Hooters poker chips

I just listed for sale on eBay my set of Hooters poker chips. If interested, you can see the auction here.

Ellis Island

Ellis Island is a little casino just off the Strip on Koval, south of Flamingo. I've been there a few times because they have a tasty and inexpensive barbecue restaurant with outdoor seating (and their own microbrewery, for those who like that sort of thing), which is a great place to take visitors from out of town.

A couple of months ago they opened a two-table poker room. I hadn't played there until last night. I think that's the longest that a new poker room in Vegas has been open without me hitting it up. I just kept forgetting it was there when selecting a place to play.

The game going was $0.50/$1 NLHE. The players were predictably terrible. It was a lot like playing at Bill's, the only other joint in town that has a game of that structure.

I was surprised to learn that EI has a ton of commemorative chips. Here is just a sampling of the ones I had in the stack of chips I bought:

I'm in the process of reversing the flow of chips in my life, so I took this picture instead of taking one of each home, as would have been my previous practice.

They have a $50 aces-cracked bonus anytime the room is open, rather than just certain hours, like other places do. Some will find that a plus. Personally, I hate it because of how it distorts the game. I had aces once last night, and played it as I usually would, winning a pot of maybe $40 or $45. I was roundly criticized for not playing more passively and going for the bonus. Sorry, that's just not how I do it.

They also give you, after one hour of play, a coupon for a submarine sandwich at the newly opened Boardhouse Sandwich Shop. Nice touch.

I won't have much reason to go back. As long as it's basically like playing at Bill's, which is just a stone's throw away, I'd rather be at Bill's. Bill's has games going more consistently, easier access and parking, earns you points in the Total Rewards program, and it's easier to move on from there to other poker rooms (Flamingo, Bally's, Caesars).

When the game broke, I went south one mile on Koval to Hooters. The only interesting thing that happened was that some of the Hooters girls came through handing out Hooters necklaces. I took one, put it on, and took a picture of myself. I call the resulting portrait "Krazy-Eyez Killah with Hooters Necklace":

Playing the 2-4 on 2/4

I'm writing at the close of February 4, a date traditionally abbreviated in the United States as 2/4. Naturally, it is the holiest of holy days on the liturgical calendar of the Sacred Order of the Deuce-Four.

I spent the evening playing at Hooters, and was disappointed that my faithfulness was not being rewarded with the sight of the Blessed Hand on its holy day. But in retrospect I see that the poker gods were merely testing my patience and resolve. I know this because of how my faith was rewarded in the end.

About 2 1/2 hours into the session, there it was: 2-4 offsuit. I was under the gun. I raised to $7 and got three callers. The flop came 4-7-K. I bet $18, and all three opponents folded.

Of course I don't usually show my cards if I don't have to, but a duty has devolved upon me to spread the Gospel of the Deuce-Four. On its special day, I would be unforgivably shirking my responsibility as an emissary of The Hand if I kept its light under a bushel, to borrow the biblical phrase. So I showed my hand, explaining that this was my favorite hand, and always a winner.

There were the usual scoffs and snorts that I have come to expect when I deliver this message in public--much like Noah's warnings of the impending destruction of the earth was dismissed and ridiculed. I'm used to it.

I composed a message on Twitter announcing that the prophecies had been fulfilled, and the Deuce-Four had prevailed on its appointed day. I had literally just hit "send" on my phone when I picked up my hole cards and there it was again, the loveliest two cards any dealer ever puts together.

This time I called a raise to $11. The flop was 2-J-4. My opponent checked. I bet $15. He called. The turn was another 4, and I lo I did see the heavens open and hear a host of angels sing. Yes, it was my sacred privilege to behold the Mighty Deuce-Four in all its glory making a full house against mine enemies. It's a humbling experience to be in the presence of a genuine miracle as it transpires.

My opponent checked again. I bet $30, and he called again.

Fifth street came a 6, and my opponent checked a third time. I bet $55, and he called. He flipped his cards over immediately after saying "call," showing me A-J. Top pair, top kicker. Nice hand, sir, but there's something you should know.

Another player had obviously believed my earlier speech, because as I was reaching for my cards, he asked, "You have your favorite hand?" Yes. Yes I do. I showed, and there was much rejoicing.

With this even greater proof now before the mocking fools, I reiterated my point about this being the most powerful hand in poker. This time, nobody snickered.

About five minutes later, the guy on my left was the only caller of a pre-flop raise (from, coincidentally, somebody who had already identified himself to me as one of my readers). He nudged me and quietly said, "I'm giving your hand a try here."

His faith was rewarded. The flop was 4-4-10. His opponent bet, my disciple called. I don't remember what fourth street was, but the original raiser now checked, and our new convert bet, triggering a fold. I told him, "You have to show it." He did. Now the former mockers had turned to admirers. I just smiled and told the table, "This is what I've been trying to tell you."

One orbit later it was time for me to rack up my winnings and head home. As my parting words, I reminded the players that they had only about two more hours to play 2-4 on 2/4, when it has extra-special powers. I can only imagine what interesting play occurred after I left.

Skirmishes in the information war

This post is in the form of a letter to Tony (yes, the same Tony featured in the previous post's silly story), but because the problems I identify are common, I hope there is value to my readers in letting you all peek in on it.

Dear Tony:

Last night was the longest time I've spent in a cash game at a table with you, and it gave me my best chance yet to observe for myself something that many others have commented on in your blogs after playing with you for a while: You give away way too much information. It's not entirely clear to me if you understand the extent to which you are doing it, or the damage it does to your bankroll, so I'm going to try to lay out some concrete examples from last night and explain how they can hurt you. These are just a few of the things I saw; there were dozens more that I could chose from, if I wanted to try to make an exhaustive catalog.

My intention here is not to embarrass you or say that you're a bad player. You obviously do well enough to get by. But you could do so much better if you closed off some of your leaks, and many of your worst leaks relate to control of information.

It should also be noted that none of these are unique to you. In fact, they are things I see commonly in many players--which is exactly why I think it might be valuable to readers to list them here, because they may see the same problems in themselves. But I would expect somebody who aspires to be a professional at the game to have a better handle on these things than the average tourist. Moreover, an aspiring professional should want to improve where he can. Though I have to point out specific things I think you're doing wrong, in order to make my points, my goal is to be helpful, not just condemning.

These are in no particular order.

1.

You freely told people at the table about the current size of your bankroll. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with you writing about this on your blog, and once in a while you'll have somebody at the table who reads your blog and therefore has this information. But to give it out voluntarily is, I think, a terrible mistake.

The most obvious problem is that it invites potential crime. Somebody might think that you mean that you're carrying all that money with you. I know that you're not, but what I know doesn't matter. Just the idea that you're carrying a ton of cash could set you up for being assaulted and robbed. You worry about that possibility enough as it is. Why add to the potential?

The second problem is that nobody cares, unless they're (A) a friend, or (B) thinking of trying to steal your money. Talking about money is fraught with social problems. It makes people uncomfortable. In our society, we don't ask other people how much money they have or make, and we don't disclose that information to others unless there is some very specific reason. I'm pretty open about just about everything in this blog, but I have never and will never talk in concrete terms about how much I make at poker. It's nobody's business.

I know that you care what others think about you. Telling them how much money you have will pretty much have only negative consequences. Those who have a lot more money than you will look down on you for being nearly broke, as they see it. Those who have less might be jealous. Either way, you have sown negative feelings. Negative feelings about you from other players hurt you. You make more money from people who like you. (This is Mike Caro's most emphatic teaching.) Doing things that make people either resent or look down on you is self-destructive. Frankly, you sounded like you were bragging, and nobody likes a braggart.

Answer me this: What do you gain by sharing this information with strangers at the poker table? How does it benefit you in any concrete, identifiable way? I think the answer is that it doesn't, and the potential for several kinds of harm is real. The cost:benefit ratio here is infinite.

2.

