de Wolfe versus Reinkemeier

A controversial hand was played recently at the EPT Barcelona between Roland de Wolfe (his name is variously rendered orthographically, but the most reliable sources seem to converge on the way I have it here--small d, with a space) and Tobias Reinkemeier (whose name it seems inevitable that I will misspell at some point herein). Remarkably, there is also a video of how the hand plays out. I first heard about it from Shamus's blog. You can read his take on things and watch the video here.

I was undecided whether to comment about the hand here--until this afternoon, when Matthew Parvis, editor-in-chief of PokerNews, posted an extensive commentary on it, which you can read here. I'm not sure it would be possible for me to disagree more thoroughly with Parvis.

From this point on, I'm going to assume that readers have seen the video and have read Parvis's opinion.

First, I have to disagree with Matt Savage, at least as quoted by Parvis. Savage apparently first concluded that the tournament director's decision to award the pot to Reinkemeier was correct, then changed his mind after watching the video. He apparently decided in retrospect that he would have ruled de Wolfe's hand retrievable and live.

I think this is dead wrong. The usual rule is that cards in the muck are dead. Granted, there can be exceptions to this. But they are and should be rare. The exceptions should, in my view, be limited to those situations in which (1) the cards in question are clearly identifiable without any meaningful risk of misidentification, (2) the potentially aggrieved party was innocent and fulfilled all of his obligations to claim the pot or a portion thereof, and (3) the cards being in the muck was the result of some factor outside the injured party's control. This would most commonly be the dealer accidentally mucking the winning hand. Even when these conditions are fulfilled, it should not be an automatic retrieval. The decision-maker should, I think, keep always in mind that the general rules should prevail unless there are compelling reasons to deviate from it and make an exception. I think it should be done only in a situation in which a gross injustice would be caused by not making the exception.

In my view, if the player has voluntarily put his cards into the muck (or the pile of burn cards, as here, which I think should be considered the same thing), or has clearly voluntarily released them to the dealer for purposes of mucking, then I can't think of any circumstance in which they should be retrieved and declared live. Maybe there are such situations, but none occur to me at the moment. Even in the case of the angle-shooter who intentionally claims to have a better hand than he actually does, which then prompt the real winner to muck, tough--you should have waited to see your opponent's cards before giving up. No mercy.

Here, de Wolfe shows one card, and keeps the other face down. Mucking one card unseen is the same as mucking all of one's hole cards unseen--and that is a precept, again, to which I can think of no exceptions. de Wolfe made two errors which are related but actually independent. First, he failed to turn his cards face up. Second, he pushed them into the muck. (The dealer was a bit overaggressive in then pulling them out of de Wolfe's hand, but I think that is inconsequential. de Wolfe's intent was clearly to muck, and he presumably would have released the cards an instant later even without the dealer's intervention--and even if didn't, I would still rule the hand dead at that point for having voluntarily been pushed into the muck.)

So de Wolfe cannot claim either that he did everything he should do to claim/retain his interest in the pot. He was not an innocent party wrongly aggrieved by an errant dealer. He completely fails my test for when cards in the muck should be given the governor's reprieve and declared live again.

de Wolfe scores additional (though technically irrelevant) demerits in my view for, well, lying. He can be heard on the audio to say, "That's not in the muck." Uh, yes it is--that's where you put it, dude.

Next, I disagree with Savage saying that "he would have had a talk with Reinkemeier, letting him know he did not want to see this type of behavior from him in the future or a penalty could be warranted." Why? What did Reinkemeier do wrong? He called a river bet. Then he insisted that his opponent either show his hand or muck it, which was fully within his rights to do. Then, after his opponent had mucked, he voluntarily showed his cards, though at that point it no longer mattered whether he did; the pot was his either way, as he was the only player with a live hand. There is nothing there to penalize, nothing to warn about.

Parvis here equivocates. He doesn't say that Reinkemeier was angle-shooting; he says that it "was on the verge of an angle shoot." C'mon, man--make up your mind. Was it angle-shooting or not? He deems Reinkemeier's actions "inappropriate," without, apparently, being willing to label them as cheating or unethical, and while acknowledging that he violated no rules.

I think de Wolfe is far more susceptible to the angle-shooting accusation than Reinkemeier is. He first failed to perform the simple duty of showing his cards when his bet was called. He then tried to claim a pot to which he had clearly and voluntarily relinquished all claim--akin to a chess player voluntarily and deliberately knocking over his king in acknowledgement of defeat, stepping away from the table, then thinking better of it and coming back to take another turn. Finally, he lied about his action when he realized what a grave error he had made. It is de Wolfe, not Reinkemeier, who should be warned about his unethical actions.

Was it sleazy of Reinkemeir to show his queen-high? I don't think so--certainly no more than showing a bluff in order to get under an opponent's skin.

Here again I find Parvis's opinion less than crystal clear. He writes, "When players do their best to finagle the rules in their favor as Reinkemeier did when he waited for De Wolfe to muck and then boasted about it by showing his hand triumphantly, it should bother all poker players." So then, was it the waiting for de Wolfe that was, in Parvis's view, the ethical violation, or was it the triumphant showing of his own cards, or was it the the combination? That is, if Reinkemeier had quietly taken the pot without ever showing his hand, would he then escape Parvis's judgment of angle-shooting (or "verge of angle-shooting")? I cannot tell for certain.

However, in a later paragraph Parvis suggests that it was waiting for de Wolfe to show the second card or muck that was troublesome, rather than just the in-your-face showing afterwards. He writes, "when Reinkemeier finally saw that his queen-high was trumped by De Wolfe's king-high, he should have had enough honor and respect for the game to muck his own hand on the spot, allowing the pot to be awarded to De Wolfe." I think this is absolutely wrong. The clear implication is that Reinkemeier should not have forced de Wolfe to show his second down card, but instead let him get away with showing only one to claim the pot. No way. Both cards are shown, or both are mucked. There is no half way on that. There are reasons for this. Suppose, e.g., that de Wolfe had two of the same card, or his kicker was a duplicate of one of the board cards, i.e., de Wolfe had been knowingly playing a hand with a fouled deck, and he didn't want to show his second card lest that be revealed. Why should Reinkemeier not wait to be sure that he was actually and legally beaten with a legitimate, live hand?

Parvis clearly believes that showing one card is enough. He writes: "If, in fact De Wolfe mucked both of his hole cards without showing the king and then tried to retrieve his hand before seeing Reinkemeier's hand, then Reinkemeier, in my opinion, would have done nothing wrong. However, a king was shown, it was the best hand, and I believe the pot should have been pushed to De Wolfe." This makes no sense to me. Showing one card is not an action with any meaning. It is merely a tease. It would make as much sense to say, "de Wolfe clearly announced his hand as king-high, so at that point Reinkemeier should have accepted his word for it, acknowledged defeat, mucked his cards, and let de Wolfe have the pot." Nope--that's not how it works. A player does not have the winning hand by saying that he does, nor by showing fewer than all of his hole cards. He tables his entire hand face-up so that it can be read by the dealer and all players, or it is dead. That's all there is to it. There is no in-between.

Parvis's confusing position continues with this head-scratcher of a sentence: "I understand that there will be plenty of people who disagree with me, but I believe that as long as one plays within the rules then all is fair." Huh??? Reinkemeier did play within the rules, as Parvis explicitly recognizes, but yet he receives Parvis's condemnation. This sentence seems to be out of whack with the message of the rest of the essay.

