At work today we had an event designed to raise money for charity, which included activities such as a poker tournament (in which I participated), where we played texas hold 'em.
We started with 5 tables of 6 players who played for 45 minutes, all starting with $25k in chips. The 6 players with the highest $ in chips at the end of the 45 minutes then went on to the final round, again starting fresh with $25k.
During the first round, one player a couple of tables away was doing quite well, often raising his arms in the air in a triumphant move; there was a lot of laughter coming from his table. The story finally made its way to our table: he wasn't looking at his cards, he was bidding and folding randomly. And he ended up with almost $100k in chips at the end of the 45 minutes.
I went to the final round and watched him again employ this strategy. After a couple of hands, I decided to copy his strategy and stopped looking at my cards, although I did not have the will of the warrior as I ended up peeking a couple of times (and as a result once, folding when I would have won a large pot - doh).
It was a blast; it really screwed with the other people at the table and made the game a lot more fun for me. No matter how confident they were about their hands, it's really unnerving to have someone betting a quarter of their chips when you know they haven't seen their hand. All of your rules and expectations and tricks about how you read other people and determine their strategies just don't apply. And of course there's also the double whammy - it's for charity, it's not real money, so people weren't playing like they would normally anyway.
About halfway through this final hand, one of the other players was down to $3k and wanted to go home, so he tried to give me his chips. We all laughed about this, but I insisted that he just go all in the next hand, if I ended up using his chips and winning, it would have tainted the win anyway. So the next hand, he went all in... and he won, with a straight on the river.
Soon the game got down to two people - the guy who never looked at his cards, and the guy who was just trying to get rid of his money so he could go home. They ended up playing several more hands (with Mr. "I just want to go home" doubling up a couple of times) before Mr. "Not looking" ended up winning.
It was by far the best outcome that could have ever come from the game. A lot of other people stood around the table enjoying the fun, there was a lot of laughter and even those of us who were eliminated were having a blast watching this unfold. I couldn't help but think about Eric Lippert's story about the Red Sox odds.
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