Guess the casino, #622

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Answer: Palms

The Bruce Buffer Post

A week ago, I had never heard of Bruce Buffer, as far as I can recall. Then I watched the most recent week of "Poker After Dark," which featured him, two mixed martial arts fighters, and three poker pros. Mr. Buffer acquitted himself rather well, I thought, finishing a close second to Howard Lederer. He was also pleasantly chatty and unfailingly polite. I learned from this that he is a ring announcer for MMA fights, and that he does a cute little move called the "Bruce Buffer 180," which, frankly, I don't get, but which seems to drive fans wild. You can see it in action here.

So that exhausted my knowledge of Bruce Buffer.

Imagine my surprise upon walking into the Luxor Poker Room today and finding that it was, in fact, no longer the Luxor Poker Room, but had been redubbed the Bruce Buffer Poker Room.

There seem to be some additional tables (or perhaps my spatial memory is on the fritz again):





Here's a close-up of a Bruce Buffer Poker Table:




Here's a Bruce Buffer Poker Dealer, wearing a Bruce Buffer T-Shirt:




This is the Bruce Buffer Wall. The two monitors on either side of the big sign cycle through a slideshow of Bruce Buffer Photographs.




On another wall is a small collection of Bruce Buffer Art:




Midway through my session, I had to take a break to visit the Bruce Buffer Men's Room. On the way there, I passed the Bruce Buffer High Stakes Poker Lounge (or at least the sign for it):




A few steps away was the Bruce Buffer High Stakes Poker Zone:




Not too surprisingly, within it one can find all manner of Bruce Buffer Merchandise:




This player was sporting the Bruce Buffer Combover:




OK, that was just mean and uncalled for. I apologize.

Anyway, the one obvious touch that appeared to be missing was the Bruce Buffer Poker Chip. Perhaps it's in production.

My understanding--and it's possible I'm mistaken on this point--is that the all-you-can-eat dining area has been renamed the Bruce Buffer Buffet.

I have another suggestion for the Luxor. They need a clear demarcation between the gambling/drinking/adult-only portions of the operation and the parts of the casino that are open to minors. They should set up kind of a no-man's-land between these two areas and call it (you're way ahead of me here, aren't you?) the Bruce Buffer Buffer Zone.

I have to admit that I don't really see the point in all of this folderol, but it seems harmless enough.

As I sat down and prepared to play, I thought I heard a voice in my head saying, "Llllllllllllllllllet's get rrrrrrrrrready to rrrrrrrrrun bad!" But I might have just been imagining things. You'd probably only hear that in the Michael Buffer Poker Room, wherever that may be.

Good show

The most recent episode (Week 6, Episode 5) of PokerStars's "Big Game" is worth watching, here: http://thebiggame.pokerstars.net/

This week's "loose cannon" was horrible. Fortunately, he was busted on Thursday, and replaced by Jason Mercier, so for Friday we had an all-pro game. The most satisfying part of the show is a classic display of Hellmuthian bad play, bad luck, whining, swearing, and bragging. Oh, and LOSING! Hee hee hee!

Cheating and more cheating

Cheating in poker

I refer you to this rather remarkable post on the Pocket Fives forum, containing several stories of apparently shady goings-on in the Partouche Poker Tour:

http://www.pocketfives.com/f7/cheating-accepted-partouche-poker-tour-598429/

I obviously have no way to verify any of the accusations. I await further eyewitness accounts. For the final and longest story, I checked Michael Binger's blog, because he is named as a vocal objector to the ruling made, but there's nothing about it there yet. Binger is unquestionably one of the brightest minds in poker, and, from everything I can tell, a completely ethical straight shooter (except for the fact that he agreed to be a pro for the cheatingest online site on the planet, and except for the fact that he knocked Cardgrrl out of the HORSE tournament at the WSOP on a horrendously bad beat, which is even more unforgiveable).


