The Luxor improves to mediocre

I hated the old Luxor poker room. It was noisy and smoky, poorly run (for example, you could stand at the front desk for a l-o-n-g time being ignored the employees, who had better things to do than tend to a customer), and their main no-limit game was an insane structure: $1/$1/$3 blinds with a $50 minimum and maximum buy-in. It was just an all-in fest, with half of the game time spent trying to get the pot right and dealing with missed-blind buttons because of that stupid structure. I hadn't bothered with the place since November of 2006.

Recently I read that they moved the room and changed the game, so I decided to give them another chance. I've played three sessions there in the past seven days.

The first thing to note is that it has been highly profitable, with three wins in three tries, net uptick $628 in 7.8 hours, or about $80/hour. That's well above my overall average, and indicative of how soft the games have been. Despite my gripes about some aspects of the room, this will keep me coming back at least occasionally.

The poker room is now the very first thing you see upon entering from the main parking garage. The Luxor also confers the advantage of being nestled between Mandalay Bay and the Excalibur. Either one is a quick indoor walk from the Luxor, making it unusually easy to do a "two-fer" poker hit, locking up a nice little profit from one room and then hitting another, without having to get back in the car and drive somewhere.

It has the sports book on one side, slot machines on the other side of a half-wall, and is roped off from the main pedestrian thoroughfare on a third side. Unfortunately, two of the tables are right up against these ropes, and inconsiderate boobs walking by will stop with their cigars and cigarettes and blow smoke at the table from about three feet away. This is a very loose definition of a "non-smoking" room. Still, it's an improvement from the way things were before.

I heard one of the dealers say that they're planning to enclose this room with real walls. That would be nice, but I'll believe it when I see it. I have no idea whether this "plan" is "construction starts tomorrow" or "somebody said that they'd like to see that happen someday," or somewhere in between.

On all three visits, I've been greeted instantly, seated immediately, and treated very well overall. I can lodge no complaints whatsoever in the service department.

Restrooms are close--right across the hall.

They don't track player hours for comps, so forget about building up enough credits to take your out-of-town visiting family to a nice dinner someday.

The no-limit game structure has finally yielded to something more normal: $1-$2 blinds, with a $50-$200 buy-in. If you drop below $200 (say, by paying the big blind), you can purchase another $200 in chips, so the buy-in is effectively capped at $398. It's pretty silly not to just call it a $400 max. For people who want to start with the most chips possible, what, exactly, is the point in making them buy $200, play one hand, then buy another $200?

There's a nice array of big televisions, easily visible from most seats.

They have no interesting souvenir chips. They just have the standard-issue chips, plus a whole bunch of the creepy "Criss Angel Mindfreak" chips pictured above. They kind of weird me out, if ya know what I mean. When I get them, I make sure they stay buried in my stacks underneath the regular chips, so that Criss is not giving me the stinkeye while I play.

There's a terminology problem at the Luxor. They have a few single-table tournaments during the day. The problem is that they refer to them as, e.g., "the 10:00 p.m. sit-'n'-go." If the problem with that isn't obvious, a bit of background history may help. The single-table tournament was originally conceived by Jack Binion as a satellite system for entry into the World Series of Poker. With Internet poker sites, it's one of the most popular formats (and my personal favorite). Online they are called "sit 'n' go" tables, because they are not scheduled; you sign up, and as soon as there are enough players to fill a table, the thing starts. In fact, there are now multi-table sit-'n'-go tournaments, with the highest I've seen seating 180 players. But however many players and tables are involved, what makes it a "sit-'n'-go" is that it starts whenever enough people have signed up. The Luxor staff has confused "sit-'n'-go" with "single-table tournament." They are not interchangeable terms. If they run this tournament at 10:00 p.m., even if the table isn't filled, then it is a scheduled single-table tournament, not a "sit-'n'-go." For it to be that, they would need to keep an open roster and start the game whenever enough players are enrolled. No, this isn't a huge deal, and only pedants like me will complain about it, but I find it peculiar that a whole room staff of poker professionals don't understand common poker terminology.

They have a unique way of doling out high-hand jackpots. It's done on an hourly basis: $150 to the best hand each hour (with a minimum requirement of, I believe, aces full). During my first session, the dealer explicitly told us that only one of the player's hole cards has to play in order to qualify for the jackpot. I was surprised at this, because that's far from the norm. In fact, I can't think of any room in Vegas that gives high-hand or bad-beat jackpots without both of a player's hole cards being used. In my next session, however, a new player was asking about the jackpot rules, and the dealer said that both hole cards had to play. I checked the small print on the sign to resolve the discrepancy, and the second dealer was correct. Hey, Luxor, here's an idea: Don't have your dealers tell the players incorrect information about the house rules.

Speaking of the dealers, that brings me to the most alarming thing about the Luxor poker room that I've encountered so far: way more dealer problems than I would usually expect. Enough, in fact, that it's worth listing each separately. I should note, in advance, that I'm really very tolerant of ordinary dealer errors. People make mistakes, and it's no big deal. It's unreasonable to expect people to make no errors; all you can reasonably ask is that they (1) know what constitutes an error, and (2) handle the errors correctly when they occur. If those two elements are there, I'll never grouse about the kind of mistakes that are inevitably just part of the game.

Dealer #1

One of the most unprofessional things I've ever witnessed in a dealer was during my last visit to the old Luxor poker room. My table was at the edge of the room, with just a half-wall separating it from the main casino floor. One dealer was completely shameless in openly ogling attractive young women that walked by, would frequently make lurid comments about them to the players, and once even made a "Hey, Baby" call-out to a woman passing. It was unbelieveable. So why do I mention that in a post about the new poker room? Because that dealer is still working there. No, I didn't hear any such things from him this week, but I have no reason to think that this pig will be any better behaved now than he was then.

Dealer #2

First, this is the same guy who gave us wrong information about the jackpots.

Second, he came to work sick. I was sitting in seat 1, right next to him, and he was coughing and sniffling and sneezing and blowing his nose the whole time. It was revolting. I couldn't believe the shift supervisor wouldn't just send him home. Thanks, Luxor, for caring about your patrons so much that you'll expose them all to vacation-ruining cold viruses from your employees.

Third, he made one of the worst mistakes I've seen. I was involved in a huge pot, raised before the flop with multiple players in, and three of us each putting in another $50 on the flop. I made a full house on the river. I was pretty sure that one of my two opponents had a flush, and the other less than that, and this pot was going to be mine. The first guy checked. I bet $75. The big-stacked maniac on my left in seat 2 (who I was confident had the flush) said "raise." Then he pushed forward one stack of $100. Then he pushed forward another stack of $100. Then he pushed forward a third stack of $100. The dealer was just watching him do this. I wasn't really opposed to him putting me all-in; in fact, it's exactly what I wanted. But once he announced "raise," my ideal scenario was a minimum raise, inviting the other player in, before I drop the hammer on them. So I turned to the dealer and asked, "How many trips does he get to make?" Only then did the dealer say, "Oh yeah," and jump into action. He correctly limited the raise to the minimum, $150. The other player folded.

I pretended for a moment that this gave me a difficult decision to make, then said, "I'm all-in." I stacked up the rest of my chips and pushed them forward, joining the $75 I had previously put in. My opponent immediately said "Call," without pushing more chips in. I showed him my full house (pocket 6s, made a set on the flop, and the board paired on the river). My opponent grimly showed me the nut flush that he had made on the turn and had unwisely slow-played. Before I could react, the dealer pushed the huge pot toward me, toppling and merging with my chip stacks. The problem was that the dealer hadn't counted out the remainder of my stacks and taken a matching amount from my opponent. Now we couldn't determine how much I had started with.

He should have immediately called over the floor, but he didn't--probably because he didn't want to have his mistake known--even after I asked him to. (He did the second time I asked, though.) We started the cumbersome process of trying to reconstruct what had been in the pot before the final round of betting, when my opponent came up with an alternative solution. He had eyeballed my stack before putting in his raise. He thought that I had about $35 more than the $150 he had put in. I thought back to what my stacks had looked like, and realized that this was pretty close, certainly within $20 or so. He asked if I would accept $185 as the amount, rather than try to sort it out exactly, and I agreed. He was very gracious and reasonable about the whole thing, especially given how sick he must have felt upon seeing that he misplayed himself out of that much money.

How did the dealer make such an egregious error? Here's a hint: The Super Bowl was on at the time. Here's another hint: Any time a player missed seeing a play because of being involved in a hand, and asked what happened, the dealer gave him a recap. In other words, this idiot dealer was paying a hell of a lot more attention to the football than to the poker. Even as he was pushing me the pot prematurely, he was commenting on a play that had just taken place. His mind was anywhere except where it needed to be. When there's an unsually large pot, with an all-in and a call, every dealer should know that that's the time when he needs to be most scrupulously attentive to getting things right, lest a major mess ensue.