You frequently discussed how a hand was played immediately after it was over. In one instance, you caught a pair (jacks, I think) on the river to beat a guy who had been ahead prior to that. You pointed out to him how his raise on the flop was so small that it made sense for you to call to try to catch a card. Then you told him that since you missed, if he had bet again on the turn you would have folded.

I'm not sure I can describe how awful this kind of talk is, in terms of long-term poker strategy. You were telling an opponent explicitly how to play better against you the next time! Why on earth would you do this? You should want him to continue playing as weakly as he did. That's how you won the hand, and that's how you would win the next one, too--except that you clued him in to precisely what he did wrong, and how to do it better the next time.

Frankly, I wanted to stand up and yell at you: WHAT ARE YOU THINKING???? The answer is that you weren't thinking at all. You were just reacting, with no filter between your brain and your mouth. Maybe the two dumbest things a poker player can do are criticize another player for his bad play and educate him as to how to play better. You did both at once. What did you get for it in return? A little bit of ego gratification. Was it worth it?

By the way, when you engage in such idiotic behavior as that, you cost ME money, too. If the guy smartens up and starts playing better, he will do so against everybody, not just against you. Your words are taking money out of my pocket, and I resent it.

There are plenty of resources that this guy and others can turn to if they want to learn to play better poker. It is not your job to educate him. Lots of recreational players aren't interested in investing time and work into getting better. They're just there to relax and have a good time, maybe win a little money if they get lucky. Imposing on them a poker lesson that they didn't ask for will tend to cause resentment. Sometimes they even leave the table, in search of a game where everybody is having fun and nobody will criticize how they play or make them feel stupid. Then we all lose out.

Tony, this kind of talk is self-defeating. It is precisely this kind of talk that is condemned with the common expression, "Don't tap on the aquarium--it scares the fish." There is absolutely no justification for it. It is a bigger leak in your game than things about which you have repeatedly expressed concern, such as how to play flush draws.

"The poker table is not a classroom. And you don't want recreational players to conclude that you're playing seriously. If you do that, they're likely to become self-conscious about their decisions and stop playing so liberally--which will cost you money." Mike Caro, Caro's Most Profitable Hold'Em Advice, page 242.

3.

You repeatedly told everybody at the table whether you were up or down from your original buy-in. Once you even said something like, "I have to get back another $62 and then I can leave."

First, again, nobody cares, in the sense of being sympathetic for you if you're down or rejoicing on your behalf if you're up.

Second, as others have told you countless times, you cannot play A-game poker if you're obsessed with always finishing up for the day. Chips are tools for gaining more chips, nothing more. In other words, you shouldn't even be thinking about being up or down for the day or for the session, let alone talking out loud about it.

Third, it opens you up to exploitation. Have you ever noticed the way that many players segregate their chip stacks into their original buy-in and their profit? As long as they're playing with their profit, they're fairly loose. After all, it's found money, free money. If they lose it, they're not really out anything, as they see it. But if the profit goes away, and they start cutting into the original buy-in stacks, they become much more serious. A player like that who is reaching into the original buy-in stacks to put in his raise is far, far less likely to be bluffing than if he is only having to play with his profit stacks.

You know that, right?

You don't keep your stacks segregated that way, but the effect is exactly the same. If sharp, observant players know the degree to which you are ahead or behind, and they know that it matters a great deal to you which side of zero you end up on (and the fact that you frequently call attention to your status makes it abundantly clear that it does matter a great deal to you), they will exploit that information. Now, I think that you're not as completely predictable as the chips-segregation guys, and sometimes you're more willing to bluff and gamble when down than when you're up. But that doesn't matter. All that matters is that it's information that smart players can use to gain extra insight into how you are thinking and playing, and thus play better against you.

I would ask again, How does it benefit you at all to tell the table how much you need to make to be back to even? In theory, you could do this to spread disinformation, knowing what people will think of you, then do the opposite of what they will anticipate. But I do not believe that you are doing this. I think you are just spewing the information because it occurs to you, because it's on your mind so constantly, and, again, you just don't stop to think about the consequences of opening your mouth.

4.

You show your hole cards unnecessarily. You do this a lot. You did it more than any other player at the table last night.

This is a complex area. There is no one clearly best strategy for deciding when to reveal your hole cards if you aren't required to do so. Some world-class players never do it. Daniel Negreanu, asked about this once for a World Poker Tour special feature, said that he does it occasionally, but always with a specific plan and purpose for what he wants his opponents to think and know. That's smart. Antonio Esfandiari recently noted in his live WSOP commentary that he never shows cards that reinforce an opponent's good decision. E.g., if they fold, he won't show them a winner--but he might show them if he was bluffing. He wants to spread disinformation and put opponents on tilt for having made a mistake, not give them a psychological reward for making the correct decision. Again, that's a perfectly justifiable strategy. It's a thoughtful way to decide what to show.

In Caro's Most Profitable Hold'Em Advice, the author spends several pages discussing how to selectively show cards in order to reinforce the erroneous tendencies of specific players. For example, show your strongest hands to players who are already inclined to fold too often when you bet. It will have the effect of making them think, "Yep, that guy always has the goods, just as I suspected." As a result, they will tighten up even more against you. Conversely, show your bluffs to players who are inclined to call you too often, in order to get them to call even more often. Again, this is a perfectly valid, well-reasoned approach to the question.

But I don't think you are following any well-thought-out strategy. I think you show when you feel like it, and there's not much more to it than that. That is unacceptable. That is unprofessional. That will cost you money.

By far the simplest approach is just never, ever show any cards unless the rules require you to show them. I think that should be your default plan. It may not be fully optimal, but it's never very much of mistake, whereas showing willy-nilly, the way you are doing now, is an egregious leak. If you asked me for advice on this point (and I realize that you didn't), I would say shut off that gushing pipe completely. Lock it down. Get in the habit of never, ever showing unnecessarily. After several months of getting used to that practice, then you can consider trying to find very selective, strategic spots in which showing your cards can increase your profits. But for now, just stop it completely.

You might also consider that the message you are sending is not the one you intended. I caught a very keen insight from Olivier Busquet the other day when he was doing live WSOP commentary. One very tight player raised, got everyone to fold, then showed some high pocket pair. Busquet was asked what it says about a player when he shows cards like that. He responded (paraphrasing here), "It tells me that he's weak and afraid. He is trying to tell the table, 'When I raise you shouldn't play back at me.' Why doesn't he want people to play back at him? Because he's afraid of tangling with them." I think Busquet is on to something there. It was a revelation to me. I had not thought of it that way before, but it's worth considering that when you intend to convey strength, it accidentally comes across as weakness.

5.

You freely discuss what you will do with certain hands in certain situations. For example, at one point last night you showed something like an A-8 that you had raised with, and said, "I'll raise with hands like that, but I won't call if somebody else has raised first."

That was another occasion on which I wanted to yell at you. What possible good is that doing? The smart, observant players will file away that information to use against you. The really bad players, who only consider hand strength and not situations, perhaps have never considered that there are hands with which one might sensibly raise, but fold if somebody else raises first. Why are you giving them an education? They didn't ask for it, and if they learn to play better, it makes it harder for you to win their money.

For about the umpteenth time I'll ask, what could you possibly hope to gain by sharing with others exactly how you play certain hands?

6.

I'm sure you'll remember the hand in which you had Q-Q and the other guy had 2-4, and hit a gutshot on the river to make a straight and win the large pot. I'll dispense with pointing out that 2-4 is the most powerful hand in poker and always wins. My point here is that you went on and on about this. You repeatedly said, "Goddammit," and other such things. Even half an hour later, long after that player had left the table, you were rehashing it, talking about how much money he had put into the pot when he was drawing nearly dead.

This is another example in the category of things you shouldn't even be thinking, let alone saying.

When I hear somebody droning on about a hand that was over half an hour ago, I know that he is not focusing on the present. I know that he is more likely to call than his baseline. (Never try to bluff a player who is obviously on tilt.) I know that he is going to be playing more hands than usual in an attempt to get back what he perceives as having unfairly lost, and will be more likely to bluff or overplay weak or mediocre hands. When you expose your feelings to the table like this, you unintentionally inform the better players what to expect from you and how to play more accurately against you. This will cost you money.

