Mesquite-flavored poker. Part 3--Oasis

The room

As suggested by the security guy at Virgin River (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/mesquite-flavored-poker-part-2-virgin.html), I drove over to the Oasis. Once again, I was favorably impressed with a Mesquite poker room. It's surprisingly large (I counted 15 tables), plenty of space between tables, elevated from the casino floor level. It's open to the casino floor, but far enough away from things that smoke and noise are minimal. I love the maroon-colored felt on the tables.

When I walked in at about 5:00 pm, they were just breaking up the only game they had going, so it looked like I wouldn't get to play. But the floor guy suggested that I try the 6:00 tournament. I wasn't really in the mood for a tourney, but I was hungry and had to eat, so the timing would be about right. I grabbed a magazine from the rack and went to Denny's (inside the casino). Finished just in time to sign up for the tournament.

The tournament

This was a rebuy event. I've done lots of tournaments with one rebuy, but I don't think I've ever played in an unlimited-rebuy one. There's a reason I avoid them: the ability to rebuy cheaply mostly takes away one of the tactics I rely on most, which is forcing opponents to difficult decisions for all of their chips. But since it was the only action available, I took it. Two tables, 20 players, four would be paid. Entry fee was $35 for $1000 in tournament chips, with unlimited $10 rebuys for the first hour (though you had to be at or below $1000 to rebuy), plus an optional $20 add-on for $4000 at the end of the rebuy period.

A comment on this structure: It's stupid, particularly the size of the add-on. You can see that chips are half the price then. This means that in the last hand or two of the rebuy period, here's what all except the biggest-stacked players are going to think: "Well, I've got 2000 in chips. I'm definitely going to rebuy. My chances against the big stacks are not much better with 6000 in chips than if I go broke now and start over again with just the 4000 add-on. But if I win a multi-way all-in pot at this point, then I've got a fighting chance." So, predictably, the last two hands become an all-in fest, with one lucky soul becoming one of the big stacks. It pushes luck to way too big of a factor.

The competition was unbelievably soft. There is just no question that I was the best player at the table. I realize that sounds like bragging, but it isn't--it's a comment on how bad everybody else was. For me to be the best tournament player at a table, with my extremely limited tournament experience, is saying something about the other players, not about me. There was not a single player there who had "raise or fold" as his main mode, with "call" being an occasional tool. Instead, it was a game of limp-limp-limp, bet-call-call-call-call, check-check-check-check, bet-fold-fold-fold. Complete and utter passivity. The only thing that distinguished the players from each other was that half of them were loose-weak and the rest tight-weak. I was chip leader for most of the first five levels, until a series of three nearly consecutive suckouts felted me in about 13th place.

The idiot

The guy on my immediate right turned out to be one of those idiots who somehow earnestly believe that unlucky outcomes are attributable to the dealer (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/11/idiots-blame-dealer.html). In one hand, he limped, I raised with K-K, it got folded back around to him, and he re-raised. The limp-reraise always smells of aces, but this was the loosest player at the table, playing about 75% of hands, and raising with a third of those. Besides, in a low-buy-in event, where the running ratio of average stack size to blinds is not high, it's virtually impossible to escape if you're on the bad end of AA vs. KK. So I push all-in, and the idiot calls. He has 10-10. To me he says, "Nice hand" (even before the five community cards are dealt). Then, nodding toward the dealer, he says, "It's typical of what John always does to me, fucking guy." He is not kidding. I just don't get how players can harbor that kind of moronic belief. Yeah, pal, he stacked the deck between hands when you weren't looking, just so that you'd lose. It's all a conspiracy against you. (Of course, it wasn't a conspiracy when that same dealer later delivered him a runner-runner flush, after all the money was in, to make his pockets 8s beat my flopped aces and tens, the first of the three hands that were my downfall.)

Cash game

Enough players had been knocked out by then that a cash game was about to get started, so I stuck around a little longer and got a seat in it. It was, again, a $4-$8 game. Like at Eureka, the table was very soft. I would peg two other players as being on par with me skill-wise, and, unfortunately, they were the two seats on my left. But they were both card-dead, so didn't cause as much trouble as they otherwise might have. Even though I'm by no means a limit specialist, I cleaned up, even without any extraordinarily lucky run of cards--uptick $138 in an hour and 20 minutes.

Nice touches

Let me mention just a few other admirable things I noticed about the Oasis poker room:

• As you can see from the last photo above, they have 50-cent chips instead of using half-dollar coins for making change from the pot when the house rake requires it. Every time I play in a place that uses silver, I wonder why they don't have 50-cent chips. Chips would be easier to handle for all involved. This is the first time I've seen a casino actually go that way. I like it. The only problem is that they won't cash out the last odd chip at the end of your session, so you either give it back as a tip or you've got yourself a souvenir.
• I love what they do with their magazine rack. Not only do they have four of the five publications I like most (Card Player, Bluff, Poker Player, and Poker Pro, lacking only All-In), but unlike any other casino I've seen, they keep the last three or four back issues of each one available. That way, if you're not a degenerate who goes to poker rooms with my kind of frequency, you can read and/or take home issues you might have missed. Nice touch.
• I have to applaud one dealer for something he did during the tournament. This is the same one--John--that had earlier been the target of the idiot's cursing. The idiot was in the big blind. A standard tournament rule is that if you're not in your seat when the deal is completed, your hand is automatically dead. This helps prevent slowing down the game, and also helps prevent people from possibly getting advice from other people before sitting down to a hand. Anyway, the dealer notices that the idiot is away from the table talking to somebody. As he's putting out everybody's second card, he goes out of his way to tell the player that he needs to get back or his hand will be killed. The idiot doesn't react quickly enough, and arrives about two seconds after the button got his second card. The dealer could easily have let it slide, but instead did the right thing and took back the idiot's cards, politely saying, "Sorry I have to do this, but it's the rule." Of course, Mr. Idiot can't blame himself, and says, "Great. He screws up and I have to pay for it." Huh??? Hey pal, even after you swore at him for an unlucky outcome, he went beyond the call of duty to try to cut you a break! He didn't screw anything up--he just enforced the rule properly. Kudos to him.
  

Like the Eureka, the Oasis is nice enough (and apparently profitable enough) that if it were in Vegas, I would definitely make it a regular stop. For the little town of Mesquite to have two such decent places speaks well for it.