New Harrah's poker room

Yesterday my friend "Apollo" tweeted a picture of a new poker room at Harrah's. This surprised me, as I had not heard that a move was in the works.

Today by coincidence I was at Harrah's. I have a friend visiting from out of town, and we decided to see the Mac King magic show. While I was there, I stopped to have a peek at the new room:

I don't play much at Harrah's, because it's a place where for some reason I have historically tended to lose more than I win. But on the occasions that I did play there, the things that I especially liked were that it was basically a hermetically sealed room. It was as perfectly isolated from casino smoke and noise as any poker room I've ever been in.

No more. Now it's right out on the casino floor, with just a low half-wall marking its border. Which means that there is no protection from the noise, and people will come and stand right next to the wall and smoke while they watch a poker game two feet away. Ick.

So now I'll have even less reason to play there than I did before.

I also stopped by the old poker room to see what was being done with it. Kind of hard to tell:

This is taken from the door leading to the sports book area.

The old Harrah's poker room is also where I first met Cardgrrl. She was standing about where that plastic bag in the foreground is.

Everything changes in Vegas.

Out of date

C'mon, dude--everybody knows that it's called the Dank now, not the Mookie. (Or maybe it's not called anything anymore, what with Black Friday and all.)

Spotted in the Harrah's parking garage Thursday night.

Harrah's = Classy (not!)

An email I received today:




And here's the web page it linked to:



(Notice that which Playmates are promised to appear somehow changed between them sending the email and me clicking on it about two minutes later. Notice also the wonderful headline, "House of Blue Poker Open." As in, y'know, B.B. King sings the blue.)

This is, of course, the same Harrah's corporation that earlier this month introduced had scantily clad young women holding seat number signs as the final nine players in the Main Event were introduced.

This is also the same Harrah's that claims, with a straight face, to hold a special women-only poker tournament in the WSOP because it is trying to make women feel more comfortable about poker.

You figure it out. I can't.

Harrah's = Stupid

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Harrah's inviting me to enter a freeroll tournament. I could choose between poker, slots, and video poker. Well, that's a no-brainer. The offer includes up to two nights at either Harrah's or Imperial Palace.

Today I finally got around to trying to make my reservation. The first problem was that even though the email said that I could use the Harrah's Total Rewards web site to make the reservation, I actually couldn't. I kept trying to enter the offer code from the email into the web site, but the web site kept responding that that was a code that had to be handled by phone instead. Why can't companies get such little things straight?

Fine. I called. I worked my way through the idiotic menu. I gave them my Total Rewards card number and the offer code. The nice lady on the phone asked which nights I wanted to make my hotel reservations for. I told her I didn't really want to say in their hotels, I preferred just staying home in my own bed, since I live in town, and all I was really interested in was the poker tournament. She was sympathetic, but said that it was all a package deal, and if I didn't take the free hotel room, I couldn't get the free tournament entry.

Fine. The tournament is on November 29-December 1, so I picked November 29 for my hotel reservation, at Harrah's. We got that arranged. Then I asked about the poker tournament. She didn't know anything about it--you know, little details like what time to show up. She assured me that I would be given all the necessary information when I checked in to my hotel room.

You do see the flaw in this plan, don't you? She didn't. I gently explained that if I'm checking into my hotel room on the evening of November 29th, that's just a wee bit too late to be giving me information about a poker tournament that will have started earlier that day.

She gave me to understand that there are, in fact, three separate tournaments, and I can enter two of them, so on the evening of the 29th I will be given the required information and can enter the poker tournaments on both November 30th and December 1st.

I'm not going to stay in the hotel room. I know some locals love getting a free "staycation" at the casinos. Not me. To me it's just a bother having to pack stuff for an overnight bag, to be followed by a sub-par night of sleep in an unfamiliar bed and room, followed by having to get up in the morning and drive home before I can do my morning routine things like check my email and RSS feeds. It's just a bother to me with no compensatory up-side.

So what I will do is play poker at Harrah's (or maybe IP) that afternoon or evening, do a fake check-in at the Harrah's desk (I worry that even if I got the detailed tourney info somewhere else, if I don't actually complete the check-in process as scheduled, they'll cancel my tournament eligibility), get the required information and/or tournament entry receipt or whatever, then immediately hand them back the room key and tell them I'm checking out.

This "can't have one without the other" would make some sense if I were paying for the room, like a "buy one get one free" offer. But that's not what this is. It's a free room. I don't want the free room, I only want the free poker tournament entries that come with it. I suppose the corporate thinking is that if I'm physically staying in the hotel, I'll gamble and eat in their restaurants, drink at their bars, and they'll make money from me that way. But I won't, other than poker. Even if I did stay overnight (which isn't my plan), I would either just drive home to eat, or maybe have a free breakfast at their cafe, using my Total Rewards comp points.

It's sheer corporate idiocy. Why can't they just give me the free tournament entry, without making me jump through stupid hoops that will end up costing them money (an unused room, staff time to get me checked in and out, etc.)?

Not my night

Played at Harrah's. Lost the first chunk with Q-Q. Flop 9-2-3 rainbow. Looked safe, so I moved all-in, as my only opponent was fairly short-stacked. He called. I showed the queens. Board played out 4-5, at which point he turned over 4-5 for runner-runner two pair. Sigh.

Lost the rest in an even more diseased fashion. 10-10 in the hole. Raise. Four callers. Flop Js-9c-10s. Checked to me. I ship it all in. Pay for your draws, fellas. Two callers, so I can't show yet. Turn: Jh. Now with a full house, I relax about the draws. One remaining opponent bets enough to put the other all in, gets a call. River: 10h for quads. Now I'm really relaxed about those draws.

Until the other guy flips over his J-J for better quads.




To rub salt in the wound, Harrah's does not have a bad-beat jackpot these days (though they used to). It is the first time I have ever been in on a hand that would qualify for a bad-beat jackpot by the usual criteria.

To pour some alcohol into the already salted wound, the floor guy checks their house rule book and finds that when there are two high hands at the same time, only the winner collects the high-hand bonus.

I left with nothing but a hard-to-top cooler story, and the package of Double-Stuf Oreos I bought on the way home for self-soothing.

Pictures from around town (4)

On the way out of the Paris theater, we passed a display case with this in it:




It's an outfit that Barry Manilow wore (once? often? I don't know.) in concert for "Copacabana." I think it is otherwise best left without comment.


I walked Cardgrrl back to her hotel room at Harrah's. I wanted something to drink, so stopped at this vending machine on her floor:



I was struck by the message you can see at the bottom: "Thanks for choosing Pepsi."

Wrong! I did not choose Pepsi. Pepsi has an exclusive contract with all of the Harrah's properties. You can't choose a Coke even if you wanted to (and I would).

From Cardgrrl's 12th-floor hotel window there was a nice view of the Mirage volcano erupting, which seems a fitting conclusion to this photo series:

Five live

I have played in five live poker tournaments over the past ten days or so, which is highly unusual for me.

1.

The first was last Monday at the Venetian. A reader generously offered to pay my buy-in for the nightly 7:00 tournament, to give him a chance to meet me and to say thanks for the blog. (He cleverly titled his introductory email, "Free money," which effectively got my attention.) This is a pretty well-structured tournament, except for one boneheaded part in which the blinds and antes increase way too much in one step.