I do not disagree with the general idea that there are points of ethics that are not part of the written rules. But they do not trump the written rules; they supplement them. They can never point or lead to a different outcome than the official rules, nor should they ever be understood to require a player to do something different from or contrary to what the actual rulebook prescribes. Parvis apparently wants the "unwritten rules" to trump here. He wants de Wolfe to be awarded the pot, even though he did not take even the most minimal step to fulfill his ethical and rule-based obligation to either show his cards or muck them. He wants to penalize Reinkemeier, who violated no rules and did not fail in any of his obligations to protect his interest in the pot. This I find bizarre. It is turning things on their head.

Parvis concludes that Reinkemeier should "man up" and relinquish the pot when he sees that his hand is second best. I think it is de Wolfe that should "man up" and either show his cards or muck them when called, without needing to be prompted by his opponent and the dealer to do so. And, when he learns that he made a mistake in mucking them, he should "man up" and live with the consequences of his own voluntary actions.

de Wolfe tries to boil down the issue this way: "The best hand should win." No. The best live hand should win. You killed yours by pushing it into the muck. All you had to do was turn both cards face up, rather than just one, and you would have had the pot. You were apparently embarrassed to do so (though it's strange that you would be willing to admit verbally that your hand was king-high but then not be willing to show that that was so). You let your embarrassment take priority over the slim but finite chance that you had the winner. So be it.

I not only would act exactly as Reinkemeier did (though perhaps without showing at the end), I have done so on any number of occasions--that is, insisting that the bettor either show or muck. If he chooses to muck the winning hand, that's his decision, and I have zero responsibility to stop him.

The bettor in such situations has the world's simplest remedy against losing the pot with the best hand: Just show it. It takes half a second and the flick of a wrist. If a player is not willing to do that, he deserves to lose. I have had many river bets called that were either bluffs or were in situations where the call told me that I was almost certain to be behind (e.g., the caller had the big pair, instead of the A-K I thought he might have). In such cases, I usually say something like, "If you called you must have the winner," but I do so while exposing my cards. Once in a while I get the pleasant surprise of being wrong and winning the pot. It happens often enough that I can't figure out why one would not take such action, when it is so easy and foolproof.

By the way, a very similar situation played out at the Wynn Poker Classic earlier this year. I wrote about here. It seems that some pros are slow learners, unable to take lessons from even the very recent past.


Addendum

I just remembered that Cardgrrl told a similar story from her last visit to Atlantic City, which you can read here. Here's what I posted in a comment on her blog on that occasion. Very astute readers may note some similarity to what I just wrote above:

I strongly disagree that Crasian did anything wrong or was being a
douchebag. First, of all, he had the only live hand. Only live hands win pots.
Second, nothing in the account suggests that *he* saw the ace flashed. Why
should he take the word of somebody else as to what an opponent had? Third, I
completely disagree with the term "technicality." This is far, far more than
that. ETP had a decision to make, whether to table his cards or not. He chose
not to. The consequence of that is a dead hand and forfeiture of any claim to
the pot. This is absolutely standard by every rule book I've seen. He had the
world's simplest method of preserving his interest in the pot--turn his cards
face up on the table. It's not asking that much of him. If he chooses not to
take that minimal step, he deserves to get nothing. IMO, it would be a travesty
for him to get the pot, or even half of it. Tabling one's cards is not a mere
formality or technicality. It is a crucial and intrinsic part of the play of a
hand. It involves a strategic/tactical decision, whether to show or muck. One
must live with the consequences of making that decision badly, just as with
every other decision made in the course of the play of a hand.

I would feel differently if he had tabled his hand and everybody misread
it, or if the dealer accidentally killed it, or something else. But this was his
own damn fault, 100%. He did wrong the one thing he needed to do. Crasian did
nothing either unethical or against the rules. I, too, would keep the pot in his
situation, and not feel a shred of guilt or douchbaggery about it.

For two similar stories from my blog, see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/06/you-goof-i-profit.html
and http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-chips-into-pot-arent-enough-for.html.

Guess the casino, #265

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Answer: MGM Grand

An unusual tell

The chip above now holds a special place in my collection: It is the only $5 chip that has ever won me $150. Let me tell you how.

I was playing last night at Bally's. I had chalked up a substantial win at Planet Hollywood next door, but after sitting down at Bally's I just couldn't get anything going. Amongst all my folding, though, I tried to pay some attention to the hands I wasn't in. While doing so, I noticed something unusual about one of the most active players at the table.

Bally's doesn't have very many commemorative chips in circulation, so they tend to stand out. This guy had the chip shown above--no, not one like it, but that very chip--on top of one of his stacks. The peculiar thing was that sometimes he put it into the pot along with other chips when he was betting, but other times he took pains to put it aside before counting out chips to go into the pot.

Eventually I figured out what he was doing. It seemed that he was intent on keeping the chip as a souvenir, and the times that he casually put it into the pot as part of his bet were the times that he was strong and felt confident that it would be coming back. Conversely, though, when he was bluffing or unsure of where he stood in a hand when making a call, he would first remove that chip from the top of the stack, then use only the regular Bally's chips for his bet or call.

I have never before either seen or heard of a tell anything like this, but it was a fine one!

It paid off in the end. I don't remember the details of the hand, but on the river I had bottom pair and a busted straight draw. He had been betting every street, as was his habit in nearly every hand he played, and I had been calling. On the river, with the pot at about $100, he took the special chip off of the top of a stack of $50 (10 red chips), replaced it with another regular chip, then shoved the stack in. Aha!

I don't know whether he had air and I actually had the best hand, or if he had a better but still mediocre hand. I was quite confident, though, that he couldn't stand the heat of an all-in raise after he had shown me his tell of weakness.

I had about $155 left. I announced "All in," and he mucked before I could even move my chips forward, without even a few seconds of thought.

So how did I get his cherished chip? Easy. When I knew that I was on my last orbit and would be leaving after a few more hands, he bet the flop using the chip. After the dealer put out the turn card and was waiting for action, I pointed to the chip in the middle of the table and asked if I could buy that one from the pot. "Sure," said the dealer, as they usually do at such requests. I quickly made the trade, and the chip was mine.

My main reason for doing that was that it was one I didn't have in my collection. A second motivation was that the guy had annoyed me. Nothing terribly rude, but he was just more exuberant in his celebrations when winning pots than I think is cricket. It was enough to make me take a bit of perverse pleasure in sneakily depriving him of his little prize. Hey, pal, if you want to keep the chip, stick it in your pocket, or keep it at the bottom of your stack. Don't keep putting it in the pot. It may not come back to you every time that you think it will.

Finally, I wanted the chip as a souvenir of my pleasure at having paid enough attention to the game to spot an unusual tell, and use it to my advantage. That pot with him got me back to even for the night. It was 1:00 in the morning, and I was too tired to try to mount another big win, so after I won one more hand, I left with a small profit.

A small profit and a good story.

Guess the casino, #264

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Answer: Green Valley Ranch

Guess the casino, #263

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Answer: Wynn

Poker gems, #310

Mike Caro, in Poker Player newspaper column, September 14, 2009 (vo. 13, #6), pp. 4, 25.


Question 1: Does everyone spend the same amount of time thinking?

...The majority of people either think shallowly or almost not at all. Once you understand that, you realize why you have such a great advantage at a game like poker. You can make better decisions than your opponents. And you can manipulate them.

... Question 5: How much of your lifetime poker profit will be a result of superior thinking relative to your opponents?

All of it.

Am I an annoying opponent?

