Wednesday, April 25, 2007 | 7:09 a.m.
Professional gambler Fezzik first likened his latest project to "The Karate Kid," and later to "The Empire Strikes Back."
But after he described his plan in detail, and invited me to sit in on an early training session, I came away thinking "My Fair Lady" might make for a better comparison.
Fezzik's mission: Take someone who's a sheer novice, or pretty close to it, and teach him to make money on a consistent basis at the no-limit Texas hold 'em poker tables of Las Vegas.
To accomplish the feat, Fezzik designed a basic strategy that he called elegant in its simplicity yet powerful enough to bring home the chips. It's based on playing poker with a "short stack" of chips and keeping the action concentrated on pre-flop play as much as possible. This eliminates the tough decisions later in the hand faced by players with deeper stacks, Fezzik said.
Part of the strategy, for example, entails "limping in," or just calling for the minimum, with strong hands such as pocket aces or kings if you're one of the first players to act - then re raising "all in" if anyone raises.
"No one respects the short stack at the table," Fezzik (one name only, please) said. "You'll get called even if they suspect you have a strong hand, because people just don't take short stacks seriously."
Although his strategy would ostensibly work at somewhat higher levels, Fezzik instructed his charges to play only in small no-limit hold 'em games such as those with blinds of either $1 to $2 or $2 to $5. Those tables attract more than their share of weak players, Fezzik said.
"We're starting out with a very simple strategy, but I expect it to work very well," Fezzik said. "We're not worried too much about post-flop play. Right now we're just 'painting the fence,' like they say in 'Karate Kid.' We're not talking about any advanced fighting techniques yet."
A high-stakes sports bettor in Nevada for years, Fezzik also dabbles in side projects that treat gambling as an intellectual pursuit. Last year he operated a sports gambling fund that made small bets against "rogue," or off-market, betting lines to demonstrate the potency of line-shopping.
Like a Henry Higgins of the green baize, Fezzik is giving his Eliza Doolittles a "freeroll" in his poker project. Fezzik agreed to put up $1,000 to start, eat any losses and split any winnings - as long as Eliza sticks to the prescribed strategy.
Applying a short-stack strategy to "big-bet," meaning pot-limit or no-limit, games certainly has its antecedents in poker's body of knowledge.
Pot-limit Omaha (PLO) players, especially those who compete at small stakes online, have long bemoaned a quirk in the structure of that game that allows small stacks to grind out a small profit over time. In PLO, pots are often contested by players holding either "the nuts," meaning the best possible hand, or a monster draw with cards to come. Small stacks can just "shove it all in" and avoid any late maneuvering.
In his 2005 book "Ace on the River," Barry Greenstein recounts a list of reasons players should consider buying into a no-limit poker game for the minimum amount permitted. "There is a mathematical edge when you have fewer chips than are needed to call all bets, since you can't be driven out of a hand when you are all-in," Greenstein writes. "This is especially powerful in no-limit and pot-limit."
The 2005 poker tournament book "Kill Phil" by Blair Rodman and Lee Nelson details how beginners can level the playing field against more skillful opponents by focusing on "long ball" poker, which involves getting most of the money in early in the hand.
In their 2006 "No Limit Hold 'em Theory and Practice," authors David Sklansky and Ed Miller include an informative section on the advantages of playing with a short stack. "It is remarkable that a robot playing a short stack can beat even relatively tough no-limit games," they conclude.
Fezzik used a sort of poker alchemy to blend elements of each into his own blueprint.
"You could call it a modified Kill Phil strategy," Fezzik said.
Fezzik said he's confident in his plan to turn a $1,000 investment into $10,000, though the poker project sustained a rocky launch last week.
A relationship with one would-be partner was riven by a disagreement on how to play a pair of kings, and another appeared in jeopardy because of a dispute about what constitutes a short buy-in.
"I feel like Darth Vader in 'The Empire Strikes Back,' " Fezzik said, "losing generals in every act."
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