My favorite hand was one fairly early in the game in which I called a preflop raise, along with about six others, with 7-9 of diamonds. The flop was 9h-8d-2d, giving me top pair and a flush draw. I checked. The original raiser bet, followed by a couple of callers, then I put in a big check-raise, which narrowed the field to just me and one older gentleman. The turn was the 6s. Now I had top pair, a flush draw, and an open-ended straight draw, with about half my stack in a very large pot. Well, duh! I don't need too many instructional videos to tell me how to play this. Shove. The other guy called. He had Ad-xd for just the nut flush draw. The river was the 5c, completing my straight, though just the pair was all it took to win. The gentleman shook my hand at the next break (he was left very short-stacked, but doubled up a couple of times to survive) and told me he realized what a dumb move he had made and that he should have known better.

But that hand was all I could do. There followed a long stretch without any forward progress. Before too long I was in fold-or-shove mode. I managed to steal the blinds about as often as I had to pay them, keeping myself afloat, but without making any headway. This happened ten times or so without ever getting called. Finally I did it from the small blind with 10-10, and was called by a doofus with 10-9 offsuit. The board came with a 7, 8, and J to give him a straight, despite me being an 85/15 favorite going in. And that was that.

The tournament also gave me the chance to meet one of my Twitter followers, youknoyoulov3me. She was at my table for the latter part of the tournament. I gather she is a dealer at Bellagio, and is self-evidently a fine player.

Thanks again to Matt for the freeroll!

2.

Cardgrrl was in town, of course. One of her reasons for coming was a get-together of folks she knows from Poker Academy, an online site where she did much of her early poker learning. The group had a private tournament Wednesday at noon at Harrah's. The Harrah's structure is thin and fast, with virtually no room to recover from an error or bad beat. It's an amateur-hour luckfest.

I chipped up some early on, but within an hour suffered a pretty horrible beat. I called a raise with A-K. Flop came king-high. Original raiser shoves with K-J. I call. Jack on the river for the 3-outer. That left me short-stacked. Then I was in the big blind with Q-6 (I think; not sure of the kicker now). Under-the-gun guy had limped, so it was just us seeing the flop. It was Q-8-9, so I shoved. He called, having flopped the nuts with J-10. That left me in "any two cards" mode. I don't even remember what hand I put it in with, nor what I was called with, but it didn't turn out well.

Still, it was a fun bunch of people to play with. I even got to steal a pot holding the mighty 2-4, and showed it. After all, this crew is from "Poker Academy"--they're there to learn, right? They need to know about invincible hands.

3.

Friday night at Treasure Island was the first of two tournaments sponsored by http://www.allvegaspoker.com/. It was a kind of strange mixed-game format, with Omaha-8, deuce-to-seven triple draw, stud-8, and razz. The fun of this was that--let's face it--none of us really knew what we were doing much of the time.

My favorite hand of the tourney was at the final table when I was dealt "number one," 2-3-4-5-7, in triple-draw. I expect it will be a long, long time before that happens again. I didn't play it optimally. After David Stucke raised, I three-bet it, when it clearly would have been better to flat-call and let a couple of others in. The chance that anybody would even tie me for the pot was negligible. But the tourney ran much longer than the organizers expected (we ran several past the number of levels they had planned out), so we had been playing for seven hours at that point. To make matters worse, I had eaten something that rather unpleasantly disagreed with me, and had been focusing mostly on not throwing up all over the poker table (which I believe constitutes grounds for a time-out). Combine that with having next to zero experience with triple-draw, and it explains why I didn't play it better. David put in a few more chips and was all in. I called, obviously. (I wasn't quite so impaired as to fold the stone-cold nuts.) I made another mistake at this point, though not too critical: I put my cards face-up on the table. I'm just so used to there being no more decisions to be made after all the chips are in that I forgot that there remained three decision points in this hand, even with no more betting to be done. It didn't really matter, though. Even if you know that you have to improve all the way to #1 in order to chop the pot, it's awfully difficult to do, and the cards didn't cooperate for David. He finished in 8th place.

Four spots were paying, but we negotiated a chop when there were six of us left. I was second in chips by that point, and was one of two people to take $300. (Entry fee was $65.) Two others took $275, and the remaining two (including Cardgrrl) took $250 each.

More details, comments from the players, and lots of photos of both AVP events are available here.

4.

The second part of the AVP bash was a no-limit hold'em tournament Saturday at the Mirage. Not much to report about it. I just never got anything going. On my last hand I got it all in pretty decently, with A-K versus 5-5 for my 10-BB stack, and couldn't improve for the double-up. Oh well.

Cardgrrl did extremely well again, finishing in fourth place (six spots paid). She was the only one to cash in both AVP events, which tells you something of her ability. She is a threat to win in essentially any tournament she enters. I was, as always, very proud of her.

5.

Tuesday evening, after Cardgrrl had left, I was at Harrah's planning to play cash. But it was 7:30, and their nightly tournament was starting. It's the same rinky-dink structure as was used for the private Poker Academy tournament. But there were only five people playing, and looking at them I recognized all the classic symptoms of complete newbies--looking nervous as all get-out, not sure what to do with their chips, asking basic questions about rules, unclear as to seat numbers, etc. I watched them play one hand, and it confirmed my impression that not a single one of them had any idea what was going on. So I called an audible on myself, took my name off the waiting list for the cash game, and entered the tournament.

We finally ended up with eight players after a couple more late entries. I chipped up some, then made one bad call when I should have folded. As I said, this structure is completely unforgiving. That one mistake left me short. I lasted long enough to see three others eliminated. Once again, when I was down to exactly 10 big blinds, I got it all in good, with A-10, called by the big stack with A-6. I was in good shape, until a 6 on the turn did me in--killed by yet another 3-outer. Sigh.


So that's one cash in five tournaments--and, ironically, the one in which I made a little money was probably the only one in which I had essentially zero edge on the field. Total buy-ins: $390 (not counting the Venetian one). Total payouts: $300 (minus $15 for dealer tip). See why I don't usually play tournaments?

My Harrah's plan worked--maybe sorta

Last year Harrah's changed its comp system so that playing poker gave players what they call "tier points" toward platinum and/or silver status. I kvetched a few times (see here, and earlier posts linked to from there) about how they are far less generous with in-town players than out-of-town visitors in terms of offers for free rooms, etc. I decided to try to attain platinum status and see what, if anything, that would get me.

I made it, and now have the spiffy platinum card.

Today I received in the mail coupons allowing me two two-night stays--one in January and one in February--at any of the four Harrah's Atlantic City properties (Harrah's A.C., Caesars, Bally's, or Showboat), Sunday through Thursdays only.

My suspicion, though, is that this offer did not come because of working my way up to platinum. Rather, it probably came simply because the system noticed that in October I actually showed up playing in the Harrah's A.C. poker room for a couple of days, and they want me back. When I look at my online points account, I still have no offers of other goodies.

As far as I can tell, Harrah's corporation basically still does not value my patronage, and barely acknowledges that I exist. Phooey on them.

Showing just one

It's easy to understand how some habits that are either against the rules or considered bad form in casinos get established: they grow in home games in which such conduct is accepted or even encouraged. One of the home-game tournament series in which my friend Cardgrrl plays regularly, and at which I joined her for a couple of sessions in October, is player-dealt; without a dedicated dealer, each player is responsible for making his or her own change for bets from the pot. Players get used to doing this, come to a casino for the first time, assume that the same procedure applies, and are suprised when they get their hand slapped by the dealer. Similarly, many home games have little or no effective ban on talking about the hand in progress, and veterans of those games tend to be surprised when other players or dealers object to them announcing out loud what cards they folded, or speculating about what cards people are holding.

But there are some habits the origins of which I have a hard time understanding. The one that I've been thinking about lately is the ugly tendency to show just one of the two down cards when called on the final round of betting.

