An entertainment interlude

Yesterday I put in a marathon poker session at the Venetian. I came away up by a couple hundred bucks, but other than that there isn't much to report about it. However, in the middle of it I did have a memorable entertainment interlude.

There are four shows on the Discovery Channel that I watch regularly: Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, Sons of Guns, and American Guns. The last two are, oddly, both reality shows about gunsmith shops, the former in Louisiana and the latter in Colorado. Both places create custom firearms and do restoration work on classic and antique guns. I like tinkering with my own guns (mostly Glocks and Smith & Wesson revolvers, which hardly qualifies me as a proper gunsmith, since those may be the two easiest kinds of guns to work on), so I enjoy watching these programs.

The two main Mythbusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, have been doing a touring stage show called "Behind the Myths." I've seen every episode of their TV show over its ten-year run, most of them more than once. It's easily one of the best non-fiction shows ever aired--interesting, funny, and creative. So when I heard that it was coming to Vegas, it was pretty much a no-brainer that I would be going to see it. I hooked up with two of my buddies from the poker world, Missing Flops and ApolloAVP, to buy tickets the first day they went on sale. (As it turned out, we should not have been so afraid of missing our chance due to an early sell-out. They had so many tickets left unsold that they later began offering them at a two-for-one sale. Oh well.)

I actually found the show a tad disappointing. It wasn't terrible, but it was kind of ho-hum. Being an avid fan, I've seen all the outtake compilations and many, many interviews with the principals. A good portion of the stage show is video montages and audience Q&A, and I don't think I heard or saw anything that was new to me in those segments.

But there were a few cool things:

1. Blendo was on stage. Blendo was a bot that Jamie and Adam designed and built in the early days of the fighting-robot craze. It was one of the first to be really, really violent to its opponents, so much so that after a few appearances, show organizers realized that the thing put audiences in danger, because the early arenas did not have sufficiently strong containment mechanisms. Blendo spun hardened steel appendages really fast, and they ripped huge pieces off of opponents' machines, hurling them in all directions. Here is a YouTube video from 1997 of Jamie and Adam being awarded the heavyweight championship of Robot Wars without even doing a single match, because the organizers could not ensure the safety of the gathered crowd, so menacing a machine was Blendo. Blendo was a real benchmark in the development of fighting robots, and it was neat to see it there on stage. Incidentally, Jamie mentioned last night that Blendo was how they got introduced to the producer of a documentary on fighting robots, which led to their later collaboration to create Mythbusters.

2. They had a sound system installed by Dolby Labs with mega-enhancement of the lowest frequencies, so that when they played a montage of explosions done on the TV show, the audience members got a better visceral sense of the body-shaking reverberations that one would experience seeing them go off in person.

3. Jamie had built a four-barrel paintball machine gun about the size of a VW Beetle. They put a brave audience member inside Adam's own medieval-style knight's armor, and unleashed hundreds of paintballs at him in an unbelievable barrage. If you don't find that entertaining, I don't think we can be friends.

It's not a show I would be interested in seeing a second time, but I'm glad I saw it once.

While I was waiting for my two companions to arrive, a familiar face passed by me. It took me a few seconds to place where I recognized him from--you know that sense of disorientation when you see somebody you know in an unexpected context. Was he another poker player? A dealer? Somebody I used to know in Minnesota? Nope. Then it dawned on me--it was Joe, one of the gunsmiths on "Sons of Guns." (And, actually, my favorite of the bunch. He is quiet, shy, cerebral, and methodical, kind of like Jamie--not your usual reality show personality.) I saw him sit down at a bar a few steps from where I was standing, and then quickly realized that two of the people he was with were Kris and Stephanie, also from the show. Kris is another gunsmith. Stephanie is the receptionist/bookkeeper. She is also the daughter of the shop's owner, Will Hayden. She and Kris got married--in Las Vegas--at the end of the second season. (Because of this, I think the show should now be titled "Son-in-Law of Guns." But they didn't ask me.) Stephanie also happens to be an experienced shooter in her own right. She has designed several "package" gun modifications to appeal both stylistically and functionally to the tastes and needs of female shooters, which Will tends to dismiss with a sneer until he realizes how big that potential market is.

I don't usually bother famous (or even semi-famous) people when they're out in public on their own time, i.e., not in a deliberate meet-and-greet mode. In fact, I don't think I've ever done so before. But on a whim last night I decided to approach and ask if I could snap a photo of them. They were incredibly nice and accommodating. They wouldn't just let me take their picture. Kris said, "It's weird if you do that without being in the shot." So they recruited a passing cocktail waitress to handle my cell phone camera (which, sadly, is really crummy). The first shot was nearly black because of the dim light, so then they insisted on staging it again where the light was better. I was by this point highly embarrassed to be intruding so much on their time, but they wanted it to turn out right.

Well, it didn't, really, because of the camera's lack of flash, low resolution, and the nice young lady's unsteady hands. But here's what resulted:

That's Joe, me, Stephanie, and Kris. And yes, Stephanie's breasts did brush up against my arm, so I've got that going for me, which is nice. I know you're all jealous.

I assumed that their presence near the Mythbusters show was no coincidence. I asked if they were involved somehow, and they said no, just there to watch. Their presence in the audience was mentioned in passing from the stage, but as far as I could tell they weren't involved in any other way.

An unrelated side note: While waiting for my table at the Venetian poker room (temporarily at the Palazzo during renovations), I saw this guy:

Of course, I've seen these enormously long booze glasses around town many, many times before. But I've not previously stopped to contemplate the physics of drinking from one. He was intermittently sucking on that gargantuan straw that's sticking out from the top. It seemed to take him a long time to get any of the liquid. This strikes me as a really bizarre and difficult way to get a drink. You have to create enough negative pressure to evacuate a large volume of air above the liquid before it will rise to your mouth. This seems to require sucking some air out, pinching off the straw, exhaling, sucking again, etc. All for the "pleasure" of consuming a large quantity of alcohol from an absurdly designed, impractical souvenir vessel.

Add this to the list of peculiar things about Vegas that I just don't get, even after six years of living here.

The once and future poker room

I was at the Venetian today. I wasn't sure whether they had moved the poker room back to its original location after a few months in a temporary spot next door at the Palazzo, so I swung by the old/new location. It wasn't open for business, but they're obviously getting close. A sign in the temporary room at the Palazzo says that the refurbished room will open on the morning of Wednesday, September 5.

Oddly, it appears to have been renamed the "Sands Poker Room" rather than the "Venetian Poker Room." I have no idea why they would do such a dumb thing. I mean, I understand that the Venetian is where the Sands used to be, and that the corporation that runs it is Sands. But why put that name on the poker room? Makes no sense to me.

Anyway, here's what it's looking like:

Addendum, September 3, 2012

I was just talking to my very clever girlfriend about this odd "Sands" thing. She posited that this is in anticipation of legalized online poker. I.e., the Sands Corporation is going to operate an online poker site, and they want their brick-and-mortar poker rooms around the world (just two so far that I know of, Venetian and Macau, but one would guess that they have other long-term expansion ideas) to be recognized as part of the same entity. This makes sense, as we anticipate that Nevada-licensed online poker rooms will allow use of their brick-and-mortar casinos for online account deposits and withdrawals, so there is some benefit to being sure people recognize them as extensions of each other. I find this to be a pretty plausible hypothesis.

Difficult decision, conclusion

This is the end of the story. If you haven't already read the set-up to the situation, and want to do that first, see here.

It's $102 more to call. Including my flop bet and his all-in, there's $216 in the pot. It will cost me $102 to win $216, which means that I break even on a call if I can win the hand about 47% of the time. [EDIT: Should be 32%. See comments.] More than that and it's profitable to call, less than that and it's not.

