Wynn versus Tuscany

Last summer I had kind of a strange day in which I played at both one of the worst poker hellholes in Nevada (Arizona Charlie's) and one of the most elegant poker rooms in the world (the Venetian)--see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/another-poker-dump.html. Yesterday was another such study in contrasts, but with a twist.

The Wynn is perhaps the most beautiful building in Las Vegas. Its poker room is one of the better ones in terms of personal service, action, dealer quality, general room management, ease of access, and range of games and limits regularly spread. (My main gripe about it is that the tables are too close together.) Yet I've only played there once before, in November, 2006. I lost $500 in a couple of hours. It was a brutal beating. It was one of those days where I seemed destined to have strong but second-best hands--the king-high flush to an opponent's ace-high flush, flopped top two pair versus a flopped set, etc. My recollection is that I wasn't really outclassed, but, at the same time, there was not a single soft spot at the table to be exploited.

That experience hurt enough that I have shied away from the place ever since. I returned today, initially prompted by the lure of the cute chips to pocket (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/03/maybe-most-adorable-poker-chips-ever.html), but also because I knew that the Wynn was a horse that had bucked me off, and I had to get back in that particular saddle again sooner or later.

There's no question that I'm a substantially better player now than I was in late 2006. Still, I chose a slightly tamer horse. This was particularly so because the Wynn's waters were sharkier than usual today (I believe in mixing my metaphors freely, as you can see), with the Wynn Classic series of tournaments in full swing. So I stuck with $4-$8 limit hold'em instead of plunging into what would otherwise usually be my normal $1-$3 no-limit game. Frankly, I wanted to be able to bleed more slowly if I ran into the same kind of day again. I figured that if things went well, I would have my confidence back for a run at no-limit the next time.

The table had two very good players, in the sense that they were tricky and aggressive enough that I usually had to simply guess whether I was ahead or behind in the hand, and with a low degree of confidence either way. The rest of the table was manageable, and only two players noticeably weaker than the average. I lost my first buy-in, but gradually ground my way to a profitable conclusion: up $172 in 3.9 hours. (I don't usually discuss my session outcomes this specifically, but there is a point this time.) I caught breaks about as often as others caught them against me, so didn't feel that luck was a huge factor in either direction. I think the outcome is probably about representative of my modest edge in skill over most of my opponents, and is probably in the ballpark of what would happen if I played $4-8 limit routinely.

Next I went to the Hard Rock, which is now in the final week of the 45-day trial period of the new "Royal Hold'em" game. (See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/interesting-new-holdem-variation-field.html.) I wanted to try it once more, since I don't know if or when it may reappear. But nobody was playing.

I didn't feel like driving back to the Strip, especially with the huge surge in traffic from NASCAR this weekend. The closest poker room to Hard Rock is at the Tuscany casino. I have only played there twice before, both times, coincidentally, also in November, 2006. I hated the place. The dealers weren't very good, it reeked heavily of smoke, there was only one table going, often short-handed, and both times there was at least one truly obnoxious player making everybody miserable, with the poker room staff doing little or nothing to curb it.

Nevertheless, both times the games were extremely soft, and the Tuscany has remained at the top of my per-session profit standings. (I haven't mentioned it before when discussing such things, because usually I include only the places where I've played at least five times, in recognition of the fact that it takes at least that many times to even out some of the random variation.) So I decided to give them another chance today.

It's still much too smokey. There was still only one table going. Although this time there was one very good dealer, there was also one who just didn't pay attention to his work. There was, again, an incredibly rude player, who, after I put a mildly bad beat on her, looked the dealer square in the eye and said, "You're a fucking asshole." Again, nobody seemed to find this particularly out of the ordinary, worth calling the floor person over to give her a warning, etc. It's as if they just expect players to be uncouth there, and the players fully expect to be able to get away with it.

But that other alluring aspect has also remained constant: I racked up a $699 profit in 1.8 hours of $1-$2 no-limit hold'em, and didn't even have to break a sweat. These were seriously bad players, and they weren't even drunk, as far as I could tell.