I was playing Saturday at Harrah's, my first venture out into the world after surving hantavirus, or whatever the hell it was that had me down all last week. (I picked Harrah's because I needed less than one more hour to qualify for Platinum status there. I made it, and picked up my spiffy new card on the way out.) I picked up A-K offsuit in late position, and raised to, I think, $12. Two callers: the big blind plus a limper. Flop was K-x-x, with no flush or straight draws. They both checked to me. I bet $25. Woman in the big blind called, other guy folded. Turn was an apparent blank. She checked to me again. I bet $45. She called. River was yet another blank, as far as I could tell. Suddenly the big blind took charge and bet $50. I didn't think that she had been slow-playing a set or other big hand, based on both body language and the betting pattern. She couldn't have been chasing a draw, so I had the sinking feeling that she had been playing a weak king and hit a lucky two pair on the river. But with top pair/top kicker, and a $50 call to maybe win a $225 pot, a call seemed virtually automatic--so that's what I did.

My opponent at this point peeked at her cards again, picked the one she wanted to show, and turned over a king. She then stared at me, waiting, apparently, for me to do something. Well, what I did was stare right back at her. I didn't feel like telling her that she was obligated to either show her hand or muck it. I assumed that she would figure out soon enough that I wasn't going to budge. It took ten seconds or so, plus another playing prodding her with, "He called you, so you have to show first," before she finally turned over her other card--a 5 (which did not pair the board). I then showed my winner.

To get back to my original point, are there really home games in which this is considered adequate, in which a player can expect that showing one card will be accepted by the other players if it's enough to win? In this situation, if I didn't have a hand that beat her top pair, would she really expect me to muck without seeing both of her cards in whatever home game she came from? (I should add that from her chip-shuffling dexterity and conversation about strategy, it was clear that she had a decent amount of experience playing the game, though I have no way of knowing if this was her first time in a casino or her thousandth.)

I just have a hard time believing that home games are routinely so casual on this point. Don't those involved (1) want more information about what their opponents are playing, and (2) understand that the rule serves game integrity by helping to ensure that the winner has a valid hand (i.e., no fouled deck, such as two of the same card, and the right number of hole cards)? Those of you with more experience in home games, I'd appreciate sharing in the comments what you have observed.

But now a digression on the etiquette of the matter.

In July I ranted about the seemingly increasing trend for players, when called on the river, to not show their cards, but instead start asking the caller what he has. This is just another variation on the same theme. Yet another variation is the angle-shooter who tries to never show unless he has the winner; these dirtbags will take advantage of the fact that sooner or later many opponents will feel the social pressure for somebody to reveal a hand, and wait to see what the caller has before mucking a loser or showing a winner. Although motivations and the exact technique vary, it's all pretty much the same to me. It all amounts to an ugly violation of both rules and etiquette.

I recounted this incident to Cardgrrl the day it happened. Although mildly sympathetic, she was of the opinion that I was making too much of it. She suggested that another way of handling the situation was just to show and be done with it, without worrying about forcing one's opponent to comply with the rules first. In essence: It's a showdown, so just show and get it over with.

There is, I must admit, some merit to this approach: 1. You are never the cause of the game being delayed. 2. You never accidentally muck the winner by misreading your own hand, your opponent's hand, or the board. 3. You never cause resentment in others.

But there are downsides, too. 1. You give away information unnecessarily. 2. You encourage the dirtbags and angle-shooters to continue their irritating and/or slimy ways. 3. You fail to gain information on your opponents' play to which you are rightly entitled, and which might be valuable.

On that last point, consider what this woman's final bet told me, once she had revealed her cards. First, I learned that she's a bad enough player to think that it was smart to take K-5 offsuit, from out of position, up against a raise from a player she had to know was tight and solid, and, furthermore, to call bets with it on the flop and turn.

More subtly, though, I learned that she has enough understanding of strategy to deploy a blocking or defensive bet--which is what I think we have to conclude her river $50 was. She understood that if I had a medium-strength hand, it would be hard for me to raise her, and a smallish bet such as she made might cost her less than checking and calling whatever I might choose to bet there (and she might well feel obligated to make the crying call with top pair). If I raised her, she could then confidently conclude she was beat and fold. It was a pretty smart move, because I indeed might have bet bigger than $50, but couldn't raise with just one pair in that spot.

It was a weird juxtaposition--this apparently moderately sophisticated river bet, combined with a willingness to play a hand a good player should have known to throw away from the get-go. And those were both useful pieces of information that I would have missed out on if I had just accepted her one-card-show.

Against Cardgrrl's position, there's also this argument from analogy: We have the rule in this country that you drive on the right-hand side of the road. Once in a while, somebody comes along going the wrong way into traffic, because they think it's one-way their way, or they're drunk or otherwise confused, or maybe suicidal, or maybe they just think it's a free country and they can drive wherever they want to. We could all just choose to ignore it, swerve around them and continue on our way. But there is obviously great social utility in forcing compliance with this rule. For that reason, I'm glad that we have police that will forcibly arrest those who fail to comply, and a judicial system that will sort out and variously deal with different levels of intentionality/culpability.

Similarly, there is considerable social utility to the standard protocol for the order of showdown in poker. Yes, one could just tolerate and excuse/forgive the occasional nonconformer, with the attitude that there are bigger things to worry about. But I think there is a greater, long-term good served by making sure that all players understand the rules of the road and abide by them, and that driving on the wrong side is not OK. There is an established protocol for order of showdown, and everybody's interests are best served by having everybody correctly and efficiently abide by it. Of course, there's no need to go throwing people in jail for first offenses here; obviously, some players really are just new and don't understand. I'm all in favor of kind, gentle education for such. For the deliberate offenders, though, tasering is in order, at the very least.

I can't object to those who, like Cardgrrl, choose to disregard the violations and just conduct themselves in a completely unobjectionable way without regard for what others do. But I think it is better for the game in the long run if we make clear to all that conformity with the rules and etiquette will be required.

What chips to take to a new table?

When I did a table change yesterday at Planet Hollywood, it reminded me of something I left out of my room review of Harrah's Atlantic City. They have a strange rule there that I've never seen or heard of anywhere else. If you have more chips in front of you than the maximum buy-in, if you change tables you must pocket the excess. I.e., you can't move to a new table with more chips than if you were joining it as a new player in the room. This is decidedly odd, as it reduces the number of chips in play, and casinos usually have every incentive to keep more chips on the table.

It's a dream come true for players who like to lock up profits and not put their winnings at risk--i.e., the squirrelers or pigeonholers. Instead of having to try to sneak chips off the table and into their pockets when nobody is looking, they can just ask for a table change and management forces them to go south with the amount that is over the table max.

This really makes no sense. You might as well make it a rule that anything you win over the table max must automatically be taken off the table, whether you move or not. Why is it any worse to come to a new table with more chips than the max, but OK to stay where you are with more chips than the max? It is illegal to take your profit off the table if you stay put, but mandatory to do so if you're just moving to a different table of the same game. That may be the single most illogical pair of rules I've ever run across in a poker room.

Incidentally, a couple of months ago I learned for the first time that Mandalay Bay has the opposite rule: If you're changing tables, and you're below the minimum initial buy-in, you have to rebuy to at least the minimum to go to a new table. This makes some sense, because (1) it keeps more chips in action, which is good for both the casino and the players, and (2) when there's an empty seat to be filled, the players at the table have a reasonable expectation that it will be filled by somebody bringing at least the minimum buy-in.