After the hand was over, I texted Donna that I had had A-Q. She responded, "What range did you put him on?" That, of course, is exactly the right question.

The problem was that he would likely consider his pre-flop playable range to be quite broad, since he had the button, the raise was not large, and there were several limpers, all of which means that he was getting attractive pot odds to play some oddball hands. I might ordinarily discount two-pair hands here (Q-8, Q-4, and 8-4), because people tend to fold those to early-position raises. But if he had them suited, he might well have deemed it worth seeing a flop, given the small raise, callers before him, and position. Of course he could have pocket 4s or 8s for a set and push rather than slow-play because he didn't want anybody hitting a flush. In my best-case scenario, he would have a queen with a worse kicker (Q-K or Q-J, especially), or a lower pocket pair (9-9 or 10-10, say), and just not believe that my continuation bet meant any real strength (especially if he had noticed and remembered that this was my third c-bet in a fairly short span of time). He might have A-Q for a likely chopped pot. He might have just a flush draw, and, if so, it could easily be the nut flush draw with suited ace-baby, in which case he would think (wrongly) that he also had ace outs in addition to club outs, even if he put me on a queen. Finally, he could have some combination--pair and a flush draw, or flush draw plus a gutshot straight draw. Big pairs (A-A, K-K, and Q-Q) seemed unlikely, as I think he would have reraised pre-flop in order to thin the field. Maybe he wouldn't have done so with Q-Q, but that was statistically very improbable since I had one in my hand and there was another on the flop.

In short, it was a vast array of possibilities. I felt confident that he wasn't on a pure bluff, but that was about all that I could definitely rule out.

As far as physical reads, my impression was that his hesitation was a fake, an attempt to look weaker and more indecisive than he really was. But I didn't put much confidence in that, since I had seen him play so few hands.

I thought about it for a minute or so. My sense was that the number of hands he could have in which he was already ahead, plus the decent equity he had with his drawing hands put my chances of winning below 50%. On that basis, I finally folded. But it was a close decision. If it would have cost me, say, just $60 or $70 more, instead of $102, I think I would have gone the other way on it and called him.

I had two other general considerations. First, I think it is usually wrong to play a big pot with just one pair, even if it is TPTK, especially when calling rather than being the aggressor.

Second, whenever I open-raise from early position, I am deliberately raising smaller than I would in late position because I don't want to play big pots from bad position. When doing so, I always remind myself of exactly that, and get it set in my mind that I will need to be more inclined to fold than I would be with the same cards in more favorable circumstances. (I discussed my pre-flop raising strategy and formula in some detail here.)

In fact, there's a decent argument to be made that A-Qo is not strong enough to play for a raise from such early position, and limping with it isn't great, either, so it's best to just throw it away and avoid the difficult decisions and costly blunders into which it can lead you. As Tommy Angelo memorably phrased it in Elements of Poker (page 179), "To me, the early positions look like a desert wasteland. It's a place where people die from overexposure. Which cards do I play from positional hell? The ones that can take the heat." A-Q can't take much heat.

After looking it over through the retrospectoscope, I think it's a very close decision, and it would not be too much of a mathematical mistake to go with either a call or a fold.

I'll confess to one other factor that made me lean towards a fold: It was getting late, I was tired, and I knew I'd be leaving soon. The night before, when entering results into my spreadsheet, I had happened to notice that I had scored six consecutive winning sessions, all of them between $100 and $300. If I folded my A-Q, I'd still leave with a profit of over $100 on the night, and that would extend the streak to seven, which would feel nice. If I called and lost, I might not be able to get back across that $100 threshold before leaving--or, worse, I might keep playing after my A-game had slipped away in a silly attempt to continue the streak, and really blow it. I fully acknowledge that that is an utterly absurd and irrational consideration, a factor that should never enter into the decision. But sometimes it just does, despite my efforts to whip into submission my remnants of irrationality.

I'm comfortable with my decision to let it go, but I'll never know whether it was correct in Sklansky bucks, because my opponent didn't show his cards before passing them back to the dealer. Sorry to disappoint you with no definitive ending to the story, but that's how poker usually is--it leaves you hanging, wondering whether you did the right thing.

Difficult decision

We are here once again with one of our occasional "you decide" series. I'll describe the situation the best that I can, let you figure out what you'd do and submit a comment committing yourself to it if you'd like, then in about 24 hours I'll post the end of the story.

My friend Donna (@Cure_MTM on Twitter, Utah State Director for the Poker Players Alliance) was in town for today's induction of Linda Johnson into the Poker Hall of Fame and a Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza tournament tomorrow, and she was at the Venetian, so that's what I chose as the poker venue du jour in order to catch up with her.

Under-the-gun guy limped. I was next and raised to $8 with A-Q offsuit. I picked up a total of five callers, which was not unusual at this loose-passive table. Pot $45 after rake. Flop was Q-8-4 with two club, of which I had none. First guy checked. I had been prepared to give up on the hand if I missed the flop, because it's just not profitable to play into that many opponents from out of position without having connected. But with top pair/top kicker and not really any draws to worry about except for the clubs, I felt comfortable taking a solid whack at it. In fact, in two previous almost identical situations over the previous 30 minutes or so I had done the same with no opposition--once with an overpair, and once with A-K on a king-high flop, both from first or second position.

Of course, that history cuts both ways. On the one hand, it has proven that these people won't try to fight back very often. On the other hand, if they're paying attention, they might think that I'm continuation-betting every time whether I hit or not--which happens not to be true, but they can't know that, since I didn't show the other times that I took it down.

It is folded to the button. He's the oldest player at the table, relatively tight, but not a classic rock. He has been verbal about how card-dead he has been, and even changed seats once just to try to get dealt better hands. He hesitates a bit, then rather suddenly picks up all his chips and plops them down in the pot. The others fold back to me.

So the question is, simply, call or fold?

Addendum

Sorry, I left out the critical information of his stack sizes. His all-in would be another $102 to me on top of my $35 bet. I have $350 or so in front of me.

Addendum 2

Wow, I must be having a stroke or something--I left out my bet size, too. I bet $35 on the flop. Apologies, all. I'm usually better at describing things than this. (There is actually an explanation, though a lame one. I started this as an all-in-one story, and only later decided to make it a question-and-answer style. I moved the numbers stuff to the second part, forgetting that that data is crucial to readers making a cogent decision.)

Nasty, brutish, and short

Thomas Hobbes apparently foresaw my day at the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza. Less than two hours in, I was waylayed by two hands in rapid succession.

First, I had 4-5 offsuit in the big blind. Blinds were 75/150 (Level 2), and I had a stack of about 13,000 (starting stack was 12,000), small blind had quite a bit less. Everybody folded, and he limped. Flop was 4-5-6 with two clubs. SB checked. I bet 250 with my bottom two pair. He raised all in, total of 7050, a completely ridiculous overbet. He did it instantly and forcefully. The unmistakable message was, "Go away, give me the pot." I thought this was completely defensive, trying to shut out any straight draws and flush draws with a weak made hand. If he had a really strong hand--flopped set or straight--I think he would try to extract more value than this, try to make me pay too much for a draw. I just didn't believe that he had my two pair beat. So after thinking a bit, I called. I was right: he had 8-8. He had to hit an 8 for a set, a 7 for a straight, a 6 for a higher two pair, or some weird runner-runner combination. Turn was the 9 of spades, eliminating the backdoor clubs threat. But the river was a 7, making his gutshot straight. Ick. That knocked me down to 5900 chips.