As mentioned in the immediately preceding post, last night my buddy Cardgrrl and I ended up playing at the same table at the Luxor for a few hours. During her February trip in which I first met her, we played together a few times at Venetian, Caesars Palace, and Mandalay Bay. But as we became closer, we mostly stopped doing that. We don't really want to take each other's money, we don't want to act as distractions for each other, and neither of us wants a seat occupied by a dangerous player (which each of us recognizes the other to be) that could be filled by a donating fish. So last night was, I think, the first time in more than six months that we have shared a no-limit hold'em cash table.

As we were leaving, I was suprised--nay, completely stunned and blown away--by Cardgrrl's casual, offhand comment: "You have an incredibly annoying table manner."

Huh???

I've heard all sorts of things about my style of play and mannerisms at the table from all sorts of opponents, but I can't recall anybody saying that he or she found my style annoying. The most common observation is simply that I'm very hard to read, which, of course, is exactly my goal. And even though I tend to be about as hypersensitive to annoyances as anybody I know (hence this blog--duh!), I cannot fathom how anybody could possibly find the way I act to be annoying. I can imagine that people might find me cold or unfriendly (not mean or rude--just not engaging on a personal level). They might find me inscrutible or mysterious or even borderline scary/intimidating. But annoying? How can that be?

Cardgrrl took pains to reassure me that she didn't mean any criticism of me--in fact, didn't mean anything negative by it whatsoever, though I'm not sure that any amount of disclaimers can fully blunt the feeling that being told that one is "annoying" isn't especially flattering.

The best that I could garner from what I'll have to admit was rather intense questioning of Cardgrrl as to what, exactly, she meant by that remark (and I trust that she will feel free to speak up if I misunderstood or if I am inadvertantly misrepresenting her point of view) is that it is the highly mechanical, "robotic" and "automaton" (her words) way that I do everything that she found annoying and tilt-inducing. I asked if she would find Chris Ferguson's even more highly perfected control of body movements to be annoying, and she said yes. This was, at least, a little bit reassuring.

This idea that I am inadvertantly annoying to others when I try so hard not to be has me on life tilt. It's not only a new concept to me, it's completely contrary to everything I have tried to implement about how I play. I'm not at all trying to annoy opponents. I'm not good at chatting them up, engaging in small talk, making friends, keeping the game all light and fun, the way Mike Caro recommends. It's completely contrary to my nature. But I do try my very best never to cause any negativity at the table--other than what inevitably comes from being a challenging opponent (hopefully, at least on my good days) and taking people's chips. I don't want to be annoying; I basically want to be as completely invisible and unnoticed as possible, and being annoying seems to me utterly inconsistent with that goal.

So now I'm deeply curious as to whether Cardgrrl's perspective is shared by others. For those readers who have spent time at a table with me, please speak up in the comments and share your thoughts: Did you find my admittedly rather mechanical ways of taking my turn to be irritating and/or tilt-inducing, or think that others would find them to be so? Note that I am not looking for selective confirmation of my self-image and/or refutation of Cardgrrl's opinion. I am genuinely interested in finding out how I'm perceived, to the extent that that is possible. If you haven't played with me personally, but recall seeing other opponents that have a style similar to what I'm describing here, did you find them to be annoying? I really want to know.


Just for fun, here's a great clip showing how completely inscrutible Chris Ferguson is when taking his actions. Can you spot any tells here? If so, you have better eyesight than I do.

Another Luxor session, another bad dealer

No surprise, really. But this time it took until near the end of the session (which was spent with Cardgrrl at the same table, something we haven't done in months) for the badness to be manifested.

The dealer was James. The "high hand of the day" was 5-5-5-5. That is, if one had pocket 5s and found the other two on the board, it was a $500 bonus. The flop came 4-5-5. Instantly, James said, "Oh, who's got those pocket 5s?"

It is perfectly appropriate, even laudable, for dealers to make sure that players know what jackpots and promotions are available, and what the rules and conditions for them are. (Side story: A young woman at the table hit quad aces and simply called an opponent on the river, rather than raising, because, as she explained, she erroneously thought that if he folded to a raise, there wouldn't be a showdown and she would lose eligibility for the high hand jackpot.) But a dealer should not volunteer this information in the middle of a hand in which doing so might alert players to something going on that they might otherwise have missed, and thus queer the action.

For example, suppose there had been a large raise preflop in this hand from a player with A-A, and a call. The raiser is contemplating what range of hands his opponent might have. He is unaware of the "5555" promotion. After seeing the flop of 4-5-5, he is not worried that his opponent could have 5-5 in the hand, because he thinks that his preflop raise was large enough to push out small pocket pairs. Now that the dealer points out the promotion, however, he realizes that 5-5 is, in fact, within his opponent's calling range, because that player might be willing to call an unusually large amount for the chance to hit the big bonus. If the opponent does actually have 5-5, the dealer's comment may reduce the amount that the player with quads gets from Mr. Aces, because now the latter is on alert. Conversely, even if nobody has the quads, the dealer's comment may increase the raiser's level of caution and cause smaller bets, or maybe even checking a street where he might otherwise have bet. In another scenario, perhaps a player who has poor eyesight or is too drunk to see the cards clearly thought that the flop was 4-5-6 instead of 4-5-5, and is about to play accordingly, until the dealer's comment draws extra attention to the fact that the board is paired.

Dealers simply must refrain from any comments that could potentially change how players play their hands. The Luxor dealers routinely ignore this mandate, and last night's incident was just the latest in a long line of such improper actions I've seen and documented here.

The most plausible explanation for the dealer's interjection here is that he wanted to be sure not to miss a possible large tip coming from a player who didn't know about the promotion and quietly mucked quads rather than showing them at the end of the hand. In other words, he selfishly puts his own needs ahead of the integrity of the game. I find that despicable.

This same dealer frequently, though not consistently, told players, "Nice hand," or "Good bet." Again, this seems likely designed to remind people to tip him, without overtly saying so. Cardgrrl has ranted about the wrongness of such dealer comments here. As she points out, this puts the dealer in the position of playing favorites--complimenting one player while ignoring or compounding the irritation or pain of the loser(s) of the hand.

She and I had a long talk about James on the way back from Luxor last night. She found this habit of his much more annoying than pointing out the possible quads. Conversely, I thought the quads thing was much worse, because it has the potential to compromise the integrity of the game, while the compliments are merely rude and irritating (and, admittedly, possibly bad for the game), but don't affect what is actually transpiring in a hand, because it's over by then.

As a final bit of unprofessionalism, both Cardgrrl and I felt a noticeable grating on the nerves when James called her "Honey" at one point.

Because of all of my griping about the Luxor dealers, it's probably only fair that I point out, again, that there are a few notable exceptions there--dealers who do their jobs very well indeed. One of the true standouts is Mark. If you've played there, you likely will have noticed him, if only because he keeps his hair cut in keeping with the pyramid theme of the Luxor, which is kind of a cool and interesting touch. More importantly, though, he is a real pro, in my experience. He keeps the game moving well, makes very few errors, is alert to players' needs, proactively deals with potential problems (e.g., last night he was the only dealer that noticed players who were inadvertantly flashing their cards while mucking, and politely reminded them to keep the cards down), uniformly enforces rules, and is unfailingly friendly and polite.

Why don't they make him the poker room manager, and have him teach his pathetic, hopeless, loser colleagues how to do their jobs right?