Dealer #3

I was under the gun, that is, just left of the big blind. What was to be my first card was face up on top of the deck in the dealer's hand after she dealt the first card to each of the blinds. This is called a "boxed card" (for reasons that I've never been able to grasp). The standard way of handling this is to show it to all of the players, then put it aside, as if it hadn't been there. That is, it's as if a stray piece of paper had accidentally found its way into the deck; it is just disregarded, and the hand goes on unaffected. (See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/05/yet-another-dealer-who-doesnt-know.html for another boxed card mishandled by the dealer.) This may not be absolutely universal, but I've never known of any card room that employed a different procedure. It is what I was taught in dealer school and is prescribed the same way in every rule book I've checked.

This dealer, though, called a misdeal, and gathered the cards back in. I didn't feel like challenging her, because as long as I get two random cards I'm satisfied. I meant to ask the supervisor before I left whether that is the room's standard procedure, but then I forgot to do so. So it's possible, but unlikely, that the Luxor's protocol for this situation is different from every other poker room in the world. More likely is that this dealer had just made up her own way of handling it.

To make matters stranger still, she just gave the deck a single riffle shuffle and a cut, then started dealing. It was very strange, I thought, for her not to do a full, standard shuffling procedure (two riffles, one "box" or "strip" shuffle, then another riffle and cut) after declaring a misdeal. That, I'm highly confident, is not the Luxor's prescribed method. Not that this dealer appeared to care....

Dealer #4

I was not involved with this hand, but watched it play out. The final board was 6-7-8-9-10. There were three cards of one suit, so a flush was possible, but on the last round of betting the first player checked, and the second tapped the table and said, "I'll play the board." The first guy said, "Me, too." Then, strangely, they both pushed their hole cards forward face down.

The dealer at this point needs to say something like "I have to see the hands in order to award the pot." It does not matter that a player's best five cards are the five community cards; every poker rule book agrees that the hole cards still must be exposed in order for any player to claim a share of the pot.

Well, not when you've got Dealer #4 in the box. She pulled in the unexposed cards, then split the pot between the two players, without a word being spoken. Apparently, nobody but me found anything out of the ordinary here.

Dealer #5

I noticed that he was wearing a lapel pin that appeared to be in the shape of a carrot. I thought this was pretty strange, and he would surely expect it to provoke questions, so I asked its significance. He said, "I just like to have the ladies ask me about my big carrot," then laughed as if he had made the funniest joke ever.

When he stopped laughing, he said that the real reason was a little promotion for Carrot Top's comedy show at the Luxor. He said he was given the choice between wearing a big button with the promo on it, or the smaller lapel pin, and chose the latter. Then he added, "Besides, it gives me the chance to say, 'I like having the ladies ask me about my big carrot.'" And he laughed again.

The guy needs some serious professional help.

Dealer #6

Again, I wasn't involved in this hand, but three other players were. The final board had a fairly obvious possible straight; any player holding a 10 would have the nuts. On the river, the first player to act moved all-in. The dealer said, "He is all-in with his straight." As it turned out, the guy did indeed have the straight, as did the other player who called him (and the one who didn't have it folded). It didn't take great poker insight to guess that that's what the first player was holding, but for the dealer to say that out loud is, frankly, shocking. It's horribly unprofessional, and has all kinds of potential for queering the action, in the event that one of the players hadn't noticed what was going on.

For example, it's fairly common for a player to be looking for a flush draw to hit, and when he doesn't see the suit he's looking for, he basically tunes out the ranks of the cards and may not notice the straight possibility, sometimes overlooking the fact that he himself has made the straight! It is inexcusable for the dealer to step in and alert him to what he might have missed on his own.

I've commented several times in the past about dealers who inappropriately insert themselves into the action--see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/another-dealer-injecting-himself-into.html and the other posts linked therein. I can only conclude that these dealers are either so resentful that they're dealing rather than playing, or so bored, that they just can't resist openly commenting on what's happening. It's terribly unprofessional, and should be grounds for discipline.

Conclusion

This is a highly aberrant number of significant dealer problems to have noted in just a few hours of play--more, in fact, than I can recall from a similar number of hours spent anyplace else. Luxor, you have a serious problem with dealers not knowing their jobs. Of course there are fine ones there, too; I don't mean to tar them all with the same brush. But it's a disturbing array of unprofessional conduct. The Luxor's poker room management really needs to take this problem seriously and start getting a handle on it. I'm not yet ready to shift the "worst dealers in town" label from the Sahara to the Luxor (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/07/where-are-worst-dealers-in-town.html), but a couple of more such examples, and I'll be willing to declare it at least a tie.

Still, with plenty of action going on at the times I want to play, soft games, and easy access to two other card rooms, I will certainly be hitting the Luxor more often than I have in the past. If they really do improve the room physically by walling it in, and start keeping track of comp hours, they will go a long way toward making it one of my favorite places to play.

Money to burn

There's a new aggregator of poker blogs at http://www.pokerwonks.com/. It's a convenient way of scanning recent posts from a wide variety of poker blogs, just to keep abreast with what people are doing and saying in this strange segment of the world.

I was browsing the site this morning, and was reminded that I hadn't checked in on the Prof's poker blog in a while (http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/pokerblog/). A few days ago he posted this:

While the Monte Carlo resort on the Las Vegas strip was ablaze last Monday
the poker room was doing business as usual. Poker players continued betting and
dealers continued dealing the cards to the nonchalant crowd of gamblers. The big
screen TV's in the poker room were tuned to local channels where the fire on the
upper floors exterior facade could be tracked in real time. This devil-may-care
behavior is reminiscent of the time when flood waters flowed through the casino
at Caesars Palace and blackjack players rolled up their pants legs and continued
gambling. Neither flood nor fire will keep the dedicated gamers from their
appointed games.

This was the first I had heard of how people inside reacted to the fire. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

I've played poker through many fire alarms before. As I wrote a couple of months ago (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/mesquite-flavored-poker-part-1-eureka.html):

The final interesting thing that happened on this visit was a fire alarm.
It happened just as I was leaving--literally the instant that I stepped through
the door. In fact, I wondered if I had triggered some security thing, like when
the alarm blares at you in the public library because they didn't de-activate
one of your books.

I've heard lots of fire alarms in casinos before, and they're actually kind
of funny, because nobody does anything. They just keep doing what they were
doing before. Every previous time, a recorded voice has come over the PA system
saying something like, "Our staff is investigating the cause of the alarm. We
will notify you if you need to take any action." In other words, they give
people permission to ignore the alarm.

But this time, the overhead voice was actually telling everybody to
evacuate. By the time I got to my car, a few people were trickling out, but it
wasn't anything like you see in a fire drill at a school, for instance. I think
most people will keep playing their slot machines until the reels melt from the
flames and won't turn any more. Even then, they'll complain that it was just
about to hit.

I have enough confidence in modern building construction and fire safety codes (well, except maybe in Harrah's properties; see http://www.lvrj.com/news/12530566.html and http://www.lvrj.com/business/14450797.html) that I don't worry that a towering inferno is going to result from most of the stuff that sets off the hotel fire alarms (an overdone souffle in the oven, somebody smoking in bed setting his sheets on fire, etc.).

But I'm just telling you all in advance, so you don't think I'm being rude when it happens: If I'm playing poker, and there's a fire in the building large enough that it's being featured live on all the local television stations, and that coverage is on the big-screen TVs in the poker room--I'm going to be leaving. It's possible that I'll finish the hand I'm currently playing. I might even cash out my chips if there isn't a line at the booth. But I'm done for the day.

Hundreds of people needlessly died in the World Trade Center because they obediently followed directions (both automated recordings and what they were told when they called security for advice) to stay where they were and not evacuate the buildings. That's not going to be me. Yeah, maybe the fire is only on the roof, and the poker room is on the ground floor, but fires do crazy things sometimes. They spread. They drop flaming debris to lower levels. They cause floors and walls to collapse, pancaking the stories below. Smoke gets into the ventilation systems. The sprinklers might turn on, dowsing everything and everybody that's still there. And if you wait to leave until the crisis is obvious and imminent, you might get trampled by panicking idiots.

Call me paranoid, but when a building is burning in a major way, I've got other places to be. With more than 50 poker rooms in the city, I don't need to be sitting in the one that's on fire.

Weird card protector

This one was an ugly little Yoda, spotted at the Riviera poker room.

Still not quite as strange as this one, however: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2006/11/weirdest-card-protector-ever.html

Chop chop

Last night at the Luxor I saw that rare species of bird, the Conditional Chopper.

Some background, for those who don't play in casinos regularly: Occasionally the pre-flop action is a hold'em game is fold-fold-fold all away around to the two blinds. Most poker rooms offer to let the players in the blinds agree to just take back their proferred chips, pretend that the hand played out, move the dealer button forward, and go on to the next hand. The only Vegas casino I can recall offhand that does not allow this is Mandalay Bay.

