Two new (or newish) poker rooms

The Quad

Today was the opening of the poker room at "The Quad," which is the new name for the remodeled Imperial Palace. The new room is near the elevators that you pass between the parking garage and the casino, also near the escalator that goes up to Hash House. It has huge traffic going by, but of course that also means that there is a lot of noise and cigarette smoke. Stupidly, all the signs still point visitors to the location of the temporary room upstairs, where there is just empty space.

Dealers are the same, management is the same. So it all seems familiar, even with the new name, location, chips, and felt.


TI (Treasure Island) 

TI moved its poker room to a location on the main casino floor (instead of out in the corridor of shops) several months ago, but today was the first time I've been there since the move.

I like the new facility. It's not quite as isolated from smoke and noise as the old one, but it's pretty good. There's also a lot more space between the tables. This is where we had my going-away tournament tonight. 11 of the 33 entrants in the 7 pm daily tournament were friends and/or readers of mine, but all four of the players who cashed were. Good work by my peeps.

Hard Rock

Last night I played at the Hard Rock for the first time in over three years. I was last there on May 23, 2009, to be exact. I never did particularly well in their "Poker Lounge." My experience was that they attracted too high a ratio of grinders to tourists. It's now been a couple of years since they shut that down and moved the room to a new wing of the casino, and this was my first time to try it out.

Why did I go? Well, I don't like there being poker rooms that I haven't seen--even ones that are merely remodeled or relocated within a casino. Also, I learned recently that an old friend from my Hilton poker room days, James Klosty, is now the Hard Rock poker room manager, and I hoped to see him. (He wasn't there, unfortunately.)

Finally, I am in the process of gradually liquidating my poker chip collection. The Hard Rock has probably issued more different commemorative chips than any other place in town. If not the absolute most, they are certainly in contention with the Tropicana, Rio, and Palms for top honors. Of course, I could just take the ones I don't want anymore to the cage and cash them in--but what fun is that? I wanted to play with them. I removed 26 ($130 worth) from my collection, leaving just six that I especially liked. (Two or three years ago I decided I had a completely ridiculous number of Hard Rock chips and that it was a Sisyphean task to try to acquire a complete collection, so the 30 that were left before last night's purge were already a culled set of favorites from a previous cashing-in event.)

As you might guess from the above photo, I pocketed another four to bring home. Which is not wholly within the spirit of the chip-reduction project. But it's still a net reduction of 22, so moving in the right direction. Besides, who could resist a poker chip featuring the Mona Lisa wearing Groucho Marx nose and glasses? Or Abe Lincoln in sunglasses? I love the elegant design of the Friday the Thirteenth chip. And surely everybody likes either Bob Seger, or the tailfins of the 1959 Cadillac, or both, right?

The Hard Rock parking garage is as maddening to negotiate as it ever was. But that actually worked out in my favor. I lost my first buy-in at around 11:20 p.m., and felt too tired to keep playing, so I tried to leave. But I couldn't. My car was on the 7th level, and there was a traffic jam all the way down to the exit. I had badly timed my bust-out to coincide with the end of the Fiona Apple concert. It was hopeless. If I got in my car, I would just sit in it, idling, inching forward, for probably an hour. I decided I'd be better off putting in another hour of poker. So I went back to the poker room, got in a different game, and in 90 minutes not only won back my lost buy-in, but an additional $195 on top of it.

The play was much softer than I remember it being in the Poker Lounge. The room is not as comfortable now, though. It's just a cordoned-off area of the casino floor, so there's a ton of noise and cigarette smoke, both of which annoy me no end. This means that I'm now going to be torn between remembering that the games seem easy to beat (if my one-night sample means anything, which it may not) and remembering the headache that the atmosphere gave me.

Will I go back again? I'm not sure yet.

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":

Seeing red

I was at the Palms tonight--the poker room's first day in its new location and under new management. The casino has contracted out management of both the poker room and the sports book to Cantor Gaming, which some industry observers think is a trend of the future. You can read a bit about it here.

The new room is just inside the doors from the west parking garage, adjacent to the food court.

The wall of televisions in the sports book has to be seen to be believed. It's enormous, sharp as a tack, and impossibly bright. (Notice in the photos above that it completely blows out the sensor in my digital camera, so you can't see any detail.) In fact, the brightness is so intense it's a problem for the poker room. You'll think I'm exaggerating about this until you go there and experience it yourself, but when the picture on the two biggest screens suddenly changes to something really bright--a little text on an all-white background for an ad, for example--it changes the ambient light level in the poker room so much that everybody turns to see what happened. It's like suddenly turning on an additional set of lights, or setting off a camera flash: even if you're not looking in that direction, you not only know it happened, but it diverts your attention, at least briefly.

The poker players spend a lot of time looking at the wall of sports action--far more than they used to with a couple of ordinary TVs on the far side of the room. The things occupy such a large fraction of one's visual field that it's pretty hard not to be distracted. This caused the games to lag noticeably more than they did in the old room, because people weren't paying attention.

A related problem is the sound level. They don't play sports in silence--whatever is on the biggest screens has the audio track filling the room. And it is LOUD. It was so loud that it made it difficult for players and dealers to hear each other. It was so loud that it gave me a headache after an hour or so.

These two problems interact in an unfortunate way: Players are looking somewhere else when it's their turn, but the dealer can't get their attention by saying, "Sir," because nobody can hear what is being said at the table. I'm not just being hypersensitive about this--the games were at least one-third slower than has been my experience at the Palms before, all because of this combination of overwhelming sight and sound from the sports book.

My final gripe is that the room was cold--one of the coldest I've experienced in a long time. And wouldn't you know it, this was one of the rare times I didn't take a sweatshirt with me. I saw "Titanic 3D" this week, and the Palms poker room made me appreciate what it must have felt like to jump off the ship into the icy North Atlantic. No--scratch that. I would have welcomed the chance to go swimming among those frozen corpses so that I could warm up a little.

