Night of strangeness

Last night was another of those days when a bunch of little odd things happened, which I will collect into a single omnibus post.


The weirdness of variance

I started the evening at the Palms. It was one of those magical sessions where everything went right. I did not lose a single hand at showdown. If I had A-Q, I'd get a flop like Q-8-2, and get my bets called down on every street by a guy holding Q-J. Never had a bluff called, never called what I thought was a bluff without being right. I didn't do anything tricky, really--just ABC poker. I made $270 in a little less than two hours, way above my average earning rate, not because I played like a genius, but because there always seemed to be somebody with the second-best hand willing to pay me off, which makes all the difference in one's profit.

I'm playing very conservatively these days, in terms of bankroll management, because even after the second half of August turned around for me, I still finished the month about $1200 down, due to the devastating first half of the month. So until the bankroll fully recovers, I'm looking to hit-and-run more than usual--make $100 to $300 somewhere and leave to lock in that profit. Conventional wisdom is that if a game is good, you should stay as long as it remains good. That means risking what I've made so far, rather than packing up and leaving. In normal times, I'm entirely willing to do that, hoping to turn a small profit into a big profit. But for the time being, I need to get my wins in smaller, surer chunks, risking as little as possible.

That's why I left after less than two hours, even though the game still seemed beatable, and went in search of profit elsewhere. I moseyed down the road to Bill's, always a reliable money-maker. But it was a very different crowd at Bill's last night than usual. More of the seats were occupied by decent players. There were still two or three pure calling stations, but there were people with whom I could actually play poker, if you know what I mean.

But I took a big hit early, and spent the rest of the session s-l-o-w-l-y grinding my way back up. Finally I made it, and was actually up by a whole $4 after 3 1/2 hours of play! The climb back was hard enough that I did not feel like pressing things any further, so I clocked out.

So that's the weirdness of variance in this always-unpredictable game: At the Palms, where the game is usually juicy but with high variance because of a lot of bluffers and gamblers, my stack just rose rapidly and steadily upward, and I made $147/hour with never a really difficult decision to make. Then at Bill's, where I can usually take people's money without even breaking a sweat, it was a mighty up-and-down struggle just to make $1/hour.

Go figure.


What do you do with a marked card?

The last time I was at Bill's (August 27), I had noticed that the five of spades had a visibly worn spot on its back. I did my usual procedure--waited until I had seen it twice and confirmed both times that I could identify it, then waited again until there was a moment when it was folded by another player and I could "name that card" to the dealer, thus proving that the card was indeed identifiable by its back. They took that deck out of play and replaced it.

Naturally, I assumed that they would replace the defective card before putting the deck back into use. So I was quite surprised last night when, on one deal, I noticed a little worn spot on one of my hole cards before I looked at them, and then discovered that it was the five of spades! They had simply taken the deck with the bad card out of use for that night, then put it back into service the next day without replacing the card.

This is inexcusable. I've railed before about the Flamingo's reluctance to replace a defective card. Now I have to tar Bill's with the same brush.

Message to dealers and floor staff at Bill's (and everyplace else, for that matter): When a player points out an identifiable defect in a card back, especially when he does so in a manner that proves that he can tell what the card is without looking at its face, it is your duty and obligation to replace that card. Period. No exceptions, no excuses. Even if you think that only one player in a thousand is observant enough (or obsessive enough, or nitty enough, or however you'd like to describe it) to notice, and even if you're right about that guess, that is all it takes to taint the game. If you care anything at all about game integrity, you must replace a card that even one person can identify.

Last night I again waited for an appropriate moment. When the dealer had finished the scramble and was about to start the shuffle, I noticed that the marked card was on top of the deck, so I quickly pointed it out to her, saying, "If that's the five of spades, I think you should replace it." It was, of course. This time, I was disgusted enough with how they had handled the situation that I took the card from her and deliberately creased it myself--something I've never done in a casino before--so that they couldn't pull the same inadequate, cheap-ass trick of just taking the deck out of circulation for one night, then using it again without actually remedying the problem.

Shame on you, Bill's.


Close but no cigar

An off-duty Bill's/Imperial Palace dealer was one of the players at the table last night. He was a good player and a lot of fun to spend time with.

I wasn't paying much attention to the hand in which this occurred, because I wasn't involved. (Yeah, I know I should watch everything all the time. But attention does lapse sometimes.) On the last street, I became aware that he was acting really strange, taking way longer than he had before, staring at the pot, etc. I couldn't tell what was going on. There were two 7s and two queens on board, so I assumed he had a difficult decision to make--double-paired boards tend to be very tricky to play. But then he did the strangest thing: he made the absolute minimum bet of $1. That made no sense at all. Even stranger, his only remaining opponent folded. Heck, I'd call almost anything for a $1 bet.

When he folded, the dealer-player shouted "No!" and sunk his head down.

Here's why. He had flopped quad 7s. Bill's recently instituted high-hand jackpots. I think it's $50 for four of a kind and $100 for straight flushes, but don't quote me on that. But as with my recent incident at the Palms, the pot was $1 short of what it needed to be to qualify for the jackpot. So he was trying to communicate to his opponent what was going on and induce a mercy call, without violating the rules about discussing the hand in progress. (Uncalled bets do not count as part of the pot for purposes of the jackpot requirements.)

After it was over, people naturally asked him why he wasn't just more open about the situation, tell the other player that he'd reimburse him for the call if he called and lost, or other such trickery that people often resort to in this spot. He said, honorably and admirably, "I'm not going to cheat the casino I work for." (Of course, one shouldn't cheat any other casino either. I don't think he was implying that he would act unethically elsewhere--just that he felt an especially acute obligation to stay entirely clear of even any gray zones where his own facility was involved.)

No jackpot for you!


Readers, readers everywhere!

I've had a good number of readers spot me and say hello at in a poker room. But last night broke the record. It had never been more than one in a day before, and yesterday it was three! I had one sharing the table at the Palms, then two sharing the table at Bill's! That's pretty statistically amazing, when you consider the number of people playing poker in Las Vegas yesterday evening, and the percentage of the poker-playing public that are readers of this blog (still just a tiny, elite minority, I'm afraid).

Because of the ensuing conversation, two other players asked for the URL, and I wrote it down for them, so perhaps there are two new readers today as a result. If so, welcome to them.

Always a pleasure to meet you folks.