If this rule is in place and enforced at any other casino in town, I have not encountered it. (If readers know of such, please speak up in the comments.) At the time I learned of it, I thought it was unique to Mandalay, but when I came home and looked it up, I was surprised to find it suggested in Roy Cooke and John Bond's Cooke's Rules of Real Poker. On p. 56 they write:

9.02 Minimum buy-in

The minimum buy-in applies to a player's initial buy-in when entering the
game, or a re-buy after going all-in in a pot or when returning to the table
after leaving during a period that would constitute the same playing session. If
a player is transferring from a game of the same type and limits then he does
not need to buy additional chips. (ALTERNATE RULE: A player transferring to
another game of the same type and limits must enter the game he is transferring
to with at least the minimum buy-in, unless he is coming from a broken game. The
logic behind this rule is that insofar as the players at the new table are
concerned, the transferring player is a new player. This alternate rule induces
action and is preferred, but because it is not widely accepted, it is the
alternate rather than the main rule.)

I like the Cooke/Mandalay Bay rule. I hate the Harrah's A.C. rule.

AVP tournament: I make top five

I'm just home from a marathon poker tournament. Allvegaspoker.com sponsored this one at Harrah's. It started at 7:00 p.m., and didn't wind up until 3:00 a.m. I was fortunate enough to be one of the five left standing at the end (out of 65 original entrants), when we negotiated an even-money five-way chop of the remaining prize money for $1000 each. At the request of one of the organizers, I jotted some notes on how the final table played out. You can read that account here. I won't repeat myself here. But I'll tell you that I'm very happy with the outcome. I played my best, got lucky in a couple of key spots, and was never on the ugly end of any costly bad beats. What more can I either ask or expect?

I have long had what I feel to be a symbiotic relationship with AVP. When I first started playing poker in town, nearly all my thoughts that got reduced to words went up in the AVP forums. After a few months, the responses had been positive enough that I felt emboldened to start this blog, and the vast majority of my early readers were AVP'ers who followed me over.

Since then, I post a lot less on AVP, because virtually everything I have to say about poker goes here. But I continue to peruse the discussions there (though not as frequently or thoroughly as I did before my own writing got to consuming so much time). I am happy that people find their way in both directions: From this blog to AVP, and from there to here. I hope that that bidirectional flow of like-minded people continues for a long time to come.

I was reminded of all of this tonight because of the surprising number of people who recognized me and approached me with kind words of appreciation for this blog. I don't think I've ever heard so many gracious and obviously sincere compliments about it in one day before. I am both delighted and humbled by that response. Thank you all for taking the trouble to seek me out and tell me that you enjoy reading what I have to say. You have once again energized me to keep it going.

But not tonight. It's just after 5:00 a.m., and I am dying to get some sleep.

Harrah's Atlantic City

I finished my brief Atlantic City trip with Cardgrrl two weeks ago yesterday, which means that my promised report of Harrah's A.C., where we stayed, is now two weeks past promise. Sorry about that.

I suppose that the most general thing to say about the place is that it's perfectly acceptable. It didn't blow my socks off in any way--nothing like, say, the Venetian does when I have stayed there. But I had a quiet, comfortable room without problems and with a nice view. In terms of a hotel, I don't need much more than that. What little time I spend in the room is mostly unconscious, and amenities don't carry a lot of weight with me at that point.

As regular readers know, I'm not much of a gambler, so I can't tell you anything about Harrah's A.C. as a casino--except that it's really big, and an annoyingly long walk from the Bayview Tower to the poker room, which is the only part of the casino I care about.

So how is the poker room? Again, it's perfectly fine. Nothing special, but--and this is uncommon for me--also not a lot to gripe about. But you just know that I'll find something anyway, right?

Here was my first experience: I get my name on the list. A while later I hear it called. I go to the desk. The guy there tells me, "Go talk to David [I'm not sure that was the name, but it doesn't matter]. He'll get you seated." They apparently just assumed that I would know who this "David" was and where he was. I didn't. I had to ask. When I found him, he was quite busy, and I had to follow him around from table to table for a couple of minutes before he got to me. Then he was surprised that I was asking him for a seat, because he hadn't been told that anything was available. It was a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. He finally found me the seat that had opened up. It was only then that he informed me I'd have to go fetch my own chips for the initial buy-in. It sure would have saved time if somebody--anybody--had told me this beforehand, and I could have had it taken care of while I was waiting. To make it worse, David just said, "Go get your chips from the cage." I had no idea where the cage was. From where I was standing in the poker room, I could see two cage-like windows, but both of them had signs on them reading something like "Race bets only." I asked David where this cage was that he spoke of. He just pointed in the direction of those windows. I told him that it looked to me like those signs were indicating a cashier. He then explained that there is another window around the side of the same area (which wasn't visible from where I was) that was the cage.

In short, everybody seemed to assume that I already knew my way around and knew the room personnel. As a point of customer service, it seems to me a better default position to assume that it is the patron's first time there, rather than that they know all the ins and outs.

I did not at all like how they handled the member card for tracking hours. There are no card readers at the tables, only one at a computer in the center of the room. That means that everything after the initial swipe requires the dealer to call out to the floor person that a player has changed seats or left the game. I can only imagine that that relay system is highly prone to errors and failure. I have no idea if I actually got the proper credit for the hours I put in.

Speaking of hourly credits, I learned that Harrah's A.C. gives 30 "tier points" per hour for playing $1/2 NLHE, and 60 per hour for $2/5 NLHE. That compares to the 28 per hour given by the various Harrah's properties in Vegas for any game. "Tier points" are what give you Gold, Platinum, Diamond (or higher) status, with their associated perks.

There is one seriously strange thing about how this poker room is run. Apparently fills have to be brought by a security team, rather than by a chip runner, another dealer on break, or whatever. This means that they are incredibly slow in coming, and dealers routinely run out of change-making chips long, long before a fill will ever come. The result is that players end up volunteering to go buy--out of their own pockets--$1 chips from the cage, then bringing them back to the table and selling them to the dealer. They do this because otherwise the game grinds to a halt. It's utterly ludicrous and moronic to run things this way. I have no idea what state regulations there might be, if any, that cause things to be done this way, but I could hardly believe my eyes the first time I saw it. That the casino management just blithely allows this insane practice to continue is the most tangible sign I saw there that they just don't care about presenting a professionally run poker room.

The dealers were mostly unremarkable--neither especially great nor awful. But there was one who was truly incompetent, so remarkably so that she deserves to have the following stories told about her, all of which occurred during a single down during the one tournament I played there (Sunday afternoon):

1. She took a full three minutes to get herself signed in. This was largely because she noticed a problem with how the previous dealer had signed the sheet (something about his badge number or employee number or whatever not having been recorded), and spent time trying to fix it for him, while nine players sat there impatiently watching the tournament clock tick by. She seemed completely oblivious to how she was affecting the game and annoying the players by her stupid insistence on fixing that problem right that minute.

2. She was the slowest dealer I saw the whole trip, by a large margin.

3. During one deal the ace of clubs flipped face-up to the under-the-gun player. No big deal--that happens to every dealer occasionally. But how she handled it was inexcusable. She replaced the card as per protocol. But then when that player folded, the dealer took it upon herself to peek at the two mucked cards, then got a look of obvious relief on her face, and said, "That's good." To anybody paying attention, that made it clear that there was not an ace folded there, and probably not two clubs, either. There is no reason whatsoever for that kind of thoughtless dissemination of potentially crucial information. The dealer has no business even knowing what cards a player mucks, let alone hinting to the table what the cards were.

