It’s a poker term. For example, if the flop is J-7-5, a player who has 7-5 would have two pair and be ahead of a player with A-A. Another jack on the turn or river, however, will make the first player’s hand objectively stronger—from Sevens and Fives to Jacks and Sevens—but now behind the second player’s Aces and Jacks, as the original pair of fives was counterfeited by the pair on the board. Note that the first player is now holding ‘three pair’ but three pair is not a poker hand.
A human countdown is hardly a precise way to allow 10 seconds. The counter screwed up, but for all we know it took 11 seconds to count down to 1.
Yeah. But precision probably isn’t as important as knowing when it’s going to stop.
To play Devil’s Advocate:
Are there other examples in this series when the 10-second countdown stopped at “1?” The “10 seconds” could just be metaphorical, not literal. If there are precedents that reaching “1” means “Time’s up!”, as opposed to “Time’s up!” meaning “Time’s up”, then it could be that that’s just the way it is.
You’d (prehaps naively) like to think that a multi-million-dollar poker tournament could equip its officials with a watch that shows seconds.
More relevant is standingwave’s point; though counting from 10 to 1 might possibly have taken longer than 9 seconds, there is no excuse for ending the count there.
Just what a world-renowned tournament needs: rules grounded in metaphor rather than reality. All participants will need to study a body of “case law” if they wish to understand just how things will actually be run. Great fun.
I based my earlier posts on the assumption that this situation was uncommon. Is it more common than I think? What would be the advantage?
I’ve only seen it go that far a couple of times. Some people are accusing Friedman of an angle-shoot, by turning it into a freeroll. I don’t know about that as that would have depended upon knowing that the Floor was going to kill his hand. I think he really intended to call and when his hand was killed, and saw he was beat anyway, he simply didn’t argue the point. Had he had the winner, I believe that he would have been screaming bloody murder.
I think he was simply hoping that Bort would reveal something about the strength of his hand before time ran out. That’s why he was asking Bort things like “will you show your hand if I fold?” Whenever I hear that, it’s usually a sign of weakness. Of course, my opponent might think that I would think that so he might be trying to outlevel me.
I’ve always said that at some point poker is like rock-paper-scissors: If you’re one step ahead of your opponent, you win. However, if you’re two steps ahead, you’re really one step behind.
I don’t disagree that ending at 1 is the more relevant point, but when you consider it’s a human countdown, it kind of makes the whole thing shift into the funny category.
Note: This would have been a good subject for Seinfeld.