Guess the casino, #262

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Answer: South Point

Guess the casino, #261

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Answer: Planet Hollywood

Try a pizza

A couple of weeks ago I overheard some of the dealers at MGM Grand poker room talking about a new pizza place that a friend of theirs had recently opened. They were raving about the food. I didn't get the impression that they were just talking up the place as a favor to a friend, because I was overhearing a discussion that wasn't really meant for me. I jotted down the name and looked it up later when I got home: http://mannieandboslv.com/

Tonight I tried it for the first time. It was sadly unpatronized. My ex-wife and I were the only two customers in the place the entire duration of our dinner. They have really great "grand opening" deals still going on: e.g., half price on any pizza for dining in, which is the special we took advantage of. We got a pepperoni and Canadian bacon large (16") thin-crust pizza and two soft drinks for a total of $13.11. If it was crappy pizza, this wouldn't be worth mentioning. But it was actually really good. I have a slight preference for thick crust, and will try that the next time. I liked it enough that I don't want the place to close because of lack of business.

It's right next to (south of) the Home Depot on Rainbow, just north of Charleston. Give it a try, eh?

Strangeness at the Flamingo

I just got home from a couple of hours at the Flamingo. BWOP, Cardgrrl, and I each took on a separate $1/2 table. It was a relatively short session, as the two of them had a late dinner date, and I had to taxi my visiting ex-wife on some errands. Toward the very end, my friend --S showed up, fresh from some job interviews; he's coming back to town after experimenting with jobs at New Mexico and Colorado casinos. (By the way, for those of you who enjoy reading me, you owe a tip o' the hat to --S. It was reading his blog that made me decide that I, too, might have something worth saying about poker, and that the technical aspects of putting together a blog might be manageable for even a technodummy like me.) So it was a nice evening in terms of the company. And I won money at a decent rate, which is always nice.

But I post this to comment on two oddities that happened during the session. The first was that the poker room ran out of red ($5) chips. They were so short that they were going around the $1/2 tables begging players to trade stacks of red for green ($25) chips.

How in the hell does a casino run out of chips? This wasn't anywhere close to the busiest day of the year. Why don't they have about a billion dollars' worth of chips in the vault in the basement, ready for even the most insanely overcrowded day? The things are cheap to buy and last nearly forever. It seems to me like a no-brainer to have more chips than one would need on even the busiest day they've ever experienced.

The second oddity wasn't really related to the first, but came to my attention because of the first. A dealer was trying to deal with the chip shortage by getting the floor to approve letting $100 bills play. Cash has not previously been allowed to play at the Flamingo. The floor guy came over and told him that, yes, $100 bills would play--but this was not because he was making a special dispensation. Rather, it was because they had formally changed this policy as of September 1. Black chips ($100) are also allowed to play now under the new rule.

So it was strange that this dealer didn't know that. But then we had a dealer change, and the subject came up again. A player went busto and needed to buy a stack of red chips from one of the big stacks. They traded the bill and chips. The new dealer, though, said that that wouldn't help, because cash doesn't play. Yep--a second dealer hadn't heard of the new rule, which has been in effect for nine days now.

Then, a while later, a dealer who was acting as brush and chip runner between downs walked by the table and noticed that two players had C-notes tucked under or behind their chip stacks. He helpfully offered to trade those in for chips, informing the table that "Cash doesn't play." Yep--a third dealer had not heard about this. Of all three dealers who had to deal with the question, not a single one had heard that the poker room's policy had changed more than a week ago. Each time, the floor guy had to come over and inform them of the new way things were to be done. There was not a single dealer who had to address the matter who knew the new rule.

How can a poker room's management be so incompetent and uncaring that, apparently, the majority of its dealers don't know about a rather important change in policy or procedure more than a week after it has been implemented?

More on Planet Hollywood scam

See here: http://www.lasvegasnow.com/global/story.asp?s=11103122

"Viva Las Vegas"

I just finished watching "Viva Las Vegas" (1964) for the first time ever. I know--I'm slightly behind the times.

There's not much point in a full review. After all, you've either already seen it or can make a darn good guess about what you'll get if you sit down to watch it: dumb plot that is just an excuse for Elvis and Ann-Margaret to sing, dance, and flirt.

What I enjoyed most was how it captured Old Vegas: for example, the car race downtown, zooming east on Fremont Street, then turning south on Casino Center, as you can see in the shots above. (Notice that when the race finally ends, a finish line has mysteriously appeared on the street at the intersection of Fremont and Casino Center where there was none before!) It would be rather difficult to do that today....

There are also nice shots of the race going over Hoover Dam, though the desert, and to a forested area that I have to assume is probably in the vicinity of Mt. Charleston. And, of course, strewn throughout the film are many shots of downtown, the Strip, and casino interiors. (Elvis has to visit every show in town in one night to locate his dream girl, whose name and working location he failed to get upon meeting her.) There's also a small part with actor William Demarest, whom I knew growing up only as Uncle Charlie on "My Three Sons."

I don't know how you could not like this stuff. Then again, I'm kind of a sucker for cheese.

Guess the casino, #260

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Answer: Mandalay Bay

Fun and not-so-fun at the Luxor

Wow--it seems strange to sit down and start to write a real post of the kind that used to come out nearly every day. It's been a while!


Last night, I picked up Cardgrrl at the Venetian poker room, where she had been playing, and we went off to Mandalay Bay to do some fishing. After an hour and a half, we had both done reasonably well. (OK, I admit it--she had won quite a bit more than I had, thanks mostly to making a set of jacks on the turn and getting the all-in call from a guy with unimproved Q-Q.) She wanted to move on to the Luxor, so I agreed.

Good call, as it turned out.

By coincidence, we discovered in talking last night that Luxor is the place where both she and I first played casino poker--and both of us had no clue what we were doing back then. So it was kind of a return to roots, but hopefully this time with us nearer the top of the Luxor poker food chain than we were five or six years ago.


Unprofessional dealers--what's new?

Just about every time I write about a session at the Luxor, it includes a story about one of the dealers doing something stupid, unprofessional, and/or in violation of basic rules. (Just click here for a compilation of the relevant posts.) I'm not picking on the Luxor deliberately; I would complain about such things from dealers wherever they might occur. It's just that at the Luxor it happens a lot more than any other poker room I visit regularly. As I have noted before, I am not the only one with this perception; "Las Vegas Michael" spends even more time in poker rooms than I do and pays close attention to how they are run, and he agrees that the Luxor is in a class by itself in terms of how unprofessional the dealers are.

Last night it took only five minutes into the session before I had another humdinger of a bad-dealer story. The dealer was Jimmy. The final board on the hand in question was K-Q-3-7-3. Player A bet. Player B called. Player A showed K-10. Player B said, "Oh, you have a better kicker." Player B then turned a king face up, left his second card face down, and passed his hole cards back to the dealer in a clear and obvious fold.

Jimmy tapped the guy's face-down card and said, "Chop chop." Player B still didn't catch on, so Jimmy told him, "If you turn both cards up, it will be a chopped pot." Player B finally saw what he meant, complied (his other card was a 5) and the pot was split.

B's cards never hit the muck, but his intention was unambiguous, and the dealer's correct action would have been to turn the king face down, put both cards in the muck, award the pot to Player A, and say nothing about it.

Player A complained, but did so very softly, speaking quietly to the player on her right. (I was on her left, so heard it.) She didn't complain to the dealer or floor, as she should have.

If a player misreads his hand or the board or both, and wrongly decides to muck his cards, he must be allowed to do so. Neither the dealer nor another player may intervene to stop him. It is a strategic decision to muck rather than table one's cards, and dealers cannot make that decision for players, nor even help them make that decision.