4. There was one giant hand that involved five players and two side pots. This dealer screwed it up beyond all recognition. She just didn't know how to set up two side pots, so she was reduced to taking instructions from the players, who, of course, completely disagreed with each other about how she should do it. It became a mass of confusion. The hand took about ten minutes because of her utter incompetence.

5. The tournament clock had tipped over to the next level while that hand got sorted out. One of the players didn't notice that and put out the previous blind amount. I pointed out that he needed more. He said, "Oh, the blinds went up already?" I joked, "Yeah, we only got that one hand in on the previous level." The dealer heard this and freaked. She stopped in the middle of pitching cards, fixed me in her glare, and said, "Do you want to sit here and do this?" Note that I hadn't said anything about her directly, or why the hand had taken such a long time. But it was an indisputable fact that it had taken a large part of one entire blind level. I couldn't believe (1) that she was being so sensitive about a joke that was nearly literally true and that, additionally, didn't blame or even mention her as the cause, and (2) that she would further slow down the game to complain to me about it, rather than doing the honorable thing and apologizing to the players for having screwed up so badly. So I just stared back at her, curious to see how long she would hold up the action. It was about 30 seconds of her repeating her question to me and me doing nothing but staring back at her, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of engagement, before she gave it up and went back to the task at hand.

This woman doesn't deserve her job. But as I said earlier, she stood out from the pack as the sole example that I saw of somebody who truly was sub-par.

I really had no other meaningful complaints about the room. It was reasonably comfortable, reasonably well-run, pretty good in terms of noise and smoke infiltration from other parts of the casino, readily accessible restrooms, and had the nice touch of drinking fountains for refilling water bottles. I can't say that I loved the place, but if it were in Vegas, I would certainly have little reason to dislike or stay away from it. For a chronic complainer to be able to come to that conclusion, they're doing pretty well.

Many people I have subsequently run into who knew that I took this trip have asked me about the competition. Frankly, I didn't notice any obvious systematic differences between the manner or quality of play between Vegas and Atlantic City. Plop me down blindfolded, and I sure wouldn't be able to say, "Oh, yeah, this table action can only mean we're in A.C." The addition or subtraction of a single player can change the game far more than putting the table down in either Vegas or the east coast. Or, as the statisticians would say, the within-group variation exceeds the between-group variation by a long, long way.

I played $2/5 for the last couple of hours before we got on the bus back home--something I don't do too often. Good thing I did--it turned what would have been a small overall loss on the trip to an overall win. The play was unbelievably passive--even more so than I usually see at $1/2. Cardgrrl, who was at the table with me, later agreed that it was seriously abnormal play for those stakes. She has played a lot of $2/5 in that room, and assures me that that's not how it usually goes.

So the big question: Would I go back? Yes. Absolutely. I very much want to. In fact, I'm already hatching plans. We'll see if I can persuade Cardgrrl to drive up there next time instead of taking the bus, so that we have both more time and more flexibility to visit other cardrooms. When and if we do, you know that I will spill all the details here.



Here's a few bonus photos of the place for you:



I love that this is the artwork most easily visible from a few of the tables in the poker room. Fish! Perfect!





Stepping out the poker room door and finding an ocean is not exactly the norm for Las Vegas casinos. It's an odd but pleasant sensation.





View from the hotel window. In the photo you can just barely see the power-generating windmills in the background. In reality, they were very prominent in the landscape, but the bleak weather, low-contrast light, window reflection, and my general incompetence as a photographer combined to make them almost disappear here.

Maybe my best 2-4 story ever

Sunday (yesterday) I played the afternoon tournament at Harrah's Atlantic City with Cardgrrl. She busted out fairly early (flopped two pair versus flopped straight, as I heard it), but I managed to hang on quite a long time. I finished 7th in the field of 45. Sadly, only five got paid, so I was the next-to-bubble-boy, which is quite annoying; 4 1/2 hours of work for nothing.

Anyway, when there were just two tables left, I had gotten critically short, so shoved with suited K-7 when it was folded to me in middle position. I got called by the woman to my left with A-Q, and she won, which then left me in desperate need of chips. When I was in the big blind, there was a raise followed by a reraise from the tightest player at the table, who had not three-bet the entire time I had watched him, so I had to let that go, much to my chagrin.

Next hand I was small blind. I think I started the hand with 6000, and had to post 1000 of it for the blind. The button raised to 8000. I had 2c-4h. Two live cards, surely, AND the most powerful hand in hold'em! I shoved.

My opponent had Q-10. The flop looked bad for me: Q-10-3, giving him top two pair. But I had nothing to fear. After all, I had the 2-4!

The turn card probably didn't scare my opponent: A harmless-looking ace. But I knew what that meant, and, in a move that is exceptionally rare for me, I even verbally called out what the river would be: "Five!"

Sure enough, the dealer paused for dramatic effect, then whipped down the five of clubs. Wheel for me! The table went wild!

I pulled out my cell phone and snapped a picture just before the dealer whisked away the cards. He has, at this point, taken my hole cards and tossed them on top of the board cards after mucking my opponent's cards and pushing the pot. There's action and I wasn't holding very still, so things are blurry, but you can still see the results:





On the very next hand I more than doubled again when my 10-10 bested somebody else's suited A-9.

I wish the end of the story were that the dramatic runner-runner save had propelled me to a $1200 first-place cash, but it was not to be. That, however, cannot be laid at the feet of the mighty Deuce-Four, which fully performed up to its legendary reputation.

Cardgrrl had come over from her cash game when she heard that I was in trouble and was standing at the table to witness this. She even tried to take a photograph of the hand, but was stopped by the tournament director. Apparently this casino is among the more paranoid about photographs. (They were so busy stopping her that they didn't notice that I was doing the same thing at the same time.) But, sadly, she still does not believe. In fact, today during a $2-5 NLHE cash game she outdrew my flopped second pair/top kicker to make a straight on the river using her own 2-4, but still refuses to accept its supernatural strength. I don't know what it's going to take to make a convert of her.

Standard odds calculators will tell you that my probability of winning after that flop was about 3.6%, and 9.1% after the turn. But my faithful readers and I know the truth: it was a 100% lock from the get-go.

All hail the Deuce-Four!

Mac King

There are a bunch of magic shows around town. I've seen a few of them, and they're pretty much interchangeable and forgettable. For a long time I assumed that the "Mac King Comedy Magic Show" was another of them. But then I saw some random comment from Penn Jillette about Mac King being the most innovative magician on the Strip. That caught my attention, and I started looking for opportunities to see the show. When Cardgrrl checked into Harrah's on a recent visit, they gave her a discounted coupon for the show, which she passed on to me. Yesterday I finally used it.

The show is really great. Except maybe for the cutting-the-rope trick at the beginning, essentially everything is presented in ways I haven't seen before. He is constantly foiling the expectations you have developed from a lifetime of seeing other magic shows. Because I never knew for sure where tricks were going, they surprised me, and made me wish I had a videotape of the show so I could go back and watch to figure out how things were done. Most magic shows leave me much less curious than this one did.

It is far and away the funniest magic show I've ever been to. The guy is just naturally funny. For example, at one point a female audience member was instructed to keep a few cards secure. She chose to tuck them inside the front of her bra. When it came time for the cards to be revealed, he asked for them back. She seemed a bit unsure of what to do. She tentatively reached toward the top of her shirt, and but then stopped to ask, "Should I take them out?" Without missing a beat, he responded in deadpan, "Just the cards."