I had one very difficult decision to make, when an opponent, new to the table, pushed all-in on the river when I had just top pair (ace) with a jack kicker, on a scary board full of straight and flush possibilities. When I finally called, he showed his ace with a deuce kicker, and I took down the biggest pot of the night.

Other than that one tough moment, I basically just ran over the table, bullying with position and a big stack, getting away with bluffs while picking off other peoples', inducing calls when I had strong hands, etc. Look, I know I sound terribly arrogant here, but I'm being as objective as I can be when I say that there wasn't another player there that came even close to my skill level. And that's not because I'm super-high on the ability scale myself. I think I maintain a pretty realistic assessment of my skill with respect to the rest of the poker world at large, and I know that I'm about as low on the totem pole as one could be and actually have a shot at making a subsistence-level living at this game. But below me is a vast sea of people who really have no clue what they are doing, and don't have a prayer of long-term success against opponents of even my modest talent.

What Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) says in "Rounders" is so true. As two tourists sit down among Mike and some of the other New York grinders at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, we hear his voiceover:

These two have no idea what they're about to walk into. Down here to have a
good time, they figure, why not give poker a try? After all, how different can
it be from the home games they've played their whole lives? All the luck in the
world isn't gonna change things for these guys. They're simply overmatched... They wear their tells like signs around their necks--facial tics, nervous fingers, a hand over a mouth, the way a cigarette is smoked. Little unconscious gestures that reveal the cards in their hands. We catch everything.

As others have observed, it's very easy to think that one understands this game a whole hell of a lot better than one really does. I look back at when I first started playing online maybe four years ago and thought I had a decent handle on it. I was so wrong.

I'm as certain as I can be that every other player at the Tuscany tonight is in that same place, thinking they understand the game, when they don't. (And, of course, that's just what the highest-level pros would say about me where I am. But at least I have the advantage of being acutely aware of my deficiencies and weaknesses. I know full well that there are whole levels upon levels of deep understanding into which I have only glimmers of insight.)

I'm in this to make money, not to find the best table-side dinner service in town, or to gain prestige from being able to say that I'm a regular at the Wynn, Bellagio, and Mirage. The Tuscany is a dump, but it has lots of low-hanging fruit to be picked. A reader recently emailed and asked why I don't spend more time talking about the high-end rooms. Well, frankly, it's because I don't spend much time in them. I want the money-making to be as easy and painless and consistent as it can be. The high-end rooms are the daily offices of the best players in town. Why would I spend most of my time where I'm as likely to be the prey as the predator?

So here's my study in contrasts for today: The gorgeous Wynn, with what I think is one of the toughest games in town at the limits that I play, or what is nominally the same game at the same limits at the crappy, icky Tuscany, with players just shoving their stacks of chips my way, where I now average a bit over $200 per hour in profit?

Please excuse me while I go put the Tuscany on my speed dial.



*The lines I'm leaving out are these:

We're not playing together, but then again, we're not playing against each other either. It's like the Nature Channel. You don't see piranhas eating each other, do you?

The DVD has an audio commentary track with Phil Hellmuth, Chris Ferguson, and Johnny Chan. They all simultaneously break into protest at these lines. Yes, they insist, they are absolutely playing against each other.

I believe them. I think the "Rounders" writers either misunderstood or misrepresented how the poker world operates. Jennifer Harman and Erick Lindgren are two of Daniel Negreanu's closest friends, but at the poker table he will use every bit of skill and deception he can muster to take as many of their chips as he can lay his hands on, and they will do the same to him. At the same time, however, they have sufficient respect for each other that there is a necessary element of caution that would be much less of a factor when playing against inexperienced amateurs. It's not that the pros avoid confrontations with each other because of wanting to go easy on them due to the friendships; it's that in a mixed game there are other, easier targets to pick on.

The pirahnas of poker will definitely feed on each other, given a juicy opportunity. It's just a whole lot easier to get your meal from something that isn't quite as inclined to bite back.