Just a few hands later, with blinds up to 100/200, I had As-Kd offsuit in early position. I raised to 600 after one limper. Young woman on the button called. Blinds and limper folded. Flop was Kh-Jc-4h. I bet 1200 into the 1700 pot. She raised to 4000. I had 4100 left. This was a difficult spot. Having watched her play for about 90 minutes, I didn't think she was bad enough to have called my early-position raise with any down cards that would have flopped her two pair. The possible exception was a suited K-J, but one king in my hand and one on the board made that much less likely. With K-K or J-J she almost surely would have reraised pre-flop. 4-4 was obviously a possibility, but I thought that most of her range consisted of (1) things like Jh-10h for a pair and a flush draw, or Qh-10h for combined straight and flush draws; and (2) another A-K. I was OK with taking my hand against those.

But she had what was for me the worst part of her range: the 4-4 for a flopped set. I would need to catch two running cards to make a straight or full house to win, and that didn't happen. I was one of the first players out.

Like I said, nasty, brutish, and short. Poker is like that some days. OK, a lot of days.

Before we got to the nasty and brutish, however, there were a couple of highlights. I continued my experiment with finding spots in which to raise rather than just call. Two were noteworthy, I think.

With blinds at 50/100, it folded to me in the cutoff with Ah-Jh. I opened for 275. The big blind reraised to 700. My usual reaction is to either fold or call. This time, though, I decided that there was a good chance that he was just reading me for a blind steal with any two cards, because that's certainly what it looked like. I decided to test his resolve, and four-bet him to 2100. It took him only about three seconds to throw his cards away. I guess I was right.

The second example happened when I had 10c-10d, blinds still at 75/150. The guy on my right open-raised to 500. I called, as did the player on my left, who had just recently joined the tournament as a late registration. Flop was 7-6-2 with two diamonds. Original raiser bet 1200. My usual play here would be to just call, waiting to see what the third player will do, as well as finding out whether the guy leading will bet again on the turn, to help me sort out if he has a bigger pocket pair versus unpaired big cards. But in accordance with my desire to try an extra ounce of aggression, I decided instead to raise, making it 3000. If either one came back over the top, I could safely conclude that he had a higher pair or a set. A flat-call from the player on my left would be plenty alarming, too. But they both folded. Pot to me.

So even though this tournament didn't turn out to be the test of my endurance as I had hoped and planned (they play until 2:00 a.m. after starting at noon), I both played reasonably well and got a couple more instances of being rewarded for selective stepping up the aggression beyond my usual zone of comfort and safety--before getting hit with a combination of a bad beat and a cold deck. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Bizarre decision at Venetian

See the full story here. Ultra-short version: Venetian tournament last night, drunk player was repeatedly warned about his abusive language/conduct, finally crossed the line and was disqualified from the tournament shortly before the money bubble. Some time later, another tournament official for unclear reasons decided to reverse that action and reinstate the player, AFTER the bubble had passed, causing considerable confusion, outrage, and turmoil.

The player victimized by the jerk was Danette Levick, whose face you would likely recognize even if you don't know the name. She has been a dealer on "High Stakes Poker" and "Poker After Dark" since their inception, until the most recent season. She has also been a shift supervisor at the Treasure Island poker room. Those facts have nothing to do with what happened here, but do suggest (1) that she is more knowledgeable than the average player about rules, floor decisions, and limits of acceptable conduct, and (2) that she is likely to be able to call more attention to what happened than the average player, due to her network of contacts within the industry.

Of course, I know only the side of the story posted. But even so, it's hard to imagine any rationale for allowing a player back into a tournament after being disqualified for misconduct--especially with the money bubble having been passed in the interim. That is THE major inflection point in a tournament, and radically alters how players make decisions. In almost every tournament you will see the short stacks hanging on by their fingernails to make it into the money, followed by a burst of eliminations once a cash has been locked up. To remove a player from the tournament and remove his chips from play near that bubble, then reinstate him after the bubble has burst defies reason. In effect, it rewards his bad conduct by changing what had been only a possible cash into a guaranteed one. It allows him to skip over the treacherous bubble period and the many difficult decisions that stage of a tournament entails, as if transported safely in a time machine.

Even if the bubble weren't an issue, the reinstatement is a terrible idea. If the original floor person issuing the disqualification is authorized to make such decisions without seeking the OK of the tournament director, then his decision has to be final (with the exception of the player seeking an immediate appeal to the TD, which does not seem to have been the case here). Furthermore, if I were the floor person disqualifying a player for abusive conduct, the DQ would be accompanied by security removing the player from the casino.

When I first learned of this incident last night through Danette's Twitter feed, I replied that the reinstatement was the worst tournament official decision I had ever heard of. On reflection, I decided that it was probably only the second-worst, with the title still retained by the WSOP, when it rescinded Phil Hellmuth's penalty overnight, in a patently political courtesy that no unknown player could ever hope to receive. Though maybe not the absolute worst decision ever, this one by the Venetian TD ranks right up there among the most wrongheaded, bizarre, inexplicable, and apparently indefensible.

I hope the Venetian handles this publicly, and either admits to a major screw-up or issues a detailed explanation of how what appears to be an astonishingly asinine ruling can be justified.

Addendum, May 30, 2011

I just saw this message from Danette:

I just received a call from Kathy Raymond, the Poker Room Manager @VenetianPoker. Upon hearing of the events of last night's fiasco, she fully investigated the incident and hoped to find evidence to justify the poor decision that was made. She informed me that she had spoken to all concerned and had concluded that a horrible decision had been made. The player should not have been allowed to return to the tournament after being disqualified.

To her great credit, she has admitted that the events that transpired were unacceptable. She will be handling the matter internally to ensure that the situation is not repeated.

I would like to thank Kathy for the professional and expedient way she has dealt with the matter. The situation was not handled well on the night and she has done everything possible to get to the bottom of what transpired. Floorman Jacob, did in fact make the correct ruling and should have been backed up by his superior. Sadly, this was not the case.

I accept Kathy's apology and will be returning to the room again soon.

Regards
Danette D. Levick

In pursuit of trivia

Every Wednesday night I see Tweets from a group of casual friends of mine about a bar trivia thing they're doing. Cardgrrl is always telling me I need to socialize more, so I decided this might be a worthwhile thing to try.

The event is run by Vegas Pub Quiz. I showed up tonight at McFadden's inside the Rio, expecting just to watch; I had envisioned a kind of College Bowl thing, with teams up on the stand pushing buzzers with lightning reflexes, and wanted to scope it out before humiliating myself. To my surprise, it's much more casual. Teams just sit at their bar tables filling out paper worksheets as the questions are read. As a result, it was no problem for me to pretend to be part of the team (they don't have formal rosters or anything) and toss in an answer here and there when I knew one.

I suppose with a little thought, I might have realized it wouldn't move fast. After all, the bar's goal is to keep people there longer than they would otherwise stay. So what should have been about 30 minutes' worth of questions was stretched out to a little over two hours.

But it was fun. The core of the team was Katie, Chris, Bob, and David. Bob's housemate Cheryl was there, too, though I had not known her previously. All contributed, and there were many questions for which more than one person knew the answer, but I think there's little doubt that Katie was the anchor, with the strongest distribution of weird bits of knowledge.

And we won! I think there were 80 questions in all, and we pulled out a squeaker with 64 points; second place had 63. I counted four instances in which I seemed to be the only one who knew an answer:

1. Capital of Australia.

2. "Ode to a Grecian Urn" poet.

3. State with physician-assisted suicide law upheld by the Supreme Court in 2006.

4. Hard substance underneath tooth enamel.

(Answers are at the end of the post.)

Of course, I messed up a couple, too. I apparently persuaded the group that one answer was sarsaparilla when the judges were looking for "root beer." "Popular Chicago department store founded in 1893" had both Katie and me vacillating between Marshall Field's and Sears. I finally pushed for the former, but it was the latter. I also dissuaded the group from going with "John Wayne Gacy" as the answer to a question about a serial killer's last words before execution, on the grounds that I thought he had been murdered in prison. Wrong. Oh well. Even if I shoulder full blame for those, I still contributed a net one point. Good enough for the margin of victory!

