taylor Swift song helped me understand a poker hand.
Let me set it up for you. It was the Spring Championship of Online Poker series on PokerStars PA and I was playing a few different events at various stages and buy-ins. This one was a $100 event and we were already well “into the money.”
Hand Details: (replay it here)1
Level 25: 7500 (Small Blind) 15000 (Big Blind) 1875 (Ante)
Stacks:
Me, UTG 8: 500K (33 BB)
Villain, BB : 200K (13 BB)
*** PREFLOP ***
I open for 34,000 in first position at an eight handed table with A♣️ J ♦️ and the Big Blind calls to close the action.
*** FLOP ***(90,000) [4♥️ Q♥️ 5♦️]
He checks, I bet 25K and my opponent calls, leaving a pot size bet behind.
***TURN*** (140K) [4♣️]
check check
***RIVER*** (140K) [5♣️]
He moves all in for 136K into a pot of 140K.
Now I have two pair with an ace kicker, which makes up a huge part of my range here. He has a lot more full houses than I do, but he also has a lot more nothing. He’s polarized. My reaction? I should be calling with some aces and folding others. Technically, my side card doesn’t play2, but it can still give us clues about what he may have. Whether you play poker seriously or not, you may be able to appreciate the puzzle. I ended up calling, he showed Ten-Five suited and dragged a big pot.
The next day, the hand nagged me. How exactly should I break ties between all the aces I have on the river? So I worked on it with a poker “solver.” These poker calculators simulate optimal strategies for both players. Admittedly, these strategies aren’t always applicable in practice, as I explore in my “Yale and the Beast” series.
Yale and the Beast: Adventures in Game Theory Part II
In the first part of Adventures in Game Theory, I wrote about the Yale Open Courses, the 2/3 the Average game, and a challenge in the controversial Beast Games TV show.
And still, solvers give so many insights into the truth of the hand3.
Before I go on, let’s talk about Taylor Swift. I love a lot of her songs but I’m far from her biggest fan, so I often discover a new favorite years, even a decade after it came out. An enjoyable level of fandom. She is so prolific, I get a new singalong every week. On this particular week, it was Invisible String. Or as I now think of it, Invisible Suit.
In my hand, I don’t want to have a seven, six or eight as my side card as I want him to be bluffing with eight-six offsuit and the like. What we do want is the invisible suit4. In this case, it’s spades, as the other suits are all on the board. Holding the king, ten or nine of spades reduces the chances that my opponent has value hands like 94♠️♠️ or K5♠️♠️5. As luck would have it, my opponent had ten-five of spades, a perfect illustration of the concept.
This is called a “blocker” effect in poker. If I had the jack of spades, it would “block” hands like jack five suited and jack four suited. Meanwhile the jack of clubs does not block any such value, since the five of clubs and the four of clubs are already on the board. My hand is between the best jack (spade) and the worst jack (club), so depending on how often I want to call, I should place it accordingly.
Blocker can be a pretty broad concept. Its effects are so numerous, and some of those deserve their own names.
In stud games—which had even more prominence decades ago6 — each player has an “up card” at the start of the hand. As up cards are folded, players keep track of which suits are “dead” and “live.” And in this case, spades were very live. Another way to put it is that they’re invisible. There, but unseen.
13 cards on an invisible string—or as the chorus now sounds to me—an invisible suit.
Taylor sings, Were there clues I didn't see? Yes. Like an invisible friendship bracelet, sometimes what’s not there is more important than what is.
I rounded the numbers for readability.
For example, Ace-King now chops with Ace-Deuce, since they both play 5 5 4 4 A.
I enjoy studying spots with short stacks, as I find the results are often more human-like. The solves are very fast because shallower stack sizes are less complex, and require less RAM.
If the out of position player leads small on the turn with a lot of their range, some of this analysis moves to that street.
The reason this is important is that hands like 94 or T5 offsuit fold preflop.
For example, the World Series of Poker Seniors and Ladies Championships were both played with seven card stud.
🩶🧵