I suspect that the dealer's reason for sticking his nose in where it didn't belong was the hope that he could pick up tips from two winners rather than one. He was a smart guy--he surely knew that what he was doing was against the rules. Dealers injecting themselves into poker hands and poker players' decisions is the single most frequent category of wrong stuff that Luxor dealers do that I have chronicled here. Clearly it is not going to stop anytime soon, because it has been going on for years. It is patently obvious that nobody in the poker room management cares about this stuff.

Here's another minor dealer error I saw last night: On the river, the action went check-check-check-check, then the button pushed out $35. The dealer, James, said, "Raise it up. Make it $35." Raise? Raise? How can there be a raise when there has been no prior bet? Players new to casino poker make this mistake all the time. Dealers never should.

One last dealer story: I had Tweeted about the first incident. Cardgrrl, two tables over, had apparently seen that post. A while later, she sent me a text message asking me whether Don was the dealer that I disliked. I responded that he was one of them, based on previous interactions. I guessed at what he was doing that annoyed her: being vulgar. She wrote back, "He was on about happy endings over here. Idiot." Bingo. Do I know my dealers, or what? (He's the same one that I referred to as "Dealer #5" here, when I heard him making stupid double-entendres about his "big carrot.")


An audacious bluff

Usually at the Luxor the players are such terrible calling stations that I deploy what I think of as my "Bill's strategy," which basically means no bluffing. There can be exceptions, but they must be selected with extreme care. Last night, such a confluence of circumstances occurred.

There was a large four-way pot. One player was all-in on the flop, with three of us calling. I had suited 7-8. On the turn I picked up both flush and gutshot straight draws, so I called another player's bet, as did the last guy.

The river missed me, but meant that the final board was K-5-4-3-2 with no flush possible. I didn't think either of my remaining opponents had an ace or a six, and thought that they couldn't call without a straight if I were to bet. Furthermore, they happened to be the only two players at the table that I thought were good enough (1) to have noticed that I had played my hand as if on a draw, and (2) to fold a hand like top pair or even two pair if they were sufficiently persuaded that I had just made my straight on the river. So when it was checked to me, I bet $50 at what was then a roughly $60 side pot. Both of them folded.

I had to show my cards because of the showdown with the all-in guy. As the dealer pushed me the side pot, he said, "You get this part for sure." I flipped my cards up and said, "I think that's all I'll be getting." I was right, of course--the approximately $150 main pot was won by the all-in guy who had a suited Q-J, and took it with queen high! Each of the guys I had pushed out of the pot claimed, very plausibly, to have had a king for top pair. Either one could have taken the main pot if not for folding to my river bet. I didn't profit, but the side pot was enough to make me approximately even for the hand (i.e., get me back what I had put into the pot before the river), which was good enough.

It is safe to say that my move caused quite a stir. I was massively unpopular with the two guys who folded winners, but the hand continued intermittently to be the talk of the table for about 15 minutes. Both of them admitted the obvious--that they were certain I had the straight. As one of them said, "Guy plays two hands an hour, you've got to believe he has it there."

I was exceptionally pleased with this move. At the risk of sounding overly self-congratulatory, it felt, well, professional. I understood the situation accurately, including my opponents' likely holdings, their temperaments and abilities, my table image, etc., then used that information to make an aggressive move that won me money I could have taken in no other possible way.

To make things even better, over the next 30 minutes I got three more calls from opponents who all said explicitly that they felt obligated to call me down because they had seen me bluff with 8-high. (This includes the guy in the story to follow.) So not only did I steal the side pot in that hand, but got paid quite handsomely in subsequent hands because of having had to show the bluff. I was enormously pleased with how it worked out.


The real happy ending

No, it has nothing to do with getting a massage, which is what I presume that nasty dealer Don was talking about. This is about the best way to end a poker session.

Cardgrrl and I had initially planned on leaving at around 10:00 p.m. But we both had slow starts, without much happening. So we decided (all by texting) to stay another hour or so. Good thing. As 11:00 hit, I played 8-9 of hearts, just as Cardgrrl texted me to say she was going to play two more hands, then quit.

I picked up a straight-flush draw on the flop with position on my opponent (flop 7h-5c-Jh). I called his $20 bet. As you can see from the photo below, I hit my perfect card on the turn, making the jack-high straight flush.





My opponent, who happened to be one of the two that I had bluffed off of a winner before, bet another $20 on the turn. I just called again, because his stack was short enough that if he bet anything on the river, as I thought he would, he would basically be pot-committed for any raise. Sure enough, he bet $20 again. I raised all-in and he called his last $50 or so. He mucked after seeing my cards. (He later said that he had had two pair, and I believe him. He also said that he was, of course, aware of the possible flush, but because of the eight-high bluff, he thought it was about 50-50 that I was bluffing again, so felt obligated to call.)

There was a short wait while the surveillance people were contacted and the high-hand jackpot money was prepared. I stood up and called Cardgrrl's name to get her attention (which is not something I'd do except under extremely rare circumstances--like this was). I motioned for her to come see what had happened. She responded that she was in a hand.

Was she ever! About a minute later, I heard the dealer at her table call out, "High hand, seat 3." Hey--wait a second. Isn't Cardgrrl in seat 3? I looked over again. Yes, she was. I trotted over and saw this on the table:




She started with pocket aces just after texting me the "two more hands" message. She then flopped a set, and turned quads.

My table had obviously figured out that we were friends from my calling out to her, so when I came back they asked if she had really hit a high hand at the same time that I did. Yep! The floor person came by about then with two stacks of red chips (i.e., $200) for me. There was a third stack in her rack, and she told me, "That's not for you--that's for my other high hand." Indeed it was. Cardgrrl won her pot plus a $100 bonus. (If she feels like telling how the hand played out she can--obviously I wasn't there to see what had happened.)

I don't even know how to start trying to figure out the odds against two friends coming to a card room together, playing at separate tables, both down to the last couple of hands of the night, and both hitting high hand bonuses at the same time--especially with this all happening in the poker room in which, years, earlier, both had independently played their first-ever casino poker. If it were in a movie script, they'd take it out in the editing process because it would be too freakishly improbable for audiences to accept as plausible.

But it actually happened (with pictures, as you can see, for those inclined to say "Pics or it didn't happen"). We were amazed and delighted, and laughed about the craziness of it all the way home. That reality can be stranger than fiction is as true in poker as in any other field of human endeavor.

It was the perfect way to end a fun and highly profitable evening of poker with the best poker companion I've ever known.

Guess the casino, #259

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Answer: Golden Nugget

Planet Hollyood shenanigans

Shenanigans, felonies--whatever.

See here: http://www.allvegaspoker.com/news_detail_355.html

Home

Poker and/or blogging should resume shortly, though still likely attenuated for a while, as explained earlier.

Guess the casino, #258

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Circus Circus

Guess the casino, #257

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Answer: Boulder Station

Deuce-four crushes again

An excellent deuce-four story here:

http://eotf.blogspot.com/2009/09/convert.html

Guess the casino, #256

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Answer: Sunset Station (You knew that Hooters would be too obvious, right? There's a Hooter's restaurant inside of Sunset Station.)

Deuce-four makes the nuts. Ho-hum.

CK of the BWOP blog (who, for readers who still wonder about it, is the brilliant discoverer of the fact that "crubs always get there") pointed me to this post from Kurokitty:
http://pokercats.blogspot.com/2009/09/quadz.html

Of course, 2-4 making the stone-cold nuts on the river is not exactly stop-the-press news around these parts, but it is nevertheless nice to see that the word is gradually getting out.

