Who invited the Ninja to Poker Night?

I used to have a regular Tuesday night basketball quorum.

It was a group of close friends attempting to maim one another for possession of a leather ball that most of us probably no longer had sufficient skill to throw into a ten-foot high metal hoop from more than six feet away. We beat the crap out of each other in long drawn out games, and afterwards slapped each other high fives for making everything harder than was humane.

It was a lovefest, and we did it every week for many many years until nature herself tore our favorite gym down.

Time to play something else.

So we shrunk our quorum to a core group of the closest friends and moved our weekly need to destroy each other into somebody's living room. This new exercise in bonding was called poker night, and it was a moral dilemma for me.

I play and coach poker for a living, and none of my friends had so much as read a poker book. Nobody invites a professional basketball player to a pickup game among out-of-shape cubicle dwellers. The few times I've seen that happen, everyone told the pro to stay at least twenty feet away from the basket.  So how was I supposed to play at poker night?

I'm not here to tell you how to win against amateurs - there are too many boring books on the basics of that subject matter. Let me summarize those books for you: don't play garbage hands, don't play unless you are last to act, stay out of multiway pots, bet and raise when you have it, fold when you don't.

In fact, I'm not here to teach you how to decimate your friends. I don't want you to rip their heads off and force things down their spines. Don't scalp them, just take a few hairs. Steal their handkerchiefs, and let them keep the shirts on their backs.

Win quietly.

The next few tips I share will hopefully show you how to beat the crap out of your friends without reducing them to quivering confused raisins of their former selves. These are your friends. You want them to like you. You want them to have fun. You want them to enjoy giving you their money.

When you win a pot: shut your mouth and do not open it again until the next hand has been dealt and concluded. If someone calls you a lucky son of a dog, just agree.  You don't apologize. You don't tell them what they did wrong. You don't make a list of the things you will buy with their money.

I like to trash talk when I score on an athletic twenty-year old kid in basketball. I like to tell that person he just got owned by somebody twice his age who can't even touch his own toes. Sometimes I tell him to invite his mother for the next game.

There is no room for that in poker night. Trash talking only works when you are needling someone who is clearly expected to have more ability than you. At the poker table - especially if you are the identified pro - you have to let them do all the talking.

Don't talk trash. Talk shop.

Wait, I don't want you to put your shades, headphones, and hoodie on either. "Don't talk trash" doesn't mean "don't talk at all."

Poker night is a gathering of friends. Your intent to take their rent money is your dirty little secret. So talk about everything else. Tell a long anecdote to mask the length of time you've spent folding every hand before the flop. Talk about how watching Batman fighting Superman is the new worst thing that ever happened to you - topping that time you fell tongue-first into a septic tank.

These are your friends, so before you can take their money, you have to be their friend. Friends like giving friends money.

So give some back.

After a big win, stack up your chips and plan on playing the next few hands, maybe without even looking. I'm not saying you should call a shove with a five and a deuce in your hand. I'm saying loosen it up more than a few notches temporarily, but don't drive a scooter into a freight train.

Imagine the pro baller at your basketball quorum taking bad shots every now and then.  These "bad shots" are not from half court, and they are not with eyes closed. They are reasonable shots that he nonetheless knows are unlikely to be good. They sort of make up for that one time he dunked on three of you.

Do the same thing on the poker table. Make some loose calls with middle pair in small pots and say "I thought I had you" when he shows you the winning hand. Make a hopeless bluff and show them you got caught.

Toss them small pots.

Some people like to toss their friends some chips back after winning a metric ton from them. They flick back a few chips and say something completely fake and condescending like "lucky chips, for you."

I hate that. Don't do it, ever.  Refer to my tip on keeping your mouth shut after a win. The simple idea is this: You do not want to say or do anything that reminds them you just won.

So instead of being the schmuck who chucks rebates at his peers, be the guy who makes "mistakes" - That's the guy who can win a large pot and still get invited next week. 

I enclose the word "mistakes" in quotations because they won't actually be mistakes. They are the hands that you don't mind losing, and in fact sometimes play badly on purpose. This is you paying income tax discreetly. This is the cost of sales. This is the price of advertising. This is what it takes to create the image of a guy who "ain't that great, after all."

Keep costs down.

Make it look good, don't go nuts. No half court shots. Pay with small pots only. I cannot say this enough so I have to say it again: SMALL POTS. 

So what is a small pot? If you are going to beat the crap out of your friends, you will need to recognize the difference between small, medium, and large. I can take a shortcut and talk about BB's, but I prefer to paint some pictures.

Whenever you raise from the button or cutoff on a pure blind-steal, that's a small pot.

When someone opens for a raise and you re-raise from the blinds with the intention of giving up if you get a call, that's a small pot.

When you limp in, call a flop bet, the turn goes check check, and you make a small bluff on the river with little to no hope of winning a showdown, that's a small pot. 

When it is an unraised pot and you call someone on the river with a weak hand - aka a bluffcatcher - that's a small pot. 

When you raise preflop and make one bet on the flop with the intention of giving up, that's a small pot. 

When someone else raises preflop and you call with a small pocket pair, intending to throw it away if you don't flop a set, that's a small pot.

If it's large, it's yours.

When you do flop a set and get your whole stack in because the other guy has aces, that's a large pot.

When you re-raise preflop with aces and intend to bet all three streets postflop because the other guy never lays down kings and queens, that's a large pot.

When you make your flush and two players made weaker flushes, that's a large pot.

The small pots, if you study them carefully, will happen to be ones that you might win as often as you lose. The large pots, well those should only happen when you have your opponent hopelessly dominated. You have it, they have less, and cannot let it go.

And then there was a Ninja.

Small, large...wait, where are the medium pots? 

Medium pots separate the amateurs from the pros. I like to call them Ninja pots - not because they are made and won with acrobatic moves and flying shurikens, but because they are made and won under the radar. 

Stealth wins. When you have a big stack of chips and nobody can remember how you won all that money, I know they came from medium pots. And I know you're a Ninja.

A Ninja floats: When someone raises preflop, you call. He bets the flop, you call. He checks the turn, you bet. He folds. Medium pot to you.

A Ninja three-bets: when someone raises preflop, you re-raise. He calls. You bet the flop, he folds. Medium pot to you.

A Ninja squeezes:  Someone raises preflop, three people call, and you re-raise it to an uncomfortable amount. When they all fold, medium pot to you.

The Home Game Recipe.

Win one large pot. Throw in a few small pots. Sneak in a few medium pots. Shake well with a lot of anecdotes, and season it all with a smile.

If you can get through the night without a large pot, then you've done extremely well. Shun the big showdowns at the home game. Let the big fishes have all the highlight reels. Kenny Walker was an NBA Slam Dunk winner. Tim Duncan is a many-time NBA Champion. Who would you rather be?

Remember, steal his handkerchief, not his shirt. By the time he realizes it is gone, he is more likely to blame himself for losing it somewhere else. This is how Ninjas get invited back to the home game.