Tales from the Excalibur

1. Huge change in the works

The way I pick a room to play in on any given day is largely arbitrary, involving a lot of eeney-meeney-miney-moe. So it was purely a coincidence that I was at the Excalibur this evening when I learned that they had made a huge announcement earlier in the day: They will be closing their traditional poker tables and going to all electronic (apparently Poker Tek brand) tables. Apparently August 18 will be the last day of poker the old-fashioned way, and August 22 the first day of operation of the new wave.

I was excited to be the first to publicize this news, but when I got home a short time ago, I checked http://www.allvegaspoker.com/, and sure enough, there have already been two threads started about it, here and here. It's tough to beat that site for poker room news, when they have several hundred pairs of eyes and ears all over town, alert for just this sort of thing.

The comments there are nearly all laments. I don't share those views, at least not entirely. Poker needs growth and experimentation and differentiation. There may well be a market niche for this. People who are comfortable playing online but are intimidated by sitting down in a casino for the first time may find this a nice intermediate step.

Some will consider me a traitor and/or a fool, but if the games stay as soft and profitable there as they traditionally have been, I'll keep patronizing the Excalibur (assuming that I don't hate the electronic tables--and I have no reason to think that I will). Heck, they might even have a lower rake, with no dealers to pay. Tipping dealers constitutes a pretty small percentage of my poker income, but I can't say I'd object to pocketing that extra $10 or $20 per session. (That's just an offhand guess; I've never tried keeping track of what it amounts to.)

I welcome pretty much any innovation that keeps variety in how the game is offered to customers. I think it is silly doomsday posturing to say that this portends the beginning of the end of poker as we have known it. No, it's just an experiment. (To be clear, I haven't heard anybody at MGM or the Excalibur say that it's an experiment, but practically everything new in casinos is. If something new doesn't bring in good money, they get rid of it. If it makes them more profit, they enlarge and duplicate it. That's an experiment, in my book. This is the same deal.) If it doesn't bring in a lot of money, they'll dump it and other rooms won't be encouraged to copy the idea. (I think MGM has an exclusive license for installing the machines in Vegas anyway.) And if it does bring in lots of money, that will be because the poker-playing public finds it enjoyable, for whatever reason. That can't be a bad thing. What Vegas really doesn't need are 50-55 rooms all offering the same thing. Variety is good.

Incidentally, I have also heard rumors that when Stations opens its newest property, the Aliante, in North Las Vegas (tentatively scheduled for November 11), it, too, will have an all-electronic poker room.

2. Funny hand

Two seats to my right was a visitor from Canada, here to celebrate his 21st birthday. He was a horrible player, just spewing money. (Welcome to gambling, young man! Please rebuy until your wallet is empty!) He also had rather unmistakable psychological problems--ADD at least, and maybe in a manic phase of bipolar disorder. I don't think it would be possible to describe him without including the word "hyper" somewhere among the adjectives: he was restless, talkative, agitated, animated. Anytime somebody won a decent-sized pot, he'd yell "WHEEEEEEEEE!"

Anyway, in one hand he and one opponent went to the flop, which was A-7-8. Mr. ADD bet $30. His opponent called. For some reason, Mr. ADD either thought that no more cards were coming or that his opponent was now all in, and turned over his pocket kings. Oops. Well, there's nothing to be done about it except keep playing out the hand. The turn card was a 9. ADD checked. His opponent--a solid, unimaginative player, whose bets had always accurately represented the strength of his hand thus far--made another bet, maybe $50. ADD called. The river was a 6, putting four to a straight and four to a flush on the board (though not one that was completed by either of ADD's kings). ADD checked. His opponent moved all in. Mr. ADD called. His opponent didn't have either the straight or the flush, but did have A-K, and won the hand.

To be sure, some players will take advantage of the exposed cards and bet as a bluff. The logic is this: I want my opponent to think that I'm not crazy enough to bet if I can see his cards and know that I have the losing hand. Therefore, he should conclude that I have the winner and fold the better hand. But given that this particular opponent was a pretty untricky guy, that he had to have something strong enough to have called a large pre-flop bet, and that he had called $30 after an ace hit the flop, it was pure kamikaze insanity for Mr. ADD to keep calling two more large bets--quite enthusiastically put out by the opponent, I should add--after his kings were revealed. Pure stubbornness on display.

I had to work pretty hard to suppress a laugh when the obvious conclusion of the opponent having a strong ace proved to be true.

3. The Grump turns junk into gold

I had A-6 offsuit in the small blind. Nobody raised, so I tossed in the extra $1. The flop was A-9-2, rainbow. I bet just under the size of the pot, and got two callers. There were no straight or flush draws, so I naturally concluded that one or both of them was/were sitting on an ace, and probably with a better kicker than mine. Oh well.

But then the turn card was another ace. Ah! I like that. Maybe only one of them has an ace, and the other hit the 9 or had a medium pocket pair to explain the call. Or, if I'm really lucky, that explains both of them, and I'm the only one with trip aces now. So I bet again to find out, this time getting only one call. Hmmm. Well, the conclusion has to be the same--he has a better ace. Oh well. Time to shut it down for this hand, check the river and hope he checks behind so that I don't have a difficult decision to make.

To my great surprise, however, the dealer found yet another ace in the deck, and added it to the board! Let's see. That's one, two, three of them out there, and one under my silver dollar. That makes four. Now I'm pretty, pretty, pretty confident that my sole remaining opponent does not have an ace of his own. The only remaining question was how much he might call. I settled on $35. He called so quickly that I regretted not trying to push it higher. He had a 9, and said that he thought that I did, too, and thought that we would be chopping the pot, even saying that he simply didn't believe I had an ace. Dang. I wish I had pushed all in, hoping that it would look like I was trying to buy the pot and push him off, and getting the hero call in response. (I consistently find that to be the most difficult decision in poker--knowing how much an opponent will call when I have an absolutely unbeatable hand.)

Excalibur is the only place in town that I know of where there is a high-hand bonus for quads and straight flushes with only one hole card playing. Unlike most rooms, where there is a progressive jackpot amount increasing daily until it is hit, at Excalibur you get to spin the wheel of fortune. There are amounts ranging from $20 to $100, as well as a "double" and a "triple" space (after hitting which you get to spin again to see what amount will be doubled or tripled). I hit $35, about an average bonus, just half a click short of the "double" slot. But it's been several months since I hit any high-hand bonus, so I was pleased with even this small amount. And I had never gotten to spin that wheel before, so it added a bit of fun to my night.



4. Odd new chip

I noticed that the dealer was using very unusual chips to do the rake. They were denominated at $2.50. I had never seen $2.50 chips before. A very nice young woman (who also happened to be a fine player) was sitting on my right. It was clear from her interactions with the dealers that she was a local and played at the Excalibur a lot more than I tend to do. She told me that they just got these new chips within the last couple of weeks.

My first impulse was to buy one from the dealer, just to have such an unusual piece in my collection. But for some reason, I was overcome with a wave of self-consciousness at being thought an oddball. (I usually fully expect to be considered an oddball, and don't let it bother me, so I can't easily explain why this stifled my action on this particular occasion.) But then this nice young woman said, "I bought one the first day I saw them, 'cause they're so unusual." Yay! A fellow oddball! I chuckled and told her that I was just thinking of doing exactly the same. And so I did.

My scanner did a horrible job capturing the color. The chip is actually an intensely bright orange, akin to reflective safety vests and flags--really quite striking, whereas my scanner somehow picked it up as a dull pink. WAY off.