The prize was a $100 McFadden's certificate. It's entirely possible that I'll show up again next week and have a bite to eat on the house, and try to contribute a few more bits of arcana. My thanks to the gang for welcoming me so openly.

As a bonus, after leaving the bar, I went for a short session at the poker room, and had the rare treat of doubling my buy-in on the very first hand I was dealt. I had 7-7 against my opponent's K-Q, and he unwisely slow-played when the flop came Q-Q-6. It was checked five ways. Turn was a 2, and he bet $6 into a roughly $30 pot; I was the only caller. River was my gin card--a third 7. He checked, I bet $25, he check-raised to $60. I shoved, correctly reading him for having a queen he wouldn't fold, and he called.

Perhaps it has happened other times, but offhand I can recall just one other time that I doubled up on the first hand after sitting down at the table. That was at the Venetian. My chips hadn't even arrived when I won. When the chip runner came back, he was puzzled to see me sitting behind a stack. He asked if somebody else had already brought them for me. Nope--I won 'em on credit!

It's a nice way to start a session, that's for sure.

Answers:

1. Canberra.

2. Keats.

3. Oregon.

4. Dentin.

(Hat tip to Cardgrrl for suggestion of post title.)

Showdown: Deuce-Four versus Crubs

Bastin is in town. He is a long-time reader who also did me the great service of suggesting to Cardgrrl that she start reading this blog, which has had all sorts of subsequent lovely repercussions in my life. I finally met him a year ago on his last Vegas trip. I was, of course, eager to try to get some table time in with him before he disappears back to the Pacific Northwest for another orbit around the sun. He Tweeted that he would be at the Venetian at 8:00 tonight, so I got myself there, and almost immediately got seated at his table, moving to his side as soon as the opportunity arose.

I didn't know that C.K. was already there, too, at a different table. Soon enough she joined us for merriment. In case you don't know, C.K. is the one who taught me--and everybody else, for that matter--that crubs always get there.

What none of us knew was that the evening would prove to be an battle between the Mighty Deuce-Four and C.K.'s beloved crubs.*

No, not just a battle.

An epic battle.

EPIC.

I have to admit that every single time there were two crubs on the flop, a third one hit either the turn or river. Maybe something slipped by without me noticing, but it sure looked like a 100% performance for the crubs. Pretty impressive, I must confess. C.K. was blowing her secret crub whistle like the Pied Piper.

But the Deuce-Four was in fine form, too. First to wield it was actually Bastin, when he hit the second nuts on a 3-5-6 flop:

The board got scary past that point, as a second 6 hit the turn, and a really ugly third one came on the river. But his faith in the ol' 2x4 was justified. His opponent had been on just a straight draw and had no pair.

Well, the Grand Pooh-Bah of the Holy Order of the Sacred Deuce-Four can't let one of the acolytes conduct the whole service, now, can he? No! So I had to step up.

The next time it was dealt to me, I called a pre-flop raise to $12, following which the nice young man on my left reraised to $35. This was the first three-bet I had seen him do, and there was very little question in my mind that he had A-A, K-K, or possibly Q-Q. Surprisingly, two others (including the original raiser) called the reraise before action was back to me. This was it: Put up or shut up.

I put up, naturally, making the pot $140.

Flop: 4-4-8. Can I get an AMEN?!

I was third to act and put in the third check. I thought that the player on my left would make a decent-sized bet, because this flop would look extremely safe for an overpair, except that he would want to protect against the spade draw the flop had brought. I hoped that at least one of the others would call before it got back to me. I had $186 left at that point, and both the guy on my left and any callers would be pot-committed, and basically obligated to call the additional amount.

He did better than I expected: He shoved. He had me covered. The original raiser thought long and hard, appearing to be on the verge of calling, but finally mucked. (He later said that he had had Q-Q, which is perfectly believable.) I called, obviously.

When my opponent saw my cards, his first reaction was a disgusted, "You've got to be kidding me." But he quickly put his game face back on, and when no help for his K-K came, paid me off with no whining, and a polite "Nice hand." That $512 pot is definitely one of the largest scores the Deuce-Four has ever made for me. It might even be the second-largest.**

So that was me showing off to my friends what Deuce-Four is capable of.

But the Crubs were not about to concede this battle. (If they were, it wouldn't have been epic, would it?) Again, though, we had to look to Bastin rather than C.K. to really show them off in the most impressive way possible--a royal flush. He started with Kc-Tc, flopped two more parts of the royal, and turned the joint. Sadly, he couldn't get his opponent--the loosest cannon at the table--to pay off even a min-raise on the river before showing off what he had done. I tried to take a picture of it, but the dealer was a little too quick scooping up the cards, and I ended up with just a pathetic blur.

Thus the showdown was, by itself, inconclusive and subject to argument and interpretation. Deuce-Four won a bigger pot than crubs, but if you were to add up all the pots won with crubs during the time the three of us were at the table together--including, of course, the royal flush--it might well total more than the sum of my monster pot plus the one Bastin took with his flopped straight.

I'm going to be a gentleman and call it a draw.

*Occasionally the crubs are "stupid," but usually beloved.

**The biggest, I'm sure, was this one, though that was back at a time when I tended not to mention specific dollar amounts in telling my stories. I think, though, that that pot was in the $800 range. If you go back and read that post, you should be aware that that was also a time when I was just beginning to sense the power of the Deuce-Four, so my tone toward it was insufficiently reverential, I now recognize.

No more Venetian comps?

This news story seems to be saying that there will be no more $1/hour restaurant comps at the Venetian poker room:

"We know that the subject of comps has been played out all across Las
Vegas, but we've taken a different position," Adelson said. "We've essentially
cut out all our accounts except the most highly rated players. No more packaging
deals to try to be competitive with others. There's no more comp rooms given
out. There's no more food and beverage. There's no shopping credits. There's no
restaurant credits. There's no showroom credits."

http://www.lvrj.com/business/las-vegas-sands-cuts-comps-for-average-gambler-115356324.html

If that is so, I think they're being penny-wise and pound-foolish, as the old saying goes. It won't change my behavior much, but I think they underestimate the nittiness of many poker players.

Ed Miller

I played at the Venetian yesterday afternoon. My first table was all deadly serious players trying hard to win--hard place to make money. I noticed that the next one over was much more jovial, so when a seat opened up I got permission to move.

I realized that one player looked familiar, but it took me a few minutes to figure out why. He looked like Ed Miller, columnist for Card Player magazine and Sklansky's co-author on No Limit Hold'em Theory and Practice. I wasn't sure it was him at first, so snapped the above picture and asked Twitter for opinions. Nobody responded, but over time conversation made clear that I was right. I may have impressed him (in a strange way) by being the only one at the table who knew that he had once been on "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

I wish I had some great story to tell--me making a phenomenal play against him, or us forming a lifelong friendship, or discovering that he is a devoted reader of this blog, or whatever. But truth is, it was kind of a boring session with not much interesting happening. Sorry.

Leftovers

(Toon found at http://www.toonpool.com/cartoons/caveman%20invented%20leftovers_37804.)

I just realized that in not just one, but TWO recent posts I have failed to include a story that I had intended to write up. So while everybody is starting to tire of cold turkey sandwiches, it seems an appropriate time to throw at you a couple of poker leftovers. Both involve specific forms of bad behavior I've never seen before, even though I thought I had seen them all.

