Making a stop at the Station(s)

Last night I played at two of the Station casinos--Texas Station and Santa Fe Station--each of which I had previously visited just once. I nabbed a bunch of short stories and observations about each.

The image above, incidentally, is not from North Las Vegas (where both of the above-mentioned casinos are located). Rather, it is Claude Monet, "Gare Saint Lazare: the Train from Normandy," 1877, a painting that one may see at the Art Institute of Chicago. About ten years ago that museum had a mind-blowing show, pulling together roughly 150 Monets--the largest assembly of his paintings in one place since the artist's death. I was privileged to see it. Best art experience of my life.

Texas Station

My friend James Klosty used to be a shift manager at the Hilton, then moved up to be the poker room manager at Fiesta Henderson. He sent me an email recently telling me that he had moved yet again, and is now in the same position at Texas Station. So I decided to go see what he has done with the place.

This is a small poker room--I counted nine tables. It's too smoky for my taste, with an ineffective half-wall on three sides, exposing players to smoke and noise from the surrounding main casino floor. Last night, a Friday, between 7:00 and 9:00, there were four tables in action, two $2-4 limit and two $4-8 limit hold'em games--nothing in the no-limit category. That alone will severely restrict my interest in returning. The games were pretty typical for a locals-oriented poker room. Most of the players plainly knew each other, and the dealers knew most of the players. There's a series of weekly freeroll tournaments going on now--qualify with ten hours of play--and a lot of the seats were filled with players punching the clock.

Texas Station's poker room is far from the worst of the lot, but, frankly, there isn't much there that would make me interested in visiting it again.


A variation on "I knew he had..."

One of the more annoying stupid things that people say at the poker table is "I knew he had..." (fill in: the straight, the flush, aces, or whatever). Of course, people only say this after their hunch is confirmed. It's pretty easy to be right 100% of the time when you only reveal your "prediction" after the evidence is in.

That's why it was refreshing last night to hear the very rare admission of an error. I won the biggest pot of the night with 7-8 of hearts in the hole when the flop came 4-5-6 rainbow. The betting had been capped with five players before the flop. My bet on the flop got three callers, two on the turn, and one called the river. The woman to my right said, after the hand, that she "knew" I couldn't have 7-8, because she "knew" that I wouldn't call all of that aggressive pre-flop betting with such a holding.

There have been only two or three times that I've noticed a player using the phrase "I knew" when describing what proves to have been an erroneous conclusion. Of course, nobody ever really knows what another player is holding--which is precisely why I find the whole "I knew he had..." post hoc boast to be so stupid and annoying. One's best guess or deduction does not constitute knowing in any meaningful sense. So I appreciated this young woman's honesty. Whether consciouly or not, she showed that what frequently and casually gets labeled as certain knowledge of what an opponent has is usually highly tenuous and fallible.


Applause for a unique rule

During a short stint at a $2-4 table while waiting for a $4-8 seat to open up, the player to my right asked the dealer to give the cards a scramble on the table before putting them into the Shufflemaster. This is a topic I've addressed before, here and here. I've never seen a dealer refuse the request--until last night.

To my great surprise, the dealer said, "I'm not allowed to do that. I have to call the floor." She called over the floor person, and was told that house rules do not permit giving the cards an extra "wash" before putting them in the Shufflemaster.

I wanted to stand up and cheer. Finally, a poker room that implements a rational policy that prevents stupid players from wasting everybody's time with a pointless gesture. Hoorah!

The only way this could be made better would be to have the rule specify that the dealer must administer a dope slap to the idiot player making the request, simultaneously asking "How stupid are you anyway?"


Somebody failed junior-high English

I spotted this sign just outside the Texas Station poker room last night. Notice the erroneous apostrophes in "10's" and "Ace's." Oddly, it's "Aces" in one spot and "Ace's" in another--apparently the sign writer wasn't sure, and so made one each way, figuring it was better to be half right and half wrong than to risk getting it wrong twice. Notice also that he manges to correctly make the plural of "flush" and "player" without inserting superfluous punctuation.

I'll never understand why so many people insist on using apostrophes to make a few randomly selected nouns plural. (There's an entire blog devoted to this pervasive problem. See here.)