At another point, a young woman was told to write her name across the card she had selected. She was a little unclear on the concept, and used the giant black pen to write her name across the BACK of the card. He rolled with it, and had a great time pretending how difficult it was to pick out the right card with the deck face down.

And if you don't laugh when he dons the "cloak of invisibility" and tiptoes around the stage, well, there's just something wrong with you.

I've never seen free tickets for this show, but it was well worth the discounted $10 apiece price, and I would readily go to see it again.

Memorializing my own idiocy

Yesterday my buddy Cardgrrl won the 1:00 p.m. $150 Megastacks daily tournament at Harrah's. Only 14 runners, but still a very nice performance, especially the recovery after taking a series of brutal bad beats that took her from overwhelming chip leader to about fourth place with five players left (and only two getting paid). She had been looking forward to trying it, because the structure seemed to play to her strengths--especially patience. She was obviously correct. Congratulations, my friend. You deserved it, and I'm tickled pink for your victory.

Cardgrrl was too polite to mention, however, a few additional facts in her brief and self-effacing account: 1. I was in the tournament, too. 2. I was the first to bust out. 3. My bustout came at her hands. 4. I was out about 45 minutes into the thing, which was only about 30 minutes of play, as we started 15 minutes late (having to wait for enough latecomers to get a second table going). 5. I played like a completely moron.

You have to understand, first, that this tournament structure starts one out with 400 big blinds. Four hundred! That is astounding and rare. There is almost no acceptable excuse for losing all of one's chips within the first hour. Getting it all in with aces pre-flop and taking a bad beat would be one. Maybe getting stuck in a set-over-set situation. More generally, if you're putting in even a quarter of your stack early on, it had damn well better be with the nuts or near nuts at the time if you (A) expect to have a shot at winning the tournament, and (B) want to be able to feel good about your play after the fact.

Grand donkey that I am, I managed to lose 3/4 of my chips in an early hand with top pair/top kicker. Now, if one is relatively short-stacked, it's perfectly understandable to go with that and hope for the best. But I know perfectly well that that's not a hand that is anywhere near strong enough for commitment of the fraction of chips that I gave to it so early in the game, and with such deep stacks. This is not news to me; I have been aware of this basic fact of tournament strategy for years. I can justify calling the initial bet and raise on the flop. But I then proceeded to call two more very large bets on the turn and river without having improved.

You want to know the worst part? (This is something that I didn't even confess to Cardgrrl in our post-mortem after she won last night. I was too embarrassed.) I thought and hoped that my opponent had the same hand. That's right--I committed myself that deeply hoping for a chopped pot! I had no reason whatsoever to think that he was bluffing or overplaying a weaker hand than mine. He actually had flopped top two pairs, and improved to a full house on the river. Yes, I continued calling even after the board had paired. It is hard to find words for how monumentally idiotic this is.

Not too long afterward, I shoved over the top of Cardgrrl's flop check-raise with a measly A-J, with an ace on the flop. I did so nearly instantly, not taking any time at all to think about it. Had I folded, I would have been way the short stack at the table, but still would have had 40 big blinds in chips--a workable, salvagable amount, with which I could have found any number of better places to get it in. Had I stopped to think, I would have realized that there were no starting hands with which she would have called my preflop raise from the small blind, as she did, and check-raised me on the flop, that did not have me beat. (She held A-Q.) Furthermore, my fold equity was essentially zero. I was simply frustrated and basically gave up. In short, how I lost the last quarter of my starting chips was every bit as shockingly, inexcusably moronic as the way I lost the first three-quarters of them.

It was an embarrassing, appalling performance. It was what you might expect from a tourist playing something other than his $0.25 home game for the very first time. It is what you might see in an online freeroll, or microstakes tournament.

I spent the rest of the day kicking myself for it and wondering how I came to be such a poker imbecile. Professional at the game? Don't make me laugh.

Even now, I cringe at the thought of anybody reading this--as if it weren't bad enough for six other players to have witnessed it firsthand. But I write this as one final self-inflicted kick in the butt to hopefully sear into my memory how incredibly badly I'm capable of playing, and how terrible it feels to lose that way. (I know what you're thinking--the WSOP experience should have already done the job. Apparently not. I must acknowledge the fact that I can at times be a very slow learner.)

I really have no good idea what caused such a monumental meltdown. It was a complete, catastrophic failure of every part of the constellation of qualities that makes me modestly successful in my bread-and-butter cash games: experience, patience, discipline, analytic capability, attentiveness, and emotional stability.* Was it sleep deprivation from the night before? Wrong time of day for me to be playing? Not feeling much enthusiasm for playing? Not caring much about tournaments generally? Not recalibrating myself to the specific structure? Possibly some element of all of the above.

But whatever caused it, it was mightily painful to be reminded of the depths of ineptitude to which I'm capable of sinking when there is a confluence of factors degrading my game--a self-administered slap in the face, which I now share with my readers as part of my shame and catharsis.

Let's hope it's the last time I have occasion to deliver myself up for such humiliation.



*I realize that some readers will likely jump to the conclusion that it was Cardgrrl's presence that did it, but that's actually the one factor that I'm highly confident had nothing to do with it. It's true that I'm enormously fond of her, but I feel zero impulse to show off for her, zero nervousness, trivial amounts of distraction, etc. If anything, her presence makes me even more solid than usual, because I don't want to embarrass myself with donkitude. I like having her at the table with me, not only because she's fun and interesting and pleasant to be around generally, but because I know her game reasonably well, so it's one less player I have to figure out from scratch.

An obvious conspiracy to annoy me

Yesterday I made an attempt at The Grump's Great Harrah's Challenge, in which the object of the game is to win at least $100 in the shortest total time from each of the seven Harrah's poker rooms clustered around the Flamingo-Las Vegas Boulevard intersection. I did well at Imperial Palace and Harrah's, but then ran into a brick wall at, of all places, O'Shea's, and shut it down for the night, after giving back 2/3 of my previous winnings. Despite ending the day up in cash, the day was an exercise in getting my goat. Three stories should illustrate why.


Dealer error and an angle-shooter

Before yesterday, I don't recall a dealer error ever directly costing me any significant sum of money. Can't say that anymore.

I was on the button in Seat 6 with Jh-10h. There were a few limpers. I raised to $15. Everybody folded except for the guy in Seat 1. He was the table monster stack, having been there for obviously many hours, and on the hot streak of a lifetime.

The flop was A-K-5 rainbow. As usual, I was watching my opponent carefully, and I got the sense that he was tempted to bet before settling on a check instead. Although I would often put out a continuation bet in this situation, I decided to be cautious and check behind. The turn was the beautiful queen of diamonds, giving me the nuts, though putting a second diamond on the board. My opponent bet $30. I raised to $100. He called, though with some fairly obvious trepidation, and after trying to quiz me on what I was holding.

I don't remember what the river card was, but it was a low one that didn't pair the board and wasn't a third diamond, so I still had the unbeatable hand. Seat 1 checked. I said, "I'm all in." My face was down at the time, because I was counting my chips, with the intention being that my next words would be what the amount was ($143, as it turned out).

The dealer said, "Twenty." He had obviously misheard me in the noisy environment of I.P. I instantly said, "No, I said, 'I'm all in.'" The dealer said, "I'm sorry. Player is all in." Then Seat 1 piped up, "I heard 'twenty,' too."

There is just no way in hell that two people independently heard "I'm all in" as specifically "twenty." It's peculiar enough that one did, impossible that two did. I am as sure as I can be, without actual evidence, that Seat 1 simply realized all of a sudden that this was a route to possibly getting a much cheaper decision than he would otherwise have to make. He lied. He was angle-shooting, taking advantage of the dealer's error.

