Bigger Deal

I recently went on a romantic mini-break to Umbria with my girlfriend. The plan was simple: to stay in a beautiful villa in the grounds of a ruined abbey, to go truffle hunting and fishing, to take long walks by the ornamental lake, to dine not wisely but too well, and to make out like teenagers whenever possible. Well, that was her plan anyway. Mine had one additional feature. A pack of cards.

I figured that once the novelty of spending "quality time" together (Fine wines! Frescoes! Actual sex!) had worn off, the weekend would offer a good opportunity to teach her poker. After all, she was always nagging me about it. "Why do you spend so much time upstairs in front of the computer? What’s so fascinating about a game?"

I’d made a few efforts to explain the rules before, but she always seemed to lose interest after five minutes. But deep in rural Italy, with no TV or shops to distract her, and only me for company, she would have to concentrate. By the time we got back to Heathrow, I was confident that I’d have a regular "heads up buddy" as well as a girlfriend.

It didn’t quite work out that way. When I produced the cards from my suitcase on the second night, she was appalled. She looked at me like I’d just unpacked a blow up rubber doll. It was a glare that said, "You’ve got to be kidding!" I rallied the situation by selling poker as another way we could be "together". It could be our special thing. How cute would that be? Reluctantly, she agreed to delay whatever shared bubble bath/moonlit walk/roaring log fire scenario she had in mind and give it one more whirl.

I tried to be gentle. But – Jesus – maybe her brain is just wired wrong or something. Despite having four ‘A’ levels and a first class degree, she simply could not digest the information that a flush is better than straight, or remember what the words check, fold, call or raise meant, never mind when it was appropriate to say them. Within ten minutes she had a moody face on, and within twenty it was clear that I had more chance of getting elected to the College of Cardinals that teaching her Texas hold’em.

(It’s true, of course, that she may have been pretending to be an idiot on purpose, for tactical reasons. Her logic might have been, "If I am useless at this he won’t keep bugging me to do it, and then we can just do the stuff I like." This is certainly identical to the strategy that I have evolved to avoid ironing, cooking and tidying up.)

Now, you might question why I need a poker buddy in the first place. After all, the internet is not exactly short on opportunities to play. Well, the truth is, I want to do more than gamble. I want to discuss the hands I play, and learn how to get better. I want to analyse them at leisure, to debate the efficacy of the bets I made (or didn’t make), and this is impossible when the computer gives you no time between a show down and doling out a new set of hole cards. For a while, I tried posting questions on poker forums after I’d finished playing, but I found this unsatisfying. Most poker situations are like a bad anecdote, in that this golden rule applies:, you had to be there. For example, in isolation, it might be correct to raise, call or fold to a bet with pocket jacks, but you can only pass a worthwhile judgement if you’ve been observing how the other players have been behaving for the last half hour at least.

Oddly enough, it was my girlfriend who suggested a solution. It may not be perfect, but in the short term at least I’m finding it a useful and compulsive training aid. As a regular on Facebook, where – in a vital supplement to the hours of expensive phone calls, texts and emails - she keeps up with the minutiae of her friends’ gossip grapevine, she often gets sent links. One was to a Poker IQ test, and she passed it on to me.

Essentially, it challenges you to work out whether you are getting value when calling an all in bet after the turn. You are presented with fourteen situations, and each time you have to decide whether to call or fold. The wrinkle is that you can see your opponent’s hole cards, so the discipline it teaches you is rapid and accurate odds calculation.

It’s simple, but very, very addictive. Not least because after you’ve taken the test, the computer gives you a rating, stretching from "Idiot" to "Immeasurable Genius". So far, I have not managed anything better than "Average", but like a macho man trying to ring the bell with a hammer at the fairground, I intend to keep going until I get a top score.

And if that doesn’t impress my missus more than four measly days in paradise, well, there must be something wrong with her…

To get into the Poker IQ Test you will have to first log into Facebook. If you haven’t got an account, it is very easy to set one up. Once you are logged in, copy the following web address and paste it into your web browser’s address line.  http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=03706ef5df5bc36c7539dc3a80f1e9ba

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