The best thing would be to get to where you don't care about the outcome, as long as you made the right decision. If you can't manage that, at least make it look to others as if that's where you are. Never let 'em see you sweat.

7.

You played a hand with, I think, A-Q, then immediately afterward asked me if I thought you played it right.

I will never discuss poker strategy or tactics at the table with you--or with anybody else, for that matter. (OK, "never" is too strong there. But it's almost never. And when there is a rare exception, it is sotto voce, when seated next to somebody I know and trust, not out loud for all to hear.) It's just plain bad for the game.

It is a bad mistake to clue in the recreational players that there are layers of depth to the game that they are not seeing. It is unwise to let them know who among their opponents are the most thoughtful and experienced and analytic. The fact that they can't figure that out from just watching hands is part of what makes them bad players. (You know the old saw about not being able to spot the fish at the table in the first 20 minutes.) It is self-defeating to let them listen in on discussions about how a hand could or should have been played.

I also don't want to be spotlighted at the table as a player whose advice you seek and value. That hangs a big sign around my neck telling the inattentive players that maybe they should watch out for me more than they had previously been inclined to do. That, in turn, may make them less willing to play hands against me, and therefore cost me money. It's bad form all around, and reduces both of our expected profits for the night.

Mike Caro again, page 261: "It's a very bad idea to discuss serious strategy with weak opponents--at the table or away from it. Doing so makes them self-conscious, and helps them recognize that there are levels of poker they don't understand. They are apt to play more cautiously as a result, and, worse, they may even learn to play well!"

8.

While sitting in Seat 1, at least one time you showed your cards to the dealer before mucking. The player in Seat 10 was still in the hand and saw them, though he didn't say anything about it. I know you didn't mean to show them to that other player, but you did. You might have influenced how the hand played out, because now that guy had information about what cards were out, information that was not available to his opponent(s).

It is generally really difficult to control exactly who can and cannot see your cards when trying to expose them selectively. It's just a bad idea.

Yet again, I have to ask: What possible gain is there from showing your cards to the dealer? He doesn't care what you had. If he is good at his job, he is not going to react and reward you with sympathy (which I assume is what you are seeking). He is going to act like he saw nothing. The best dealers, in fact, will turn their eyes away and refuse to look when a player is trying to share his cards that way, and explain that he doesn't want to take the chance of influencing the action by giving away anything with a reaction to what he is seeing.

This kind of action not only gives away to another player what you were willing to fold to his bet, but directly and adversely affects the integrity of the game. This was a serious breach of protocol. To be blunt, there is no excuse for it. There is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost.

Some general thoughts:

I like what John Vorhaus wrote in one of his columns: "They say that information is power; in poker, it's cash, just cash." Information is money. You should not give it away when you don't have to.

Even better is Tommy Angelo's extended discussion of poker as an "information war" (Elements of Poker, pages 86-92:

I play poker on a need to know basis. I need to know the thoughts my opponents are thinking. I need to know the feelings they are feeling. And I need to know the cards they are playing. Meanwhile, I need them to know as little as possible about me. I call this relationship the information war.

The information war is fought on two fronts--sending and receiving. To win it, send less information than they send, while receiving more information than they receive. By controlling those differences, you control information flow....

The information war at poker has an arms race, and if one were to take it to its natural extreme--which I have--one would play a style of poker I call "mum poker"--which I do.

On the outside, mum poker is the classic poker face, extended to the entire body, and maintained through sixth street. [Angelo coined the term "sixth street" to refer to everything that happens after one hand ends and before the next begins, most especially the players' discussion about what just happened.] On the inside, mum poker is no complaining, no blaming, no regretting. Mum poker is stillness. Mum poker is readiness....

Or you could just think of it as sit up and shut up.

Today, when I am playing primarily for profit, I play mum poker.... I do not speak unless spoken to, and even then, I do not react to questions or comments about poker.

I have found that the less information I send, the more I focus on the game. And when I am focused on the game, I send less information. When I employ mum poker, I fight on both fronts of the information war simultaneously....

Mum poker is not about not talking. It's about not talking about certain things, namely, poker things. Mum poker means not talking about poker plays, poker thoughts, and poker feelings, especially the recent ones. And it means not talking about poker players, especially the present ones.

Mum poker means not saying certain words and phrases when you play. Words like ace, king, queen, spade, heart, pair, straight, gutshot, river, etc. Mum poker also means not being a dickhead. If someone asks you if you like your food, answer. If someone asks you if you like your cards, don't answer. That's mum poker....

There's a big difference between ignoring the people and events in a poker game and not reacting to them. Ignoring is when you react on the inside, but not on the outside. Not reacting is when nothing happens, inside or out. Not reacting looks the same as ignoring, but it feels better....

Everything everyone does is a tell. What they wear is a tell. How they sit is a tell. What they say is a tell. What they don't say is a tell.... It's all a seamless trail of tells. And what do all these tells tell you? It depends. Tells might tell you about your opponent's thoughts. Tells might tell you about your opponent's feelings. Tells might tell you about your opponent's intentions. Tells might tell you what your opponent's hole cards are. It all depends on what you are doing. Are you listening? Or are you telling?

To the extent that there is identifiable motivation for why you do these things, I think it is chiefly that you very much want others at the table to respect you, to think that you're a good player. To that end, you try to show them that you understand the game more deeply than they do. But sooner or later you have to ask yourself what is really more important to you--controlling what nine strangers think of how you play poker, or maximizing your profit? Those two goals are mutually exclusive. You cannot give away information without giving away money. As it stands, you are giving away information on a nearly constant basis. That means that you are giving away money. I don't think you can afford it.

I have a serious suggestion for you, and for any of my readers who recognize similar problems in their own information wars. When you first read this, you'll think I'm just exaggerating to make a point, but I'm not. I'm deadly serious and completely literal in this suggestion: If you really want to plug these information leaks, you have to make your brain equate information and money in a very explicit and automatic way. I suggest that every time you catch yourself leaking information--showing a card that you didn't have to show, talking about strategy, criticizing how an opponent played, cursing about a bad beat, rehashing a hand that is long over, discussing your bankroll, telling people whether you're up or down for the day--punish yourself by giving the dealer a $5 chip as a tip. Giving away information is giving away money, and you've got to learn that association down to the deepest fibers of your being. The way to ingrain that lesson, I submit, is to make it hurt, and make the information=money connection explicit to yourself along with the pain.

I don't know whether any one piece of information that you give away is worth more or less than $5, and it really doesn't matter. What matters is that you come to grips with the fact that when you leak information, you are giving away your chips. It is literally true, whether you acknowledge it or not, so make it literally true and concrete for yourself. I predict that if you do that, it will not take long before you learn to keep your information to yourself--and all those red chips, too.

If your reaction is that you can't help yourself, that these things just happen, I will have to disagree. Suppose I offered to pay you $100,000 if you played poker for one hour without a single unnecessary information leak. Could you pull it off? Of course you could. These leaks are things you choose to do--every single one of them, every single time--and you could choose not to do them if you wanted to, if you had sufficient motivation. The question that remains is whether you will decide that making more money is sufficient motivation.

I hope you find these observations and suggestions helpful. I wish you success, my friend.

I have just one question, sir

I wrote quite a bit about Tony "TBC" a couple of months ago here, after watching him play a heads-up Omaha match at the Tropicana poker room. (Since then he has moved his blog to here.) Last night he and I shared a table at Hooters for a few hours.

One of the players sitting between us had his girlfriend watching him play. She got progressively drunk on shots of Patron.

The boyfriend half of the couple was apparently getting bored, and they were chatting about where else they could go. He asked if the Tropicana (right next door to Hooters) had a poker room. I said yes. Another player, between me and him, said no; he hadn't been aware of the recent reopening.

