Guess the casino, #1003

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Answer: Mirage

Over and out

I'll be gone for a few days, off to Salt Lake City to visit the parental units.

To tide you over until I get back, here's the latest adventure in the life of the Mighty Deuce-Four:

Guess the casino, #1002

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Answer: Harrah's

Hodgepodge

First up, in the "What's in a screen name" category, we have this excellent example:

Second, it keeps on raining quads for me at Bodog. These two happened in the same game today:

Finally, no post would be complete without at least one example of the Mighty Deuce-Four at work. Here the flop was checked around. I bet the turn, on the strength of my sure-to-get-there draws, got one caller. He called again on the river. He had A-J with no spade. He thought that was enough to take down the Deuce-Four. I pity the fool!

Guess the casino, #1001

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Answer: Excalibur

I am pure awesome sauce

If you should doubt that, just ask Josie.

Screw-ups at Full Tilt

Excellent read about what may have happened, by Bill Rini:

http://www.billrini.com/2011/10/04/screwed-full-tilt-poker/

The part that doesn't ring true to me, however, is the bit about the big investors accepting ongoing payments, when they knew they really shouldn't, because they had to keep up appearances. I just don't buy the premise that Howard Lederer was depositing checks for millions of dollars at a time, while muttering under his breath, "Damn, I really hate that I have to take this money, but it's for the good of the company, so I'll do it."

Guess the casino, #1000

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

Answer: Binion's

Poker gems, #438

Tom Schneider, today on Pokerati.

The one thing I’m most curious about is Chris Ferguson. Why Jesus? Why did you let this happen to us Jesus? Why did you need that much money? It’s obvious that you didn’t spend it at the barber. Your clothing budget couldn’t have been very much since you have worn the same long, black, scary leather jacket for the last ten years. The poker community after review of all of the facts should take a vote on whether Jesus should be able to keep his name. Whatever, we probably couldn’t even organize that.

Barry Greenstein as judge of character

The news today is that Barry Greenstein and Doyle Brunson say they believe their friends over at Full Tilt Poker may have been incompetent businessmen, but they couldn't possibly have had any malicious, criminal intention.

See http://www.pokerlistings.com/brunson-greenstein-talk-full-tilt-poker-scandal-55027.

I want to focus just on Greenstein here. He is quoted saying, “There’s no doubt in my mind that their thought wasn’t ‘We’re going to steal from customers’ but when Black Friday hit it came at the absolute worst time for them.” Further, “Most of these guys on Team Full Tilt are friends of mine and most of them definitely didn’t know what was going on." And, finally, “I don’t think anyone believes that the initial intent was to defraud the customers, it just worked out that way in their method of fixing the problem."

Well, that's fine and noble of him. But how is Greestein's track record as a judge of character?

Here he is in 2008, speaking of Russ Hamilton, after going to his house to interview him specifically to determine whether Hamilton was guilty in the UltimateBlecch scandal: “This is being investigated and there’s no doubt in my mind that it will end up that Hamilton knew who the cheaters were, but I don’t get the feeling that we’ll be saying that Russ Hamilton is one of the cheaters.” “I didn’t get the feeling that he was that knowledgeable about what was going on as we hoped he would be.” “Russ seemed like he knew a couple of the guilty parties, but in the end, I don’t think it was him.”

We all know how that story turned out.

So it seems to me we have to conclude one of two things:

(A) Greenstein is an astute reader of human minds, he correctly assessed Hamilton's soul, and the poor guy is wrongly accused, as pure as the driven snow, despite all the evidence (only some of which was known at the time of Greenstein's interview), and despite the formal conclusions of the investigating gaming commission.

or

(B) Greenstein is a nice guy and tends to assume that other people are also nice guys, and he has a blind spot to the evil that men do. Furthermore, he has a habit of trusting his own gut feeling about people in preference to objective evidence. As a result, his comments about Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson and Rafe Furst should be viewed as the product of friendship and wishful thinking, rather than a reliable, objective assessment of the whole situation.

I know which way I'm voting.