These three problems are serious enough that if they aren't fixed, my time in the new room is going to be severely limited. One of the things I most appreciated about the old room was that it was small, quiet, and isolated. The new room is none of those things. The room launches a multi-faceted assault on one's physical comfort.

On the plus side of the ledger, the appointments are plenty nice--assuming you like your red juiced up on steroids.

The new tables don't have built-in cupholders, however, which annoys me. I dislike having to find one of the portable ones and jam it under the rail.

In one of the pictures above you can see a single table inside a glassed-in room, which I assume is for private and/or higher stakes games.

They finally have the Genesis Bravo system with card readers at the table, instead of logging in and out at the desk.

No poker magazine racks are in evidence. I'm told that that will be remedied in the future.

The entire sports book area has been designated no-smoking. That surprised me, because I can't think of another sports book in town that is smoke-free, but I'm sure not complaining. When I first saw that the new poker room was actually inside of the sports book, one of my first thoughts was that there would be a lot of smoke infiltration. I was wrong. I never caught a whiff of smoke in 3 1/2 hours of play. There's also a set of restrooms inside the sports book, so you don't have to penetrate of wall of smoke to get to them.

To sum up, the place looks really nice at first glance, and it's far more smoke-free than one would guess from the layout. However, the combination of the problems of player distraction, painful noise levels from the sports book, and a temperature that made me yearn for a big dose of global warming are daunting to me, and are likely to make me choose other venues when I would have hit up the Palms if they had stayed with the old room.

The Palms used to have a poker room. Now they have a few poker tables inside a sports book. The sports-book environment is so intrusively, unrelentingly oppressive that you are unlikely to forget even for a single second that that's where you are. This is a wholesale change in the character of the place, one that I deeply wish they had not made.

Tropicana's new poker room

I've had serious beefs with the Tropicana poker room in the past (click on that "Tropicana" label at the end of this post to review them), but was nevertheless eager to have the room reopen under new management. It opened yesterday, 9:00 a.m.

I got there about 7:00 p.m. and stayed for about 2 1/2 hours. The game was always short-handed, and three of the players were off-duty dealers (one from the Trop, two from other rooms). We had a couple of weak players, but it was not what one would consider soft or juicy. However, you can't judge how a room will play by its first day of operation, when only locals who follow the Vegas poker scene will know it's there.

So here's what it looks like:

OK, not exactly like that. It's orange, but not quite THAT orange. I couldn't get the white balance on my camera right.

The tables are nice:

Random observations:

• It's in the same location as the old room, right next to the sports book, but the lighting and decor are much improved.
• For that matter, the entire casino has undergone an amazing upgrade. I had not been there since the old poker room closed in late 2008, and, really, you'd hardly recognize the place. It's bright, beautiful, clean, and airy.
• The new chips are very tasteful, as you can see above. I was disappointed, though, that they have retired all the old ones. I have about 65 different $5 Trop chips in my collection, but there are lots of them left that I never picked up. I had hoped that the new poker room would mean more chances to scrounge up some of the less-common older chips, but they have been taken out of circulation.
• Oddly, the poker room was using both new and old $1 chips, and some of the old design were obviously uncirculated, with sharp edges. Apparently they had a stash of the old design that never got used, and decided to put them into play alongside the new design. Why do that for the $1 chips but pull the old $5s out? Seems inconsistent.
• The chairs are comfortable, standard office five-wheeled things, adjustable for height. The dealers raved about their chairs (not the same ones players use) being the most comfortable EVAR.
• Tables are nice, but good luck keeping that white border white, what with spilled drinks and poker players' notoriously grimy hands and questionable personal hygiene.
• The tables are small enough that they can seat only nine. I don't mind that, but then why did they order them with ten cupholders? It's so much easier to square up the table if the dealer can tell everybody to get centered on a cupholder, rather than saying, "You need to be three-eighths of the way between this cupholder and that one."
• Restrooms are a l-o-n-g hike from the poker room--a longer trek than with any other poker room in town that I can think of offhand. We were told, however, that ongoing remodeling, when completed, will bring a new set much closer.
• The mainstay game is $1/3 NLHE, buy-in $100-$500.
• They're using Cartamudi cards, a brand I had never heard of before. They were nice enough, but the real question is durability. How well will they resist picking up identifiable dings, dents, bends, smears, and worn spots?
• The room is nicely isolated in terms of infiltrating noise and cigarette smoke.
• They have the Genesis Bravo system, giving the city standard $1/hour in food comps.
• They have progressive high-hand jackpots.
• There is ample, luxurious room between the tables.
• No magazine racks for picking up freebies.
• I really wish they would install a water cooler. It's such a simple and inexpensive amenity, but saves me from a bunch of waitress tips while keeping a ton of water bottles out of the landfills. (Incidentally, for an interesting look at the economics of bottled and running water, see this post from yesterday at the Freakonomics blog.)
• Nobody threatened to beat me up yesterday, which is all by itself a substantial upgrade from the old room. Also, they appeared to have and abide by actual rules!
• Dealers were first-rate, except for one young woman, who appeared to be fresh out of dealer school, still nervous and inexperienced.

Speaking of dealers, here's a randomly selected one, of no particular interest or significance, proudly showing off his dead spread:

This room has considerable potential. As I mentioned a few days ago, its physical features seem to be exactly to my preferences--small, cozy, quiet, comfortable. The big question is whether they can build enough of a player base to keep a game going consistently at the hours I like to play, and, if so, whether it will be a local's rock garden or populated mostly with fun-loving tourists. We'll just have to wait and see about that. I have high hopes.

New poker room at the Riviera

I played at the Riviera tonight. It's way down low on my list of preferred rooms, but I heard that they had moved the room recently, and wanted to see the new digs.