Palms

This happened yesterday. I was in seat 10 and not involved in the hand. The pot was contested between Seat 1 and Seat 8. On the river, Seat 1 checked, Seat 8 bet $55, with four to a straight on the board. Seat 1 grabbed a partial stack of chips, enough for a call plus a little bit--maybe three or four chips extra. He put the stack about halfway between himself and the dealer and said, "Could you count it out for me?" That was an odd request, so I leaned forward to watch, trying to figure out what was going on. I could immediately see that the reason he wasn't trying to count the chips himself was that his hands were shaking like a heroin junkie needing a fix. (We would soon learn that he had pocket aces, which explains why he was experiencing an adrenaline surge.) The dealer counted out $55, pushed the extra few back to the player, but left the stack where it was, in the "staging" area. As she was to explain later to the floorman, she felt that she couldn't push them across the betting line (which the Palms poker room enforces) for the player.

At this point, Seat 8 announced, "I have a straight," and showed his cards. Too late, the dealer tried to stop him. She turned to Seat 1, pointed at the stack of 11 red chips, and asked, "Is that a call?" Seat 1, now seeing that he had lost, said, "No, it's not a call. I fold." He showed his aces and mucked them.

It was pretty clear to everybody that his intention had been to call. Why else would he have the chips cut out? Yes, sometimes a player will cut out the chips for a call in order to see what he will have left if he calls and loses, but (1) that's much more a tournament than a cash game thing, and (2) I got no such vibe from him here. There was no indication that he was mulling over what to do. His failure to push his chips across the line was simply a combination of him being lost in the moment and his not understanding that the Palms relies on the betting line--until the dealer pointed this out to him, and he suddenly realized that he had an escape, a way of saving himself $55. All he had to do was lie about his intention.

Floor was called. The dealer gave an admirably clear, complete, and concise explanation of the relevant facts. (Not all dealers can do this. Floor people often get confused because dealers tell incoherent stories, including irrelevant points and neglecting crucial information. It drives me crazy when I have to sit there and listen to the issues get lost in the jumble.) Floor guy was clearly a bit stymied about what to do, and there followed a period of uncomfortable silence.

This void started to be filled by other players saying things like, "That's not right, dude." "That's wrong--you were calling." This went on for maybe 10 or 15 seconds, with no floor decision yet forthcoming, until finally the tension was broken by Seat 1 resigning himself to the situation. He picked up the $55 in chips and tossed them across the table to Seat 8. Floor left, there being nothing more to resolve.

Interestingly, Seat 8 verbally acknoweldged that he was partly to blame for the mess, as he had not waited for action to be clearly finalized before making his announcement, so he gave Seat 1 half of those chips back. (I'm not sure if it was five or six.)

Indeed, both players were at fault. Seat 8 should have waited to be sure that there really was a call locked in before exposing his cards. (In this post I described two situations in which I had to ask for clarification of whether there was a river call before showing my hand.) But his mistake was just that--an innocent error, with none of what attorneys in the area of criminal law like to call the mens rea, the guilty mind.

Seat 1, by contrast, was being dirty, trying to angle-shoot himself an extra $55. I don't think he had malice aforethought; he didn't ask the dealer to count the chips for him as the first step in an elaborate plan to fake a call and withdraw it if he found out that he had lost. Rather, it was a spur-of-the-moment attempt to take advantage of a situation when he realized that he could. Still, it reveals an ugly personality. A player who is at heart honest and ethical simply would not stoop to that, either by planning or on impulse.

Secondary lesson: Betting lines cause more problems than they solve. Erik Seidel says they are "an angle-shooter's paradise." About all of which, see here.


Venetian

The second story is an incident that occurred when I was playing with Grange95 at the Venetian, in the session I wrote about here. (I think this was before BWOP joined us.) This pot was contested between a young man in Seat 1 and 40ish woman in Seat 5. On the river, she bet, he called, saw that he had lost, and momentarily lost control of himself. He threw his cards hard, hitting his opponent in the chest with them.

At first glance, it looked like he had deliberately thrown them at her. That was clearly the interpretation placed on the action by the dealer--Sabrina, whom I have known since she worked at the Hilton back in 2007. Sabrina is a no-nonsense type, with zero tolerance for bad player behavior. (That's not a criticism--it's praise. I wish more dealers adopted the same attitude.) She immediately started calling for the floor, and was fully prepared to have Seat 1 thrown out on his ear--no warnings, just gone, BOOM.

(I am torn at this point as to which pop culture reference to incorporate. Option A, Monopoly: "Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200." Option B, Pulp Fiction, with Jimmie, played by Quentin Tarantino, explaining what will happen if his wife comes home and finds all this "gangster shit" going on: "I'm gonna get fuckin' divorced. No marriage counselling, no trial separation, I'm gonna get fuckin' divorced." Go ahead--you pick. I can't decide which one is more amusing and appropriate.)

But something interesting happened. The instant those cards hit the player, Seat 1's face fell. He was aghast. He started apologizing even before Sabrina could react. He said he had been aiming for the muck. Actually, I believe him, not only because of how quickly and sincerely he reacted, but because I had noticed that the cards took a weird sort of trajectory, initially dipping down, then catching some air and rising up again. The fact that the player hit by the flying cards was the woman who had just beat him in the pot was purely a coincidence--they would have struck whoever happened to be in that seat, as it was on the far end of the line between Seat 1 and the muck.

The victim was incredibly cool about it. In fact, it was only her immediate and complete bestowal of forgiveness that got Seat 1 off the hook. He was truly humbled by his gaffe, and ended a profuse string of apologies by noting, "I need to learn to control both my temper and my aim."

Indeed.

Fun with Dick and Jane

Dick and Jane, in this case, are, respectively, Grange95 and C.K. No, their real names are not Dick and/or Jane, nor am I trying to imply that anybody is a dick. It's just that after spending a couple of hours playing with both of them at the Venetian a few days ago, that's the blog post title that came to mind, and I'm sticking with it.

It will come as no surprise to long-time readers that I'm at least slightly misanthropic. I don't like most people, and most people don't like me. It's about all I can do to tolerate them, and I think the feeling is mutual. But there are exceptions. I can think of about a dozen people that I've met since living in Vegas that I genuinely like having at the poker table with me, because they're smart, funny, and/or interesting, and don't do things that annoy me. Some I've met through blogging, others through allvegaspoker.com, two or three I've met playing, plus a couple of poker dealers. It is rare that I get two of this small group at a time, but Friday was such a day. The three of us have played together twice before, which I wrote a little about here and here.

One of the sweetest things that Cardgrrl ever wrote to me (and I hope she'll forgive me for quoting this publicly) was this, when we had been having an email exchange about how my shyness and reticence in social situations causes difficulty in making new friends: "If you showed most people what you show me ~ your humor, your kindness, your generosity, your interest, your curiosity about the world, your playfulness and creativity, and your perceptiveness ~ they would absolutely like you." Well, there's something about the people in that small group I mentioned above, specifically including Grange and C.K., that delights me enough that I relax and get to be somebody other than a curmudgeon or automaton for a while. Maybe whatever it is that Cardgrrl sees in me gets to peek out during such times, because it does seem to have the effect of causing them to like me, too.

Jeez--didn't mean to go all Sally Field on you there. Sorry. Back to the story.

So I get to the Venetian and arrange for a table change to join Grange. (He knew I was coming and yet didn't switch to the open seat on his left, so he lost the right to complain about my positional advantage.) A while later, C.K. comes along (probably attracted by the scent of easy money). I tend not to be much of a needler, and I'm usually made uncomfortable by the barbs exchanged by friends in my presence. But Grange and C.K. seem to have a rapport that makes it OK. I guess I waited too long to write up this post, because now I'm forgetting most of the zingers they exchanged that made me laugh at the time. I think my favorite was when the two of them were contesting a big pot, staring each other down, and Grange said, "I'd be looking into your soul right now--if you had one."

