Don't be a nit

An important lesson on and off the poker table.

There was originally supposed to be some sort of politics-related newsletter scheduled for this morning. But much as last week, huge political news — former President Trump’s conviction on felony charges¹ — interrupted my best-laid poker-playing plans, this time it’s the other way around. I made Day 3 in a big WSOP tournament — Event #16: $5,000 No-Limit Hold'em — and I’m 4th in chips out of 41 remaining players and 660 who entered originally. I’d be a hypocrite not to heed my own advice from my WSOP tipsheet — item #4 was literally “if you make it to Day 3, aggressively cancel other commitments” — so that post will have to wait; instead the plan is to have a relaxing morning. But since I have poker on the brain anyway, I do have one tip from the poker tables that was pertinent in my play yesterday and may be good advice away from the poker felt as well.

First, though, here’s Episode #4 of the Risky Business podcast with Maria Konnikova. We talked about Trump’s conviction, and we talked about the NBA Finals, which get underway today — there’s a big gap between models, which have the Celtics as huge favorites, and betting lines, which have the Mavericks as only roughly 2:1 underdogs. And we talked about a different WSOP event where I also had a lot of chips — unfortunately that one ended with a relatively disappointing 56th-place finish, but poker tournaments almost always end in a disappointing way.²

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The term “nit” is one of my favorite pieces of poker vocabulary, in part because it doesn’t have any close corollary in everyday speech, even though it describes a personality type that you’ll recognize all the time. In the forthcoming book, I define it thusly:

Nit: A poker player who is conspicuously risk-averse. It can also convey cheapness or neuroticism, being a stickler for the rules. The term is sometimes extended to other situations; e.g. you’re a nit if you go to bed at 9pm instead of joining your friends at the club, or nitty if you demand an itemized accounting rather than just splitting the bill. The antonym is degen.

In other words, being a “nit” involves some combination of risk-aversion, cheapness and curmudgeonly neuroticism, three traits that often cluster together. Although the term has occasionally been reappropriated by poker players to have a more positive connotation — conveying proudly prudent penny-pinching, like using casino comps to avoid having to pay for hotel rooms — for the most part “nit” is meant as an insult. Whereas calling someone a “degen” — short for degenerate gambler — is actually usually meant as a compliment.

That’s because nits are often too risk-averse for their own good — so risk-averse, in fact, that nits may actually have a higher risk of ruin because they aren’t opportunistic enough to give themselves a backup plan when something goes wrong. In the context of poker tournaments, this means they won’t build up a large enough stack to survive inevitable coolers and bad beats. If you have 250,000 chips, you’ll live to fight on when your opponent with 150K chips makes a straight with 7❤️6❤️ to crack your aces, but if you have only 125K chips instead because you folded earlier in a +EV spot, you won’t. Even when you have a great day in tournament poker — yesterday, I started with 150K chips and ended with nearly 1.9 million — it’s almost never a straight ride upward. I actually lost my fair share of 50/50 spots yesterday — what poker players call races or (coin) flips — but because I had a big stack, I only once had all of my own chips at risk.

There are three hands in particular that stand out where I avoided nittiness and it worked out well, which I’ll describe in reverse order. The first came toward the end of the day when an aggressive player raised from late position and I re-raised from the big blind with TT (pocket tens). The player took his time and 4-bet — that is, re-re-raised — technically not all-in, but enough that both of us would be pot-committed if I called the bet. Ordinarily, this is a spot that you’d be thrilled with: TT is a great hand in this situation³. Except the player’s physical actions conveyed a lot of strength. I’m not going to spill my tell-spotting secrets — but here’s the thing: I’d only been playing with the guy for an hour or so, and unless you’ve established a strong baseline of behavior, any physical read can only influence your decision so much. I might think about folding a hand as strong as 88 or even ace-queen suited here, but TT is just far too good⁴. So once he raised, I instantly announced all-in for his remaining chips.