Tony decided to interject his story to emphasize that there is, in fact, a Tropicana poker room. Now, if you've never met Tony, this is kind of hard to describe, but when he is bursting with eagerness to share something, it pours out of him loudly and rapid-fire, in what psychology professionals might call a "pressured speech" pattern. I would runallthewordstogetherlikethis to convey graphically how it sounded, but then you wouldn't be able to read it. So you'll just have to imagine the following one-breath story gushing out like water from a fire hose, at both high speed and high volume:

"I played a thousand dollar buy-in heads-up no-limit Omaha eight or better tournament against a guy at the Tropicana poker room and they didn't even charge us any rake because the poker room manager is friends with the guy who set it up and the whole thing is on YouTube."

There was silence for a few seconds, as nobody seemed to know exactly how they should react to this tale.

Then drunk girl broke the silence with an earnest question:

"Were you naked?"

I have no idea what prompted her to ask this. It was so completely out of left field that I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

Having been there, I am pleased to report that no, the contest did not take place in the nude. However, upon reflection, that would add a certain element of humiliation and hilarity to any future rematch, and I think the participants should consider it.

But I don't want to be running the hole-card cam if they do.

King me

At Hooters last night, I had two kings in my hand, and found another two of them on the flop (along with a queen). That pretty much gave me most of 'em--along with a small pot and a $100 bonus.

Too much sensitivity training?

Last night I played for several hours at Hooters. For most of that time, I had on my right a rather odd duck. He was, shall we say, sensitive.

I first became aware of this when the player to his right--a generally obnoxious pig, to be sure--sneezed directly into his own hands about a dozen times. Mr. Sensitive asked him to go wash his hands before continuing to play. Pig derisively refused. Mr. Sensitive then went to ask the floor guy to make Pig go wash his hands. I could overhear only bits of that conversation, but floor guy said something about that not being a rule that he could enforce. Mr. Sensitive returned, all huffy that his ideas about proper poker-table hygiene were being ignored.

Hey, I'm with him about how gross poker players are. But it's just silly to single out one particular instance of such filth for special attention, while pretending that everything else is all pristine. Almost four years ago I wrote in some detail about how disgusting poker chips, cards, and players are: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/07/i-think-im-going-to-throw-up.html. Getting one guy to wash his hands one time hardly makes a dent in the load of germs involved, so it doesn't make much sense to get all bent out of shape about it.

The second episode involved me more directly. I had been pretty chatty on Twitter. I was also trying to figure out how to get my new Android phone to do various things, without a lot of success, partly because I had only spotty 3G signal coverage. So, yeah, I had had the thing out and was playing with it a lot more than I usually do. But I never slowed down the game, never failed to notice when it was my turn, and always put it away as soon as I got involved in a hand.

Anyway, after a couple of hours of this, Mr. Sensitive asked me, "What is it you're doing with that?" I told him I was chatting on Twitter with a bunch of friends. He said, kind of snippily, "Well, I'm finding it very distracting."

Mind you, we were in end seats, rotated far enough away from each other that he couldn't see anything on the screen, and the phone was on mute and not emitting even the slightest peep. The thing could have been off with me just pretending to be fiddling with it, and he couldn't have known the difference. This was not a case of something visual on the screen or audible in the air that was bothering him. No, it was just the fact that I was doing something other than watching the poker game--or maybe he had some paranoia that I was writing about him. (I wasn't then, though I am now!)

Again he tried to enlist the floor guy, but the floor guy told him that I wasn't breaking any rules, and cell phones were allowed as long as players didn't slow down the game. In fact, Hooters is the only poker room I know of that actually has a sign posted on the wall prominently announcing "Cell phones OK." (See photo of it here, though they have removed the "Smoking OK" sign since I took that picture.)

As soon as a seat opened up on the far end of the table, he spoke up for it and moved far away from me. I can't know for sure if it was because I was bothering him, but I suspect so.

Can you believe how easily annoyed some people are???

I suck

Tonight I went to the Tropicana for the opening day of its new poker room, about which I'll have more to say later.

After a while the game dried up, so I went next door to Hooters, where, if there is a game, there are bad players. The first time I had the button, it was folded to me with K-T offsuit. I raised to $13. The blinds both folded. The under-the-gun straddler looked at his cards, looked at me, grabbed about half of his chip stack without counting, and slammed it rather forcibly in front of him--$50 or so.

I had essentially no information on him--which, I'll admit, was probably reason enough all by itself to let this one go. But something about his demeanor suggested to me that his thought process was, roughly, "I see you trying to steal the blinds and my straddle. You don't need a real hand to do that from the button when everybody folds to you. I think you got nuthin', so take THAT!" I put him on a medium pocket pair, at best.

I wasn't going to be intimidated by his bluster. I announced all in--and his chips literally beat mine into the pot. Ruh-roh. He quickly flipped over pocket kings. Hmmm. Might need to get my opponent-reading radar into the shop for a little tuneup.

I was only 9% to win; he was 90%, making me a 10:1 dog. This is literally just about the worst possible all-in pre-flop situation one can be in, mathematically.

I sheepishly turned over my pathetic little K-T and said, "I think it's going to be hard to beat you with this."

Well, apparently not as hard as I thought. Flop: J-Q-4, giving me an open-ended straight draw. The other guy admonished the dealer, "Don't you do it to me!"

Turn: 9. Boom!

Now he was the one needing help--a ten for a chopped pot.

River: 7.

Hilarity ensued, naturally.

Remember back in 1992 when Ross Perot was running for president, largely on an anti-free-trade platform? One of his favorite lines was saying that if NAFTA passed, we would hear a "giant sucking sound" as all our manufacturing jobs moved south across the border.

If you heard a giant sucking sound tonight, chances are that it was emanating from the Hooters poker room.

Duh, winning!

There are times that the poker gods have decreed, "You will lose tonight," and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You play patiently, read opponents with laser precision, get your money in with the best of it every time--and lose, lose, lose.

There are other times that the poker gods have decreed, "You will win tonight," and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You play loose, from out of position, make every mistake in the book, get your money in bad every time--and win, win, win.

I didn't exactly play that badly tonight, but it was unmistakable that some unseen deity had declared it to be my night.

A year ago, almost to the day, I met reader Matt from Atlanta. As I reported then, he generously staked me in a tournament at the Venetian, just to have an excuse to meet and chat with me for a while. We've kept in occasional contact via Twitter since then. Several days ago he let me know he'd be in town again for a convention. He said he'd be staying at Hooters, and planned to hit their poker room Monday night. I had no other plans, and hadn't been to Hooters in a couple of months, so quickly agreed to meet him there.

I got there early and was one of the four to get the game started. Within the first ten minutes, I had called a raise with 6-6, flopped a set, turned quads, and picked up a $100 high-hand bonus in addition to the pot:

It has been several months since I last hit a jackpot--a statistically anomalous dry spell. It was high time it ended.

After that, the good times just kept rolling. I just Could. Not. Lose. I literally won every pot of over $50 that I contested the entire session, save one; I lost a race with J-J versus A-K all-in pre-flop for $45 each. Other than that, pretty much everything rolled my way. Raise with a good ace, and the flop would have an ace or my kicker as the high card. Call somebody else's raise with suited connectors, and I'd make the flush, straight, trips, or two pair. This streak was completely, utterly, off-the-charts, must-be-rigged ridiculous, and it had the full attention of every other player and all of the poker room employees.

I played for just over 2 1/2 hours, starting with the max buy-in of $200, and cashed out with $980, for a win rate of $297/hour. That is insane!

Matt and I had agreed in advance to a $5 bet over who could win a pot with and show the Mighty Deuce-Four first. Well, before he even arrived, I had scored a double-felting with it. I raised from the button to $15. The small blind moved all in for $27. The UTG player called, leaving himself only $10 behind. I called, too. The flop was K-4-x. UTG tossed in his last $10. I called, of course. Both he and the small blind had K-Q. So what came on the turn? A deuce ex machina. Two pair, thankyouverymuch. Pot to me.