Something (and again, I really need to get some Alzheimer's testing done, because here we are just four days later and I can't recall what triggered this) made me think of the first time I met C.K. I suspected she wouldn't remember the circumstances, and I was right. There had been a mini gathering of poker bloggers at the MGM Grand during the 2008 World Series of Poker. We had a low-stakes mixed game going. C.K. couldn't get a seat, but she entranced the males at the table by giving Mrs. Chacko, who was in the game, a hot girl-on-girl chair massage. That was a pretty memorable introduction! (That night was also the first time that I met F-Train, Dr. Chako, Falstaff, Gadzooks, and others. The gregariousness of that group was quite overwhelming for a wallflower like me.)

Grange won two consecutive big pots from C.K. with pocket jacks, which I expect he will recount in detail on his own blog, so I'll refrain. The biggest pot between C.K. and me was soon after Grange had reminded me of the 3-6, which he and his silly Iowan ka-nigget friends call "The Spanish Inquisition," because, well, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. (If you have to ask what that's about, I'm afraid you have led a sad, sad life.) Just a hand or two later, I found myself holding the 3-6 of diamonds, and C.K. had put in a raise. I had to do it--I just had to. The flop was 3-3-x. Ding! Teh pokerz, it is such EZ game! She bet, I called. She bet again on the turn--$25 this time--and I raised to $75. She scowled a bit, but didn't take too long to fold. I asked Grange to deliver the line for me as I exposed my cards, and he humored me with his best (or worst--hard to tell) British accent: "NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

As for taking money from Grange, well, I did a little of that, too. He raised, from one seat to my right. I called with the 4-6 of hearts. The flop was, I think, 8-9-2 with two hearts. He bet $25, I called. The turn was an offsuit 10. He checked. I caught more than a hint of fear in the air, so I bet $45. He called, but seemed none too happy about the situation. The river was another 8. He checked again. My draw hadn't come in, and with 6-high, the only way to win this pot was to fire at it again. I thought I had a good chance of getting away with it, because the way the hand had played he would have to worry about me having flopped two pair or a set, or having flopped a straight draw that got there on the turn. With about $160 in the pot, I settled on $75 as an amount that would look like a "please call me" value bet. I started to cut out that many chips, but he stopped me: "You've got it. I missed everything. I can't call." And with that he folded Ah-Jh face up. It is only now that he is learning that I had even less than he did. :-)

***
An aside. (I'm obviously feeling prone to those tonight.) I was about to end that little tale with "Sorry, Grange." But I'm not sorry. Of course I didn't set out to target him specifically due to any personal animosity, nor did I bluff him in order to rub his nose in it for the fun of the torment; I was just playing the situation that presented itself the best way that I knew how. This hand had occurred after the two big ones between C.K. and Grange, so I commented to him, "The others here know the three of us are friends, but I guess we've dispelled any worries that we soft-play each other." He told me, in return, "I'd lose my respect for you if you soft-played me." I much appreciated that affirmation. I understand and share the sense of integrity that stands behind it.

***

For once I didn't lose any big pots to either of my friends. I expect that to revert back to normal next time around. And I do hope there is a next time, and a next, and a next. I don't play poker for pleasure, but it's awfully nice to have the occasional session that is just plain fun because of who is there, regardless of how the cards fall.

The vision thing

I was playing at the Venetian earlier this evening. I had been there about 30 minutes when I found 3-3 in second position. I became one of six limpers. Flop was K-7-3, which I rather liked. Guy to my right bet $10. I called. I didn't raise, hoping to draw others in; besides, the bettor here was probably the least experienced player at the table (didn't know what a straddle was, didn't know if he could add more chips to his stack, etc.), and he had shown some tendency to run away if he ran into resistance. Everybody else folded.

Turn was an 8. He bet $10 again. I raised to $30. To my surprise, after just a couple of seconds he motioned all-in and pushed his stacks forward. He had me covered. I had not seen him all-in previously, so he clearly liked his hand. I dreaded that I had walked into a set-over-set trap, but I called anyway. He didn't flip his hand, so I didn't either. River was a deuce. At that point he turned his cards up. I did the same before I had had a chance for his to register.

Yep. Pocket 8s. He had turned it. Sigh. Welcome to my world. I let off a little grimace and eye roll.

Then the guy said, "Nice hand." I hate it when people do that. Whether they intend it or not, saying that to the loser always sounds to me like, "Pretty good second-best hand you have there, chump!" I didn't respond.

But at just the same time, the dealer pulled our cards out where she and the rest of the table could see them better, and said, "Two pair, sevens and eights. Set of threes."

I looked again. Sure enough. He had 8-7 in the hole, not 8-8. Whew!

It's been four years since I last had my glasses prescription checked. It might be time again.

Pain, relived

A post yesterday told a story about a Venetian dealer named Mark, and mentioned that I have known him, well, basically ever since I moved to Vegas, as he was then working at the Hilton, which was my primary poker hangout for a long time.

A reader asked if he was the same dealer "Mark" mentioned in another old post. The answer is no, that was a guy at the Orleans. I don't think I've ever talked about Hilton/Venetian Mark before, at least not by name. However, the question reminded me of a post that's old enough that I think many readers will not have encountered it, or perhaps did three years ago when I wrote it, but won't remember it.

Mark was the dealer for what was undoubtedly the most painful ten minutes of poker I've ever experienced, and my guess is that it was a sufficiently striking experience that he still remembers it, too. Some good did come out of it, though; I think it is still one of my best stories, and one of my best posts. Since it cost me something like $475 to have the experience, I might as well get maximal mileage out of it by referring you back to read it again (or for the first time)!

http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/irony-poker-story-in-4-parts-non-grumpy.html

Space invaders

OK, last story left over from yesterday's Venetian session.

When I arrived at the table, a woman was eating lunch while she played, using a side table. OK, no problem.

However, when she finished her meal, she just left the table there. For well over an hour she didn't move it, even when getting up to go to the restroom. In fact, shortly before I left the game she moved to another seat and still just left the table where it was.

For all that time, it remained a significant obstacle to people trying to move around the table, as it almost completely blocked the available space between our table and the next. Players coming and going had trouble with it, cocktail waitresses and chip runners had to carefully maneuver around it, etc.

Of course, it would have been nice if the Venetian Table Fairy had come along and whisked it away. But this woman had it entirely within her power to stand up, scoot the thing about ten feet away (there was an obvious place to park it where it would have been unobtrusive), and thus solve the problem. But nooooooooooooooooooo, she couldn't be bothered taking 30 seconds out of her life that way.

You always hear players complaining about how there isn't enough room between tables at most poker rooms. But players themselves contribute to this problem all the time. Just the simple act of pushing your chair under the table when you stand up (as your mother surely taught you) would meaningfully reduce the clutter between tables--but if you pay attention you'll see that the great majority of people fail to do it. Their inaction says, in effect, "Why should I bother, when the next guy trying to walk by will exert that effort for me?"

Another frequent offender is the guy who sits with his butt and chair way out from the table, leaning way forward and resting his chin or elbows on the table, effectively blocking anybody from walking past without having to ask him to scoot in.

People are so inconsiderate of others. They are either completely oblivious to what effect their actions have on other people, or they know it and are so self-centered that they just don't care.

If you contribute to the problem of the tight spaces between poker tables in any of these ways, in my book you lose the right to complain about how the poker room allocates its space.

"Scott was a little uptight"

I still have a couple more stories from the Venetian yesterday.

At the same time that I entered the game, coming into the box was Mark, a dealer I have known since he worked at the Hilton. He is an exceptionally good dealer: he knows the rules forwards and backwards, enforces them consistently, pays attention to everything, rarely makes any mistakes, and he either remains quiet or says something funny--no mindless chit-chat. My kind of guy.

Adam and Eve, we are led to believe, had an abundant garden full of everything to eat they could want, but had one fruit tree that was forbidden to them. So, rather than say, "OK, we can do without that one thing," they just couldn't resist the temptation. Kids are like that, too--make one thing off-limits to them, and it becomes the only thing they want.