When I first started playing live poker, I was a purist on this point and considered it scandalous that we would consider not playing the hand. Over time, I learned why it's done. Basically, it's a waste of time. In order to make any money on a hand, two players must each have a hand they consider worth investing in. It's rare that both players in the blinds meet that condition. Usually either they both have trash or only one of them has cards that he likes. If they are forced to play it out (such as at Mandalay), usually a pre-flop raise by one player will end it, and if not, usually a bet on the flop will, or they both just check-check-check all the way. In each of those common outcomes, the winner profits $2, minus any house rake and tip.

Unwritten etiquette is that if you and the person you'll be making this decision with are going to chop, you do it every time, regardless of what cards you're dealt (though some will make an exception if they have, e.g., two parts of a royal flush, and there's a big jackpot they want a chance to hit--in which case they'll say something to that effect explicitly). I've heard that at least one room in town forces such consistency as a rule, but I can't remember which place people have said that about, and I've never seen anybody try to enforce it.

Personally, I don't much care which way we go. My default is to go for the chop, but if the other guy wants to play (maybe he's in Vegas for only a short time and wants to play every hand he can, or maybe he likes getting practice at one-on-one play), that's OK with me, too.

But once in a while, you run into somebody who wants selectivity. That's what happened last night.

We were playing shorthanded because several players had left all at once. The first time a chop opportunity arose, I was in the small blind. I was in the 10 seat, so I leaned around the dealer to catch the eye of the guy in the 1 seat, and asked, "Wanna chop it?" He grinned and said "No way," quite emphatically. OK by me. I had something dumb like a Q-4 offsuit, and tossed in the extra dollar. As I sort of expected, he raised by another $5. Fine. The flop missed me completely. I checked, he bet, I folded. He proudly showed the J-10 of hearts, giving him a flush draw on the flop. He said to me, "Sorry. Usually I would chop, but not with this kind of hand." That was my first indication that his intention was to agree to a chop selectively, based on his cards. He apparently thinks suited J-10 is too precious a gem to waste. Idiot.

Because of the noise level at Luxor and the dealer sitting between us, it was impractical to engage in conversation with him. I knew that he would eventually figure out that I was going to hold him to playing it out every time, now that he had set the precedent.

If I had been sitting next to him, I would have asked him, "So you're planning to agree to chop when you don't have a strong starting hand, but play it out when you do have a strong hand, is that right?" Presumably he would say yes.

Then I would ask him the question that had apparently not entered his thick skull: "Why on earth would I agree to terms like that, which always favor you?"

The next time the situation arose, I had Q-Q in the small blind. This was great, because I thought he might read my raise as being just revenge, not reflecting real strength, and play back at me with nothing. He called, but then folded to my bet on the flop, which meant that we each netted zero from the exchange. Soon after, the table broke up as we were moved to other tables.

Celebrity sighting

I played poker Wednesday night with Dr. Pauly, one of the uber-bloggers of the poker world.

I was at Mandalay Bay from 10:20 p.m. to 12:05 a.m. (according to my records). When I sat down at the back table in seat 1, I looked around the table and noticed that the guy in seat 9 looked an awful lot like the photos I had seen of Pauly. But with the dealer to my immediate right, I couldn't get a good look. Besides, when you've only seen someone in pictures, it's hard to identify him or her confidently. If I had been keeping up with his blog (http://taopoker.blogspot.com/) lately, I would have known he was in town, which would have made me more confident of my impression.

Anyway, now I know that I was right, because he mentions this session in his entry for Thursday:

I got up and walked back to the Excalibur. Insomnia struck and I couldn't
sleep. I headed down to Mandalay Bay to play at 2am. [Note: He's a little off here.] There was one 1-2 NL table running. I sat down next to a hot thirty-something chick from Southern California that was hammered. She slurped a frozen daiquiri from Ruby Tuesdays and kept asking the dealer, "Is this my big blind?"

She didn't have too many chips. But she was bleeding off $100 at a time.
She'd rebuy. Piss it away and dig back into her Gucci purse and rebuy again. The
accent told me she was from the East Coast originally. She had mentioned that
she played at the Bike on occasion and had lived in Los Angeles. She had a rock
on her finger the size of a Titleist and she had a fake tan. I could sense the
inner emotional turmoil that drove her to drink. She was the your typical Las
Vegas drunk girl, and the perfect example of someone you want at your poker
table. Rich. Reckless. Drunk.

Drunk Girl was the mark, but we only got involved in a couple of pots
together. She kept trying to buy me a drink. I was only drank gingerale, and she
questioned my manhood. I told her that I was higher than Snoop Dog at 4:20. She
let out a wicked laugh and asked me where she could score any pot. Our dealer
was a grumpy old white guy, and yet that made him crack a smile.

Then I got to tango with Drunk Girl.

Four of us limped. I had As-3s from the small blind. The fop was A-A-8. I
checked. Drunk Girl bet. I check-raised her for half of her stack.

"I don't like you!" Drunk Girl screamed. "I thought we were friends."

"You're from L.A.," I explained. "You're used to having fake friends who
always stab you in the back or fuck you in the ass."

Drunk Girl thought that was the funniest thing she had ever heard. She
repeated the line three times. I got a warning from the dealer for dropping the
f-bomb.

"What? Why he can't say fuck?" Drunk Girl inquired.

That slowed up the hand for about five minutes as she got into a drunken
debate with the dealer over what exactly is bad and what is acceptable.

"That's a stupid fuckin' rule," Drunk Girl said.

She also got a warning. We still had a hand to play. We had to verbally
reconstruct the hand for her to get her up to speed. Drunk Girl eventually
called my bet. The turn was a 6. I bet a stack of red chips. She sighed and
picked up her cards. She showed me an 8. I didn't see the other card. She called
for her last $20. I tabled my trip Aces which held up. Rebuy!

I won another decent sized pot with Kh-Qh. One player from UTG raised. The
button called. I had re-raised from the big blind. They both called. I decided
to check-raise the Ace high flop with two hearts. I checked. UTG bet the pot.
The button folded. I check-raised for his entire stack. He tanked before he
folded his hand face up. I just showed him the Qh and I raked in the pot.

I was running good until I lost a $400 pot when I got rivered by a two
outer. My kings got snapped off by threes. That sucked. I decided to cash out.
The table was not fun anymore. Drunk Girl had left the table an hour earlier and
was probably passed out somewhere.

I was there for much of Drunk Girl's time in seat 8, and clearly remember the "I don't like you anymore" hand. She kind of annoyed me because she was never paying attention (about half the time, a friend from whatever convention she was attending was sitting or standing by her, chatting about whatever (I couldn't really hear them from my end of the table), and she just tuned out the fact that there was a poker game going on that she happened to be involved in. When she first sat down, I licked my chops, because she was clearly an easy mark, but I never got a situation in which I could take advantage.

The only hand I remember playing against Pauly was this: I had Q-Q, raised, he called from one of the blinds. Flop was A-x-x. He checked, I made a standard continuation bet. He check-raised me. I folded the queens face-up. (Note: This isn't the same hand as Pauly describes above, unless we're remembering it very differently. I don't recall getting reraised pre-flop, I don't think there was a third person in the hand, and I didn't take any time at all to fold the queens after the check-raise.)

Not very exciting.

He was running good, but I was having one of those dreadful nights when I couldn't do anything right: I called when I should have folded and vice-versa. Couldn't get a flop to match my hole cards no matter what. Lost $300 in that roughly 90 minutes. Ugh. Fortunately, those nights don't happen too often.

I'm just glad that my lackluster performance didn't become the target of one of Pauly's jibes. It would have been well-deserved, I'm afraid. My inner donkey was showing.

Nice to (sort of) meet you, Dr. P!

(Photo above used without any permission whatsoever, from http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/pokerblog/archives/2006_02.php.)

Hooters--maybe not a place for wise owls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weirdest poker book review

I'm reading Poker Player newspaper, and find in Ashley Adams's "Stud Sense" column a favorable mention of a new poker-themed novel by Susie Isaacs, White Knight Black Nights, which I hadn't heard of before. I go to amazon.com to try to find more reviews of it, see how much it costs, and maybe add it to my wish list. It's not listed.

So I do a Google search to find other reviews. The first one that pops up is the following, at http://roomreview.net/book-review-white-knight-black-nights-by-susie-isaacs/, which I repost here in its entirety, because otherwise you might not believe just how unreadable it is. It sounds as if it were written in another language and rendered into English by Babelfish or some other computerized translator.

When you get involved with poker employ, you might have heard of the poker
player Susie Isaacs, it is very successful and in the international poker scene
best known. In addition to gains in a number of major live tournaments in Las
Vegas, has Susie 1998 at $ 10,000 buy-in WSOP Main Event, 10 Space. It also has
the women’s events in 1996 and 1997 won. In 2007 it succeeded in to the WSOP
among the top 5% to place.