(I explained to the table that not only was it my favorite hand, but it was the most powerful hand in poker. Some actually scoffed at this idea. Another player claimed that deuce-five is much stronger than deuce-four. Now it was my turn to scoff. The silly ideas that some poker players get in their heads!)

Matt was kind enough to pay me off when he arrived and heard about the Deuce-Four double-felting, even though he hadn't witnessed it. I didn't think it should count (even though other players were vouching for it having occurred) since I had an unfair head start. But I think he just wanted to give me this chip anyway:

He had been in Panama on his honeymoon, and brought it back as a souvenir for me, knowing that I collect $5 chips. I think it's lovely, and it's one that I am extremely unlikely ever to have picked up on my own. Thanks, Matt. You're a classy guy.

So how did I repay his kindness? The story gets ugly here. Gory, even. If you have small children in the room, you might want to have them leave before you read on. You don't want them having nightmares.

I had 7s-9s and limped from early position, Matt (on my left) also limped, along with a couple of others. Mr. Deuce-Five raised to $17 from the big blind. He raised a lot, but usually with good position, so this smelled of a real hand. I called, as did Matt. Three to the flop, which was J-7-7 rainbow. Ding! Mr. D-F bet $25. I smooth-called, assuming he'd bet nearly any turn, and it would either be an all-in bet or he'd be pot-committed to me shoving on him.

That's not how it worked out. Matt blindsided me with his own shove, for about $120. Mr. D-F shoved, too, for slightly more than that--almost surely with an overpair to the board. I was pretty confident Matt didn't have J-J, both because he hadn't raised pre-flop and because I think if he were that strong he would milk it more, trying to keep both me and Mr. D-F in. No way was he bluffing, and no way was he foolish enough to think that it would be a good spot to commit his stack with something like A-J, after my suspicious flat-call on a drawless flop. He had to have a 7, no two ways about it. But what kicker? I feared an ace. But Mr. D-F might well have two of the aces, and I also thought that after an ace his most likely kickers were a 6 or 8, for suited connectors. If so, I was ahead by a nose. It seemed to me at least twice as likely that his second card was a 6 or 8 as that it was an ace, so with more than 2:1 pot odds, I called, holding my breath.

I showed my 7-9, and Matt rolled over.... wait for it.... suited 7-10. D'oh!

I just barely had time to process this bad news when, Boom! Nine-ball, corner pocket. Full house. Blank on the river. A roughly $530 pot came my way. When the poker gods have made you their golden boy for the night, hitting a three-outer is child's play.

Fortunately, Matt's lovely young wife was taking the slot machines to school, making up for his sick losses. Also fortunately (for me), he laughed it off like the good sport he is. He left to go do something else, though we may meet up again tomorrow night. I've got to give the guy a sporting chance to return the suckout! Maybe my luck will have run out by then.

But I wouldn't count on it.

Starting a game at Hooters

Yesterday afternoon I ended up at the Hooters poker room around 5:00. I found two dealers and one shift manager sitting at the table twiddling their thumbs. I was a little surprised that they didn't have a game going yet. They had several names on the list. I was told that those players were occasionally checking back in, but they'd see that the tables were empty, and would take off again for their blackjack tables or slot machines.

I decided to plunk myself down in a seat in the hope that it would get at least one of these in-and-outers to stick around, which, in turn, might persuade another of them that the game was about to go, etc. So I did. I even had them sell me chips, in order to enhance the image that we were on the verge of starting.

I had to wait about 40 minutes before the cards started flying (I carry a crossword puzzle to work on for just such time-killing situations), but it was worth it. Once we got started, the other players were, frankly, pretty easy pickings.

The only reason I'm writing this post is to commend the shift manager at Hooters. When I told him that I'd stay put to try to get the other names on the list to join us, he immediately said, "Great. I'll get you clocked in right now."

That hadn't occurred to me as a possibility, probably because nobody has ever offered it to me before, despite the fact that I've played the same "catalyst" role many times in many different rooms. I earned less than a dollar in food comp credit sitting there, but it was something. More important, really, than the monetary value was the gesture; he was saying, in effect, "I recognize that you are helping us get the game going by sticking around instead of going off to do something else and waiting for other people to show up first, and this is our small token of appreciation."

As the great Chip Reese said, "If you don't open the store, how can you get any customers?" I have occasionally had room managers offer to begin rake-free when there are just three or four players, trying to induce them to get the game started. They obviously know that a game in progress is far more likely to attract additional players than the mere promise that a game will be starting some time in the ill-defined future. It seems to me that Hooters has stumbled upon another incentive technique: Offer to start the comps clock on players who actually sit at the table with chips, as that will probably help get the game going more quickly than if you just add another name to the list.

It's such a simple, cheap, effective, and (in retrospect) obvious idea that I have to wonder why nobody else ever does it.

Not my night, redux

I'll make this quick.

Hooters. First hand--not just the first hand I choose to play, but the first hand I'm dealt--is KJ. Flop is A-Q-10. Get it all in against a guy with A-10. Turn 10.

Rebuy.

Second hand--not just the second hand I choose to play, but the second hand I'm dealt--is AQ. Raise, several callers. Flop A-Q-10. (Sound familiar?) I get it all in against a guy with K-J. I do not improve.

I go home.

That is by far the fastest I have ever lost $400.

Here's my spreadsheet of results for the night:

Thanks, Mike!

I've read lots of stuff from Mike Caro over the years, in both books and columns in periodicals. I think it's safe to say that I've learned more from him than from any other poker writer.

By far the most profitable single piece of strategic advice I have picked up from him has been how to deal with a bully or maniac at the table. (I think there are some differences between the two, which I briefly considered pontificating about, but I think I'll let it slide for now, so as not to veer too far off-topic.)

One temptation is to try to out-do the bully, to punch back even harder than he is hitting. The problem is that you are pretty much reduced to flailing away wildly, like Ralphie in A Christmas Story when he finally loses it and goes nuts on the bully Scut Farkus. (Can't embed that clip here, but it's always worth a re-watch, don't you think?) It might work, but it's risky and costly. In the poker setting, it also leaves you wide open to being exploited by other players who are smart enough to wait to trap the two of you with a monster when you're trying to out-bully each other with mediocre holdings.

The other temptation is to cower, to go into highly defensive mode, to tighten up even further, waiting for the rare premium hand before playing back at the bully. There are two problems with this. First is that you're missing out on lots of money that the bully is putting into pots with weak hands which you could win if you were braver. Second is that even minimally intelligent bullies will notice the guy who punches back only once an hour. He'll just fold, giving you one pathetic little pot for all your patience and consternation.

Caro's solution is both simple and obvious, once pointed out: Just call more than you otherwise would. He has written about this countless times, in all of his outlets, but here's one example--a column that was first published in Bluff magazine in 2006, but was recently reposted at Caro's newly revived web site, http://www.poker1.com/, here. Here's the essence of the formula:

Now, listen up. A poker bully is by definition too aggressive. In order to
be a bully, he must make a fundamental mistake – he must bet and raise too
often. When an opponent makes a mistake, there’s always a way to take advantage.
Here’s how to take advantage of a poker bully:

Call more often. Because a bully is betting more hands, it’s obvious that
he must be betting more than just the ones you would normally bet. This means
you can relax your calling standards and still make a profit.

Bet less often. A key to defeating a poker bully is to let him hang
himself. Since his major mistake is betting too liberally, you should give him
every opportunity to defeat himself by repeating that mistake. You should check
and call frequently. You should also bet less often when a poker bully checks
into you, because a bully likes to check-raise a lot. Therefore when he foregoes
the opportunity to be a betting bully, you should be wary of a check-raising
bully. Just check along.

When you do these two simple things, the bully has a losing expectation
against you. And, in the long run, he cannot win. Sometimes it’s tempting to
“out bull” the bully by being even more aggressive than he is. That’s the wrong
answer. You can’t win at poker by exaggerating the same mistake an opponent is
making. Stick to the one-two formula I just presented.