Sure enough, the player had KK (pocket kings). The dealer ran out the board quickly — without the dramatic flair that poker dealers sometimes take in big all-in pots — and four clubs came, giving me a flush with the T♣. It was a superbly lucky outcome — I was only about 20 percent to win when the chips went in — but I couldn’t know what he had, obviously. It’s still a spot you have to take almost every time unless the player has literally flipped his hand over to reveal his cards.

In the middle of the day, I’d played a big pot with ace-king, a hand that often lends itself to escalatory confrontations. I’d raised, a player with position on me called⁵ and a third player re-raised from the blinds. This is a dangerous situation — it almost exactly replicated a spot where I’d busted out of a major tournament in last year’s World Series. But going all-in⁶ is the only play. The hand is far too strong to fold — especially against this opponent, an aggressive linebacker-looking type — and calling puts you in a real bind, squeezed between the raiser on the one hand and the third player on the other hand.⁷ They both folded, with the linebacker muttering something about having to give up on his pocket pair against my ace-king.⁸ Even though this spot will often end in ruin, all-in is clearly the best play — you can’t be a nit about it.

The final big hand came early in the day — and that one was a little closer and the one time I did have to put all my chips at risk. I raised from the button with pocket 8’s, and a player 3-bet from the big blind. I called. The flop ran out 977. Although I lose to any 9 or any 7 — or any pocket pair better than 8’s — this is a relatively good flop because players rarely re-raise before the flop with hands containing 9’s or 7’s. The turn was another innocuous card — a 4♠, although it did put a flush draw on the board — and the player made a big bet; I’d have a few chips behind if I called, but I’d basically be pot-committed except perhaps against the very worst river cards like the A♠. So I went ahead and went all-in for what I had left; if the player had some bluff like J❤️T❤️ or A❤️Q♠, he still had some outs against me and my pair of 8’s was vulnerable.

The solver says this is the right play⁹ even against a computer-perfect opponent. However, the player — an older Southern gentleman — was not the type who spends his spare time studying simulations. Instead, he said something about having to fold aces and gave up on his hand, which either makes this one of the worst folds I’ve ever seen at the poker table or means that he was lying and trying to get a read out of me. My money is about 97 percent on “lying” considering that the opponent was in the midst of an argument with a player at the neighboring table about a $20K Chinese poker debt that he’d apparently failed to pay off. This player was a capital-D Degen, in other words — and although we honor our Degens in poker, you can’t be a nit and fold to them when you have a good hand.

1. The New York Times/Siena College poll — by far the highest-quality survey to have polled the race since the conviction — found Joe Biden making modest gains against Trump among relatively disengaged voters, just the outcome I’d been expecting. I’ll save a longer check-in for once there’s more high-quality polling.

2. I wouldn’t say that you literally have to win the tournament in order for it not to count as disappointing — although with a couple of big runner-up finishes in the past couple years, I can tell you that even 2nd place can feel bad in the moment.

3. For the poker players among you, effective stacks were about 35 big blinds and the player opened from the cutoff.

4. According to a poker solver, folding would have been about an 11 big blind mistake.

5. From the button.

6. For about 50 big blinds.

7. The problem is, if you call here, you’ll often have to fold on the flop if there isn’t an ace or a king if the raiser bets again, even though you’ll sometimes have the best hand or equity to improve. But if you do flop an ace or a king, it can be hard to get action — if you do put a lot of money in, you’ll often be behind kings or aces.

8. In poker, it happens more than you’d think that a player identifies your exact hand and doesn’t follow through with the read — it helped in this case that I had (slightly) more chips than the linebacker, so he’d be putting his tournament life at risk but I wasn’t.

9. Technically, the solver uses a mix of all-ins and calls — almost always calling any river bets too — but it thinks folding would have been a mistake to the tune of roughly 3 big blinds, depending on the exact suits in my hand (which I don’t remember at this point).