Cheating in blogging

I first learned of this story from Richard Marcus's "Poker Cheating and Casino Cheating Blog," here. It rather nauseates me to have to post that link, but integrity requires it. It's ironic to speak of integrity in the same paragraph as Marcus's name. On several occasions I've called him out on his dogged refusal to follow ordinary ethical practices in blogging; see here, and then follow links backwards. He's a slime bucket. I continue to subscribe to his RSS feed because it does serve as a useful aggregator of news on the subject; if there were another that did the same but treated its source material with normal respect, I'd use it instead.

In this case, Marcus does not name the source, does not link to it. In fact, he tries to make it sound as if he has personally been hearing these stories from the French poker tour from his own private sources, and his publication of them is original. I did a Google news search for "Mike Matusow Partouche" and quickly found the Pocket Fives post noted above. I then discovered that it contained in one place all of the allegations that Marcus names. His post tries to make it sound as if he is compiling them from multiple independent sources, but in reality, he has just plagiarized one pseudonymous post.

I have zero hope of reforming Marcus; I believe him to be an unredeemable thief and cheat. But I feel some obligation to point out his ethical violations when I become aware of them.

Guess the casino, #621

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Answer: M Resort

What's in a screen name? #4

Another excellent selection, this one found on Bodog.

Safe for now

I periodically tire of preparing the "Guess the casino" posts, and think about killing the feature. It gets repetitious, people don't comment on it, it takes time to do, and sometimes I just think, "Meh, let it go." But then something comes over me and I buck up and do another batch of them.

Today was one of those days. So, after putting in a marathon session of pasting up GTC posts in advance, fans of the series (all three of you) can now rest assured that your game is safe for the time being. No matter what happens to me (run over by bus, stabbed by angry tourist whose aces got cracked, etc.), "Guess the casino" will continue to automagically appear daily at least through November 3.

After that, we'll see.

Going nuts with the nuts

Can anybody explain the betting in this hand--or lack thereof?




Nice value check with the royal flush on the river.

Guess the casino, #620

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Answer: Golden Nugget

Monster of a game

I just had an idea for a poker home-game variant: Double-flop Omaha (which, despite the name, means two full boards), high-low, with mandatory run-it-twice turn and river. That makes a total of four boards, and pots that can be split eight ways, even if there are only two players. If there are more than two players, and some tie for some portion of some pot, it might get split, oh, I dunno, about 32 ways. The best part is that you'd get through about one hand an hour--play the hand, then spend 55 minutes arguing over who won which portion(s) and how the chips get divided.

"N0, no, no. Look, it's very simple. I get 7/16 of the top and 3/8 of the bottom, Jim got quartered on the top and eighthed on the bottom, Suzi gets 5/16 of the top and 1/8 of the bottom. No, wait--her two pair got counterfeited on the second river on the bottom, and she tied for the nut low with Randy and Lisa, so she only gets 1/3 of 1/4 of 1/2...."

Doesn't that sound like fun?!

Just don't make me the dealer.

Guess the casino, #619

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Answer: Club Fortune

WET

Interesting article on WET, the company that built the Bellagio fountains, the several water features at City Center, the new Mirage volcano, and other stuff:

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2010/mar/17/how-wets-water-features-give-gravitas-vegas-strip/

Never give in. Never give in.

It's pretty cheeky and melodramatic of me to coopt Winston Churchill's famous address to his childhood school. After all, he was talking about Hitler attacking Great Britain, and I'm talking about a $15 online poker tournament. But I'm going to do it anyway:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great
or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good
sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of
the enemy.

I was reminded of that speech because I just won the HORSE tournament that the last couple of posts were about--and I did it after being severely short-stacked for a very long time. I think this marks the best tournament comeback I've ever made, from nearly being out on the final table bubble (9 left) with only one big bet left in my stack, to taking first place of $435.

When we were first into the money, I was cruising high, one of the chip leaders. Then I got this devastating hand:





(PokerStars does not scramble stud hands, so the order that you see is how they came.)