If you are in the last few years, poker magazines have read, they certainly Susie Isaacs also as a writer of texas holdem articles. Isaacs has a number of poker items with the name “chip Chatter “is written. 1000 Best Poker Strategies and Secrets, Queens Can Beat Kings, Ms. poker Up Close and Personal, and the two-piece Ms. poker I ‘ m Not Bluffing.

What you may not know is that Susie has recently also to the successful novelist authors heard some time ago, the book White Knight, Black Nights (White knights, black nights). I have just finished reading it and can only recommend.

It is not just around a poker book, it is not mainly with poker. Although it is predominantly in Las Vegas plays the main character a professional poker player and also a few other poker players for the act are important - they are certainly no better poker player, if you read this book. It is for you but in any case very entertaining, to read this book.

Isaacs presents us his dramatic story about discoveries - a woman discovers her own identity as a writer and poker player. It presents the reader with the world of unconditional woman, she accompanies this woman in dramatic and painful twists up to the date of their conversion is finished and they are under great difficulties and extensions driven by fear of a self-confident and independent woman has developed.

But the story does not end there. Also featured are some of them Isaacs mass murderer, general chaos and sex addicts.

Isaac’s story sounds almost like a biography - at least in some parts. Writer, poker player, and the surroundings of Las Vegas, which sounds so, as if the author himself fictionalized. But Isaacs wants the readers in this book presents more than just the main character. It shows us a diverse cross-section of society, credible and well described. The dialogs of the characters sound very authentic. The descriptions of events is extremely interesting are sometimes very touching. The action is based on several levels of action, making the book even more intriguing.

I have this book on several things well liked. It is very economically written - in an honest, factual style. I do not believe that the author tries the reader through an excessive “literary” presentation to impress - a problem which many authors of debut works. It is for the characters in this book is not one dimensional caricatures,
there are no easy place for the plot of the book. The fates of the individual characters touched me and I suffered with them.

But I liked best the depiction of poker and Las Vegas in this book. I liked it in an ultra-luxurious suite casino on the Strip to be brought. I liked the action at the poker
tournaments. I wish it would have been a little more in the book to - and I am sure that with their experience Isaac a whole book would have to fill. Perhaps this is indeed the topic of her next book on the action live poker tournaments - I can hardly expect it.

Wow. OK. Glad you expressed yourself so clearly there. Yeah.

Still not sure about the book, though I managed to develop some very definite opinions about the roomreview.net web site.


Incidentally, the lovely etching above is "Tower of Babel" by the great M.C. Escher, as found at http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/escher/jbescher.htm.


Addendum, about ten minutes later

I went looking for other book reviews, and the next one I found was by Ashley Adams, a longer version than the one he wrote for his "Stud Sense" column. See http://www.pokernews.com/news/2008/01/book-review-susie-isaacs-white-knight-black-nights.htm. I was immediately struck by the similarity of the sentence-to-sentence structure of this review with the one I reprinted above. Take a look for yourself.

I think that somebody at the roomreview.net site took Adams's review and ran it through a translator twice, once into another language, then back into English. Why would they do this? Perhaps to change enough of the words that it wouldn't be immediately obvious that they were stealing somebody else's material. In fact, it's hard to think of any other plausible reason for such a maneuver.

Very strange.

Poker gems, #82

James McKenna, Poker Player newspaper column, February 4, 2008, p. 10:


[O]ther players don't cause tilts. We do it to ourselves.... No one can put you on tilt without your consent.

I'm in Card Player magazine again

No, that's not me on the cover.

About three months ago, I did a post about two situations of rule violations by other players where it wasn't completely clear to me whether I had handled things correctly. (See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/11/should-one-speak-up-when-not-involved.html.)

I knew that Card Player columnist Mike O'Malley writes a lot about rules, ethics, and etiquette of player conduct, so I emailed him a link to the post. I told him that if the situations I described caught his interest, I'd be happy to have him respond with his thoughts in the comments section of the blog, or on his own blog (http://rzitup.blogspot.com/), or even use it as the jumping-off point for a column.

With my permission, he used the two stories basically as his entire column for this month, on pp. 102-104, in the issue pictured above (volume 21c, number 3c, dated February 13, 2008), just out in the casinos today. I'll post a link to the column when it's available online at Card Player's web site (which usually seems to be a month or so after the print issue hits).

The column is a bit confusing, because Mike sometimes uses my first-person account without quotation marks, which sounds like he's describing his own experiences, and sometimes uses my name and the accompanying third-person pronouns. A little editing glitch, I suspect. Ah well. The last paragraph is his comments on the two events.

For those wondering about the "again" in the title of this post, this has happened before. See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/07/article-in-card-player-magazine-non.html.

A dealer unclear on the concept

I was at Mandalay Bay tonight, waiting for a no-limit game, and had to endure a $2-4 limit game until a seat became available. (The CIA may waterboard suspected terrorists, but they won't go so far as to subject them to $2-4 limit poker. No question that that would constitute illegal torture under the Geneva Convention.)

One woman commented on what a lucky session it had been for her. The dealer, a young Asian man with a heavy accent, said, "It's a good time of year to play, right after the Chinese New Year."

I said, "It can't be good for everybody."

He looked puzzled and asked why not.

"Because in poker," I explained, "every time somebody wins, somebody else loses."

He got a thoughtful look on his face for a second, then said, "I guess you're right about that."

Poker is not a zero-sum game--it's worse than that. It's an overall negative for the players, considered as a group, because tips and the house rake take money out of the game. The sum of the cash that the players walk away with will always be less than the sum of the money they bought into the game for. There might be nine winners and one big loser, or one big winner and nine losers, but there will be at least one person losing.There isn't enough luck in the world to prevent that outcome--even during the Chinese New Year.

It's astonishing to me that a poker dealer had apparently never realized that rather basic truth about the nature of the game.

Great comeback

This happened a couple of months ago, but I was just reminded of it, and I didn't post it at the time. Better late than never.

Playing hold'em at Suncoast (I'm not in this hand), the final board was 2-4-8-9-Q, with no flush possible. The two-way action on the river was big bet and a call. The bettor turned over two pair. The caller turned over J-10, for the nuts. Somebody asked him why he didn't raise. He said, "I thought he (pointing to his lone opponent) might have the higher straight."

A smartass at the end of the table said, "Right. If he had the jack, ten, AND king in his hand, he would have had you beat."

Officially, of course, I must express my strong disapproval of such comments. First, we don't want to smarten up the clueless players and make them harder to beat. Second, making somebody feel stupid at the table is likely to result in him picking up his chips and leaving a lot sooner than he otherwise would.

But I've gotta admit, it was very, very funny.

First readers' tournament results: no donkeys, winner "Pemite"

The most important result (being just a wee bit self-centered here) is that I didn't make a complete fool of myself. I think I only applied one bad beat, but was on the receiving end of several, which is a reasonable indicator that I was usually getting my money in at the right spots. I managed an embarrassment-avoiding, just-barely-snuck-into-the-money, very-very-slightly-above-average finish of third place, out of seven who played.

The double-stacks thing on Full Tilt really does give a lot more play than standard formats. We went a long time before seeing the first casualty, "kazor," who unluckily ran his A-K into my pocket aces. I had been below average in chips until that point, and it vaulted me into the lead:





It is, of course, the hallmark of a great professional player to know how to pick up pocket aces when an opponent has K-K or A-K, so that you get all of his chips. Poker is all skill, you know.

The next big inflection point for me was when my Q-Q ran into the K-K of "redbullandpoker" (Ted O'Neill; see his poker blog at http://redbullandpoker.blogspot.com/). It had predictably ugly results:



Oops. So much for the hallmark of a great professional....

Things toodled along sort of mediocre like that for a while. I got a boost when I picked off Ted's all-in bluff on the river with my queen-high flush, praying as if I were Jerry Yang that he wasn't holding a higher one. He wasn't. Whew!

"Festus 9" went out next. It must be noted that he was playing at a significant disadvantage, with a storm causing him frustrating interruptions in his connection at some crucial moments.

I think that both "sendit2kj" and "I_P_Icicles" went down to a double knockout by "Lucypher." Other participants are welcome to fill in the details in the comments section. I may be bollixing everything up from how it actually occurred in these middle sections. (Dang--I should have turned on Poker Tracker; then I could check the log electronically and pretend that I just have a phenomenal memory.)

Judging by Ted's post earlier today (http://redbullandpoker.blogspot.com/2008/02/poker-grump-readers-tourney-tonight-on.html), I'm guessing that "sendit2kj" was Kelly Jo McGlothlin, who was the next-to-last woman left standing (eliminated in 95th place) at last year's WSOP main event--see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19758035/. I had not seen Ted's note when the tourney started, so I had no idea who it was, until just now.

Anyway, that left us looking like this in the standings:



Next, "pemite," our only non-American participant (his information said something about a "U.K." nationality--what kind of weird country name is that, anyway??? Sounds like something the damn Brits would make up), took out Ted on the bubble with quads (slight overkill) leaving us here, going into three-handed play:



I'm second out of three--respectable enough!