There's not a lot interesting to report. Same old tables, same old chairs, same staff, same chips. It's now at the base of the escalator that goes up to the theaters, and adjacent to the entrance to the main-floor theater where they have the Rat Pack show.

There is markedly less foot traffic in the new place. I spoke to the shift manager about it for a minute as I was cashing out. He pointed out that the old location was very near the elevators to the guest rooms, so they would get a lot of people returning from the Strip (often drunk). They'd pass the poker room as they were heading to their rooms to crash, and decide to engage in a little late-night poker as a nightcap. That doesn't happen now, because the room is well off the beaten path.

They are phasing out the high-hand jackpots as each one is hit for the last time, and substituting a splash-pot promotion. At hourly intervals (or so it seemed tonight), a player is chosen at random to spin this wheel for the table:

The amount indicated is put into the pot at the beginning of the next hand, and goes to whoever wins the pot.

I was there for two of these spins tonight; both happened to be for $100. The first one played out in a straightforward manner. The second, though, was kind of interesting. Almost everybody limped in. (I can't say "everybody," because we had some players who had no concept of poker math, and failed to realize that any two cards were worth at least the $2 big blind for a chance to win $100.) I joined them from the cutoff position with K-3 offsuit, hoping for a cheap flop.

The guy in the small blind was the only other smart, thinking player at the table. When it was his turn, he moved all-in for $101. Everybody folded around to me. This was an intriguing situation. If I were that guy, I might be inclined to do that move with any two cards, after the table had all limped, showing weakness. It would seem to have very high fold equity, and hence a high expectation to win $100 without even having to sweat a five-card board.

He was the only player at the table capable of figuring out that that was likely a profitable move, no matter what he held. He knew that essentially every other player was a complete or near novice to the game. They were having trouble just with knowing what the bet was, whose turn it was, how to protect their cards, etc. They were utterly ABC, playing the strength of their own hands with no grasp of how to gauge what others held, and with not a lick of deception among them. (Well, except for when they failed to grasp how strong a particular hand was--e.g., I saw one of them just call on the river with the stone cold nuts, for no apparent reason.) He would know that their limps were not setting a trap for somebody who would try to raise big with air to steal the pot; a $2 call meant that they didn't want to put in more than $2.

All of which meant that he was the one player whose shove could not command much respect from me.

So I called. He flipped over 10-10--a better hand than I had given him credit for. But at least I had an overcard. Sure enough, the flop came K-Q-9, and he bricked out on the turn and river. I suspect that's the first time I've won a $300+ pot with K-3 offsuit.

My opponent did not take it well. "K-3? You've got to be effin' kidding me! WTF were you doing calling there?" Etc. In short, hilarity ensued--at least briefly, before he stomped off.

Had I been able to see his cards, would a call be correct there? I actually don't know the answer as I type this, but let's work it out. PokerStove tells me that I win against T-T 27.9% of the time, while he wins 72.1%, or 2.58:1. I had to call an additional $99 to win a pot that was about $220 after the rake, so pot odds of 2.22:1. That means that my call was slightly -EV, had I known what he held.

However, if we look at his whole range, things look better for me. I have no way of knowing exactly what range of cards he would make this push with, but let's assume that it's any pocket pair and any two Broadway cards. Then he's 65.4% to my 34.6%, or 1.80:1, making the call mathematically correct. My guess is that that is his minimum range for that situation, and it might well be much broader. Or maybe this is all just self-serving justification. I don't claim to know for sure.

Anyway, the structure of this promotion is kind of interesting. One strategy might be to keep one's stack at the bare minimum, buying a few chips at a time, but never going entirely broke (which then triggers the minimum buy-in requirement of $50). Ideally, you'd have just $2 left when it was time for the splash-pot, because you're eligible to win the entire amount that the poker room puts in the pot before the hand begins with that minimal investment. Of course, you can't win more than an additional $2 from any other player, but spending $2 to have a 10% or more shot at $100 is a nice bargain. Obviously, some of the slots on the wheel are much less than than, but others are more. Also obviously, it costs you something to stick around, which complicates the risk/reward calculation.

One of the big drawbacks, it seems to me, is that they announce in advance when the splash-pot will occur, which will give all the local jackpot-hunting jackal nits plenty of incentive to occupy a seat for about two hands per hour, and do something else the rest of the time while leaving the game short-handed and putting no chips at risk--and they'll do it with the minimum buy-in. They could quickly kill the game if they start acting as I predict they will. (A side note: If I can figure out how the scummy angle-shooters will try to game the system, why can't the poker room managers who devise them?)

It won't matter much to me. I only visit the Riviera a few times a year, mostly when there is a billiard or archery tournament going on there. My guess is that this promotion will have run its course by the time I'm back.

Florida, day 6

Day 6 photo album is here.

We were originally planning to drive back to the Tampa area and spend the day there. But Cardgrrl called an audible, making a last-minute decision instead to visit the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, which is about an hour east of Ft. Myers. I had mentioned it a couple of times as a possible stop in our itinerary, and I think her acquiescence (wow--I typed that word about 15 different ways before the spell-checker stopped highlighting it as wrong) was meant as sort of a sop to me for having let her and her aunt call the shots over the previous several days. But apparently she ended up as glad that we made the detour as I was, judging by her words and photographs.

Corkscrew (named for the river that flows through it) is not exactly a hopping tourist destination. It's somewhat off the beaten path. But we found it well worth the trip. It's a roughly two-mile boardwalk path through an interesting variety of six different small ecosystems that have an unusual convergence in the area. It was clear to me from the equipment and books we saw people carrying, as well as snippets of overheard conversation, that a large fraction of visitors were dedicated birders. I was pleased and surprised at how freely strangers were pointing out to each other hard-to-see wildlife, sharing binoculars, etc.