That was almost the end of me. But just a couple of hands later I won this squeaker:




That put me back into play, at least marginally. But then I got hosed again:



Yes, I bet it hard all the way. The guy who won that hand was an absolute maniac. Actually, that proved to be my salvation, after this. He was very, very, very slow to catch on to the fact that I was only putting my last chips in with strong hands. When I had just one or two bets, he'd call and I'd win. When I had a bit more, he'd try to push me off of hands when I had a third or more of my stack in. As the doctor says at the end of Bridge on the River Kwai (which I just watched again last week--one of the greatest movies of all time), "Madness!"

We were, at this point, on the final table bubble, with a pay jump of an extra $20, so I made myself an expert at folding. Once at the final table, three others went out lickety split before I had a chance to make a move. Here's the thing that is for me unprecedented: I remained the short stack for almost the entire time from the nine-handed final-table bubble until well into three-handed play. (Had to say "almost" because I did have one brief jaunt up to 4th/8, but then promptly got swatted down again.) At that point the maniac finally spewed off so many chips that I caught up to him and got into second chip position.

I was picking up a pot here and there when I had something good, but mostly biding my time to let the others knock each other out. What's surprising is that it actually worked! I was like the "little rat" that Daniel Negreanu condemns for playing timidly, sneaking up the money ladder. But when the big stacks are throwing huge raises at each other in every pot with marginal hands (which they were), it made perfect sense to me to sit back and watch the fur fly. I was really quite surprised to see myself surviving one elimination after another, when they didn't have the sense to wait for me to get blinded off. One guy was sitting out for the last hour or so, and coasted into 5th. It was only after he was gone that I really started playing again.

Anyway, after we had played three-handed for a long time, the other guy finally knocked out the maniac, and started heads-up play with a 2:1 chip lead. I did not think that I was likely to win. My opponent had been aggressive, but not insanely so. He was not going to be a pushover, that was for sure.

But I got lucky in a couple of key spots, with the big turning point being a hand in which I caught quad queens (hand #23). Forty hands after we had started heads-up play, I had him. Here's the whole gruesome battle, if you want to watch. He seriously turned on the afterburners on his level of aggression, as you'll see if you watch this playback. My best strategy appeared to be to lie in wait with better hands and let him hang himself. It worked well enough, I guess. I can show you the whole thing because it coincidentally all transpired during a hold'em round.



My opponent had been not only a decent player but a decent sportsman all the way through. He didn't complain about bad beats, didn't boast when winning a hand, didn't engage in trash talk, even gave out a few "nh" messages. But I lost all respect for him when, after the final hand, in which my K-K held up against his A-2, he signed off with this farewell:

ImLoveInErja said, "gg nigg3r"

Yeah, I think I'll forward that one to PokerStars. Jerk.


Just playing this tournament was weird in the first place, because it started at 6:45. I'm almost never up then. I was today only because I had been lying in bed for the previous couple of hours unable to get back to sleep. This may be the first time in my life that I'm glad I had a bout of insomnia.

You can put the deck back in the freezer now

Here's something I've never seen before: rolled up over rolled up. Glad I was on the good side of that one. Currently in chip lead in HORSE tournament, 48 left, 24 get paid.

What's in a screen name? #3

I couldn't sleep, so I entered an early-morning HORSE tournament (currently in 3rd, with 59/126 left).

I like the defensive nature of this guy's screen name. What are you gonna do--insult him by calling him an idiot?

Guess the casino, #618

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Answer: Bally's

So close

I came in second place in the Very Josie tournament tonight. OK, so second place in a $10, 13-person tournament won't exactly have the poker media's attention for more than a few days (pray tell, what good is it to have all these poker media friends when they won't report my triumphs?), but hey, it's what I was doing tonight, so I might as well report it.