There was a lot of jabbing and feinting and stealing and threatening. But no big all-in clashes for quite a while.

Then the end came. (Warning: Extremely sad story ahead. We're talking "Love Story" sad. We're talking "Brian's Song" sad. We're talking "Terms of Endearment" sad. You might want to go grab the Kleenex box right now.)

I was in the big blind with Q-Q. Both opponents limped in for 400 each. I raised it to 1400, and they both called. The flop was J-x-x. Sweet! No overcards! I moved all in. "Pemite" thought a while, then called with suited J-9 for top pair. It was looking good for the Grump, until a very ugly third jack showed up--completely uninvited, I might add--on the turn. And that was the end of that:




But as all experienced tournament players know, you can't blame the outcome on just the last hand. It's everything that led up to it that gave me a much smaller stack than "pemite" had, so that I was precariously situated and it took just one unlucky card to topple me. One of the great advantages of accumulating a big stack is that you can withstand a couple of bad beats and walk away bruised but still alive. Not so when you've allowed yourself to get whittled down before the bad beat happens.

My elimination gave "pemite" a virtually insurmountable lead, and it was only a few minutes later that "Lucypher" ran his pocket tens smack into pocket aces, and couldn't beat them, giving us these final standings:




Congratulations to those two for finishing first and second.

I thought it was a lot of fun, and could only have been better by having more of you there.

Or by me winning. Yeah, that would have been OK, too.

I don't know when the next event will be--probably a month or two. The $10 profit I took ($32 payout minus $22 entry fee) will go into the pot somehow for that tourney, probably as a small bounty on my head. That should make things interesting.

Thanks to all the players for spending a little time with me. I really had a great time.

And, most importantly, I didn't completely suck.

Poker gems, #81

Steve Badget:

Besides lovemaking and singing in the shower, there aren’t many human activities where there is a greater difference between a person’s self-delusional ability and actual ability than in poker.

Poker gems, #80

Helen Chamberlain (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Chamberlain), runner-up in the 2005 Ladbrokes Poker Million Final, a year later, announcing that she was through with poker, as quoted in Graham Sharpe, Poker's Strangest Hands, p. 227:

Sitting in silence for four or five hours round a table of people who you know are out to smash you to bits at every opportunity is not my idea of fun, plus I don't know one professional poker player who isn't a kook or a weirdo.

Readers' tournament--final reminder

It's tonight. See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/special-announcement-poker-grump.html and http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/poker-grump-readers-tournament-update.html for details.

I have to add an explanatory note. A friend who read my announcement of the tournament said it sounded kind of odd, as if I were saying, "Hey, I'm not so bad at online poker after all, so come play against me and let me take your money." Honestly, that's not at all what I had in mind. I don't think I'm any more likely to win than anybody else who has some experience with multi-table tournaments at roughly this buy-in level. My experience with other private tournaments is that they're a lot more fun than open ones, because people chat and laugh more, play a bit less fiercely (showing hole cards, making crazy plays just for the fun of it, etc.), and are playing for the bragging rights as much as for the prize money. That's what motivated the endeavor, not greed on my part.

In fact, just to clear my conscience of any possibility of being--or being perceived as--exploitative, if I manage to take any cash from the tournament, I'll feed it back into the next event as an overlay on the prize pool or a bounty.

If we sit down at a cash game together, online or in Vegas, yeah, I'll do what I can to put your chips into my stack. But that's not the goal of this event. I cringe that it didn't occur to me that some might interpret my invitation as being motivated by a desire to take readers' money. It wasn't--for once in my poker career!

Cheating at poker

I'm thinking about cheating. No, no, I'm not thinking of engaging in cheating; I'm thinking about the subject of cheating, as it pertains to poker. It's hard to know exactly what to say about it, beyond "Shame on you" and "What the hell is wrong with you?" and "Didn't your mother teach you any better than that?" I don't know that I'll end up writing anything more articulate than that. But here goes.


1

The latest scandal in online poker comes from a European site, Betfair. See here for the details, so far as they are known: http://www.pokernews.com/news/2008/01/players-cash-betfair-programming-glitch-sng.htm. Basically, some players somehow discovered a glitch in the software such that if all of the players in a six-seat tournament (a very common format online) went all-in on the first hand, the winner would get the first-place money (of course), but the site would erroneously award second-place prize money to all of the other five players, for a sum well above the total entry fees. An unknown number of players rapidly conspired to exploit this software bug for as much money as they could wring out of the system before Betfair discovered the leak and plugged it.

Significantly, the "terms of service" document to which all players must agree upon creating a Betfair account contains this language: "9.2 If you are incorrectly awarded any winnings as a result of (a) any human error on the part of the Service Providers or (b) any bug, defect or error in the Software or (c) the failure of the Products or the Software to operate in accordance with the rules of any of Poker's games then the Service Providers will not be liable to pay you any such winnings and you agree to refund any such winnings that may have been paid to you as a result of such error or mistake."

There's a long discussion thread about the whole matter here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=101864, and more about it here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=119512.

I find it depressing to read. It's not exactly news or shocking to me to discover that people will be dishonest and unethical (after all, I had my life horribly disrupted by having my car stolen last year), but I hate getting slapped in the face with such overt evidence of how scummy people are. Peruse these threads, and you'll read players admitting that they were involved, others saying that they wish they had known about it so that they could get some of the free money, and lots of people saying that they see nothing wrong with what the players involved did.

For example, a guy who goes by the name of "Superluminal" writes, "Well, yes, for one that isnt cheating - the site made the screw up which made the games pay out more than they took in - this is certainly not cheating by any definition available." (This and all other quotations need to be chock-full of "[sic]," but I'm not going to bother.)

"Bad Beat Bill" said, "I think that most of us, if we found a bug like this would probably have tried to exploit it too. Being honest I would have tried knowing that I wouldn't have much to lose...and potentially a whole lot to gain." Psychologists out there will take note of the phenomenon of projection: He would do it, and therefore concludes that "most" other people would, too. I bet that "Bill" has no inkling of the irony in asserting that he is being "honest" about his dishonesty.

Similarly, somebody calling himself "ariston" wrote, "Any poker player who can put his hand on his heart and say they wouldn't have sat in a few of these if they saw what was happening is kidding themseleves or is lying." Note to ariston: I wouldn't have, hand on my heart. You may wish to believe that I'm kidding myself or lying, but I know better. I've done enough things in my life of which I have later had to be ashamed that I have developed both a genuine desire and a fairly keen ability to avoid such regrets in the future. It's a pity that you haven't.

Ariston also posted, "Oh and as I have already stated if I had been up that night I would have gotten involved and played these as well. I can honeslty say I don't know a single person who wouldn't as human nature/greed would've kicked in." To which the insightful poster "Bonified" replied, "Don't you know anyone with the foresight to realise how they'll feel about something later before they do it?"

One poster ("chillin_dude"), who admitted to having been involved, wrote, "I do think that people [apparently meaning those who have expressed outrage at the participants] took this a massive step too far in their judgements and their condeming of the players that took part, and that if they were in such situations themselves, it wouldn't be such a clearcut right or wrong...." Bullshit. I would have had zero difficulty determining, in about two nanoseconds, that it was a "clearcut" wrong. I'm not any super-saint, just a pretty ordinary guy. I think that the majority of people are on my side, and you and your despicable ilk are in the minority.

In a later post he added, "I truely do doubt that many people wouldn't get involved if they found out something like this was going on in the heat of the moment."

Apparently, the "everybody's doing it" (and its close cousin, "everybody would do it") defense is alive and well.

Another ("lucymagem") who confessed involvement is complaining bitterly about how Betfair is treating her. Among other things, it froze her uninvolved father's account. (I assume this is because they wanted to prevent the possibility of her dumping her ill-gotten gains off to his account.) She is so blind that she can't see the strangeness of having tried to rip off a company for several thousand dollars, and then crying foul when the company does everything within its power to prevent the fraud from succeeding.

2

Because I don't really play online much and don't spend a lot of time keeping up with online poker forums (yeah, I know that should be "fora," but it just sounds too pretentious for me), I was only vaguely aware of the "JJ Prodigy" scandal. Interestingly, unlike any previous online cheating episode, this one is spilling over to have effects on the perpetrator in the world of live poker, too, as he got banned from one prestigious live tournament. (See Gary Wise's columns for ESPN's Poker Club about "JJ Prodigy" specifically, and online cheating generally: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/columns/story?columnist=wise_gary&id=3210798 and http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/columns/story?columnist=wise_gary&id=3224481.)

Good. Count me in with Greg Raymer and Dani Stern (both quoted in Wise's first piece), wishing that the poker community as a whole would band together to ostracize known cheaters. Casinos should ban them from both cash games and tournaments, just as they would ban cheaters who had been caught by other casinos and placed in the infamous "Black Book" of "excluded persons." That they were caught cheating online, rather than in person, should make zero difference. The possibility of a lifetime ban from both online and brick-and-mortar casinos might actually give pause to those whose defective consciences alone are insufficient deterrent to cheating.