Sante Fe Station

After I had had my fill of limit hold'em, and there was no sign of a no-limit game getting started, I left Texas Station and proceeded up Rancho Drive a couple of miles further northwest to Sante Fe Station. I had been to this place only once before. That was on opening day of "Lucky You." I took a friend out there to see the movie and try the then-new "Salt Lick BBQ" restaurant (pretty good, but mostly indistinguishable from about a thousand other barbecue places). There was a little down time before the show started, so I played maybe 30 minutes of limit hold'em while waiting.

Last night was surprisingly different. The place has 14 tables, and 12 of them were full, with waiting lists for everything. I had not anticipated it being so busy. They had only one cocktail waitress for the entire room, which just isn't enough for 12 tables. It took 45 minutes to get a lousy bottle of water.

As with Texas Station, this is primarily a locals casino. Many of the players clearly knew each other. Play was the standard weak/passive that one usually observes in such places. Easy to beat if you just pick your strong spots, and avoid bluffing, because you're surrounded by calling stations. (Hey, it just occurred to me--maybe that's why they named the casino chain the "Station" casinos!)

"All of a sudden..."

The funny line of the night came from a guy named Joe. Four players were in the hand, and nobody bet at it the whole way. The board ended up showing a straight, which nobody could beat, so the pot was chopped four ways; each player got his $2 back. Joe was at an end seat, and raised his hands like a catcher in baseball, encouraging the dealer to throw the two blue chips his way. She obliged. But at the last nanosecond, the player sitting next to Joe deftly reached out and single-handedly nabbed the two chips in mid-air--a very nice interception. He was just kidding around with his friend, and after pretending to pocket the chips put them down in front of Joe where they belonged.

Joe pointed to his buddy and quipped, "All of a sudden, he became my ex-wife!"


Whiner

I watched one guy win a small pot when he had pocket 8s and the other two 8s came on the flop. His lone opponent had nothing and folded to a small bet on the turn. He whined for five minutes about how he couldn't get paid off, and that it was his unluckiest day in poker.

The only thing worse than a player who whines when he loses is the guy who whines when he wins. (See here for a similar story.)

Don't trust your life to 911

As I was leaving Santa Fe Station, I passed through the intersection of Rancho and Lone Mountain Road, where I saw a very drunk guy stumbling around. He randomly staggered between the sidewalk and Rancho. Cars come along pretty fast on that stretch of this major street, and I was worried that he would stumble out at the wrong time and get hit. So I called 911 on my cell phone to report the situation, and hopefully have the cops take him somewhere safer to sleep it off.

I'm aware that calling 911 from a cell phone doesn't necessarily get you to the right people for help on the first try, because the systen isn't really set up to know where one is calling from. I'm used to having to specify where I am and what service is needed before being transferred to the appropriate call center. So when the call was answered, I quickly explained the location and problem, and heard, "One moment please while I transfer you." OK, that's cool.

Second call answerer. I go through it again. This time I am surprised to hear the "wait while I transfer you" again. A third person answers. I ask, "Do I really have to explain this for a third time?" She says she isn't aware of whatever I may have said to previous people. I'm annoyed, but I rattle off the information yet again. She asks which part of the intersection. I say the southwest corner. She then asks which of the two roads I'm traveling on (Rancho), and which direction. How can that matter, since I'm past it now? But I oblige. Then she wants a detailed description of the man in question--race, age, hair, shirt color and style, pants color and style, etc. After about three of these questions I'm getting seriously irritated, and finally cut her off with this: "Look, if your officers get to the intersection of Rancho and Lone Mountain Road and see a drunk guy stumbling around in the roadway, it's probably the same one I saw. And if he has left and there's a different drunk guy stumbling around into the road, then they can help him."

She apparently took the hint and stopped asking for further information. I still can't see the point of asking for all of those details. I mean, isn't it obvious that if they arrive at the intersection specified and see somebody wandering in the street drunk, that's probably the man in question, regardless of what color shirt he happens to be wearing?

I'm sure glad I wasn't trying to report a rape or murder in progress. It would have been done and the perp long gone before I (1) got transferred to the right agency, and (2) finished answering all of their pointless questions.