Well, poker players are just the same way. There is only one topic of conversation that is prohibited during the play of a hand, and that is the hand in progress. So what do poker players MOST want to talk about? The hand in progress.

This was going on yesterday. I think the thing that triggered Mark's initial attempt to stifle it was somebody commenting on the size of a bet that had just been made and what it might signify. After the hand was over, he politely asked the players not to discuss the hand until it was done.

The offender objected, insisting that what he had said was perfectly fine. He then tried posing a series of hypothetical things one might say, to each of which Mark calmly responded, "It would be better if you waited until after the hand was over."

After Mark had moved on to another table, the guy whose comment had started the whole thing said, "Scott was a little uptight." (Yeah, he called him "Scott." Great memory in addition to a finely honed sense of social propriety.)

No, he wasn't being uptight. He was doing his job correctly, in a way that, unfortunately, most dealers don't bother with. Whether it's because they don't want to offend any player and risk cutting into tip income, or because they're tired of the constant battle, most dealers just let this stuff go by without comment, which is a large part of the reason it's such a ubiquitous problem. If every dealer handled such matters every time they came up, players would quickly learn that the rule really does matter, and would learn to shut up.

I have heard nearly infinite variations on the exchange that this player and Mark had: A player says something about the hand in progress, receives a reprimand or reminder from the dealer, and responds with some lame excuse about why that particular thing is allowable.

So let's set the record straight. (Not that anybody who really needs to be taught this will be reading, but I turn a blind eye to that fact.) What you can say about the hand in progress is what the current bet is, whose turn it is, and what the individual cards on the board are (e.g., for a player who can't see them clearly)--though even there it is usually best to leave those things to the dealer. Those are the stark, basic facts that are or should be available to all observers equally. Any facts beyond those, or any interpretations of what those facts mean, are off-limits.

To wit:

If you tell your neighbor what cards you folded, you are breaking the rule.

If you speculate out loud about what you think another player's cards are, you are breaking the rule.

If the third card of a suit comes and you say, "Somebody just made their flush," you are breaking the rule (in addition to showing that you have difficulty with noun and pronoun matching).

If the five community cards make a straight and you joke, "I would have made a straight if I had stayed in," you are breaking the rule.

If somebody puts in a large pre-flop reraise and you say, "Big pair," you are breaking the rule.

If somebody makes a large bet and you say, "There's a guy who doesn't want a call," you are breaking the rule.

If the flop comes with two of some rank and you whisper to your neighbor that you folded another one of those, you are breaking the rule.

If at the showdown one player's hand has been shown, another player is trying to decide whether to show or muck, and you say, "Any pair beats him," you are breaking the rule.

If somebody bets and you observe out loud, "He's pot-committed now," you are breaking the rule.

If there are four diamonds on the final board when it comes to the showdown and you say, "Who's got a diamond?" you are breaking the rule.

If the board contains a pair and three parts of a straight flush and you say, "Possible bad-beat jackpot," you are breaking the rule.

If you say, "I'm going to fold because that guy's hands are shaking so bad I know he's got a monster," you are breaking the rule.

If you ask another player, "Are you betting that much because you don't want anybody chasing the flush draw?" you are breaking the rule.

If you say, "Let's have a six on the river to make my straight," you are breaking the rule.

If there are three jacks on the board and you ask, "Who's got the last one?" you are breaking the rule.

If there are four nines on the board and you say, "Any ace wins it," you are breaking the rule.

Get the idea?

To be as general as possible, if anything you say could even conceivably help another player decide what to do or influence how he decides to play his hand or give him more information or insight about what is happening, it is not allowed. In making that determination, you should assume that there is a player at the table who is blind, deaf, drunk to just short of passing out, and who is such a novice at poker that he doesn't even what hands beat what other hands; i.e., any small clue you give out might help him.

An exception to all of this is if you are one of just two players left actively contesting the pot, in which case it is no longer possible for you to unduly influence the action of a third party.

None of this is particularly complicated. You don't talk about the hand in progress. It's a beautifully simple rule, really. The exceptions are so few that you could easily ignore them, act as if there were no exceptions at all, and go through an entire poker career just fine, never saying a word about the hand in progress.

I am appalled on a nearly daily basis about how casually and frequently this rule is violated, and how little most dealers do to keep a lid on these comments. I'll always appreciate and stand up for those stalwart few who make the effort.

Table jumping

I saw a flagrant table-jumper at the Venetian today. He moved himself from another table to an empty seat next to me, stayed less than one orbit, apparently didn't like us, spent some time craning his neck around looking for another spot, and soon took off, only to plant himself at an open seat at some other table. Who knows how many times he moved himself in pursuit of the perfect situation?

In every poker room that I know of, you have to get permission from the floor to move from one table to another. There are sound reasons for this. For one thing, they need to keep tables balanced in terms of numbers of players. Without this rule, if a table got somewhat short-handed, there could be a mad dash as the remaining players tried not to be the one left without a place at some other table, as in musical chairs. For another thing, somebody else may have already requested to move to a certain table when a seat next became available, and it's unfair for an interloper to move in and swipe it.

In small poker rooms, it's pretty hard to get away with this, because everybody--players, dealers, and floor--notices the move. But at larger rooms like the V, there is so much constant movement that a player can get away with it if the room staff aren't following the procedures that prevent it.

In a room that has a centralized seat management system, like the V, new players are sent to whichever table of a certain game type has the most open seats. The person at the desk will announce, "Player in on 25," so that the dealer knows that a new player is coming. When today's jumper first arrived at our table, the dealer should have called the floor, because there had been no preceding announcement of a new player coming. He would thus have been caught, and directed back to where he had come from.

There are two related problems at the Venetian. The first is that, in my experience, about one time out of three that I am sent to a table upon arrival, I get there only to find that there is no open seat. I then have to waste time going back to the front desk, get their attention, explain the problem, and get reassigned. It will not surprise my readers to learn that this annoys me greatly.

The second problem is that they are horrible, horrible at honoring table-change requests--literally the worst in the city. If you just want to move to any other game, it's usually not a problem, because they have so many to choose from that there's a seat open almost all the time. But if you request to move to a specific table, because you know it's fishy, or because you have a friend there you'd like to sit with, my experience is that you have less than a 50% chance that your request will be taken care of when a seat at that table becomes available.

As far as I can tell, they do not enter these table-change requests into the computer, as is done in most other large card rooms. Instead, the floor person assigned to that section of the room either tries to remember the request or scribbles it on a scrap of paper. (And, by the way, just finding the right person to make the request of is a chore. Sometimes the guy manning the computer at the desk will take the request, other times he will direct you to the floorperson. Not just any floorperson will do; you somehow have to figure out which specific one is responsible for your table, and nothing makes that obvious to the casual observer.)

As you might imagine, these things get forgotten. Shifts change, floormen take breaks or get assigned to other sections of the room, scraps of paper get lost, etc. Furthermore, since the person at the front desk doesn't consistently know about the request, he is apt to send a new player there when he sees an empty seat, before the floor guy notices. It's just an awful mess of a system. It completely baffles me, because the Venetian does so many other things right--nearly everything, in fact--that the idiocy and unreliability of the table-change system stick out like a sore thumb.

These problems are surely interconnected. The reason the open seat has vanished by the time I get there is that a table-jumper was allowed to sneak into it, and one reason that people jump tables without authorization is that they have learned by sad experience that trying to go through the proper channels is an exercise in frustration and futility. These problems, then, cause vicious cycles of exacerbating each other.

I have enough experience in how poker rooms run to be able to identify such problems, but not enough to know exactly how to go about fixing them. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the basic approach would have to include stressing to dealers to be watchful for table-jumpers and alert to calling the floor if somebody joins the game without being announced, using the computerized system to handle table-change requests, and making it more transparent to players how to make such requests.


(Cute photo above found here.)