Guess the casino, #255

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Answer: Riviera

Guess the casino, #254

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Answer: O'Shea's

Blast from the past

I'm in Minnesota, staying at what used to be my house, and now is the ex-wife's. (Fortunately, we have remained friendly.) Using my old computer here, I was reminded of the one and only time I got a royal flush in online play. (Still hasn't happened in live play.)

I saved the hand history. Here it is:


Hand #11575310-35 at Thu740pmUBNet-051 (No Limit tournament Hold'em)
Powered by UltimateBet
Started at 02/Feb/06 20:25:55

TuckerB13 is at seat 0 with 4060.
eric1975 is at seat 1 with 12725.
Kenmeister1 is at seat 2 with 4490.
mike4902 is at seat 3 with 3935.
drock69 is at seat 4 with 1270.
sluggie is at seat 5 with 1835.
Rakewell is at seat 6 with 5065.
KOChief is at seat 7 with 6950.
Picaroon is at seat 8 with 2990.
ImJohnnyBlade is at seat 9 with 4425.
The button is at seat 3.

drock69 posts the small blind of 20.
sluggie posts the big blind of 40.

TuckerB13: -- --
eric1975: -- --
Kenmeister1: -- --
mike4902: -- --
drock69: -- --
sluggie: -- --
Rakewell: Qh Ah
KOChief: -- --
Picaroon: -- --
ImJohnnyBlade: -- --

Pre-flop:

Rakewell raises to 160. KOChief calls. Picaroon
folds. ImJohnnyBlade folds. TuckerB13 folds.
eric1975 calls. Kenmeister1 folds. mike4902 folds.
drock69 folds. sluggie folds.

Flop (board: 2c Kh Th):

Rakewell bets 340. KOChief calls. eric1975 calls.


Turn (board: 2c Kh Th Jh):

Rakewell bets 840. KOChief folds. eric1975 folds.
Rakewell is returned 840 (uncalled).



Hand #11575310-35 Summary:

No rake is taken for this hand.
Rakewell wins 1560.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Guess the casino, #253

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Harrah's

Poker gems, #309

Tony Guerrera, in Poker Player newspaper, August 31, 2009, p. 9.


In the end, we can only control two things when playing poker: our emotions and our decisions. In the short term, being stable emotionally enables you to weather bad streaks and to evaluate whether poor short term results are the result of bad luck or bad play--even if the short term is too short to make any sort of judgment. Being stable emotionally also allows you to focus on what really counts: the decision-making.

Stripping everything away except the decision-making process can be scary because when you do, the only one you can blame for bad long-term results is yourself. Bad long-term results are then only a function of bad table selection and bad playing.

A small mystery resolved

I occasionally get "match play" coupons. For any even-money table-game bet of $5 or more (that's the usual stipulation, anyway), they match the bet amount. For example, you can use it on odd/even or red/black at roulette, which is my usual approach. It's definitely a +EV (expected value) thing to do.

The question I have wrestled with, though, is exactly how much EV is there in, say, a $5 coupon? This should be a completely straightforward question, but I had difficulty with it. My instinct at first was to say, "Well, it adds $5 to the bet, but only pays half of the time, so the EV is $2.50." (For present purposes, I'm assuming it's exactly an even-money payout and odds, disregarding the small chance of 0 or 00 on roulette.)

But when I did the math, I kept coming up with it being a $5 EV. Suppose we have two such coupons, and we bet $5 plus the coupon on red both times. The ball lands on red once, black once. When it hits red, the payout on a $10 bet is $20. I.e., you get the $10 bet back plus $10, net gain of $15, after investing $5. When it hits black, you lose $5. The sum of these two events is +$10, so the EV of each coupon is $5--in conflict with my first conclusion.

Hence my conundrum.

Today I had lunch with Cardgrrl at the Orleans, where she is staying. She was given one of these coupons on check-in, so I explained my dilemma. She wasn't sure of the correct resolution, either.

So we took the coupon to a table, put a $5 chip and the coupon on black, and the ball fell on 22 black. The woman placed two more $5 chips on our winning spot, and we walked away.

It took us a bit of thought to realize what had happened. The payout was smaller than expected--$15 rather than $20. And, once it dawned on us, the reason was obvious: They don't replace the coupon with a $5 chip before spinning the wheel. That makes it different from making an actual $10 bet in this crucial way: With a $10 bet, you get your original $10 back plus the $10 win, or $20. With a $5 bet and a coupon, you get back your original $5 plus the $10 win, or $15.

In fairness, I had seen this happen a couple of other times that I used these coupons and won, but I left wondering why the payout was less than I had thought it would be, without ever stopping to think through it all the way.

When you win, your net gain is $10. When you lose, your net loss is $5. Those two things happen with equal frequency, so the EV for the coupon is $2.50.

On the rare occasions that my gestalt sense of what should happen in a gambling situation conflicts with what the math is telling me, it's usually the math that is right and my subjective sense that is wrong. Here, though, I had the math set up incorrectly, which led me astray, and my original thought about the value of the coupon was correct. I suppose that's reassuring in some way, but, on the other hand, it's a bit embarrassing and distressing that I made such a fundamental error in how to evaluate the situation mathematically.

Can you tell that, aside from poker, I really don't gamble much?

A small life victory (zero poker content)

When I picked up Cardgrrl at the airport recently, I got a parking ticket. This puzzled me at first, because there was still time on the meter.

After looking around at the situation for a while, I figured it out. I had parked in what I had thought was the left-most spot in a row. I thought this because, as you can see above, the next space had clearly visible diagonal stripes across it. Faded, sure, but definitely still there. Besides, nobody ever lets you park in a space that would partially block access to a stairway, as that one would. So I put the coins in the left-most meter. It briefly occurred to me that there was a mismatch between the number of spaces and the number of meters, but hey--I'm in the left-most space and using the left-most meter, so anything else isn't my problem.

Well, as the airport sees it, that striping isn't really there, and that space is available. Therefore, the meter corresponding to the space in which I was parked was expired, and I got a ticket.

I wrote a letter of protest, including the above photo and explanation. If you want a space to be considered available, I said, you have to actually remove the striping, not do it halfway. You leave too much ambiguity as it is. Nobody can be sure whether that space is available.

Today I received the following letter:



Naturally, they're not admitting any responsibility for screwing up, nor, apparently, do they have any intention of removing the ambiguity for future customers. I think the rough translation of the letter is, "You're right, and would win if any judge had to decide the matter, so we'll quietly let it drop, without admitting that we did anything wrong."

No $20 fine for me!

Guess the casino, #252

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Answer: Excalibur

Bear with me, please

I realize that things have been slow here lately. This is largely due to spending free time handing out with the delightful Cardgrrl rather than sitting alone in my apartment thinking up pokery things to gripe about.

Some might even consider this an improvement in life.

But I have to warn you that things are going to get even slower in the immediate future. Wednesday I leave for nearly a week, heading back to Minnesota. My brother is getting married, so I need to be there. Also, I have a bunch of highly unpleasant but necessary tasks that I left behind when I left in haste three years ago--stuff that needs attending to and cleaning up. I will not be taking laptop with me, though I'll have access to one there. Then when I get back, Cardgrrl will still be here for a few more days.