3

To get some inkling into how many people will cheat at the game, given the opportunity, check out this twoplustwo.com thread, which invites members to confess their poker sins: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=90438. This is, of course, just a tiny sampling.

4

It's not exactly about poker, but contemplation about cheating generally prompted me to recall an online exchange from last year.

Last summer, somebody on http://www.allvegaspoker.com/ (specifically, here: http://www.allvegaspoker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2002&highlight=) posted this:

on my recent trip to las vegas i played a little blackjack at the golden
gate casino downtown. they had a $3.00 table so i sat down with $20.00 and
played for abour 1/2 hour. i left the table with 8 $5.00 chips and went to the
cashier. she counted them out and said "$175.00" and took the money from her
drawer and counted it out in front of me. i said "dear would you count those
chips again. thats $40.00" i got the correct amount and left.

i was wondering if i shouldn't have just taken the $175.00 and left, but
then i know she would have been short when she balanced at the end of her shift
and the whole transaction was probably taped, so i think i did the right thing.

I found this so irritating that I posted this admittedly rather nasty reply:

I think:

1. You are not genuinely wondering if you did the right thing, but just
wanted to brag about having been honest.

2. If you are, in fact, genuinely wondering "if i shouldn't have just taken
the $175.00 and left," then there's something seriously wrong with you.

3. If, in fact, you have concluded that pointing out the error was correct
for the reason you stated (because "the whole transaction was probably taped"),
then you're truly a moral midget. That is, your statement pretty clearly implies
your conclusion that if you had reason to think that the transaction were *not*
taped, then walking away with the $175 would be OK. Which means that despite
your apparent attempt at bragging about your honesty here, you are not actually
an honest person--just one who'll reluctantly manage to be honest if the chance
of being caught in your dishonesty is too high.

Criminy.

5

I recently discovered a whole blog devoted to the subject of casino and poker cheating: http://www.richardmarcusbooks.com/blog.htm. Might be worth bookmarking, if the subject interests you.


Wrapup

There is, sadly, abundant evidence that lots and lots of people have no meaningful ethical compass to guide their decisions. If an armored car's door accidentally opens and cash spills on the street, they'll help themselves to as much as they can grab, and run off with it. If a cashier gives them too much change, they'll dummy up about it and smile at the windfall. If the bank credits their account with an extra "0" in a deposited check, they'll try to withdraw the money before the mistake is discovered. If they hear of a software bug that allows them to drain money from a poker site, they'll exploit it as fast as they can. If they can figure out a way to multi-account a poker tournament or purchase another player's position late into the game, they will.

The only things preventing them from being dishonest are various external constraints that reduce their ability to cheat and steal, or that raise the cost and/or other disincentive to do so (e.g., locks, surveillance cameras, threats of prison sentences, iron-clad software).

Meanwhile, I worry about whether I'm being unethical when I inadvertantly know one of an opponent's cards because of a mark on it (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/02/ethical-dilemma-non-grumpy-content.html), or take a commemorative chip off the table without putting another $5 into play (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/10/going-south-and-not-for-winter.html), in technical violation of the rules. I don't mean to sound or act holier-than-thou; I'm just struck by the strangeness of my worrying about being even a hair's breadth over the line between ethical and unethical, while sharing this worldwide poker community are untold thousands of unabashed cheaters and scammers, perfectly willing at the drop of a hat to take money that isn't rightfully theirs; untold thousands more who would do the same if they could do so without being caught; and at least hundreds more who will take time and energy to write and post rationalizations and justifications for all of the above.

I would dearly love to be able to believe that poker players are, on the whole, more honest than the population at large. Unfortunately, I think that's a fantasy. The best I can realistically do is hope that we're not statistically less honest than the general population.


I lived in Minnesota before moving to Nevada. We had four, um, interesting years with professional wrestler Jesse Ventura as our governor. Among the countless controversial things he said and did during his term was to give a speech to University of Minnesota students, in which he told them that he had lived by the motto, "Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat."

I wonder if he's a poker player.



Note: So that I'm not engaged in a different type of cheating, I need to point out that I stole the idea for illustrating this post with a photo of cheetahs. Wicked Chops Poker did this a few weeks back for a post on the Chris Vaughn/Sorel Mizzi scandal (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/im-not-cheater.html and http://wickedchopspoker.blogs.com/my_weblog/2007/12/chris-vaughn-an.html). I thought it was funny enough to copy, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all. (Yeah, that's a stolen line, too.)


Addendum, February 5, 2008

See Gary Wise's comment on all of the above at http://www.wisehandpoker.com/blog/index.php/gary-wise/2008/02/05/the_missing_word.

How smoke-free is "smoke-free"?

Last June I submitted to http://www.allvegaspoker.com/ (a site dedicated to contributors' experiences with Vegas poker rooms) a proposed classification of smokiness of local poker rooms (see http://www.allvegaspoker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2231&highlight=). Since then, some rooms have closed, some have relocated within the casino, I have played in some that I had not visited back then, and I have more experience with others. As I sat choking in Boulder Station today, it occurred to me that it was time to update the list. I also added the two rooms in Mesquite, Nevada. Finally, I've added links to room-specific reviews that I've written since having this-here blog.

I realize that not every reader will be interested in this information, but I think that posting it here will make it more readily found by search engines than when it's buried in the AVP forums. I can also easily make additions and modifications as needed here, which I can't easily do there.

******************

I personally really dislike cigarette smoke, so one of the most important features for me in selecting which places to spend a lot of time is the probability that I will leave feeling the need to take a shower and change my clothes because of smelling of smoke.

I propose here a tentative classification of Las Vegas poker rooms based on the degree of isolation from smoking areas of the casino. Some of them I've only visited once, and my memory is a little vague, so I could be persuaded to shift some rooms up or down a level. Also, I realize that the borders between these categories are somewhat fuzzy and subjective--but it's the best scheme I could come up with.

The shorthand version is that smoke is generally not an issue that I think about before setting out to play in poker rooms that fall into the first three categories; those in the last three categories require me to decide whether I'm willing to put up with the smoke exposure.

Debate, disagreement, etc., are welcome in the comments section.


1. Room physically separated from smoking areas by walls, doors, and/or corridors; as close to truly smoke-free as you'll find.

Binion's (Note added November 3, 2008: This refers to the new poker room opened 10/30/08, a vast improvement over the old room, which had been in category 3. See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/11/more-on-binions-new-poker-room.html.)
Caesars Palace
Harrah’s


2. Room open on one end or side to smoking area, but little or no infiltration of smoke is noticeable. (Caveat: in some of these, certain tables may be close to the open area, and if people are smoking right in the doorway, the experience may be irritating temporarily. Overall, though, I think they're easy enough on the lungs that it's just not an issue.)

Cannery
Gold Coast (This is the new poker room, opened early December, 2008, a great improvement on the previous one. See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-poker-room-at-gold-coast.html.)
Golden Nugget
Green Valley Ranch
Hard Rock (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/08/hard-rock-may-have-winner-on-its-hands.html)
Monte Carlo (closed as I write this due to recent rooftop fire, but expected to re-open once repairs are finished; no reason to think that the poker room will be altered)
Oasis (Mesquite; see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/mesquite-flavored-poker-part-3-oasis.html)
Palace Station (Note added November 3, 2008: Palace Station used to allow smoking in the wee morning hours, but I have just learned that that practice was discontinued a few weeks ago.)
Palms (Room becomes a Category 6, with smoking allowed at the tables, after 2:00 a.m.)
Red Rock
Sam's Town
Suncoast (Note added November 3, 2008: New room recently opened at Suncoast, but smoke rating remains the same. See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/10/summerlin-poker.html.)
Treasure Island (TI)
Tropicana (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/search/label/tropicana)
Wynn


3. Room open to smoking areas on more than one side, but actual amount of smoke entering is not bothersome, due to distance/buffer zone between smoking and non-smoking areas and/or effective ventilation. I rarely if ever notice smoke during a poker session or on my clothes after leaving.

Bellagio
Circus Circus
M Resort
Mandalay Bay
MGM Grand
Mirage
Rio (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/could-i-have-found-new-poker-home.html)
Santa Fe Station
South Point
Sunset Station (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/08/new-poker-room-at-sunset-station.html)
Venetian (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/another-poker-dump.html)


4. Room fully or almost fully open to smoking areas (usually just a roped-off section of the main casino floor, or surrounded by a useless half-wall). Smoke is frequently noticeable while playing. It's usually a minor annoyance rather than a real assault on the senses, but I can expect to smell of smoke when I leave, sometimes lightly, sometimes heavily.