The Audubon guides were wonderful, too. When something especially interesting was spotted, they would post a paid or volunteer docent there and alert passersby as to what could be seen. For example, in my #14, you can just barely see a big nest with a baby hawk's head poking out of it. That was taken on maximum zoom, and cropped to remove about 90% of the surroundings. It was impossible to see with the unaided eye. But they had set up a powerful spotting scope on a tripod, and were encouraging tourists to look. Through it, you could easily see the little fellas moving around, chirping, and pecking at each other. Delightful! Because the sanctuary is not a heavily promoted, commercial site, there weren't long lines of annoying people messing it up; we could just walk right up to the friendly guide who was eager for everybody to share in the sight. There were very few young children, and the adults were unusually well behaved, everybody trying to remain quiet so as not to scare off the wildlife we were all there to see. It was really an enjoyable, relaxing way to take an afternoon stroll.

#2 is a hawk whose very presence was scaring the bejesus out of the other birds in the area, judging by the alarming calls they were passing amongst themselves.

#3 is a cottonmouth--one of several cool critters we totally would have walked right past without noticing, were it not for one of the helpful guides stationed there to point him out. (There was a beautiful yellow rat snake a few feet away, too, but it was impossible to get a clear shot of him through the shrubs and grasses.)

#8 shows a fine example of a strangler fig, which I had never heard of before. They look like vines, but are not. They do not grow from the ground up, but germinate in the canopy of the host tree and exist as epiphytes until, growing downward, they reach the ground. How cool is that?!

#5, 9, 12, and 18 are all American White Ibis, which were abundant. #9 is a terrible shot, but was the only time we saw a real aggregation of them--at least eight all hunting together. (What is a collection of ibis called? A flock? A gaggle? A murder?)

#10 and 11 are an American Anhinga, a truly remarkable-looking bird, much larger than you'd probably guess from these photos.

#13 is a Little Blue Heron, with a gorgeous spectrum of blues and purples in its plumage.

Cardgrrl was sorely disappointed not to have seen any alligators on our trip, so it was a special treat to spot one here--the last place we would have a chance to do so (#17). And it was not just any ol' alligator, but a new mother with about eight tiny bebbe alligators running up and down her back! The only bummer was that it was at least 30 yards away and nearly hidden in the marsh plants. It was another wonderful sight that we would have missed, were it not for other visitors excitedly pointing it out.

#19 is a big ol' snapping turtle--yet another creature to which we were oblivious until fellow sightseer helpfully directed our attention.

We finally had had enough of nature, between the Edison botanical gardens, the beaches, the Sanibel Island wildlife sanctuary, and the Audubon. So we headed back to Tampa in the late afternoon to take in a distinctly different kind of experience: the Hard Rock Tampa casino (#21). Both Cardgrrl and I, at different tables, independently concluded that the quality of play here was noticeably, meaningfully worse than at similar games in Vegas. We were only there for a couple of hours before being too tired to continue, making ours a small sample size, but if you're a decent player and in the area, a visit will likely be profitable. It was a pleasant playing environment, as well-run as most Vegas poker rooms, and larger than most (50 tables, and surprisingly busy on a Monday night). You could plop that casino down on a vacant lot on the Strip, and it would fit in perfectly. Were it there, I expect it would become one of my more frequent haunts.

The next day (Tuesday) was just returning the rental car and waiting for our flights, so this was effectively our last day of real vacation time. As I've already said, it was one of the most thoroughly enjoyable weeks I've ever spent, with the world's most perfect weather. And, of course, the world's best travel companion.

New poker room at South Point

I played at South Point today, for the first time since they opened their new poker room a few weeks ago. It's definitely a step up, though a small one. Nothing was made worse, and a few small items were improved.

I counted 22 tables, which seems like way more than they'll ever be able to use--but what do I know? Dealers and management remain unchanged, of course, as do the rules, some of which are silly.

Tables look like the same old ones to me, though I think the chairs are new. (Sorry for my uncertainty; I don't spend enough hours at South Point to be sure.) The most notable feature of the new room is that the tables are luxuriously far apart. It might even now boast the greatest average inter-table distance in the city, were anybody to bother measuring.

The room was admirably quiet--well, "admirable" if you like quiet poker rooms, which I do. I think that's more a function of the fact that there weren't a lot of people playing the nearest slot machines than due to the room actually being acoustically isolated in any way. As you can see, it remains wide open to the casino floor on one of its long sides. I noticed not even a whiff of cigarette smoke coming in, nor on my clothes later, though again this may have been due to a slow day in the adjacent slots area rather than any special accomplishment of the ventilation system.

A very nice touch is the addition of a self-serve coffee machine, as you can see in the last photo above--and hot chocolate, too! I don't drink coffee (can you believe I have achieved my advanced years without ever even tasting the stuff?) and the weather was too hot for sampling the hot chocolate, so perhaps my mild excitement will prove to be in vain. I wish they had a water cooler alongside it. I'd be far more likely to use that.

They're still using a paper list, but at least they do it reasonably competently.

Not much else has changed that I could tell. Basically, it's the same room, moved over 30 yards or so, expanded, with a bunch of extra dead tables and a set of new chairs and a coffee machine thrown in. Plus ca change.


So much for the room. The session? Not much interesting to report, as has been the case lately. Most of my profit came in one hand. Pocket 9s, raised to $10. Button goes all-in for his last $26. Big-stacked big blind calls. I call. Flop is A-9-2 with two diamonds. BB checks. This is a situation in which I will usually bet. However, I thought this flop missed him, and he needed to catch at least something to pay off my set. Furthermore, I had, up until this point, played flops after a pre-flop raise with perfect transparency and predictability: Bet if I hit, check and fold if I missed. I thought this guy was smart enough to have picked up on that pattern, and take a shot at the turn even if he had nothing. Time to pull a switcheroo on him.

