Fun at Bill's

I had another successful session at Bill's Gambling Hall and Saloon last night--up $397 in what was for me an unusually long stretch at the table, 7 1/2 hours, not leaving until almost 4:00 a.m. I kept wanting to leave, but there was a never-ending stream of new players replacing the ones busting out, and, well, their money was just too easy to take for me to leave, as long as I was still alert enough to be making good decisions. I'm perfectly content with $53/hour.

Actually, that's almost exactly my hourly average for Bill's. I've played there six times now, five winning session and one clunker. Net win of $1399 over 24.8 hours, for an average of $56/hour.

Folks, I've gotta say something here. As recently as several months ago, you could have a meaningful debate about where the worst poker players in town were to be found. You might have made a plausible case for Tuscany, Sahara, Riviera, Excalibur, Stratosphere, Imperial Palace, O'Shea's, or a few other joints.

No more. The debate ended on May 13, 2008, when Bill's opened its doors. If anybody tries to tell you that the worst players congregate at some other casino, it is only because said person has not played at Bill's.

Examples just from last night:

-- I had K-K, and hit a miraculous flop of J-K-K (as if I needed more evidence that my recent horrible streak of bad luck was over), and took the entire stack of a young woman who just didn't believe that I had hit any of that, and thought her J-Q was good.

-- On a flop of J-J-10, I watched a raising war ensue between two players, who both ended up all in. I had been trying to guess which of them had the overpair and which had A-J or maybe K-J. Boy, was I wrong. One had 9-9. The other had A-K (with no flush draw).

-- A player raised from under the gun to $5. (Bill's plays with a single $1 blind.) I reraised to $15 with A-K. He called. The flop was A-10-2. My opponent bet $20. I raised to $60. He moved all in for an additional $84. Yuck. Top pair/top kicker is nice to have, but it's not good enough to bet the farm on. Nevertheless, given the stack sizes, I thought I couldn't get away from it. I actually found myself wishing he had more, so that I could make a better case to myself for folding. I reluctantly put in the additional chips, while saying, "At this point, I think the best I can hope for is that we have the same hand." I meant it, too. Usually in this situation, I'm up against a flopped two pair or even a flopped set (aces or 10s), and I'm in deep doo-doo. My opponent turned over A-9. Let me say that again: A-9. He raised from under the gun, called my reraise from out of position, then bet the flop and moved all in over my flop raise. With A-9. Big Slick held up for me. This player then rebought, and if you think he was bad before, you should have seen him when he was on tilt!

I hope it's obvious from such stories that bluffing at Bill's is throwing away your money. You will get called, often in more than one place, pretty much no matter what cards you're holding or what the board shows.

For the most part at Bill's, you have to be satisfied with rather small pots. This is partly due to the unusual blind structure, but more due to the incredibly low buy-in: just $20 gets you a no-limit seat. This attracts lots of people who have never played poker before, and/or who didn't intend to play that day and just happened to walk by a couple of poker tables at the edge of the casino floor. Of course, they play any two cards, and with ultra-short stacks, quickly find themselves pot committed. But then they keep rebuying for $20 or $40 or $50. So you can get all of their money without too much difficulty--you just have to do it in smaller chunks. I don't mind this at all. It also means that I'm risking less loss to the inevitable bad beats that they will score against me. When they occur, I think of it as just lending them some chips for a while....

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Although the easy money was the main motivation, at least a small part of the reason I stayed longer than usual was because I had two fun and funny guys to my left, in Seat Two and Seat Three. (I was in Seat One, as per my usual preference.) They made it one of the most socially enjoyable poker sessions I've had in a long time.

I've mentioned many times in this blog that I'm really not a gambler at heart. I don't feel any need to constantly be in action, don't find any allure in slots or table games or sports betting. But last night there was a prop bet that was just too fun to pass up.

Right next to Bill's poker tables is a bank of four video slots. They are networked, and over the top of them is a big monitor. Every once in a while, a bonus feature pops up there. There are several different ones, all involving cute cartoon pigs. One of the rotating features is a piggy foot race. The only picture I could find of it on the manufacturer's web site is above--you can just barely see it below the "Bigger Bang Big Event" banner. I don't know the details, but somehow which pig wins the race determines which of the slot players wins a bonus, and how much it is. The outcome is pretty clearly random.

There are five pigs that run this race. The guy in Seat Two proposed that the three of us each bet $1 on the pig corresponding to our seat numbers, with the bottom lane designated as 1. This is obviously a break-even proposition, in which nobody has an edge, cost only a buck, and not only seemed like a bit of fun, but would have been practically rude to turn down. So I joined in. It's like betting on those dumb mechanical horse races that a few casinos still have, though with no house overlay.

Well, the first two races had to be declared a push, because they were won by either Pig 4 or Pig 5. The next two? Piggy #1 took them both. Then there were two more wins by 4 and 5, so no prop winner. Unfortunately for our fun, people stopped playing the machines after that, so our game was over.

My first venture into poker table prop betting? 100% success. Up $4. Thank you very much. I feel that I have mastered the prop bet, much as I mastered sports handicapping earlier this year.

You know what the three of us concluded? Video slot machine pig racing is TOTALLY rigged!

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I learned a new little fact last night, completely unrelated to poker.

Some casinos put on their employees' nametags a notation of where the person hails from. I don't know why. Perhaps it's meant to spark conversations. One of the dealers last night was wearing such a nametag. I noticed that it read:

DIANE
VIET NAM

Like the smartass I can be sometimes, I said to her, "Who is it in the nametag-making department that thinks 'Vietnam' is two words?"

She said, "It is."

I thought she was kidding, but nope. She told me that in Vietnamese all words are a single syllable. (How's that for another interesting random fact?!) To her and other Vietnamese, seeing "Vietnam" looks all wrong. This is sort of confirmed by the first bit of the Wikipedia entry on the country. I suppose it's roughly equivalent to how something like "Unitedstates" would look to us.

In all my 47 years, I don't recall ever seeing the name written as "Viet Nam." Maybe I have and just missed it, but I think it would jump out at me as looking wrong, just as it did when I saw that on Diane's nametag, and therefore stick in my memory.

Who knew?!