Guess the casino, #999

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Answer: Tropicana

Guess the casino, #998

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Answer: MGM Grand

Poker gems, #437

Sam Trickett, in Party Poker Big Game 5, episode 2.

There's too many levels in this stupid game.

Bellande 2

Finally found video of the Bellande gambit I mentioned last night. Here ya go:

Deuce-Four at the WSOP

Pathetic little pocket queens try to take on the Mighty Deuce-Four. What do you think happens? LDO!

Personality test

Downtown Vegas is hopping this weekend, primarily because of Bikefest being in town.

The following were among the many unexpected sights seen on my walk to and from Binion's last night. The personality test comes down to this: Which do you prefer to look at?

A) Cute puppy.

(Apologies for the pictures all being so crappy. It was dark, my cell phone camera is not very good under the best of circumstances, and this little guy just WOULD NOT STAY STILL FOR A PORTRAIT!)

(Sorry, Jen, but he might have been ever cuter than Vinny, though that's a hard standard to beat.)

B) This woman (and/or the naked cowboy off to the side).

C) Cupid.

D) A Delorean, complete with Doc Brown impersonator (but, sadly, no flux capacitor).

E) Her. Or, um, him. Or whatever.

Me? I'll go for the puppy first, Delorean second. For the others, well, I think I'd prefer to scoop out my eyeballs with a rusty grapefruit spoon.

Trying Poker Tracker

I downloaded Poker Tracker 3 for its 60-day free trial. I've been waiting for version 4 to hit, but it seems to keep turning into vaporware. "Soon!" we are told endlessly. Well, maybe it will be out by the time 60 days are up. We'll see.

For now, though, I'll play with version 3 and see what it does for me. My initial impression is annoyance, because it puts the stats for a player with the name/avatar of the adjacent player until you manually move every one of the displays around--and you have to do this anew with every table. That's just bad design.

It also seems to have a weird glitch that it recognizes screen names across tables and combines stats for other players, but not for me. In the above screen shot, for example, you can see that "Ape567" has twice as many hands tracked as I do. We were at two tables simultaneously. The software correctly merged the information from both tables for him, but not for me, for reasons that are not at all obvious.

However, I do like being able to see mucked, unshown hands without having to open Bodog's hand history page.

I'm keeping an open mind on whether the advantages are worth the cost and fuss of it.

Guess the casino, #997

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

Answer: Hard Rock

Brer Bellande

I was watching this week's WSOP installments earlier today, and saw something unusual that I thought was worth commenting on. Jean-Robert Bellande raised with K-J and was rewarded by flopping a full house. He bet at it, got one caller. As it happened, the caller had 8-4, i.e., nothing at all. Bellande couldn't know whether the caller had caught a piece of the flop or was just floating him, but for his purposes, it didn't matter.

The turn card was something inconsequential. Here's where Bellande shined. He immediately started cutting out some chip stacks as if he were trying to settle on a bet size, but then looked up and checked instead.

I have seen this move hundreds of times, and I have never known it to be anything other than weakness. The player doing it is trying to convey strength to his opponent. The gesture is meant to make the opponent think, "That guy was about to make a big bet, but then checked instead. He must be trying to trap me, so I'll just check behind."

Bellande, however, was using it as a reverse tell, which I've never seen anyone do before. He knows perfectly well that that move is usually one performed by a player feigning strength, so he pulled it off when he was actually strong. It was brilliant. He pulled it off perfectly. I think I would have been suckered in if I had been the one in position against him. After you've seen it done a few dozen times, the move, meant to be intimidating, actually comes to resemble a green light.

That's certainly how the other guy with the big stack read it. He shoved. Bellande called, obviously, and got his double-up.

It was a really nice example of silently manipulating an opponent into doing exactly what you want him to do.

**********

"'I don't keer w'at you do wid me, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'so you don't fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas' me, Brer Fox' sezee, 'but don't fling me in dat brierpatch,' sezee.

"'Hit's so much trouble fer ter kindle a fier,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'dat I speck I'll hatter hang you,' sezee.

"'Hang me des ez high as you please, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'but do fer de Lord's sake don't fling me in dat brier- patch,' sezee.

"'I ain't got no string,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter drown you,' sezee.

