Don't Blame Third Base at Blackjack

Casino Players are an optimistic bunch. We know deep down that the casino has the edge on most games and the games we play have a negative expectation. This is a fancy way of saying that in the long run we will lose. But we also know that in the short run anything can happen. This means that players can and do win. Nobody would go to a casino if they knew they were gong to lose each and every time. Some players study the games and easy cards tricks make sure they are playing the best games with the lowest house edge. They take the time to learn the strategy for Blackjack, Video Poker and other games where their decisions can affect the outcome of the game.
Nobody likes to lose. Whether it is because of a competitive spirit or a quest for excellence, most of us have a burning desire to win. When some players lose they feel the need to blame their loss on something other than the mathematical reality of the game. They might blame bad luck, rotten cards, the dealer or even other players at the table. Other than at live poker, this happens the most at the Blackjack table.
At a Blackjack table the seat closest to the dealer that gets dealt to first is known as first Base. The seat of the player that receives the last cards before the dealer is known as third base. The other seats really are not designated in any way. The seat that concerns players the most is third base. This is because the player in this seat is the last to act before the dealer and the decisions that this player makes receive the most scrutiny.
Many Blackjack players who have learned basic strategy feel that since they took the time to learn it, everyone else at the table should also “know how to play.” If a player at third base makes a decision that goes against basic strategy, the other basic strategy players at the table get very upset. If the player takes a hit on a hand he should have stood on and takes the card that would have busted the dealer, and the dealer then wins the hand, watch out. The rest of the marked cards players at the table will blame the player at third base for their loss. I have seen some heated arguments, discussions, name calling or worse occur when this happens.
The reality is that the only player that can affect your game in the long run is the player sitting in YOUR seat. Players tend to have selective amnesia. They remember the times that the third base player takes a card which results in a loss, however they forget about all the times that the “mistake” by the third base player actually saves the table.
Another situation that the “Basic Strategy Experts” fail to consider is that the player at third base may indeed be a card counter. A card counter will make decisions that go against basic strategy based on the relationship of the high and low cards left in the deck. So what looks like an idiot play by the player at third base in the eyes of the basic strategy player, may actually be the correct play for somebody who is counting cards.
But the players have no way of knowing this and the card counter is surely not going to defend the play to the others by telling them that the count justified the decision for doing it.
Don’t blame other players for their play. In the long run it will all even out for the basic strategy player. Remember the other player is playing with HIS money not yours. He has as much right to play the way he wants as you do. If you don’t like how someone plays at your table, you are free to get up and move to another table. If the player is new to the game you just might frighten them away. If there are no new players are learning the game there will be fewer players and the casinos will replace the blackjack tables with other games or slot machines. A trip to the casino is entertainment and should be fun for everyone. Don’t make it a bad experience by criticizing other players. 

About David Plastik

Name	David Plastik
Current Residence	Las Vegas Nev.
Born	Jan. 22, 1964
Birth Place	Queens New York, US