Bally’s
Eastside Cannery (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/08/newest-poker-room-in-town-eastside.html)
Eureka (Mesquite; see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/mesquite-flavored-poker-part-1-eureka.html)
Fiesta Henderson (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/lets-have-fiesta.html)
Flamingo
Luxor (new room opened late 2007, old room was much worse; see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/02/luxor-improves-to-mediocre.html)
Orleans (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/upgrades-at-orleans.html)
O'Shea's (new poker room in the back; see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/poker-harrahs-way.html. The configuration of this room is actually like those of category 2--open on just one end--but it's so small and ineffectively isolated that the experience I had the one time I was there was much more like the others in category 4, so after some debate with myself about how to list it, I moved it here with this explanatory note.)


5. Physically similar layouts to category 4 above, but, additionally, smoking allowed within a few feet of tables and/or such poor ventilation that there is lots of infiltration from smoking areas, even if they are more than a few feet away. I am frequently or constantly bothered by the smoke while playing and will definitely reek of it when I leave. These rooms are only marginally better than those in category 6.

Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/05/newest-poker-room-in-vegas.html)
El Cortez (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/04/armpit-of-las-vegas-poker.html)
Excalibur
Fitzgerald's (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/09/annals-of-perfect-timing.html)
Hooters (Edit, 2/4/08: I originally had this in category 4, which is how it was the only time I played there, but the comments received convinced me to make it a category 6 now. I'll try to stop in there sometime soon and see for myself.) (Edit 2/10/08: Went there tonight and confirmed those reports. See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/02/hooters-maybe-not-place-for-wise-owls.html.) (Edit 2/4/10: On a visit last night, I learned that the policy changed many months ago, and players must now step away from the table to smoke. Hooters is therefore now listed in category 5. See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/02/upgrade-at-hooters.html.)
Imperial Palace (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/poker-harrahs-way.html)
Jokers Wild (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/i-think-im-going-to-throw-up-part-2.html)
O'Shea's (two poker tables in front of casino; see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/poker-harrahs-way.html)
Plaza (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/plaza-another-stinky-dump.html)
Planet Hollywood (note that this is the new location of the poker room as of early October, 2008, which is much worse than the old location; see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/10/planet-hollywood-doubly-annoys-me.html)
Poker Palace (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/poker-palace.html)
Railroad Pass (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/smallest-poker-room-in-nevada.html)
Rampart (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/rampart-poker-room-what-city-hasnt-been.html)
Riviera
Sahara
Stratosphere (new room opened late 2007; much worse than the old room; see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/stratosphere-upgrades-by-making-things.html)
Tuscany
Silverton (temporary poker area roped off from main casino floor while new room under construction; much worse than previous poker room; see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/silverton-poker-room.html)


6. Smoking allowed right at the tables; bring your own iron lung along.

Arizona Charlie's-Decatur (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/another-poker-dump.html)
Boulder Station
Club Fortune (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/i-think-im-going-to-throw-up-part-2.html)
Palms (after 2:00 a.m.) See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/07/dont-go-to-palms-poker-room-after-200.html.
Texas Station This is a recent (July, 2009, apparently) change.


The unknowns: There are still a few poker rooms in the valley that I haven't played in yet.

Railroad Pass (listed above because I have been there and can easily tell how it would be, but there was no game going at the time)

Speedway (which apparently hasn't spread a poker game in months; see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/poker-palace.html)

Hacienda (I'm not completely sure they even have a poker room anymore)

Nevada Palace (ditto; see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/i-think-im-going-to-throw-up-part-2.html and http://poker.wikia.com/wiki/Nevada_Palace and http://www.vegastexasholdem.net/poker/NevadaPalace.htm). Edit: Nevada Palace is now officially defunct, and has been replaced by the Eastside Cannery.

Jerry Yang and the questions still unanswered

I have written twice before about 2007 WSOP main event winner Jerry Yang and his unprecedented overt display of religiosity at the final table (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/07/mr-destiny.html and http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-on-religion-at-poker-table.html). You'll need to read those posts if you want to understand some of the details in this one, I think.

Last night some web surfing on another poker-related subject led me to the archive of articles that Gary Wise occasionally writes for ESPN (http://sports.espn.go.com/keyword/search?searchString=gary_wise), and there I noticed an interview he did in December with Yang (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/columns/story?columnist=wise_gary&id=3140073). Now I have to rant on this subject again.

This is the part of the article that first raised my hopes about getting a straight answer to the obvious question Yang's public propitiations raised:

The question I'd wanted to ask Jerry over those months since watching him
win was this: "If God isn't changing the order of the cards, why the prayer?"
Yang was instantly transformed into poker's holy champion by his calls to the
"Lord" on ESPN's broadcasts. It felt a little strange to me (and a plethora of
other observers) that he'd think a greater power would invest itself in any way
in the turn of a card. My mistake was in my perception of his acts.

"God doesn't love one person more than another person" Jerry answered,
assuring me there was no chance the Lord was intentionally pairing him up flop
after flop. "I pray to my God for the strength to make the right decision."

Time and again, Yang made tough calls at the final table, trusting his
gut instincts in doing so. It would have been easier to play it safe and make
folds in those situations, the money and exposure being what they were. In
calling out his prayers, Jerry was seeking the fortitude we all seek when faced
with those make-or-break moments at the table. "He's giving me the opportunity
to make my own choices." He also wanted to share the joy he was experiencing
with the being he saw as responsible for it.

Unfortunately, that's as probing as Mr. Wise got. He apparently did not confront Yang with the fairly obvious discrepancies between his answer here and what actually happened last July.

For example, in the hand that knocked out Lee Watkinson, Yang is heard saying this, after all the money was in and the hole cards were exposed, so that no further decisions by either player were possible: "Come on, Lord. You know your purpose for me.... You have a purpose for me today.... Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, c'mon, let me win this one."

OK, Jerry--explain to me how those words can plausibly be interpreted as pleading for God to help you make correct decisions, and not as a request for a conclusion to the hand favorable to you.

Similarly, in the hand that eliminated Lee Childs, Yang pleads, "Let people see your miracle." Again, I can't see any way to interpret that as a prayer for Yang to be given strength to play to the best of his ability, coming, as it did, after all of the chips were in.

As further evidence, here's what the Las Vegas Sun reported as happening before the final table:

Once, for instance, he risked a big chunk of his stack of chips with just
a pair of 4s and ran smack into an opponent's higher pocket pair.

It was then Yang - like a lot of poker players, including some who are
probably more reluctant to admit it - turned to prayer.

"I kept saying, 'Lord, give me a set,' " Yang said, using the common poker
term for three-of-a-kind. "And there was a 4 on the flop."

Another time, Yang needed an ace or a 4 on the final card to fill a
straight and extend his tournament life.

"I said, 'Lord, if you want me to win this, put the ace or the 4 on the
river,' " Yang said. A 4 came, and Yang lived to fight on.

(Note that the link to that story in my first post is now dead, but the article can be found here: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2007/jul/19/jeff-haney-on-how-the-new-face-of-championship-pok/.)

I don't know how Yang's own words could be any more explicit. "Lord, give me a set" and "put the ace or the 4 on the river" are not prayers to be helped in making correct decisions. They are overt, unambiguous requests for divine intervention to change the order of the cards being held in the dealer's hand.

With that in mind, let's look in more detail at what Yang said to Mr. Wise. Below is my transcript of the critical section of the interview, which you can hear in full at http://cdn.libsyn.com/roundersradio/12-05-07__Gary_Wise_Full_Show___Jerry_Yang__and_Chip_Reese_memories__.mp3. This portion occurs between about 28:05 and 30:10. I tried to be as accurate as I could be in making the transcript, and I'll take responsibility if I accidentally introduced any small errors.

WISE: The question that I asked you in our conversation a few days ago was one that was meant to clarify for a lot of people some misconceptions, and that was whether prayer could affect the result of hands, because at that final table obviously you prayed very long and very hard and very loud to God, and I feel a lot of people interpret that...

YANG: You're right, absolutely.

WISE: And I think a lot of people interpret that to mean that you felt that, y'know, if you called loud enough, you could get a better turn card.

YANG: [laughs] Oh, that's pretty funny, Gary!

WISE: But you see what I'm saying, this is the misconception that a lot of people have been operating under, y'know, so

YANG: [more laughter] Absolutely, yeah, you're right.

WISE: [Crosstalk makes it difficult to hear a few words here] c'mon, God, gimme an ace, y'know?

YANG: [more laughter] No. I did not say that. C'mon.

WISE: Well, no, you didn't say those words, but I think a lot of people interpreted your prayers that way. So why don't you, why don't you take this opportunity to straighten them out a little bit? What, uh, why were you praying to God?

YANG: OK. I wanted to, this is such a very, very interesting question, and I'd be more than happy to answer that question. First of all, I don't want the fans, I don't want anybody out there to, to think that I'm praying to God to give me the cards. That's not my intention whatsoever. I believe in my God. I pray to my God for the strength and the guidance to make the right decision. And at that point when I pray to my God I say, you know what, I leave everything in his will, I ask him for his guidance, his strength, to give me the strength to make the right decision for myself. That's all I'm asking from my God. I'm not asking God to change the cards.