Last night I was ever so grateful to have taken this advice to heart. I was playing at Hooters again. The place is a rathole of a poker room, but I've been heading there more often recently, since they stopped allowing smoking at the table. It is chronically populated by bad, drunk, fun-loving players. There's a lot of annoyances to be tolerated, but it has proven to be highly profitable.

One guy at the table last night raised the first five hands in a row after I sat down. I can be a slow learner, but that was enough to get even a clod like me to realize we had a bully on our hands.

My first action was to change seats, taking an open one two spots to his left, so that I had position on him eight out of ten hands. He stole my blinds liberally, but I didn't mind. Except for maybe the top ten starting hands, I did not want to play against him from out of position, so I just conceded the nothing pots.

Then I gave him the Caro treatment. A little observation revealed that the bigger his bets, the less he had, and the more he was trying to just push opponents off of pots. When he occasionally had a big hand, he made smaller value bets, trying to induce calls. That meant that I had to screw up the courage to call three big barrels with ace-high, or middle or bottom pair. But it worked to perfection.

I did deviate from the prescribed plan twice with raises on the river. Once I had, well, less than nothing--draws that had missed. But I had gained some decent amount of respect and reputation, so when he bet $40 on the river in a situation where I couldn't give him credit for much, I raised to $120, and he folded in about three seconds, saying, "I can never beat this guy." The other time was when I rivered a queen-high flush that I was certain was good. This was one of the rare times I was out of position. I checked. He bet $100, and I check-raised all-in. He folded, this time saying, "I'm done trying to bluff you."

The result? Uptick $399 in 1.8 hours, or $218/hour. If you don't think that's pretty good for a $1/$2 NLHE game with a $200 max buy-in, you haven't played it much.

The really interesting thing was how my reaction to him changed how the other players handled him, too. I rather quickly acquired the table's biggest stack, and once while stacking the chips from a sizable pot that I won from the bully by calling him down with just a middle pocket pair, one of the other players looked at me and said, "You're my hero!" It was obvious that the bully had been frustrating them for quite a while before I came along. But they picked up on what I was doing and started emulating it.

By the time I concluded my relative short session, the bully had gone from big stack to busto, and had had to rebuy twice. He was becoming the one who was frustrated, because he was being called down much more frequently than before. The bully had been exposed to be a weakling in disguise--a fraud. The one thing no bully can endure is being stood up to. Once the bully's victims see that he can be beaten, they are eager to get their licks in, too. It gave me considerable emotional satisfaction to see them join in taking his money, and to watch his frustration mount. He wasn't a sophisticated enough player to adjust profitably; he had only one shallow bag of tricks, and kept resorting to it even when his losses were accelerating.

I love the simplicity of the strategy of just calling the bully. Of course, sometimes he gets lucky and hits something big, and you look pretty foolish calling three times with not much of a hand. But in the long run, those instances are far outweighed by both the monetary effect of his too-frequent bluffing and by the psychological effect that you have on him by not backing down to his attempts at intimidation.

Bob Ciaffone, in a Card Player magazine column a few years ago, penned a wonderful apothegm that neatly sums up the concept: "We know you can fight fire with fire, but what is wrong with fighting it with water sometimes?"

Indeed.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Y'know, that might make an intriguing first line of a novel. Somebody oughtta try it.

I picked that title because last night I did a study in contrasts. I saw via Twitter that my friend Grange95 was playing at the Aria poker room. It's always fun to share a table with him, and I didn't have any particular reason to select someplace else, so off I went. As I was getting ready to go, I noticed a handful of $5 chips from Hooters sitting on the table by my door. (Actually, there are chips from lots of different casinos; they kind of accumulate and multiply.*) I realized that Hooters is only a short distance from Aria, and I thought that that particular sequence might make for a fun comparison on this here blog. So I stuffed the chips in my pocket as I headed out.

It was true: the two casinos are about as polar opposite as you could make two places. But more about that later. First, let me review my session at Aria.


Stupid parking preference

The first comment-worthy thing I noticed on my way into Aria from the parking garage was that there were maybe 10 or 12 of the spaces closest to the door marked with these signs:



There's a whole bunch of stupid things about this. First, MGM Grand is in the business of making money. This kind of policy does nothing to enhance their bottom line, unless it's by some highly indirect way of making tree huggers think that that the corporation is a wonderful friend of the earth, and thus they somehow become willing to lose more money at the slot machines, which seems dubious. MGM has no corporate interest in whether its customers arrive in a Prius or a Hummer. Worse, it offends some (like me). I had already parked farther away before seeing these spaces, but as I walked past, I noticed two ordinary vehicles (both minivans) start to pull into one of the spots, then see the sign, back out, and go elsewhere. I suspect those drivers were annoyed. It is not good to annoy your customers.

Then there's the whole question of what the sign actually means--does your car have to be an alternative fuel vehicle, or a low-emissions one, or both? And what standard is being applied? Does a flex-fuel car count? If I drive a 30-year-old diesel Mercedes that I've converted to run on used vegetable oil, but it smokes like an oil well afire, is that OK? Is a hybrid GMC Yukon OK? If so, how does it make sense to allow that but not a gas-sipping little Toyota Yaris, which is conventional in its fuel system but extremely frugal? One has no way of knowing what the powers that be at the Aria will deem acceptably green to occupy these premium parking spaces.

Next problem is that I seriously doubt the threat is real. Along the lines of not annoying your customers, are they really going to lose your business forever by ticking you off by having your car towed because it wasn't on their preferred list of models? I don't think so. The Hilton has a bunch of parking spots reserved for players who accumulate points on their member cards, with dire threats of towing violators. However, when my car was stolen from their lot, and I checked with security to see if perhaps it had been towed for some inadvertant violation, the security guy in charge confided with me that they never tow for such things--only if a car is abandoned or parked in some way that blocks traffic. I suspect that all or most casinos follow similar policies. It's hard to get a customer angrier than by towing away his car for some trivial infraction. In apparent confirmation of this theory, I took time to notice the cars parked in these alt-fuel spaces as I left, and it was a completely random assemblage, including some notoriously inefficient SUVs and one pickup truck. I'm not sure which is stupider: to have this parking policy and actually enforce it, or to have it and not enforce it, but I think Aria is choosing the latter route of stupidity.

And, FWIW, I still have serious doubts about the whole fossil-fuels-cause-global-warming hypothesis. (Sorry, Al Gore.)


Dogs playing poker?

My friend Michael Hamai, of allvegaspoker.com fame, just two days ago posted this picture of a dog accompanying its owner to a poker room, with the message, "Only at Boulder Station." It was a wonderful coincidence, then, to spot last night the only dog I've ever seen in a poker room:




My guess is that dogs are not generally allowed, but both of these two have somehow been legally designated as "companion animals" and are thus given access privileges equivalent to those of seeing eye dogs. The most common reason for little lap dogs getting this label is for "treatment" of some sort of anxiety or panic disorder. The owners claim that having the dog nearby calms them down. If you ask me (and I realize that nobody did), the vast majority of these are just scams by people who like having their pooches with them, and/or drama queens seeking and getting attention for their "disease." I can't believe how many doctors will sign off on such nonsense. I don't really mind having well-behaved dogs in public places like casinos, but they should allow anybody to bring them, not just those who wail, "I'm sick! I need Muffins with me every minute of the day or I can't cope!"


Stupid rule

Early in my session, I noticed the dealer just sitting there after a hand was over, with nothing happening, and no apparent reason for the delay. Just as I was about to ask what the holdup was, the green light flashed on the Shufflemaster, he exchanged decks, and went on with the next hand. I thought he was just being too lazy to do a hand shuffle. But then I noticed the same thing happen with each of the next two dealers when a hand ended quickly, so I asked the third one if that was a house rule. Indeed it is. He informed me that there are no hand shuffles allowed at the Aria unless the game is four-handed or less, and even then it requires the supervisor's approval.