Turn was offsuit 3. He checked again. I bet $25. He check-raised to $95, looking confident as all get-out. He had played fewer hands than anybody at the table, so I had no sense of his degree of trickiness. There was no flush possible, no paired board. The only possible straight was 4-5 for a gutshot flop turning the wheel, which seemed unlikely, given his pre-flop call of a reraise when the betting had been reopened to me behind him. The only other hand he could have that had me beat was A-A, and the pre-flop action argued against that. I thought it was most probable that we had either set-over-set, or he had aces up, both of which were fine with me and would likely earn me a call, so I shoved. He called with no hesitation and said, "Straight." He did indeed have the 4-5. Oops.

But then he made his fatal mistake: He saw my cards and told the dealer, "Don't pair the board." The next card to come was probably a going to be a queen or something else unhelpful to me, but the God of Irony clearly heard my opponent, and felt compelled to do what he does. River: 3. Full house to me, pot to me. The classic suck and resuck, thankyouverymuch.

Other than that, not a single blog-worthy hand or incident.

A stop at Bill's--plus, cicada sweat

I heard via Twitter that about a week ago Bill's moved its poker room, so this evening I put in a short session there to see what I might think about it.

What I think is this: They killed the three distractions that I most liked about the old room.

First, the old room had the best people-watching vantage point of any poker tables in the city, bar none. Particularly in the summer when they would leave the exterior doors wide open, it was almost like sitting on the sidewalk to play, but with air conditioning. Watching the freaks and tourists was the best part of playing at Bill's. Well, besides making money, that is.

Second, if you were there at the three showtimes a day, you could listen in on Big Elvis performing maybe 40 yards away. I doubt that you'll be able to hear him in the new location. I like Big Elvis. In fact, Big Elvis got married tonight, at Bill's. I was there and snapped the photo above. (That wasn't pure coincidence. I had read about the nuptials in the Las Vegas Sun, and picked today for my visit partly because of the chance to peek in on it.) The wedding took place in the same spot that he performs every day, though they dressed it up so differently you wouldn't be able to tell from the pictures. That guy is one hunka hunka burnin' love. (There is, however, a lot less of him than there used to be.)

Third, when Big Elvis wasn't performing, they had pop oldies playing in the casino--it's music I grew up listening to and gives me a pleasant rush of nostalgia. As far as I can tell, it doesn't play in the new location, probably because people in the immediately adjacent race/sports book want to be able to hear the game or race being called. (Pure speculation on my part there.)

So now playing there is just the poker. Less fun. I know, I know--I'm not supposed to be there for the people-watching or for Big Elvis or for the soundtrack of my youth. But one can't pay attention to the game all the time, and I enjoy having something else going on as a respite from studying for tells and calculating pot odds. They took those things away, and I don't like it.

The new location is also right next to a bar, and when I arrived the entire region was stinking to high heaven from some nasty dude's big fat cigar. The old room was pretty smoky, too, but they didn't improve the situation any, it appears to me.

Bill's poker room caters to beginning players, with the lowest stakes and buy-in of any NLHE game in town. (The MGM "beginners' game" may be an exception; I don't know its parameters offhand.) Many, many times I have seen people wandering by and deciding to play because of those factors--people who started their day with no intention of playing poker, and who had never played poker in a casino before. I think that the walk-by player factor will be meaningfully decreased in the new location, as it's a bit off the beaten path of the slots and table games. It's sort of hidden behind and roped off from the player's card service area and the $1 hot dog stand.

I'm not exactly a frequent flier at Bill's these days, but I'm afraid that my visits will become even fewer and farther between than they have been. I'm giving the room change a big thumbs down.


Random fact learned at the poker table tonight: Cicadas are the only insects that can sweat to cool down when it's hot. This came up because a young woman seated next to me had a cicada tattooed on her arm. Why? I have no idea. But she did. And seeing it prompted another player to volunteer to be Cliff Claven (he brought up that name himself) and tell us about cicada sweat. I didn't think he was pulling our legs, but I had no idea whether the information was reliable. When I got home, however, and Googled it, I became convinced. I found this paragraph here:

In perhaps its most novel defense, the desert cicada has developed an
extraordinary ability to remain active throughout mid-day, when most would-be
predators have to seek shelter from the desert heat. Notably, the cicada,
unlike any other known insect, can sweat, which helps it dissipate heat.
“When threatened with overheating,” said University of Arizona entomologist
Robert L. Smith in an article called “Keepin’ Cool and Dodgin’ Spines,” “desert
cicadas extract water from their blood and transport it through large ducts to
the surface of the thorax, where it evaporates. The cooling that results
permits a few desert cicada species to be active when temperatures are so high
that their enemies are incapacitated by the heat. No other insects have
been shown to have the ducts required for sweating."

So there ya go. Now I ask you--what other poker blog could you have read today that would have educated you about cicada sweat? NONE, I tell you!

Boulder Highway adventures

I mentioned recently that I've been trying to call Club Fortune and find a time when they're spreading a $1-$2 no-limit game, because I've never seen their new poker room, even though it has been open for months. After being told that this virtually never happens, however, I resolved to head out there sometime and put up with a low limit game, just so that I can report on the room. I decided that today was the day.

But on the long drive out there, I got interested in a news story on the radio and missed the turn. Before I knew it, I was at the point where Boulder Highway becomes limited-access, and there was no way to turn around for several miles. The first opportunity to head back north comes right at Railroad Pass.


Railroad Pass

I've been to this place once before, in December, 2007. I took a couple of pictures of its one lonely, unused poker table, and did a post about it titled, "The smallest poker room in Nevada."

I had not been planning to visit it again, but as long as I had accidentally ventured that far out (22 miles from my downtown apartment, right on the border between Henderson and Boulder City), I decided to peek in and see if the one table was still there.