"'Drown me des ez deep ez you please, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'but do don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee.

"'Dey ain't no water nigh,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en now I speck I'll hatter skin you,' sezee.

"'Skin me, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'snatch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,' sezee, 'but do please, Brer Fox, don't fling me in dat brier- patch,' sezee.

"Co'se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch 'im by de behime legs en slung 'im right in de middle er de brier-patch. Dar wuz a considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck de bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang 'roun' fer ter see w'at wuz gwineter happen. Bimeby he hear somebody call 'im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin' crosslegged on a chinkapin log koamin' de pitch outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer Fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed fer ter fling back some er his sass, en he holler out:

"'Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox—bred en bawn in a brier-patch!' en wid dat he skip out des ez lively ez a cricket in de embers."

From Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings, by Joel Chandler Harris, available here.

Clash of the titan hands

I was playing at Binion's tonight. At one point I had 8s-8d and limped. Button limped. Small blind raised to $17, an unusually high raise. This immediately suggested to me that he had one of those pairs that so many $1-2 NLHE players just don't know how to play after the flop--queens, jack, tens, and nines, with jacks being the #1 suspect, as that is the one hand with which I most commonly see the over-sized raise. I called, as did the button.

I flopped a set as I had hoped to do, but apparently I did not specify with sufficient clarity the texture of the flop that I wanted to go along with my set. What I got was 8c-9c-10c, which is maybe the worst possible flop containing an 8 that I could imagine. If I wasn't already on the bad end of a set-over-set situation, or up against a straight or a flush, about half the deck on the turn would give me a very hard decision and maybe an ulcer.

SB bet $30. He had both started the hand with $120 or so. I had a little more than that. I moved all in. Button folded. SB called instantly and enthusiastically. Ruh-roh.

It wasn't the worst possible scenario, but it was close. He had pocket jacks, include the jack of clubs, giving him an open-ended straight flush draw. Ugh.

I didn't have to nurse my ulcer for too long, though, as the dealer quickly found the case 8 for fourth street. That was awfully nice, but it still wasn't over.

Memo to the poker gods: When you've got quads made on the turn, YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE TO SWEAT THE RIVER!

At this point, another player helpfully announced that he had folded the 7c, which reduced the SB to one out. That helped me relax. I can usually dodge one-outers.

And I did. A harmless 10 hit the river, giving me quads full of tens, or something like that. I won the pot and a $50 jackpot--the minimum one, since it had just reset after somebody else had hit it a short time before.

And now for something complete different: A bonus story, having nothing to do with the above, except that they both took place in the same session.

I got up to throw away a water bottle. Coming back my seat (#1), I noticed a blue $1 chip on the floor between my chair and the dealer's. I knew I hadn't dropped any chips. I was pretty sure it must have come from one of two places. First, the dealer had gotten a fill of blue chips a short time before, and one of them could have been dropped unnoticed. Second, soon after I sat down, a young woman had joined the table across from me, and had dropped her chips on the floor as she tried to move them from the rack to the table. One of them could have easily rolled under the table in my direction.

So when the hand was over and the dealer could listen, I told her that I found a chip, and perhaps she should count her tray to see if one was missing. She did. The count was right, but then (and we are finally getting to the point of the story here) she added, "But I'm always willing to take donations."

Really? Begging? For a $1 chip you're reducing yourself to open, shameless begging? How low can you go? It was pathetic.

On the rare occasions that I find a stray chip on the floor around a poker table and nobody can plausibly claim it, my usual practice is to give it to the dealer as a tip. That wasn't my plan on this occasion, because I had a good idea who the rightful owner was, but if it had been the usual situation, that comment would have caused me to deviate from my normal course and keep the chip rather than rewarding the dealer's scummy groveling for it.

The woman who had dropped her chips earlier happened to be away from the table when this occurred, so I just rolled the chip over toward her seat. When she came back, she didn't question where it had come from, and I didn't volunteer anything about it. I saw no need to open the subject. I especially didn't want the woman to decide she wasn't sure it was hers and give it to the dealer. Let sleeping dogs lie.