Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999
From: Jim Geary
To: cgp
Subject: Re: Board Position

On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, Ron Tiekert wrote:

 BTW, does anyone know exactly how this term [CASE] came
 to be used in card games? Or is willing to speculate?

I believe I coined this term in a local poker game in 1973. It was 5-card-draw Jacks or better to open, I was dealt a pat full house, tens full of fives. A bookish kid immediately to the left of the dealer opens the pot, two callers in between, and I raise. He reraises, the cold callers drop, and I re-reraise. Without batting an eye he makes it 5 bets to go. I bumped it again, and he rebumped. I just called. He stood pat, which made me wonder if he did or didn't have quads, as in a similar situation seven months before, he had drawn one to quads to throw me off. I thought that perhaps he was not drawing one knowing what I knew to throw me off again. But I remembered that whenever we played smear the queer he would jig left or right depending on the least significant bit of the binary representation of the digits of the square root of three. I didn't have enough experience in this new situation to ascertain whether or not there was a similar pattern for poker. I assumed there was one, but would have to leave the solution to a time when I had acquired more information. Therefor, I could not reasonably rule out quads. I then tried to reason what his hand was. I figure on his opening bet, he has to have at least pocket aces to do so under the gun, given that in Jacks or better it is foolish to open from early position with the bare minimum hand due to exposure to raises from late position. My reraise announces to him that I can beat at least his aces. His immediate reraise says he's not on a draw (else why would he try to thin the field reducing his implied odds?), so he's intimating to me that he can beat what I can say beats aces(probably two pair given the possible distribution of starting hands in my hand and applying Bayes Theorem), so he has at least trips. My reraise should indicate to him that I fear no trips and have at least a pat hand, ie straight or higher. His making it five bets says to me that given the distribution of pat hands that I have now implied I hold, he still feels he is a 2:1 favorite to win (2:1 because he is risking being reraised just to get one more unit out of me). My reraising now says I have at least a full house(which I in fact did). His reraising tells me that he on average does not fear my full house or higher. Then, I enumerated the distribution of hands from full houses to straight flushes to be such :

2sF,3sF,4sF,6sF,7sF,8sF,9sF,JsF,QsF,KsF,AsF,quad2s,etc..,5hiSF,6hiSF.

Now given that he was 2/3 up or higher on this (almost)continuum it would appear he has quads or higher, but the distribution is not as smooth as it would appear on paper. The opportunity for straight flushes is compromised by the fact that every straight in poker has either a five or a ten and I'm holding 5/8 of them. Therefor, his median hand for this situation is in the high-full house to low quads range. The distribution is highly concentrated between jacks full and quad nines. Realizing that I'm probably beat, but have a chance to win, I announce, "I'm busting up my full house, just in CASE." Throwing the two fives face up into the muck, I squeeze out the draw: the eight of spades and ! THE CASE TEN ! He checks to me on the river, I check back. I show my four tens; he throws his four sevens into the middle of the table as I scoop the pot. Legend of the six-year-old boy who broke up the pat full house to draw to quads heads up quickly spread along with the "just in case" comment and thus the term was born.

JG

marvelous! - MartinW
Makes all the shit I have to wade through on cgp worthwhile to find a gem like yours. -BobS
You lazy bastard! Get the hell out of school, away from the gambling and start submitting this stuff to the right places! - SusiT

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