It is not. I have no idea when they stopped trying, but there is definitely no poker room at Railroad Pass now. Which means that I can claim to have played in every currently operating poker room in the area. (Unless Speedway still has a table or two. I kind of doubt it, but I don't know for certain.)


Club Fortune

I headed back north on Boulder Highway and managed not to miss the turnoff this time. I quickly found the new poker room and got a seat:












Aesthetically, it's a fairly nice little room. The colors are tasteful. It's quiet and genuinely smoke-free. There is plenty of room around the tables, which are a nice tan felt. I wouldn't mind spending many hours there, if (1) it weren't so far away, and (2) they had a game at which I could make money.

In terms of game selection, well, you already know. They typically have either a $2-4 or $3-6 LHE game going evenings. I hear that they often have a stud game one night a week.

What kind of place is it? It's the kind of place where you can, and will, frequently hear the dealer announce, pre-flop, "All in for $2."

It's the kind of place where you can, and will, hear a good ol' boy say, while throwing in the chips for a crying call on the river, "I'm suckin' hind tit but I gotta call ya."

It's the kind of place that does one better on the annoying (but, thankfully, dying) practice of chopping $1 chips into half-dollar coins: They use quarters. (If you think it's slow waiting for some old geezer to gather up four $1 chips for a call, wait until he has accumulated that much in quarters, and wants to get rid of them by putting them in the pot.)

It's the kind of place where a player next to you will ask you to trade you a white chip for four of your quarters, saying he needs them to tip the cocktail waitress. It's the kind of place where he will not be kidding.

The play was typical $2-4 LHE, maybe a little worse than average. Let me tell you about a few hands.

1. My first hand at the table I was given pocket jacks in the cutoff. I raised. Eight callers. Flop KdQd7s. Checked around to me. I think it's pretty hopeless, but ya never know, so I bet anyway. Six callers. Jumping to the end of the story, I'll tell you that it was won by a guy who had 7d-9d. He rivered the flush. He had flopped a pair and a flush draw. Can't fault him for playing it, really, though he would have been better off betting than playing it passively. But passive play is a hallmark of this structure everywhere, so he's just doing what everybody else does.

2. A few hands later, I have Ks-Qs. I raise. I was already getting dirty looks. Apparently raising twice in one orbit is a significant faux pas, and makes one stand out. Five callers. Flop A45 with two diamonds. Once again, with perhaps more hope than sense, I bet when it was checked to me. Surprisingly, I had only one caller this time, the button. She obviously has either an ace or a diamond draw, right? Turn is 10d. Check-check. Hmmm. River: offsuit king. I check. She bets. I think most likely she has an ace, and checked the turn not for deception but because she feared I hit the flush. But she has me a little puzzled and curious now with this late bet, so I make the crying call. She has Q-10, no diamonds. I win, with considerable surprise. So play back what happened: She called on the flop with no pair and no draw. When she actually made a pair on the turn, she checked behind. Then when another overcard came on the river, she bet. Go ahead--you figure out her logic. I can't.

3. I have A-J offsuit in the small blind. There are, I dunno, about 30 limpers ahead of me. I raise. I think one of them folds. Flop is a lovely A-A-2. Two hearts, of which I have zero. For a second I consider slow-playing, going for the check-raise. But I quickly rule that out, since even in a family pot, this crowd could easily check it all the way around, and if they're all going to be as inclined to keep calling as history has shown, I'd like to let them. So I bet. Not only do I get callers, I get raised, and reraised. It was the only time the entire hour I played that a betting round got capped--five ways! My head was reeling. What the hell was going on? How many aces are there in this deck anyway? I can guess that one of these knuckleheads has the case ace, one or two have a flush draw. But what about the others? Did somebody luck into a boat with 2-2? I am completely at a loss to understand what is going on.

Turn is an offsuit 9. I don't know where I am in the hand, but I bet out anyway. Three callers this time.

River is a king, putting a third heart out there, which I hate. I give up and check, because surely at least one of these people just made his or her hand. But to my amazement, the action is checked all around. Seriously, now--WTF? Why would somebody with a full house have checked? Why would somebody with a flush have checked? It all made no sense whatsoever.

I show my hand first. The big blind slams his A-10 down on the table face up, uttering an unpleasantry in the process. The others quietly muck. So no flush, no full house. What in the world were those people calling with? What caused them to cap the betting on the flop, then let one bet stand on the turn, and check the river around? I still have no idea. It's one of the most bizarre, inexplicable hands I've ever played.

4. The final board is 6-10-6-10-2. On the river, Player A bets, Player B raises, Player A calls. Player B shows, not too surprisingly, suited 10-9. Player A lets out a sigh of relief and flips over his 6-6.

Monsters under the bed, sir?

5. Final board: K-3-8-2-9, no flush possible. There is a bet and call. Bettor shows 2-3 offsuit, bottom two pair. Caller flashes Q-10 offsuit before mucking.

Nice call, sir. Way to keep him honest.

I played my requisite hour, then said good-night and went on my way. Next stop:


Jokers Wild

Again, this is a place that I scratched off of my list of rooms to play in about a year after I moved here. It was so bad I thought I'd likely never return. I wrote two stories from my one hour in that particular patch of poker purgatory, here and here.

My main purpose in stopping was to snap a few photos for the "Guess the casino" series. (This constitutes fair warning for those of you who play along.) I had not yet hatched that idea when I first visited. I did stop by the poker room. They had a one-table tournament going, no cash game, so I didn't have to ever consider whether to subject myself to another stretch of locals $2-4 LHE.


Eastside Cannery

I gave a friendly wave as I drove by. I might have stopped to check out the poker action, but decided I had better things to do than to spend a night in jail for trespassing, so I kept driving.