I have never heard of this being a policy anywhere else, though when I sent out a Twitter message about it, somebody responded that they have the same rule at the Bellagio. I can't see any convincing reason for it. It slows the game down, without any meaningful advantage to compensate. I suppose there is some tiny reduction in risk of the dealer manipulating the shuffle for the benefit of some particular player, but is that really a serious concern? If there is some good reason for this policy that I'm not seeing, please let me know in the comments. Absent that, I'm declaring it to be just plain stupid.


Winning lucky, winning smart, winning strange, and winning ugly

Most of my profit came in three hands. In the first, I cracked aces with 5-5 when I flopped a full house. In the second, I correctly called down a three-barrel bluff by a tight player whom I had not seen bluffing in the two hours I had played with him. I had only top pair with a mediocre kicker (J-9 on a jack-high flop, to be exact). I just got the strange sense from him that he didn't really like his hand as much as his bets represented, though for the life of me I couldn't pick out any one thing in particular that was giving me that vibe. I was glad to discover that I had been right.

I took one pot that I didn't expect to. I raised pre- with something junky like a 7-8 offsuit, got one caller from the blinds. The board missed both of us, and it was just checked down. By the river, I had not improved at all. But to my surprise, my opponent just checked out (i.e., mucked instead of checking) on the river, saying, "I missed." I won without having to show that I had just 8-high. Who knows--maybe it was the best hand, but there's a decent chance he threw away the winner for no reason.

The biggest pot I won last night, though, came, unfortunately, at the expense of my friend CK, of the BWOP blog, who had also come to share the hilarity with Grange. He had to leave for dinner shortly after she arrived, though, so that didn't really work out. In this hand, I had K-K, and she was the only one to call my raise, with J-10 and position. Flop was J-10-x. I bet, she raised. I thought for a while. I was trying to decide, (1) Did she have something like A-J, and was probing to see if I would fold A-K or A-Q or a middle pair to a raise? (2) If she had two pair, J-10 was the obvious candidate, and could a reraise make her sufficiently convinced that I had flopped a set that she would fold? (3) If she had a set, would she raise here or just smooth-call? Well, by some series of mysterious mental machinations, I concluded that there was enough chance of either being ahead or getting her to fold two pair that it was worth pushing. I did. She called quickly, though with a pained look that, in retrospect, I take to mean that she suspected a set and called with top two pair anyway. I was in bad shape. But the turn and river were both 7s, landing me a better two pair and the roughly $500 pot. That is truly winning ugly.

We have now played two large pots (previous one in December, written up here and here), each of us winning one. But not only was hers the bigger of the two, both times she got her money in good, while I got mine in bad. That's not something I'm terribly proud of.

CK left after that hand (it being only the last in a series of ugly ones for her), and the table wasn't much fun without my friends there, so I cashed out less than an hour later, up about $400.

I headed over to Hooters to complete my self-amusement by contrast. But I've now taken long enough to write up the first half of the night that I need to get going on other things, so the second half of the story (that's the "worst of times," to give you a foretaste) will have to wait until tomorrow.



*Why? Well, sometimes I'm in a hurry for some reason and don't want to take the time to cash out, so I just bring the chips home and use them on the next visit to that casino. But the most common reason is that I pocket some special commemorative chip to add to the collection, get home, find that I already have one of that issue that I had forgotten, and then it goes by the door to be used again next time I play in that room. With Hooters, there are so many different chips, each with a pretty girl on them, that it's really hard to remember which ones I have and which I don't, so on my last trip I ended up with 10 or 15 that turned out to be duplicates, and were waiting to be recycled into the poker economy.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Just home from playing at Aria first, followed by Hooters (an interesting study in contrasts). At the latter, I liked this card cap being used by another player--a four-leaf clover encased in some sort of acrylic. It seemed fitting for the day.

I'm thinking that I might stay downtown for the evening festivities tonight. The downtown crowd tends to be fun and interesting on holidays, with great photo ops. That way, I wouldn't have to fight traffic near the Strip. Maybe Fitzgerald's would have enough action for my once or twice yearly visit to play there. If not, Binion's and Golden Nugget are reliable alternatives.

Upgrade at Hooters

(With that title, it's tempting to lead with a photo of before-and-after breast implants. But I shall refrain. Besides, I'm an au naturale kind of guy; I think implants usually detract from rather than enhance beauty.)

The last time I was at Hooters was exactly a year and a day before last night's visit: February 2, 2009, a fact that I did not know when I set out across the street after finishing up at the MGM Grand. I just knew it had been a long time.

The main reason I have avoided returning is that Hooters was one of just a handful of poker rooms that still allow smoking right at the table. (The others, to the best of my knowledge, are Arizona Charlie's--Decatur, Boulder Station, Club Fortune, Palms after 2:00 a.m., and Texas Station.)

I was surprised, therefore, when nobody was smoking when I sat down. As more and more time passed without anybody lighting up, I gradually realized that the policy must have changed. When the floor guy substituted in to give the dealer a break, I asked him about it. He said they changed it nearly a year ago.

Mind you, this is still one of the smokiest rooms you'll find; players need only step away from the table about three feet to light up. But it's amazing what a difference that small distance makes. Yeah, you'll still leave with clothes reeking, but it's not the gag-inducing injection right up your nostrils that it was when the sidestream was 12 inches away.

On that basis, I'm moving Hooters from category 6 up to category 5 in my list of degrees of smokiness in Vegas card rooms.

Also on that basis, there's a good chance I'll be patronizing the place a little more often than I have in the past. It's one of the softest rooms in the city, an easy place to make money if you can stand the smoke and the raunchy behavior of the other players. (Having the entire business themed after female body parts seems to eradicate any inhibition customers might otherwise feel about making sex the continual centerpiece of conversation. I can't recall a single mention of a woman in a few hours last night that wasn't about her body and/or sexual performance. It's true: Men are pigs.)

As an added bonus, Hooters poker room now gives $1/hour in comps that can be used at its restaurants or retail shops, like most every other poker room in the city does. They didn't used to do that (as far as I know). They also have a $100 aces-cracked bonus all day every day (highly unuusal), high-hand jackpots, and a bad-beat jackpot ($1000 shared--not sure of the distribution) for aces-full beaten.

The hatred is ebbing

I've been whining lately about sets treating me badly. Tonight the pendulum swung back in the direction I'm more used to. I spent a few hours at MGM Grand, then went across the street to Hooters, a place I tend to hit only once or twice a year. Between the two rooms, I hit seven sets, and didn't lose with any of them. Three yielded only small or medium pots, but with four of them (kings twice, jacks, and fives) I doubled up or felted an opponent. That included my kings cracking aces on a flop of K-Q-9 for the biggest pot of my night. I also never lost a big pot to somebody else's set.

As a result, I am experiencing considerable diminishment of my loathing for flopped sets.

My night among the smokers

Once or twice a year, something hits me (a stroke, maybe, or a brain tumor) and I decide I should put in a session at one or more of the handful of poker rooms in town that still allow smoking at the table. (Wow--strange coincidence. I just noticed that it was exactly one year ago today that I first put up my frequently updated categorization of degrees of smokiness in poker rooms.) Tonight was such a night. I took in Boulder Station and Hooters. Nothing interesting happened at Hooters, but let me tell you about Boulder.


New room

They're advertising a new poker room at Boulder Station. Baloney. It's the same old room, with barely enough change to call it a face lift. They moved the check-in desk from one end to the other, put up new wallpaper, and are gradually replacing the chairs with more comfortable ones. That's it.


Pictures

Despite what has happened to me and other photographers in other Stations properties, I walked around snapping pictures at Boulder unnoticed and unmolested.


Massage

There was a young woman in uniform walking around offering table massages. I had not seen this at Boulder previously, though I've only played there twice before, so maybe it goes on all the time and I was just unaware of it. I've added it to my list of places where you can get a massage while playing.


Oops

On my next-to-last hand of the night, I was dealt J-J, except the second one flipped up and was exposed during the pitch and had to be replaced. I got an offsuit 4 instead. Ick. It's the first time ever, as far as I know, that I have had a big pocket pair broken up and taken away because of a dealer's bad pitch.