His name may sound artificial, but there's nothing fake about David Plastik and his poker career. With several years as a consistently winning player, all the poker pro needs to cap off his career is a World Series of Poker or a World Poker Tour championship win.
And that's just to top his current career. He's already spent a decade as a rock photographer and another as a fabric salesman. Quite a combination for a guy born in 1964 in Queens, N.Y., to your average urban family.
Raised in Queens and Manhattan with his one brother, Plastik grew up with a love of playing sports and card games, and for music.
Though he was discouraged from marked cards playing an instrument while younger - he was left-handed, and when he went to a music teacher to learn to play guitar, the instructor tried to make him learn right-handed - Plastik found another way to pursue his love for song.
Instead of playing music, Plastik became a regular at rock concerts. This was back when people could take just about anything with them to concerts, and he started taking along a camera his father had bought him as a gift.
"I got good at taking photos by trial and error," Plastik said in a 2007 interview with PokerListings.com. "I also met the right people and getting paid for my photos sort of grew from there."
His first payday came from a Van Halen concert in the early 90s. Though Plastik says on his own Web site that freelance photography didn't pay well, he was hooked. After graduation from the University of Hartford with a communications degree he moved to the other coast to settle in Los Angeles where most of the rock stars were.
He spent that decade working as a freelance photographer, traveling and partying with the rock stars. He sold his photos to anyone who wanted them, including big music publications such as Rolling Stone, Cream, Guitar and Hit Parade.
Plastik's photos from those days still sell and get published to this day. You can see his work at 80srockphotos.com.
Living the life among rock stars, though, had its price for Plastik. He was drawn into their world of booze and drugs, especially after becoming a personal photographer for comedian Sam Kinison.
"I became very good friends with him, and he introduced me to all these famous people," Plastik says on his Web site. "He was a pretty extreme partier, and he got me into all that. It was a crazy life, and after a while it got ugly."
Plastik decided it was time to straighten out his life and turned to the family business to help him out. His father owned a textile company, and Plastik went to him with the idea of becoming a sales rep for him in Los Angeles.
"So for the 90s I was a fabric salesman," he said, and a successful one to boot.
While making good money in sales, Plastik discovered the nearby Commerce Casino and poker. He'd played in home games before, but never in a casino. He sat down at a table and won - beginner's luck he admits, but he became a regular and honed his game.
In 1997 he discovered tournament play, which appealed to competitive side. Now he's mainly known as a tournament player and competes whenever he can, though he still plays cash games online.
It wasn't until he got out of the sales business though that his poker career took off. His father died, and the company was sold but his dad's business partner soon hired Plastik on in his business where he continued his sales success.
Then his mother died too, and he lost all interest in the industry and left. Rather than look for another sales job, he used the money he'd saved up and gave poker a shot.
That was about nine years ago and Plastik said he's consistently made money year-after-year. He attributes his success to patience, discipline and "knowing that my time will come."
Watching Plastik in a tournament, you wouldn't guess that was his edge when it comes to making it so deep marked cards contactlenses. He's known more for being an emotional player - sort of a John McEnroe or Phil Hellmuth type - when he's competing in tournaments. He tends to be loud and boisterous when winning and tantrum prone when not.
As it turns out, despite his emotional play, Plastik's poker winnings were the more stable and reliable part of his bankroll.
Thinking that he was doing the smart and responsible thing, Plastik invested quite a bit of his poker winnings and business savings in high-tech stocks a few years ago. When those stocks crashed in 2000, Plastik lost everything, including his house, and was left with a big dent in his bankroll.
Luckily, Plastik's consistency in poker tournaments kept him going. Month after month he cashed in events, making it to several final tables in the following years and even winning a few tournaments.
"My goal is to win a big million-dollar tournament or to win a World Series of Poker bracelet," Plastik said.
The closest he's come so far to winning a bracelet is in 2004. He placed third in the $2,000 H.O.R.S.E. event while Doyle Brunson went on to win it.
It's not for lack of trying, though, as he usually enters in about 20 WSOP events each year. That works out to nearly a month of playing poker depending on how deep he goes into an event. It's no wonder he likes to take a vacation before and after the World Series each year.
Travel is also one of his hobbies that he can work into his poker schedule.
"I like to travel around poker and go to the more exotic venues," Plastik said. "It's one of the other benefits I can reap from being a pro player."
Oddly, photography never really made it onto that hobby list, and Plastik said he doesn't really take many photos when he's out traveling and going to tournaments. His passion for music and concerts, however, has survived and he sees many of his favorite bands from the 60s and 70s in concert as often as he can.
Now living in Las Vegas - where he likes the lifestyle despite there being better poker in Los Angeles - Plastik has firmly entrenched himself in the poker world. You can bet you'll see him out rockin' as well as rolling through the poker tournament scene in his quest for a major win.