Boulder Station

There are now just three poker rooms in the city that allow cigarette smoking right at the table: Boulder Station, Texas Station, and Arizona Charlies--Decatur. Boulder has a distinct advantage over the others: It consistently has a no-limit hold'em game, at least in the evenings and on weekend days. The others do not. It also has worse-than-average players. My friend "Las Vegas Michael" frequently Tweets about his big scores there, tilting the local rocks when he cracks their big pairs. So I reluctantly try to hit it once or twice a year, just to keep it in the rotation. And as long as I was in the neighborhood, I decided tonight would be such an occasion. (Upon getting home, I see that it has been just over a year since my last time there, a visit that featured one memorably wild hand.)

Alas, no such stories to relate tonight. It was one of the tightest, nittiest $1-2 games I've played in a long time. Raise and take it, win $3, over and over again--or a continuation bet and win maybe $10. I ended up with a little extra pocket change by the time I left, and a serum nicotine level that will probably be off the charts for a while. Good Lord do these people smoke! The guy next to me went through seven cigarettes in the two hours I played. Ugh.

The only remarkable thing that happened during my time at the table was that the power went out. That is a first for me in a casino, despite the number of hours I've logged in them over the last four years. In fact, it happened twice, a few minutes apart. The lights flickered, and the cable or satellite feeds on the TVs went out, but otherwise not much happened. The backup generators apparently kick in extremely rapidly. The staff had to reset computers and their connections to the other Stations poker rooms (for the combined-property bad-beat jackpot), but that was about it.

The greatest thing about Boulder Station is that its poker room is the only one out of the 60 in the valley that is right next to a Dairy Queen. Just about everything is made better if one is eating a Snickers Blizzard while doing it, and that includes playing poker. Nom nom nom.

Then I went home. The end.

Second verse, same as the first

As mentioned in the previous post, I was at Imperial Palace for a few hours last night. I wanted to see if they had managed to get their new poker room open as scheduled. They had.

First, here's what the old room now looks like--kind of sad and deserted. The city's most absurdly oversized poker tables sit unused:







And now for the new, looking pretty much the same as it did a few days ago when I showed you the sneak-peek photos--except now there are people in it:








This post's title is kind of misleading, I guess, in that the implied next words do not pertain; that is, the room is neither a little bit louder nor a little bit worse.

Here's the rundown, item by item, as I see it.

• Dealers and floor: Same.
• Chairs: Same.
• Tables: Lovely two-tone tan felt, very nice. Normal size, for a change. Still playing ten-handed. But these are rickety folding tables, clearly not meant for permanent use. They wobble like crazy anytime somebody puts his elbows on the table, or removes them, or pushes away from the table, or whatever. That's annoying. No built-in cupholders. Shufflers in every table.
• Noise: I couldn't tell that it was meaningfully more or less noisy than before.
• Smoke: Last night it seemed less bad than the old spot. But if you look closely you might be able to see that the poker "room" is just roped off from the slot machines on two sides, and a couple of the tables are right next to the ropes. Some players had already figured out that they could just duck under the rope for a drag, come back to the table to play a hand, fold it, step back for another puff or two, repeat as needed. That occasionally transpired in the old room, but it required several more steps and was harder to coordinate, so it wasn't a frequent occurence, in my experience. I think it will be more common now. I don't think there is going to be much overall improvement, and it might be somewhat worse. When you can smoke literally three feet from the table, calling it a "non-smoking" room is laughable.
• Service: The check-in desk is now the same place from which to buy chips. This avoids having to walk to the back of the room for chips before being seated. However, it can also mean longer waits for everybody, because the list management functions are competing for a tiny space with the cashier. Last night I had the surliest cashier I've ever encountered in a poker room. I tipped her a buck when cashing out, as I usually do. Then when putting my money in my wallet, I noticed that I had a surfeit of 20s, and asked her to change ten of them for two Benjamins to reduce the wallet bulge. She had completely undisguised contempt for me daring to impose on her in that way--scowls, sighs, rolled eyes--even though the extra transaction cost her not more than 15 seconds, when she wasn't doing anything else anyway. That was the last time I will tip her for doing her job.
• TVs: With rare exceptions, I pay only minimal attention to the televisions in poker rooms anyway, but I did notice that there are only a couple present, and many seats have no view of any monitor at all.
• Lighting: This may be the best part of the upgrade. IP's old poker room had about the crappiest table lighting in the city. The new room has done a far, far better job of that. At least the table I was sitting at last night was perfectly illuminated for my taste: bright and even, with no glare.
• Temperature: I'm sure this will fluctuate from day to day and season to season, but if last night was any indication of a trend, you could use the extra space in the room for aging beef carcasses. It was about the coldest I've ever known a poker room to be. Ridiculous.
• Space: There is quite a bit more space between tables than before, but it was still a bit tight if two people back-to-back at adjacent tables were trying to enter or exit at the same time.
• Traffic: Unlikely to be any difference, since the two spaces are literally only about a dozen steps from each other.
• Reception: The old room was a perennial dead zone for my AT&T cell phone. I always had to step outside for a Twitter update or to send a text message. Even though the new room is only a short distance away, it seemed to have a meaningfully better signal. Not great, but about half of the time I could get a Twitter page update when I tried, with a "connection failure" the other half. That's an improvement.
• Restrooms: The same restrooms as before remain the closest ones, but now they are that much farther away. It's one of the longest restroom hikes among the city's poker rooms, and it's along a corridor that is chronically clogged with idiots obliviously blocking the path for no good reason.

Overall, I think patrons will find not much change from the old room to the new. Oddly, I think the lighting improvement does the most for both the external appearance and the playing experience--not nearly so dreary and dingy now. The elimination of the gargantuan tables makes the social experience seem more normal, as well as eliminating the chronic delays that used to result from the difficulties of moving cards and chips between dealer and players.

I think the general effect is one of a minor upgrade.