So it may be a while before there is much substantive posted here, for which my apologies in advance. I know it seems odd, but sometimes actual life has to take precedence over both poker and blogging. This little stretch is going to be one of those times. And after that, I have an out-of-town visitor coming to stay for a while (the ex-wife, actually!), so will be doing some of the tour-guide kind of stuff.

But I shall surely return, as good (or as bad) as ever. I hope you'll stick around through the hiatus.

Guess the casino, #251

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.



Answer: Bill's

Health insurance for poker players

Not much detail available, but perhaps worth checking out if you have no better options:

http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/world-poker-association-offers-health-insurance-for-poker-players-4527/

Guess the casino, #250

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Answer: Santa Fe Station

Guess the casino, #249

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Answer: Monte Carlo

Tiny AVP meet-up

My friend Cardgrrl had a little do Friday night at the Rhumbar lounge at the Mirage, which has a lovely outdoor setting. The purpose was to give fellow denizens of www.allvegaspoker.com a chance to meet her in a setting other than across the green felt.

The weather was just right, and, aside from a few moments of icky cigar smoke, so was essentially everything else about the setting and the attendees. The menu of exotic drinks available at Rhumbar is pretty impressive--enough to make one consider becoming an alcoholic. But I had to be content with a virgin strawberry-pineapple daiquiri thing, which was sweet and tasty. (I also had sips of a couple of Cardgrrl's selections, which were pretty interesting.) I think it safe to say that a fine time was had by all present.

Photos are here.

Tomorrow, Cardgrrl and I tackle the Red Rock poker room.

Guess the casino, #248

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Answer: Gold Coast

Poker gems, #308

Mike Caro, in Bluff magazine column, August, 2009, p. 89, speaking of his experience with trying to keep his World Series of Poker tables light and friendly.


Most of the tables I sat in during those events were friendly--giving me something to work with from the get-go. But some were as quiet as a horror film before the crazed killer jumps out from the closet. Dead serious players. I hate that. So, immediately I went into action, engaging players in conversations and announcing, "This is the quiestest table I've ever been at, which is a sure sign that some players here are taking a hundred million dollars way too seriously."

Guess the casino, #247

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Answer: Bellagio

Guess the casino, #246

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Answer: Sam's Town

A note about the "Guess the casino" posts

I originally envisioned the "Guess the casino" posts as photos of particular places and things in and around the Vegas casinos that were sufficient thematic or otherwise distinct that one could guess the casino without even having been there. There are probably some such items still in the archives (I have hundreds of photos not yet deployed, mostly taken many months ago now, when I got into a bit of a frenzy about it), but as those paying attention will have noticed, most of them now are things that you would have to have seen and noticed in person to recognize. I.e., usually now you can't just spot something about the object or background and deduce where the shot must have been taken. I discovered that there just weren't enough distinctly identifiable spots to keep the series going for very long under the original premise.

So there is definitely a change in emphasis. That is, it's not really any longer reasonable to expect even a fairly Vegas-savvy reader to know or guess the location of more than an occasional photo in the series. But I still enjoy posting them, and hope that some readers still enjoy looking at them. If you find it frustrating to try to actually deduce or just plain guess the casino, well, you might try to stop looking at it as a game at which there is an expectation that you can figure it out with some effort. Instead, think of it as just a little feature about the beautiful or odd things that this strange city has hidden away if you go looking for them.

Incidentally, the other day I ran into a reader who admitted that he only looks at the "GTC" posts, and not the rest of my content! I would never have guessed that there were any such people, but I'm happy to pick up readers whatever their tastes. It balances out the occasional nay-sayer who thinks the "GTC" posts are either a mar on the blog or my way of being lazy and skimping on writing fresh content.

Also, as a special addition, sooner or later you will see pop up in the series some guest shots taken by my good friend Cardgrrl. I don't think she would mind me revealing that she spent a good number of years as a professional photographer in an earlier phase of her life. She has a far, far better eye for physical beauty than I do, along with much more skill and experience at using a camera to capture the beauty she perceives.

Where I win

One of the questions I am asked most frequently is something about where to play--where are the softest games, where can one make the most money, which are the best rooms, etc. Note that those are not equivalent questions.

Recent my pal Cardgrrl addressed the subject of the frequent poker forum question about where the softest games are. Among other partial answers, she suggested that (1) the answer is ever-changing, (2) and somebody who really had a decent bead on the current answer wouldn't be inclined to divulge it.

There is some truth in these observations, but I don't see it entirely the same way. I think there is a fair amount of constancy in how games of a given level/structure play from place to place. Yes, of course, there is also at least as much day-to-day and table-to-table variation as there is casino-to-casino variation (i.e., within-group as compared to between-group variation). We've all seen how the arrival or departure of a single player can radically alter how the game plays in a matter of minutes. But still, it's a safe bet that, say, the $1/3 NLHE game at the Wynn is going to be a tougher struggle to beat than the $1/2 NLHE game at Imperial Palace. It just is. They cater to almost completely non-overlapping clientele, and the two groups have very distinct average characteristics and skills.

As for spilling the beans and inviting in the sharks, I'm not worried. First, I don't think my readership is that broad, nor does it include many people with big pointy teeth. Second, true shark-like creatures don't tend to be interested in the $1/2 games that constitute most of my play and income.

I mention all of this because it has been a while since I reviewed my records to see which poker rooms were generating the most money for me, which is obviously something I need to do from time to time. This post is to announce the results.

In case this isn't readily apparent (though I think it should be), what you see here does not mean that the games in the rooms listed are objectively the softest or most profitable for everybody. There is a lot of random statistical noise that may account for a huge fraction of the room-to-room variation I experience. Alternatively, it may simply be that my particular style of play performs well against the opponents in these rooms, but somebody with a slightly different style would have very different results. I have spent a decent amount of time talking to others who make their living (or a good portion thereof) from the same types of games, and I'm always amazed at how different our impressions are of the places where we fare the best. For example, MGM Grand is extremely popular among most of my fellow "show me the money" serious players, but was long one of my personal "kryptonite" rooms. Conversely, they tend to find that the Venetian game is too stocked with good players as opposed to completely green tourists, whereas my experience has been that the V is one of my best venues. Who knows why? It's all a mystery, with so many variables that it's likely beyond any of us to do more than guess.

Speaking of kryptonite rooms, I'm pleased to announce that two places that had been such for me seem to be no longer. Specifically, Harrah's and MGM. I had accumulated a terrible track record at both places, and avoided them for a long time as a result. But recently, upon revisiting, I have found perfectly acceptable success. This reinforces my tentative conclusion that what I was experiencing was a combination of (1) random statistical variance, coupled with (2) some degree of self-fulfilling prophecy, i.e., after losing at a place three times in a row, there is probably some subtle corrupting influence on my play from a subconscious sense of fatalism. Once that is overcome, things can play as normal.

I note, finally, that, remarkable as this may seem, I had done so much better at the old Hilton poker room than anywhere else, and spent so much more time there than at any other poker room, that two years after it closed it still remains my #1 all-time income source! It still pains me every time I think of it being replaced by a bunch of stupid slot machines. Grrrrrrrrr!

So here we go.


The first way to count results is by total net profit. By that method of accounting, my five top poker rooms (counting only those still in operation, for obvious reasons) are:

1. Mandalay Bay
2. Palms
3. Venetian
4. Sahara
5. Bill's

However, that's not very useful, because it is obviously hugely influenced by the number of times that I visit a place. (For the record, my most frequently visited spots are, in order, Venetian, Palms, Rio, Orleans, Mandalay Bay, Caesars Palace, Golden Nugget, Planet Hollywood, Binion's, and Bill's. But that's counting all three years equally, and lately there hasn't been much of Orleans, Nugget, or Caesars--they racked up most of their visits earlier.)