To Mr. Wise's credit, he's the only one to date, as far as I have been able to learn, who has asked Yang directly about this apparent bit of bizarre theology. Unfortunately, though, he then let Yang off the hook with an answer that is obviously false, or at least woefully incomplete, and flagrantly inconsistent with Yang's own words immediately after the event.

My disappointment in having my hopes for an answer raised, then dashed, prompted me to do a Google search for other Yang interviews, to see if anybody else has pressed him on this point. As far as I can tell, nobody has. Here's the list of interviews I was able to find:

http://www.pokerlistings.com/poker-player-interviews/wsop/2007/jerry-yang-a-world-class-world-champion

http://www.holdemradio.com/media/kfa110107.mp3

http://www.bluffmagazine.com/magazine/readarticle.asp?aid=670

All of those appear to have nothing useful on the question at hand.

But in an ESPN radio podcast with Phil Gordon (http://ne.edgecastcdn.net/0000A6/espnpod2/espnradio/poker/poker070807.mp3), Yang makes this comment, at about 14:10:

"Winning this, this thing, this whole thing, I think I give all the glory and credit to God for obviously giving me some good cards...."

Then, starting at 26:05, he says, "God brought me through each step of the way. I believe that God had a plan for me and to win the World Series of Poker and win this amount of money. That is why I dedicate to giving back something back [sic] to the community. So I give the glory, all the glory and credit to God, because of him I won and I believe that there was a miracle hand that happened during the World Series. I was on the verge of being eliminated like three, four times, but the river card just happened to bail me out, so I believe that God and the Holy Spirit was [sic] there with me. I truly believe in that."

So he does unquestionably believe that God arranges the deck. I don't see how you can believe that precept, and that God answers prayers, yet not believe that one's prayers asking God for specific cards will result in the cards in the dealer's hand changing.

One other interview captures another piece of evidence: http://pokerati.com/2007/08/01/re-meet-jerry-yang/. Here, Yang is asked, apparently right after the WSOP, whether, on the final hand, he expected the river to bring the 6 that filled his inside straight. (He needed one of the four 6s or one of the two remaining 8s to win the hand.) He says that yes, he "absolutely" expected it. "I remember the second day, my chips went down, I started with 738,000 or so, and I went down, and I prayed for the 4 on the river, and the 4 came and gave me a wheel. And today I felt it, somehow I felt that. I say, oh please, either that 8 or that 6 at the river, and when the 6 came I was so excited."

Again, how can he reconcile this with the later claim that he does not expect God to intervene in order for him to win hands? Does he not remember what he said before? Has his theology shifted in the interim? Does he think that we're all too stupid to notice that he is now denying what he openly admitted to before?

Yang is being blatantly inconsistent in his responses to various interviewers.

I hope that this changes. I hope that at least one member of the poker media takes the initiative to press Yang with the hard questions that so far he has been allowed to duck. Quote to him what he has said, point out the contradictions, and keep nailing him with direct questions until he either admits that he really did intend his propitiations to affect the outcome of specific hands, or explains (if it is possible) how his repeated words that sound as if that's what he is doing can reasonably be interpreted in a way that is consistent with his post hoc explanations.

I hate the fact that I have to include this disclaimer, but I do: As far as I can tell, everybody who has had contact with Yang agrees that he is an incredibly nice, humble person, a good family man, generous with his winnings, with an amazing personal life story. I don't dispute any of that. I'm focused narrowly on trying to understand what I consider a weird, even borderline delusional, belief that saying the right things to the right deity in the middle of a poker hand will supernaturally cause a different outcome for that hand than would have occurred without the player uttering those magical words. I remain quite confident that Jerry Yang does actually believe that, despite his later denials.


Fitting comics below borrowed from http://goberude.blogspot.com/.

Addendum, February 3, 2008

1. I apologize for the weird line spacing in the foregoing post. Blogger does something mysterious to an entire post when there are sections that are block-indented. I haven't been able to figure out how to counter it. I hope the content is still worthwhile, even though the visual presentation is less professional than I would ideally like it. I'm slowly learning, and someday I expect I'll be able to set such things right.

2. Gary Wise was kind enough to not only write back to me (I sent him an email to alert him that I was talking about him--I figure that's the polite thing to do), and post a comment here, but quickly drafted a very thoughtful reply on his own blog. See http://www.wisehandpoker.com/blog/index.php/gary-wise/2008/02/03/an_interesting_debate.

I'm sympathetic to his dilemma: Press too hard, and you get shut out entirely in the future, because people such as Yang have no obligation to do interviews at all, and when they do, they have a lot of reporters lined up who want in, and they can cherry-pick the best and/or easiest ones. As I said above, give him credit for even broaching the subject, when nobody else has, as far as I know.

I agree with his observation that my role as an independent, unpaid writer (and one that precious few people in the big poker world pay attention to!) gives me the luxury of more freedom to be blunt than he can afford. I hope it's helpful that I put the hard questions out there into the ether, even if I don't have access to the only one who can answer them. Perhaps in some intangible way, more people seeing the hard evidence of the stark contradictions between what Yang actually did, and what he nows says that he did, will eventually seep back to him, and prompt him to reflect more on the whole thing, and maybe comment publicly about it at some point.

3. One commenter takes me to task for getting "worked up" about the whole thing. I'm not sure how to respond to that. First, I'm not "worked up" in any emotional sense. I'm intensely curious about the overt contradictions in Yang's statements, but I feel not one speck of personal investment in the matter. I don't expect that I could change Yang's mind about his beliefs, even if he were perfectly clear as to what his beliefs are (and I don't think he is; I think his thoughts on the matter are terribly muddled, and that he hasn't really ever wrestled with himself as to what he believes God does and doesn't do). Nor am I particularly interested in doing so.

But f'r cryin' out loud, this whole blog is devoted to my pointing out things in the poker world that I don't like, that I think should be done differently. That includes griping about things a whole lot more trivial than whether there is a supernatural being that controls the shuffle even more directly than the dealer does. Doesn't that seem like a rather important thing to know? If you are facing an opponent who has a omniscient and omnipotent being hovering over his shoulder, one who knows what you've been dealt and might whisper that information to your opponent, and one who can wiggle his nose like Samantha on "Bewitched" and change your aces into a 2-7 offsuit if it pleases him to do so, wouldn't you want to know that? I think I'd ask for a table change, if I knew that I were up against that kind of sorcery.

Conversely, if your opponent is so addled in his thinking that he believes that he will win any hand if he counts backward from 100 by sevens while twirling his left thumb clockwise, isn't that something you'd like to know? If there is no ethereal creature waving an omnipotent magic wand to rearrange the cards in the dealer's hand, but your opponent fervently believes that there is, isn't that information worth having?

I think, as a general rule, that truth and consistency are pretty important things. Yang is in a position to potentially influence how a lot of people view our game. If he were on the speaking circuit telling the world that there is a purple unicorn that he talks to--visible only to him--and that the unicorn talks back to him, and the unicorn uses its magic powers to put the cards that Yang needs on the board when he asks in just the right way, wouldn't it concern you that that's a pretty bizarre image of poker to be presenting to the world? Well, objectively there is no difference between that and what Yang is actually telling everybody. He believes in a powerful, invisible, supernatural being that wants Jerry to win, one who moves the cards around in the dealer's hand to make that happen, if Jerry just incants the right words at critical moments. That's weird. That's nuts, frankly. If he were to couch that idea in any way other than putting the specific label of the Christian god on it (the unicorn, for example), he'd get locked up in the looney bin and deemed unfit and unsafe to raise his own children until he got put on enough Thorazine to quiet his demons.

Yeah, I think that having one of the currently most visible players of the game announcing, basically, that he's borderline hallucinatory, is kind of important, as subject matter goes in the poker universe. It's probably more important than whether casinos give too-small and watered-down servings of Coke, or whether Phil Hellmuth is occasionally way off in his on-the-spot odds calculations, or whether a particular poker movie was a waste of $6 to see, or whether the El Cortez poker room is worth visiting, or whether David Apostolico made an error in how he recounted a specific WSOP hand in a magazine article, or how annoying it is to have poker players leave stuff under the table that I end up stepping on. Yet all those, and a couple hundred others, have been the targets of my musings here. Look at it like this: If Yang really did start publicly recounting a unicorn theory, would you think that worthy of attention from poker bloggers? If yes, then why should I, or we, ignore what he says because he phrases it in a more common supernatural vein than in a less common one? I can't see that the commonness or uncommonness of a delusion--if indeed it is a delusion--makes it any more or less valid a topic of discussion. Conversely, if it is not a delusion, if Yang really does have the key to access omnipotent powers on behalf of his poker game, should I deem that an unimportant topic of conversation? Seems pretty important to me to know whether that's really true or not.

Finally, I will invoke what I assume is a tenet of Yang's own faith: "[B]e ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you." (1 Peter 3: 15, King James Version.) Shouldn't Jerry Yang be willing to live up to this, assuming he views it as a directive from the God he worships?