A night at Bill's

Last night at Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon turned out to be one of my few unprofitable sessions there. *sigh* It happens.

But there were some noteworthy things, which I collect below.


1.

Not long ago I reported that Bill's had changed its no-limit hold'em game from a single $1 blind to a more standard $1-$2 structure. That experiment did not last long. A little birdie tells me that the people who want to buy in for the minimum $20 (and there are a lot of them) were going broke too fast, and they couldn't keep the game going as consistently. So they have revised it yet again, and now run it as $0.50-$1. That seems reasonable to me. It means two people have money in the pot before the cards are dealt (unlike the original structure), and there's a little more there. It also means a lot more handling of 50-cent pieces, which is mildly annoying, but oh well.


2.

Bill's has joined other Harrah's properties in now allowing a button straddle. As elsewhere, this means that the blinds have to act first, which totally sucks. There should be, like, a constitutional amendment to end this abomination.


3.

Every time I think I've seen everything that can get screwed up in the conduct of a poker hand, somebody finds a new way.

Two players got it all in before the flop. The dealer put out the flop (Jh-8s-Jc), turn (Jd), and river (7h). The players involved showed A-Q (I didn't note the suits, but it didn't matter) and 9h-9d. It looked like a straightforward win for the pocket nines with a full house.

But when the dealer pushed up the two jacks on the flop, he uncovered an extra card. As you can see from the photo below, there had been an unseen fourth card on the flop: the 10d was hiding under the Jh.




I have many times seen dealers accidentally put out four cards on the flop. It is usually pretty straightforward how to handle this. The dealer and floor reconstruct how the cards were taken off of the deck, and thereby determine which card doesn't belong. It becomes the burn card for the turn, as it was supposed to have been. If they cannot confidently reconstruct how the cards came off of the deck, the procedure would be to reshuffle the deck and start the flop over again, though I don't think I've ever seen this resorted to.

Two things made this situation different. First, the players were both all-in before the flop, so there were no further decisions to make. Second, the error was not discovered until after the hand was apparently completed. I have never seen either of these conditions present when there has been an accidental four-card flop, let alone having both of them together.

Significantly, it made no difference which of the four cards on the flop were the "right" ones; any combination still yielded a win for the 9-9 over the A-Q.

Because of that fact, had I been the floor person, I think I would have ruled that the nines win the pot. Had the error been discovered immediately and the proper flop reconstructed before putting out the turn and river, that would have been the result. It doesn't make sense to me to change that just because of the delay in discovering the problem, as long as the outcome couldn't possibly change. However, if different combinations of the flop cards yield different winners of the hands, and the correct flop cannot be reconstructed with virtually 100% confidence, I would split the pot between the two players. Alternately, I suppose one could argue for reshuffling the deck as it was before the flop (i.e., including the board cards and burn cards, but not including the discards from players who folded), then dealing out an entirely new board.

Here, the floor called it a "fouled flop" (a term I have not heard before; a Google search finds it only on one web page, here) and chopped the pot. For the reasons stated above, I don't think this was the best decision for these specific circumstances, but this being a situation I've never encountered or even contemplated before, perhaps it's the correct one by the book.

As always, comments by experienced dealers and floor staff are welcome.

Caveat: There is a possibility that the turn card was actually the Kd rather than the Jd, in which case the content of the flop does matter, because the 10 would then give the A-Q a Broadway straight. I distinctly recall that my first impression was that of a full house, but my memory might be adversely influenced by the subsequent rush of trying to figure out what the right thing to do in this situation was. I also commented to the guy next to me that the outcome wouldn't change no matter what the flop was, and he concurred. Finally, when I blow my photo up and fiddle with the brightness and contrast a bit, there seems to be a "J" in the corner of the turn card.

But two things give me pause. First, you can see that the dealer pushed up the two jacks in the flop, but not the turn card; if he were seeing a full house, I would expect him to push forward all three jacks. If the turn card was a king, it would be easier for him to overlook pushing that forward, even though he technically should.

The second thing is that right after snapping the picture, I whipped out my pen and paper to record notes about the hand, and I wrote: "(10) J 8 J 7 K." I was doing that immediately after the cards had been swept away following the floor decision, so it was from short-term memory rather than copying what I was seeing. I think now that I just mistakenly wrote a "K" there. I also clearly inverted the order of the turn and river, which adds to the likelihood that my "K" was a mistake of memory. But now I can't be 100% sure. I did not watch the hand play out, because I had stepped away from the table to snap the next two photos you'll see. I only came back as the dealer was declaring the winner and the error was uncovered, so the whole thing caught me kind of off-guard.


4.

New toy at Bill's:





I did not inquire as to how one plays, what stakes it can be set up for, or exactly how one goes about winning entry to the WSOP using it (as the signage implies one can do). Call Bill's and ask them, if you're interested. See here for more about the machines.


5.

One of the annoyances of playing at Bill's is the frequent overhead announcement of names from the restaurant's waiting list.

Last night, though, I (and probably only I) got a kick out of one of them, when the loudspeaker called for, "Nietzsche, party of four. Nietzsche, party of four."

I would have been amused no end to see a guy in a Superman costume stand up and say, "Hey, I think that's for me!"

(A little philosophy humor there. If you don't get it, see here. It won't make you laugh, but at least you'll understand.)

Ah, well. An identical announcement has probably been made an infinite number of times before.

(Yes, that's yet more lame philosophy humor. See here.)


6.

Here's an observation I've had in mind to blog about for a long time now, but never previously got around to it.

What is the most useless casino employee? The restroom attendant. I don't need somebody to turn on the water faucet for me and hand me a paper towel. It does not make my life any easier or more pleasant. In fact, I find it instrusive and obnoxious. No tip EVAR!

One of the best skits in the whole history of "Saturday Night Live" had Kevin Nealon as "The Bathroom Attendant," paying just a little bit too much attention to customer Harvey Keitel. Nealon, in fact, says here that that was his favorite SNL role. (For the curious, the show aired January 16, 1993; Episode 18-11 (#337).) Sadly, the clip does not appear to be posted anywhere on the web, despite there being many people saying that they wish they could watch it again. There are any number of YouTube videos that mimic the same idea, but I doubt that any of them skewer the point as perfectly as Nealon and Keitel.

Anyway, these attendants seem to be cropping up in ever more casinos. I think Hard Rock was the first place I saw them. I was surprised when I later found one at Bally's. But last night, for the first time, there was one at Bill's. Bill's! This is not exactly top-dollar territory we're talking about.

Spare me.


7.

Interesting observation from an unknown player at our table:

"You cannot be the drunkest, most effed-up person in Vegas. I know. I've tried."


Addendum

I forgot one more story. Reader Minton was there with me for part of the session. At one point I had 2h-4h and flopped a flush. When I won at the showdown, Minton said, "That made me all tingly."