Terrible's is--you guessed it--terrible

Yesterday after I busted out of the blogger invitational freeroll event, I felt like I should go out and play, but didn't really feel in my best form. I pondered a bit where I could go that wouldn't be too taxing on the ol' brain cells. It finally dawned on me that I had not yet been to the newest poker room in town, at Terrible's Hotel and Casino.

The room opened in January, I think. The reasons I haven't been there before are pretty simple: they rarely run no-limit games, and I was pretty sure it was going to be an awful room. But I feel duty-bound to try every poker room in the area at least once. I was reasonably confident they'd have a game of some sort going on a Sunday evening.

It took me quite a while to find the poker "room." It consists of just two tables in the gaming pit, adjacent to blackjack tables. I actually walked right past it a couple of times before noticing it. There are no signs anywhere. It's not even given the standard token roping-off treatment.

They had one table in action, predictably a $2-4 limit hold'em game. I have, for the most part, sworn off of this structure. I'm pretty sure that it's unbeatable in the long term. I used to willingly play it while waiting for a no-limit seat, but no more. Instead I now habitually stick a crossword puzzle in my pocket and work on it while waiting. It's better than losing money before I start the real poker, which was the norm when trying to play $2-4.

But today was an exception, since I knew I might never get a chance to play NLHE here. So I gritted my teeth and dived in.





Should you, for whatever reason, decide to play poker at Terrible's, here's what you can expect, based on my experience there:

• Hard, uncomfortable, wobbly chairs.
• Cigarette smoke. Players technically can't smoke at the table, but all they have to do is get up and stand right behind their chairs. They are allowed to keep playing a hand from this position, so applying any sort of "no smoking" label to the situation is a farce.
• Casino noise--not surprising, given the location right in the middle of everything.
• Smokers coughing up a lung or two while they play.
• Talking about the hand going on freely--speculation about what other players have, announcements of what somebody folded, discussion of what cards would be good ones to have given the board, etc.
• Dealers making no effort whatsoever to curb the above.
• Players who never learn to push their chips forward to within reach of the dealers (the tables seem larger than average), no matter now many times they are asked.
• Players who take forever agonizing over $2 and $4 decisions.
• Showdowns in which nobody is willing to reveal his or her cards first. (Confidential to the guy in Seat 1: When you play every friggin' hand, you are not giving away any information about your range by always holding out until the other guy shows first. Moron.)
• A need for the dealer to tell players what the action is to them, every time.
• Play going in order being the exception rather than the rule.
• People who can't master the difficult concept of how much each bet is, and always bet $4 when it should be $2, and vice-versa.
• Flashing cards to other players, openly and deliberately, with, again, dealers not bothering with even the gentlest reprimand.
• People who make $4 bets by making four trips to their stacks, retriving one blue chip each time.
• Typical $2-4 play: average 7-8 to the flop, 5 to the river, etc. Pot going to the worst starting hand is the norm.
• No autoshufflers.
• No comps (as far as I know).
• Splashing chips into the pot.
• Dealers who roll the deck, don't notice (or don't care about) cards that flash when pitched, can't figure out missed blinds situations, join in the conversation about the hand in progress, and various other assorted dealer sins of omission and commission.

It is, in short, a torture chamber for anybody who takes poker seriously. Because my sole purpose in trying the place out was to be able to report on it here, I frequently felt reminded of the lyric from "The Man of La Mancha": I was willing to march into poker hell for this heavenly cause.

OK, I can be a bit overdramatic at times.

I was rewarded for my courageous adventure with a win: $63 in an hour and ten minutes (all I could stand), which is something of a miracle.

It was still not quite the hellhole that the El Cortez was; probably nothing else ever will be. But leaving aside that special case, I would rank Terrible's right alongside such worthless places as Arizona Charlie's--Decatur, Club Fortune, Jokers Wild, and Poker Palace. They are all poker rooms that, as far as I'm concerned, have no reason to exist, no redeeming social value.

That said, I suppose I should point out the one feature that distinguished Terrible's from the other places with which I just lumped it: It appeared that no more than two of the players were locals. The rest were clearly out-of-town tourists. And they were having a good time, for the most part. As a result, there wasn't the nasty, surly, nitty, miserable miasma that emanates from a bunch of retired locals, all of whom know and hate each other, just putting in their freeroll requirement hours, or trying to chase a jackpot. So it's got that going for it, which is nice.

But that one small advantage over the other worst joints in town is nowhere near enough to make me want to go back. If I could call once in a while to try to find a time when they have a NLHE game going, I might return one more time to sample that, just for thoroughness. But there is no telephone, no podium or desk, no centralized place from which things are run, so I doubt that I could ever get a quick and reliable answer about what games are being spread via a phone call. That means that it is most likely that I'll never be back there again.

And that prospect that does not trouble me one little bit.

Aria

Last night I finally made it to City Center for the first time. I must be the last local to set foot in the place.

I won't bother with a full review of the Aria poker room; if you're interested, then by now you've either been there or read what everybody else has written about the place (e.g., here). I'll just add that it is indeed as nice as they all say. Aria is simply the most lavish, gorgeous, visually compelling casino I've ever laid eyes on.

With pictures as with the commentary: others have already done it far better than I could, so I'm keeping them to a minimum. (The first four are actually from Crystals, the shopping mall through which I passed on the way from the pedestrian bridge across the Strip to Aria. But hey, it's all City Center.)

It's a beautiful room, certainly on par with Wynn and Venetian. It seems somewhat louder than either of those places, though, with slot-machine and pit noise more prominent. I hate noise. Other than that, it's hard to find fault.

I was tired and played for only an hour, winning just over $100. That was mostly on a rather daring all-in check-raise bluff on a big scare-card turn; it completed both trips and a possible flush, and I was pretty sure my opponent was on an overpair and wouldn't dare call. He tanked for about three minutes, but then folded in disgust. Thankyouverymuch.

I will most certainly be back there many times.