Chopping the blinds

1.

A quick bit of background info, for the minority of my readers who haven't played much casino poker. In hold'em there are usually two blind bets required by the rules, so that there is always money in the pot to be contested. The players posting these forced bets are the last to act on the first round of betting. In most Vegas casinos, if everybody folds, and only the two blinds are left to act, the players can agree to "chop the blinds," meaning that they just take back their bets, relinquish their cards, and the game moves on to the next hand.

The reason that most players do this as a matter of course is that the great majority of the time the pot ends up tiny even if they play it out. Statistically, it's just not very likely that you'll end up with two hands strong enough that both players will feel like they have the winner and are willing to put more money into the pot. When the hand gets played out, either because house ruels don't permit a chop or because one player refuses as a habit, most often the result is that the hand just gets checked down, or, alternatively, one player makes a small bet and that ends it. It tends to take more time than the pot is worth.

The negotiation really needs to take only one or two words: "Chop?" is followed by a yes or a no, or a nod or shake of the head.

But once in a while, you get a guy who feels the need to be grandiose about it. His little speech will usually be some variant of this: "I'll always chop, even if I have aces. I don't even look first." I've heard that more times than I can count, and it just makes me roll my eyes. The tone is inevitably one of self-righteous moral superiority, and conveys a sense of, "I am a far better human being than those lowlifes who chop selectively."

The problem with this attitude is that nobody chops selectively, if there is a person with a functioning brain in the seat next to him. Once the person to your right (or left) makes a decision to chop or not to chop, and you agree to it, the two of you are going to stick to that for all future instances, unless you're stupid. I would never let the other guy selectively decide to play just his strong hands, and chop all the weak ones--nor would any other rational player. The result, if everybody thinks that way, is that whatever you decide the first time the question comes up will be in effect as long as you're seated together. And that, in turn, means that once chopping has been established as the routine, it will stay that way, no matter what the hole cards are.*

Of course, playing the hand out is the default condition, and both have to agree to chop independently every time. That means that, in theory, a player could chop, chop, chop, then see pocket aces and suddenly not agree to chop.** The hand would play out, but most of the time Mr. Aces will win only the other blind, and, in the process, earn the contempt of every other player at the table. He will also have effectively voided the friendly agreement for the remainder of the session, and the other guy will thereafter force him to play every hand. It's just not worth the hassle.

All of which means that the righteous smugness of the "I'll even chop aces" crowing is just empty, smug rhetoric. Yeah, of course you will, if you chop with everything else, too--not because you're such a great guy, but because the way the whole process works basically compels you to. So stop trying to look like there's something special about you.

Yes, of course I have chopped when I held aces or kings or queens. So has everybody who has played a lot. It's just like getting aces on a misdeal--you give 'em back to the dealer, shrug, and go on with the next hand. You do not get a star on your forehead for being angelic. It's just how things are done.


2.

Another common speech made in conjunction with the chop question is the morality tale. Somebody will relate a story in which a villain refused to chop, and ended up losing a monster pot. Again, I've heard more of such stories than I could count.

Regardless of whether the stories are true, I think they shouldn't be told. I don't think that any player should feel pressure to agree to a chop. I don't really care if the guy next to me wants to play or chop, as long as it's the same answer every time.


3.

While I'm on the subject of chopping, here's a related rant. What's the deal with players who feel that chopping is a right and privilege, and that they are somehow being wronged by a player who calls or raises, thus preventing a chop from occurring? These numbskulls apparently feel that chopping the blinds is some sort of positive good that they should get to experience, and they are robbed of it by somebody betting.

This ranks among the stupidest attitudes you can have at a poker table. You're there to play. You're there to win money. Chopping the blinds does not allow you to do that. It is a total waste of time. (Not a lot of time, but still.) There are reasons to think that chopping is usually better than the alternative of playing out two weak hands, which takes even more time, usually without meaningful profit to anybody. But every table seems to have at least one maroon who gets positively giddy when he gets to chop, and positively surly when somebody deprives him of that opportunity.

It is yet another in the long list of poker player behaviors that I see all the time, and yet cannot comprehend.


*There are some exceptions if one player has a hand that might hit a high-hand jackpot. Some players want to hold out the possibility of playing out such hands. But to do so necessarily involves collusion with the other blind to win that money, a practice that no ethical player will attempt to pull off or cooperate with.

**I occasionally hear that one card room or another has a rule that whatever any given pair of players first agree to, they must stick with. However, I have never heard this from a source that I thought was truly in the know, and I have never seen any attempt to enforce such a rule, if it does actually exist anywhere.

"Have you been carded?"

I have several stories from my session at the Venetian today. Sometimes I mash them all together into one multi-part post, but today I'm going to keep them separate, mainly (1) for ease of finding them later (I've discovered that I have more trouble finding an old story when I need it if it's one part of a big post), and (2) so that the comments threads stay more coherent.

At the table was a young man who was appeared to be of borderline age to be legal in a casino. When a new dealer came into the box, she asked him, "Have you been carded?" He said yes.

Wow. What an effective security measure! Yep. There's no way on earth that anybody could slip past that kind of scrutiny. Why, in order for an underage person to keep playing in that situation, he would have to tell an untruth! At a poker table!

If she has concerns about his age, she is supposed to check his ID herself, or have her supervisor do it--not just ask him whether anybody else has checked it. That's just laughably stupid and ineffective. It's no better than ignoring the issue entirely. Her question will only catch people who are so dense as to answer no, which won't include anybody who knows that his only ID shows him to be a minor.

Compounding the silliness, the dealer said that if he showed up in the system as having a player's card, she wouldn't have asked him, but he was just "guest." There's more of that steel-trap brain of hers at work. After all, nobody could ever hand his undersage pal a player's card and have him sign in with it. Nope. That has never happened in the history of the world. A player's card is watertight proof of legal age.

It's certainly true that nobody likes to harass players by being, say, the 15th employee of the day to ask to see ID, but that's why casinos have readily available wristbands that announce that the person's ID has been verified, so that he can be left in peace thereafter. If she had arranged for him to get one, she would have saved him future repeat questioning and would have actually been doing her job, all at the same time. What a concept!

I'm reminded of something from my youth. My brother was the eldest in the family, so he tended to get stricter discipline. For example, when he was in high school, dating and driving, he had curfews. My parents would set an alarm clock in the hall outside their bedroom. If he didn't get home by the appointed hour, it would wake them up, and he'd be in trouble. By the time I got to the same age, as the third child, things had gotten a tad more lax. Rather than the alarm clock thing, they would just ask me the next morning, "What time did you get home last night?"

Which approach do you think was more effective at enforcing the rule?

I suspect this dealer would go with the question method, and not realize it opened any loopholes.*



*Obviously, the morning-after question is not completely toothless. After all, it's always possible that a parent would wake up for some reason past the deadline and find that the wayward child was not in the home, in which case an untruthful answer the next morning would have repercussions beyond having been out too late. However, it is important to note that I never, ever violated curfew, and thus I never, ever had the slightest reason to lie about it. The reason this is important to make explicit is that my father reads this blog faithfully, and I wouldn't want to risk being grounded for past hypothetical transgressions.

Useless casino employees, part 2

I have previously opined that the most useless employee in a casino is the washroom attendant. I would like to expand that list a bit.

The security guards at the Venetian that stand at the driveway entracces and wave you through are equally useless. In the dozens and dozens of times I've been there, they have stopped me exactly once. That was on a New Year's Eve or Halloween or some other high-traffic night, when they were apparently trying to keep out people who just wanted the free Strip parking. They asked why I was coming. I said, "To play poker." That answer satisfied them, and they waved me on through. I guess those were the right code words. Good thing I knew them. Obviously, no terrorist set on pancaking the parking garage with a car bomb would ever think to tell them that.