So let's go to the next way of looking at it: percentage of sessions that are winning ones. For this and all other figures herein, I'm only counting the rooms where I have placed five or more times, in order to iron out some of the random noise that results from too-small sample sizes.

1. Sunset Station
2. Sahara
3. Tuscany
4. Mandalay Bay
5. Planet Hollywood

Finally, we can look at it in terms of average dollars won per session. (I keep track of hours, but not in the same spreadsheet, so it would take a lot of work to figure out dollars per hour for a given poker room. Average dollars per session, though, is calculated automatically for me in the heading for each casino.)

1. Tuscany
2. Sahara
3. Suncoast
4. Sunset Station
5. Mandalay Bay

Your mileage not only may vary, but almost certainly will vary.

As a final note, the fact that I find a place profitable does not mean that I like it. For example, I find both Tuscany and Sahara to be execrable places, so bad that I literally feel like a need a shower when I leave. They are dirty, smelly, noisy, uncomfortable, with bad dealers and management and lousy customer service. I really despise them. But the money flows so easily that I hold my nose, bite my tongue, and keep them in the rotation. (You think it's easy playing solid poker while holding your nose and biting your tongue? Try it!)

Guess the casino, #245

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Answer: Mirage

17 outs, swing and a miss

It's not very often that I find myself with 17 outs on the flop, so I thought it might be worth recording how it happened.

After a very successful session at Mandalay Bay yesterday afternoon (Sunday afternoons there are becoming a happy, habitual indulgence, with the money pouring in freely), I decided to try to make a little extra at the Luxor next door. I bought in for the max, $200, which after about 45 minutes was down to $125 or so due to losing one race (A-K lost to an all-in 5-5) and false starts on a few other hands.

UTG guy raises to $15. He's solid, so probably A-K or a big pair here. I have Kc-10c on the button. With crubs, how can I go wrong? I call, following a call by a MP short stack.

Flop is Ks-Jc-9c. This gives me top pair, the second-nut flush draw (in crubs!), and a gutshot straight draw. UTG leads out for $25. MP guy shoves for about $45. I reshove for my last $110. Original raiser calls. He has, predictably, As-Ac. MP guy never shows, mucks when he loses.

So I win with any crub for the flush (9 cards), queen for the straight (3 more cards), 10 for two pair (3 cards), king for trips (2 cards)--or so it looked at first glance. In actuality, since he had the Ac, that's one fewer crub available. And, of course, they are not all clean outs, since (A) I don't know what the MP guy had, and (B) runner-runner crubs would give him the higher flush, and oddball things like a Q-10 combo give him a higher straight, K-A gives him a full house, etc. Conversely, the Qc would give me an unbeatable straight flush and some big jackpot (I didn't check to see how much it was).

But I'm going to have to have a word with C.K., because the crubs did not get there. Nor did the trips, two pair, or straight. We went blank-blank. Oh well. As they say, all you can do is get your money in good, and I managed to do that. That $110 shove would have reaped about a $200 profit if any of my cards had hit, and I was a clear mathematical favorite.

Maybe this is why they call it gambling.

Guess the casino, #244

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Answer: Flamingo

Memorializing my own idiocy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Today's helpful hint: Ask about the cash

A couple of weeks ago I posted a story from the Venetian in which I anticipated a potential problem about how much money a guy was playing and spoke up, trying to get it resolved before it became a crisis. I admit that I was kind of surprised that not a single commenter agreed with my action. (Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that the player involved, the dealer, and the chip runner all bear part of the blame for the situation arising as it did.) I reject the specific form of criticism that was based on the retrospective observation that the player involved got mad and left, when he was clearly a donkey and likely would have donated a lot more money to the table. That was completely unknowable in advance, and it might just as well have turned out that my intervention saved him money and made him grateful and happy. Still, although I don't exactly conduct myself according to reader-majority rule, it has given me cause to reflect, and I'm now not sure that I would do the same again.

But thinking about that experience and whether I did the right thing triggered memories of a tangentially related class of incidents in which there has been uncertainty about cash playing.

The most common rule in Vegas poker rooms is that $100 bills on the table are in play the same as chips (and are subject to the same buy-in cap), but other denominations of currency are not.

(In card rooms that take the rake in half-dollar increments, there are a bunch of weird and inconsistent rules about when and whether the half-dollar coins you get back are in play. E.g., they might be usable for paying your blinds, but not count if you're all-in, or only count in full-dollar amounts, or other such nonsense. For purposes of this post, I'm only talking about bills, not coins.)

However, there are variations on this. The most peculiar one I know of is the Sahara, where all denominations of currency are in play--even $5 and $1 bills. At the old Hilton poker room, no bills played, nor did $25 or $100 chips. Their reasoning was that it was too easy for other players to overlook these items and thus inadvertantly misjudge an opponent's stack and make a crucial error.

The Imperial Palace is an example of a room that follow this same policy now. A few weeks ago I was playing there. On the river I missed a flush draw but made some sort of small pair. I checked. Opponent moved all in: he had a single $1 chip and a single $100 bill, both of which he pushed forward. The bill had been sitting in front of him for several hands at least, but the dealer had failed to notice it until this moment. He informed the player that the bill was not in play, so the all-in bet was only $1. Floor was called and made the same ruling. The player was livid. I called his $1, though I was about 99% sure I was losing. He had the nuts--a straight. He was ranting about how he was being cheated out of $100. I reassured him that $1 was just about the most I would have called, so the error actually made him an extra dollar that he otherwise would not have gotten, because if his bet had been $101, I would have folded. That calmed him down.

The point, though, is that dealers frequently don't notice currency on the table. Last week at the Venetian I noticed that a player had a stack of $20 bills sitting behind his chips. I don't know how long they had been there before I spotted them. I waited until the hand was over, then told the dealer, "We should probably get clarified whether that cash is in play." The dealer, too, had failed to notice whenever it was that the player had added the money to his stack. He got it changed for chips, and all was well.

Similarly, during the last week of the World Series of Poker, I was sweating Cardgrrl as she played a juicy $2/5 game at the Rio. At some point I noticed a similar situation--a player had quietly added some $20 bills to the table. I was pretty sure that the Rio followed the standard rule of only $100s playing, so I whispered to her that she might want to ask the dealer about it between hands. She did. Again, the dealer had not noticed the issue, and it got resolved before it became a big blow-up.

The obvious problem is that when this sort of thing goes unnoticed and unresolved until there is an all-in move, somebody is going to end up unhappy--whoever has or believes he has the winning hand will want as much in the pot as possible, and the loser will be arguing against counting whatever he can. That's the worst possible time to try to resolve the matter.

Yes, dealers should always notice when a player adds cash to his stack, both to be sure that it is eligible for play and that it does not violate any buy-in cap. But dealers have a lot to do, and this kind of thing slips by unnoticed all the time. So today's helpful hint is to simply ask. Don't assume that any particular poker room follows the standard rule if it's a place where you are not a frequent visitor and certain of the house rule. If you're told that no cash plays and there is cash on the table, or that only 100s play and there are 20s on the table, just wait until the current hand is over and ask the dealer to clarify. Of course, once in a while the player affected will get upset, because people can be irrational and stupid. But you'll be doing everybody at the table a favor by getting the question resolved definitively before there is a big blow-up.

Guess the casino, #243

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Answer: Bally's