My big hand

OK, here's the story I really wanted to get to.

I had started with my customary $100 buy-in, and after a little less than two hours had worked it up to $201. I was two off the button and looked down at K-J offsuit. Not a great hand. Sometimes I'll throw it away, sometimes limp, sometimes raise. As is so often said in poker, it all depends. In this case, there were three or four limpers already, and it's not a hand I want to play in an unraised pot. I hadn't played a hand in a while, and hadn't raised pre-flop in a long time, so I thought that if I raised I could get credit for a bigger hand than I actually held. Furthermore, the cutoff and the button were the two tightest players at the table, so I thought that a raise had a good chance of effectively giving me the button for this hand. I raised to $13. I got four callers, including the button, which was not good.

The flop was Q-T-5 rainbow, giving me an open-ended straight draw to the nuts. The first three players checked. I bet $35 into the approximately $65 pot (a couple of limpers had folded, both blinds had called, and I think the max rake is $4--close enough), basically running a flag up the pole to see if anybody would salute, as the saying goes.

Boy, did they ever! The button reraised all-in for his last $95. The small blind pushed all-in for a little over $400. One guy folded. A middle-position maniac pushed all-in for about $250. Nothing, absolutely nothing like this had happened during the previous two hours! What in the hell was going on?! As the chatter and oooing and ahhing started, people started coming over from nearby tables to see what was developing.

I hated this situation. I probably had the worst hand among the four of us left contesting this pot! I had $153 left at this point. I estimated that I was getting better than 3:1 on a call for the rest of my chips and that I was right around 3:1 to win it. (Eight outs twice is about 33%, but you have to factor in some discount for the possibility of somebody hitting a runner-runner flush, or, more likely here, the board pairing and giving a full house or quads to an opponent currently holding a set.) It was close, but I thought the math favored a call.

I hate this sort of thing. If I'm going to be playing a huge pot, I want it to be on my terms, when I have reason to be confident that I have substantially the best hand. I might semi-bluff all-in on a good draw like this against a single opponent if I could be the aggressor, but calling all-in on a draw? Into three opponents? It's against my religion!

But I was finally persuaded by my estimate of the numbers that it was the right thing to do, so I stacked up my chips and pushed them forward. We now had an actual crowd around the table.

The dealer put out the turn card: deuce of the fourth suit. Didn't help me, but it didn't pair the board, and it killed the possibility of a backdoor flush.

River: a 9! Yes! I spiked my gin card, and now held the absolute nuts. The button mucked without showing. The small blind had 5-5 for a flopped set. The middle-position maniac had A-Q. (I don't know why he didn't raise before the flop. That was uncharacteristic of him.) The dealer pushed me about $654, and gave the rest to the small blind.

Here's the actual math, now that I can take the time to work through it with 20/20 hindsight. First, though, I have to guess at what the button had. I think it must have been 10-10, Q-Q, or Q-10--maybe A-Q or A-A, but I think those are less likely. Given his tight nature and how I had been playing, those are really the only two hands with which he would have called my pre-flop raise and then raised me all-in on the flop. For now I'm going to assume it was Q-10.

The pot was actually offering me $501 that I could win (the $65 pre-flop pot, plus my $35 bet, plus the button's $95, plus $153 from each of the two bigger stacks). That's 3.27:1 on my money if I win. The odds calculator at cardplayer.com assigns us the following rounded probabilities to take the hand: 27% (me), 13% (for the presumed Q-T on the button), 58% (5-5 in the small blind), and 2% (maniac with A-Q). That makes my odds 2.7:1 against winning. So I was basically right that it was pretty close, but mathematically favored the call that I ended up making. [Patting self on back.]

(If we assume instead that the button had flopped a bigger set, it change the odds between him and the small blind, but doesn't change my odds meaningfully. Because he was the short stack, he wasn't eligible for any side pot and therefore wouldn't have to show his hand even if he did have a better flopped set than the small blind's 5s.)

It's nice to be presented with a moderately complex situation, work out the right decision, and have the poker gods reward it. Study your math, boys and girls--it really does come in handy!

I finished that orbit, but didn't have another playable hand (because my jacks got taken away). I packed up my chips and told the table, "Gentlemen, I know when my luck has gotten as good as it's going to get, and that would be now, so I'm leaving before it changes on me." That was my flimsy apology for the hit-and-run. But I just didn't feel like taking a chance on giving it all back, like I did the last time I had a comparable stack. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Sometimes that means take the money and run.


Good dealer

By the way, I need to add kudos for the dealer. He announced verbally each step in figuring out the pot. He showed that I had the button covered, gave his stack to me, then counted my stack and took the same amount from each of the two big stacks, gave those sums to me, then gave the rest of the A-Q's stack to the small blind. He explained clearly at every point what he was doing and why. In multi-way pots, it's easy to make mistakes, but if the dealer says everything out loud along the way, it's makes it far easier for those involved to either be reassured that the outcome is correct or recognize that a mistake is being made and speak up to make it right. I tipped him more than I usually would for being so open and clear. Dealers usually get these things right, but do the work silently, so I have to figure out what they're doing as they go. That's not always easy, because there are several ways one can go about the process. I much prefer this dealer's uncommon explicitness.


One Hooters story

OK, I forgot about the one notable thing that happened at Hooters: I saw somebody flop a royal flush. He had A-K of hearts, and the flop came Q-J-10 of hearts--in that order, even. This is, I think, the third royal flush I've seen made using both hole cards, but the first one that hit on the flop. Given how much I play, that tells you something about how rare a phenomenon it is.


So all in all, my night among the smokers turned out OK. As soon as I burn the clothes I was wearing and finish coughing up a lung or two, I'll be fine.

Hooters--maybe not a place for wise owls

I just got home from playing poker at Hooters hotel and casino. I had been there only once before, 18 months ago. Didn't like it, so I never went back. But after posting my recent list of smokiness of the various Vegas poker rooms (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-smoke-free-is-smoke-free.html), some commenters informed me that Hooters has reconfigured its poker room, and my rating wasn't really valid now. I noted in an edit that I should probably go check out the revamp. I was passing right by it on my way home from the Luxor, so decided that tonight was the night to give the joint another look-see.

The commenters to my previous post were right. As you can (sort of) see from the first photo above, there are two tables outside the poker room proper. You can see through the window into the actual poker room, and the door leading to it is right behind the desk where the guy in black is standing. The second photo is inside that room.

But they keep the main action at the two outside tables, and there's a big sign posted reading "Smoking OK." So Hooters really did buck the no-smoking trend and joined the tiny list of places where smoking right at the table is permitted--not at every table they have, mind you, but at least at the ones they use the most.

It wasn't quite as noisy as the din I remember from last time, but it was still what I consider to be annoyingly loud--players had to speak pretty loudly to hear each other.

We had two dealers rotating for the one table in action, and they were both first-rate--attentive, quick, friendly, but strict on the rules. I didn't witness a single slip-up of any kind.

The players were a mixed bunch, poker-wise, though uniformly a friendly lot. The skill level was generally lower than what I'm used to at other comparable games around town. It was driven by three maniacs. They nailed me with agonizingly unlucky (for me) situations for two buy-ins before I was able to put on my sheriff's badge and make them pay big fines for driving way over the speed limit. I ended up with a $321 profit in just under 90 minutes. It was like riding a bucking bronco, but I emerged with the best of it.

Somebody ordered a big mess o' chicken wings, and four players were sharing them, eating with their fingers (naturally, not one of them left to wash his hands first), then sort of vainly wiping them on their pants before picking up the cards and chips. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww!

Hooters won't go on my list of the "worst of the worst" places to play, because that's reserved for the handful of places that are populated almost exclusively by elderly locals playing the lowest limits they can find, trying to hit jackpots, and it's nearly impossible to make any money consistently. Unlike those places, there is definitely big money to be made at Hooters, if you can stand the environment. I can't, at least not very often, and not for very long.