The floor was called. The dealer explained what had happened, that he thought he heard me say "twenty," and the other player claimed the same thing. Nobody else claimed to have heard anything. The floor ruled that the bet would be $20. Seat 1 called, and showed 5-5 for the flopped set.

With undisguised irritation and sarcasm, I turned over my cards and said to the dealer, "Yeah, I'm betting $20 into a $200 pot with the nuts."

As the pot was being pushed my way, I overheard Seat 1 plausibly telling the player next to him that he had put me on A-K for top two pair, although he had verbally floated the idea that I had Broadway when he was deciding on his call on fourth street. In other words, I'm in the range of 90% confident that he would have called the full amount, even if reluctantly.

The responsibility for this minor disaster is divided three ways. First, I take some share of the blame for apparently not speaking up enough in that loud environment. Second, the dealer screwed up. He had to be at least a little uncertain about what he heard, because "I'm all in" objectively just doesn't sound very much like "twenty." If he had paused for just a second to wonder whether he had heard correctly, it should have dawned on him that $20 was an extremely unlikely bet for that situation, with over $200 in the pot--not impossible or unprecedented, but weird enough that it would be worth asking whether what he thought he heard was what I had actually said. Finally, of course, there's the lying scumbag cheating angle-shooter who didn't want to have to make a difficult decision, and exploited the situation to his advantage.

It was a collision of factors custom-made to tilt me.

Still, I had made $114 in two hours. It was then that I decided that that was a potentially decent start on the Grump Harrah's Challenge, so I took the money and ran, stopping next at Harrah's.


Unclear on the concept of "doors"

I made money even faster at Harrah's. First I executed what I thought was an admirably well-timed bluff using just position and a middling pair against two opponents, though if their later chat was honest (and I think it was), I was actually bluffing with the best hand. That gave me an uptick of $86 less than 15 minutes in, and the second stop on the Challenge was looking good. A short time later, a guy on tilt from a bad beat in the previous hand tried to run a bluff into me when I had pocket jacks with a flop of 10-8-2, which was an easy call. So I made $204 in 30 minutes, and took off for the third stop.

So what was annoying about that? Something not directly related to the poker.

The Harrah's poker room has long been one of the best in terms of low levels of noise and cigarette smoke. That's because the room is one of the few in town that is fully enclosed, physically isolated from the surrounding casino floor.

But they have recently implemented a new policy: leaving the doors open.

This displays a profound lack of comprehension of the very concept of door. A door exists so as to selectively let people or things in and/or out. If you are never going to let anything in or out--i.e., if the door is going to be closed all the time--you might as well use a wall instead. Conversely, if you're going to let everything in or out--i.e., leave a door open all the time--you might as well take the door off of its hinges and remove it. It serves zero purpose.

Just outside the Harrah's poker room is the courtyard area between Harrah's and Imperial Palace. There's a bandstand, a bar, sidewalk merchants, etc. It's very loud at times, especially on weekend nights.

There was a extremely loud band playing, and it was making me crazy. Also, players would leave for a smoking break, and stand about six inches outside the room, the better to keep tabs on the game and run back in when it was their turn. (Is there something about tobacco that makes people rude and uncaring of how they affect other people? It seems to me generally that most smokers care not one bit how about how their nasty habit is inflicted on others.) I was seated at the table immediately adjacent to the doors, which were being propped open by chairs.

This is just insane. With one quick decision, they have turned what was perhaps the city's quiestest and most smoke-free room into one that is annoying infiltrated with horrible noise and cigarette smoke.

I asked the shift manager if they could close the doors. I was given to understand that the answer was no, and that it had come from levels of management in the Harrah's organization well above the poker room, so that nobody to whom I might have actual access had any power to change the decision.

The reasons, I was told, were twofold. First, to increase traffic. Second, to comply with the need for disability access.

These are easy to address. For the first, sure, it's understandable that at least some small percentage of potential patrons--especially those working up the nerve to enter a casino poker room for the very first time--might feel a little put off by closed doors, even though they are glass. This has an easy solution: You put on the doors a big sign that says something like, "Welcome to the Harrah's poker room. Please come in." That way, there is no risk that anybody will think it's a private place, like Bobby's Room at the Bellagio, for example. Problem solved.

As for disability access, I can grant that that's a legitimate consideration. But the solution, again, is easy: You have your engineering department install power door openers, just like you have with every other one of the hundreds of doors in the place. Duh!

I hate noise and smoke when I'm playing poker. I grit my teeth and put up with it at places like I.P. and Bill's and Sahara because they have proven to be such consistent cash cows for me. But when the situation is created by a retarded new policy that fails to consider why the room was built the way it is in the first place, when it eliminates what for me had been the room's most attractive attribute, it's completely unacceptable.


Bad beat at O'Shea's

I dreaded the next Challenge stop. O'Shea's is without question the noisiest poker room in the valley. The only protection from cigarette smoke is the fact that the tables are open to the sidewalk, so there is often some decent air circulation.

Anyway, poker did not go well here. Max buy-in is $200, and I lost that, gave up, and went home. The last big pot went down like this:

I was down to about $100. I had A-A for the first time in the night, all three casinos combined. The under-the-gun player raised to $12. I reraised to $30. He called. Flop was K-2-7. He moved all-in for his last $48. I called.

He showed--get this--9-10 offsuit. A pure bluff, and an incredibly stupid one at that. After all, there is no hand with which I'm putting in the pre-flop reraise that I'm going to fold when I'm being offered better than 2:1 ($48 call to win about $110). I don't really think he has flopped a set, but the possibility isn't going to deter a call for that price. It was a move that made no sense.

Anyway, I showed the aces, and was feeling pretty confident about winning. But then the turn was a queen, and the river a jack, giving him a nine-to-king straight. The only way he could win that hand was like that, or with an eight and a jack, or with some combination of nines and tens for trips or two pair. I was a 94% favorite (better than 15:1) when the money went in.

Gaaaaa!

I admit that I donked off my last $20 rather than cashing it out, which would have been a smarter, more disciplined, and more professional way of dealing with the fact that I had decided to give up on one of my most annoying nights of poker in recent memory.

Progress

There are some signs of movement in my experimental "all Harrah's all the time" program, in which I am trying to see if I can get Harrah's to notice that I give them mobneys, and they should give me generous kickbacks.

As previously mentioned, last week when I first looked into the situation and started learning about "reward points" and "tier points," I found that I had 369 of the former and 21,501 of the latter on my account. Today I am showing 1069 and 22,793. Movement! Whee! It takes 4000 tier points to earn platinum status, which seems not only feasible but easy at this rate. Diamond status for 11,000 seems likely out of my reach, unless I really play nowhere else for a long, long time, and I would hate to give up playing at the Venetian, Palms, Planet Hollywood, South Point, Mandalay Bay/Luxor/Excalibur, etc.

This is probably still not as much credit as it should be. They are allegedly giving us 28 tier points per hour of poker play, and I've put in 37.3 hours in Harrah's property chairs since then, which should translate to 1044 additional points, or a current total of 1413, plus whatever I might get for flushing $30 down a Harrah's toilet losing a total of $30 in their stupid slot machines at three different casinos. (I did the $20 at Imperial Palace as previously noted, then, at Cardgrrl's suggestion, dropped another $5 each at Flamingo and Bally's.) Perhaps the reported 28/hour isn't quite right, or maybe there is some lag in getting the hours updated.