Trivia

• Communications degree from the University of Hartford
• Rock and roll photographer during the 80s
• Has partied with Madonna and the Rolling Stones

 

How to Calculate Pot Odds and Equity: Equity

As we mentioned in part one, the ability to calculate pot odds will only get you halfway to where you need to be. Once you have the odds, you need to calculate your equity in the pot, and then compare the two.
The previous article explained how to calculate pot odds in your head at the table. This next concept, though every bit as important, is much easier to master, thanks to some simple shortcuts.
Hand Equity
Count Your Outs: In order to calculate your equity (your odds of winning the pot), you need to first know how many outs you have to make your hand. This becomes quick and simple with a little practice and a little memorization.
Remember: There are four cards of every value, and 13 of every suit.
If you have an open-ended straight draw, there are two different values of cards that will give you your hand: 2*4= 8 outs. If you have a flush draw there are 13 cards of that suit. You hold two of them, and two of them are on the board: 13 - 2 - 2 = 9 outs.
Remember to remove the outs of cards cheat poker you know (on the board and in your hand), and to not count outs twice (for example, if you have an open-ended straight flush draw, you have 15 outs).
When counting your outs, you need to remember the idea of anti-outs (and possibly even blockers). If by making your straight you also complete the flush of your opponent, then those straight cards are not outs to your hand, and cannot be counted as such.
The possibility of a flush draw on the board can turn a profitable eight-out straight draw into a six-out straight draw, rendering your odds insufficient.

The stronger a read you get, the more accurate your equity calculations can become.

To learn more about anti-outs and blockers, check out this article.
If you're unable to make an astute deduction of the value of your opponent's hands, err on the side of caution and always assume that they have the hand most dangerous to your own.
If there's a flush draw, assume they have the draw; if the board is paired, assume they have a full house or, if you're lucky, just trips. It's less expensive to wrongly fold a hand than to wrongly call off your whole stack.
Equity Shortcut: The easiest way to get juice cards your equity is to remember this simple rule:
On the flop, multiply your outs by four.
On the turn, multiply your outs by two.
This means with an open-ended straight draw (eight outs) you have a 32% chance of making your straight with two cards left to come.
For hands on the flop with a large number of outs (>8), the previous shortcut gives a slightly incorrect answer. There's a simple formula you can remember to get a slightly more accurate figure:
(number of outs * 4) - (number of outs - 8) = Equity
This means the equity of an open-ended straight flush draw (15 outs) would be:
(15 * 4) - (15 - 8) = 53%
Without this little formula, the percentage would be higher by seven points, giving us an artificially large result. If your equity calculations are wrong, you will be unable to make informed decisions on the day.

Matusow's notorious for his real results not reflecting his equity in any way.

Putting the Two Together
Now that we know the equity and are capable of calculating the odds, how can we tell if it's a good call or not? In the previous article, we got our odds as a ratio (the final example ended with the cut-off being offered 2.3-1 odds, and after the cut-off called the button was offered 3.3-1).
It's impossible to compare apples to oranges, so we need to convert our equity percentage from a percent into a ratio. Doing that will require some of the same techniques described in the previous article:
32% is most easily described as having 32 out of the total 100. 100 - 32 = 68. Since you're looking for your odds, and not the odds of your opponents, your ratio is 68-32. Use the techniques from the previous article and you'll get yourself a final ratio of 2.1-1.
This means your odds of winning the pot are 2.1-1 against. For you to make money, you need to have pot odds higher than that ratio. If you're sitting with your open-ended straight draw (32% or 2.1-1), your odds example from the previous article gave the cut-off odds of 2.3-1, meaning the cut-off would have just enough pot odds to make this call.
If you put yourself on the button with your open-ended straight draw, and the cut-off calls, your odds become 3.3-1. You only needed 2.1-1 to make money, so the call has become very profitable in the long term.
Although this result is correct, it's only half of the odds spectrum you will want to take into play, as you haven't taken any consideration of the implied odds.
Implied odds change the game of No-Limit Hold'em greatly. In fact, having a very large amount of implied odds can render a call correct, even though pot odds would render it absolutely incorrect.
To learn more about implied odds, and how they can affect the choices of you and your opponents, check out this article here.
(For another method of calculating your equity in a pot - one you may find easier - you can check out this article.)
As you can see, equity and pot odds hang on a bunch of relatively simple calculations. All that they require is some memorization of the formulas and techniques, and a little bit of practice calculating them in your head. For some people this will be much easier than for others, but everyone can do it if they spend a small amount of time practicing.