The rewards credits aren't going up as fast because I've finally started using some of them to get free meals, which I hadn't done before. Under the old system, one had to go to the poker room management and get comps written out, which was a bother, so my credits mostly went unused. Now that I've discovered that I can just go to one of the restaurants and have the check covered by my rewards card when it comes, I'm a lot more likely to use them.

In any event, it seems that the system is responding to my inputs at least a little bit. Still nothing in my "offers" inbox yet. We'll see if that starts changing soon.

Of course, there remains the problem of what to do when Harrah's finally notices me and starts offering to let me stay in their fine Vegas hotel rooms. I don't like hotel rooms, even when they're free. I like my own bed, in my own apartment. And I don't have any travel planned to other cities with Harrah's properties. So in one sense, this whole project is kind of boneheaded and pointless. But it interests and amuses me nevertheless.

Does he doctor the cards?

Spotted this license plate in the parking garage at Harrah's Thursday morning. Not really sure what to make of it.

Button straddle

The other day at Harrah's I was surprised to see the button straddle being used. I had previously seen this only at the Rio, Hard Rock, and, most recently, the Stratosphere. I went to allvegaspoker.com, the best source of information about what's happening in Vegas poker rooms, and found this report confirming my observation, and noting that the rule change would also be coming to some or perhaps all Harrah's properties. Last night at Imperial Palace a dealer confirmed that they had had it going for two days.

I've previously explained my reasons for disliking it here. I have seen nothing since then to change my opinion, so I won't repeat the arguments here. This note is just to express my dismay that the thing is spreading. I hope that it stops where it is, and does not become a de facto standard in poker rooms.

Recap of my week

It has been a quiet week in Lake... Oh, wait--that's somebody else's opening line.

It has been a busy week in Las Vegas. Both Shamus and Cardgrrl have been in town for my birthday. Well, they each claim that something else brought them here--poker tournaments and some equestrian stuff, blah, blah, blah. But we all know the truth.

Wednesday Shamus and I went to the Wednesday Poker Discussion Group at Binion's. As you all know by now, I live about five blocks from there. I've been meaning to get to those meetings for, oh, two years or so now, and then always either forget or have something else come up. It took an out-of-town visitor to finally get my butt in a seat there. Glad I did--it was actually interesting. I wouldn't have thought that you could discuss one poker hand for 90 minutes, but we did. It was one of those weird hands in which you could make a pretty reasonable case for folding, calling, or raising at every decision point, and advocates for each approach were not shy about explaining their preferences.

The presenter, a guy named Alan (Allen?), had played the hand at a $2-5 game at the Wynn. I'll spare you the details, but he took a mediocre starting hand (Q-8) hand up against two unknown, drunk opponents from out of position, and used a completely weak/passive line, largely based on his interpretation of an odd comment the main opponent made early in the hand--a pretty dicey proposition on every front. But (1) it worked out for him, and (2) I had to admit that I could imagine myself making exactly the same decisions. Yeah, it was lousy poker by conventional standards. But sometimes you don't have to play brilliantly to win--you just have to play somewhat less badly than your opponents.

I was reminded of a line that I didn't think I'd ever end up quoting in earnest: Barry Greenstein's "Math is idiotic." His point was that sometimes it all comes down to deciding whether the guy has it or not, and nothing about numbers will solve that riddle for you. That's what Alan was facing, and he got it right. Good for him.

That evening I had a delightful dinner with Cardgrrl, Shamus, F-Train, and BWoP. Pity poor Vera, Shamus's wife, who had to endure a couple of hours with five poker bloggers. Most would consider that a fate worse than death. But we did actually manage to pretend to be normal humans to the extent of finding a few topics other than poker to discuss.

Been hanging out with Cardgrrl a lot, continuing to find her smart, funny, and interesting. Well, except for the nasty little habit of forgetting where she might have left her glasses, necessitating the search of the entirety of one of the largest hotel/casino/resort/convention center complexes on the planet (with the initials M.B.)--y'know, only a few square miles or so.

Late Wednesday night we were playing at Harrah's when our table was joined by a guy with one of the strangest hats I've ever seen. He was black, with apparently a huge afro. But it was all stuffed inside a knit cap that was about ten times the size of his head. Every time I looked at it, it reminded me of a Jiffy Pop container about to burst. Cardgrrl said that it reminded her of Star Trek or some other sci-fi show, with a big-headed alien.

Friday night was Tony Roma's for birthday ribs with my best friend, then "The Sting." It has probably been 20 years since I saw this last, so it was a real treat. I loved Paul Newman, as Henry Gondorff, getting cold-decked by the bad guy with quad threes, with which he was supposed to lose everything to his opponent's quad nines--but then Gondorff turns over quad jacks instead! (See Shamus's take on the scene here.) This leads to a great line of dialog:

Floyd: Doyle, I KNOW I gave him four THREES. He had to make a SWITCH. We
can't let him get away with that.

Doyle Lonnegan: What was I supposed to do - call him for cheating better
than me, in front of the others?

Last night Cardgrrl and I were playing at Mandalay Bay in a rather boring, sedate game, when suddenly I became aware of a familiar face standing behind and chatting with a couple of the other players. He soon joined our game:



That's right--it was Cory Zeidman, he of the infamous straight-flush hand against Jennifer Harman. (See here for a bit of discussion of that, with relevant links.) Also, he of the incredibly tedius, meandering recount of said hand during Phil Gordon's live broadcast of the 2007 Main Event--a story that started with a trip to the dentist, his observations about the dentist's office's furnishings, etc., all interspersed with regular promises that, yes, this background was indeed all relevant to the story of the straight flush. Yeah, right. This had all predisposed me not to like the guy, until he showed up on Poker After Dark recently, so skillfully skewering Phil Hellmuth that I did an about-face and began liking him.

Literally as soon as he sat down, the nature of our game changed. He hadn't even received his chips yet, and he raised the first hand, eventually showing that he had pocket 10s and flopped a set. He quickly became the center of both action and conversation. I found him to be funny and likable--and, obviously, quite a decent player. I had hoped to get him in a situation where I could make a comment about going sightseeing if I lost the hand, but it never happened.

Zeidman quickly ran up against the quirky house rules of the Mandalay poker room. (See here for more on that.) First the dealer made three players remove their cell phones from the table. Not allowed. Then they wouldn't let Zeidman read a poker magazine when he wasn't in a hand. That led to a prolonged discussion with the floor person. It's a little hard to describe the tone of that conversation. Zeidman managed to convey with zero ambiguity how stupid he thought the rule was, all the while maintaining a genuine smile and good humor. He finally found a loophole: The shift manager tried zinging him with the observation that she knew he didn't know how to read anyway, so it shouldn't matter. He acknowledged that this was true, which then meant that they couldn't accuse him of reading the magazine. Instead, he just "looked at the pictures" between hands. They left him alone after that.

These exchanges led to a running joke at the table about other rules. When he ordered a bottle of water and set it down in the appropriate place, I told him in my best faux-serious tone of voice, "Hey, no using the cupholders at the table!" When he was talking during a hand, I snapped, "No talking during a hand. House rule." Well, at least I was having fun with it.

He stayed only an hour or so, but it was definitely an enjoyable short visit.

Poker? Well, poker this week has basically sucked. E.g., playing at the Venetian and being the fourth one to call a raise, with 8h-6h on the button, seeing a gorgeous flop of 6-6-8, and losing it all to a guy holding pocket eights. FML. A "S.I.G.H." if ever there was one. That's how my poker week has been.

But all the other pleasant and interesting stuff happening this week have been almost enough to make up for that kind of thing.