I played pretty well overall, and never got insanely lucky or unlucky before the one-on-one portion started (well, OK, except for the little royal flush thing). Picked up a couple of $2 bounties in addition to the prize money.

When it got down to heads-up, I didn't like my chances. I was down 6:1 in chips, and facing Memphis Mojo, who was not only probably the strongest player of the last handful left, but was running red-hot all the way through the tournament. I had consistently stayed in second or third chip position for much of the game, but he was usually one notch ahead of me.

I did turn the chip lead around, due more to luck than skill (as you'll see in the first three hands here), but then couldn't seal the deal, even after getting my own 6:1 chip lead. Furthermore, I got 2-4 three times in the first 50 hands or so. Though I won them all, how kind does the deck have to be to me before I can win?

I blew it in a crucial spot where I made my most common online mistake: thinking somebody is bluffing when he isn't. I shoved on the flop with bottom pair and MM called with top pair (hand 59, I think). From there it was just a war of attrition, which he won. Got the last of it in good, but couldn't make it hold up. Good game, sir.

I thought the heads-up part was fun and challenging, and maybe even a little bit interesting to others who know either of the participants, so here it is, blow by blow. (Please do not feel compelled to watch. It's not like a Scorsese film or anything.)

Something REALLY beautiful

Now where's my high-hand bonus?

This is, by the way, the first royal I've hit since living in Vegas, live or online.

Full hand history below, though it's not especially interesting.

Life fail

I made some yummy stuff for my lunch today, but while eating the first of what should have been about four meals' worth from it, accidentally left the rest sitting on the stove. With the burner still on. Realized it only about 15 minutes later. Rest of stuff ruined.

Ironically--or perhaps fittingly, given our advanced ages (I'll be eligible for the old folks' event at the WSOP next year)--Cardgrrl did nearly the same thing once while I was visiting her. At the time, I teased her that leaving stove burners on accidentally is the classic sign that one's mental acuity has diminished to a point that it is no longer safe to live alone. Now it doesn't seem quite as funny.

I expect my family to intervene and cart me off to an assisted-living facility (completely devoid of dangerous implements such as stoves) any minute now.

Guess the casino, #617

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Answer: Sunset Station

The vision thing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guess the casino, #616

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Answer: Sahara

Guess the casino, #615

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Answer: Palace Station

Poker gems, #385

Jennifer Tilly, in Bluff magazine column, September, 2010, p. 77, on having a short stack at a tournament final table.


My stack barely has a pulse. I have to bitch slap it back to life.

Mandalay Bay comp system

I like the Mandalay Bay poker room, in spite of its quirks. It's quiet, reasonably smoke-free, comfortable, has pretty good dealer staff, good tourist:local ratio, and for four years it has stood as one of the most consistently profitable places I play.

But I am becoming increasingly annoyed with their bizarrely archaic comp system. After you are seated in a game, you have to get up, go to the desk at the back of the room, tell them your name, wait while they fish out an index card from the file, then sign in with the date and time and your initials (all the while missing the first two or three hands that you could be playing). Then when done for the day, you have to do it all over again to sign out.

To make matters worse, they keep losing my card. I have no idea why. It's not like I'm giving them a different alias on every visit. Today was the fourth time that I've been told they don't have a card for me. (Another annoying thing is that despite playing there dozens and dozens of times, there are only three employees who appear to recognize my face as a repeat customer, and none of them can call me by name. The guy most frequently in charge on Sunday afternoons has asked me "Have you ever played here before?" at least ten times.) I was trying to get a food ticket written out so that I could grab lunch at the cafe before playing, and I had to wait about ten minutes while somebody rummaged through all the various boxes that they keep these cards in. He finally found one with my name on it, but it was the old one, not the current one. They gave me the comp ticket anyway, just on good faith that somebody with enough visits to fill up the first card probably did have credit available--a gesture that kept me from really steaming up in frustration. By the time I came back after eating, they had, by some miracle, found the right card somewhere.

In addition to these four times in which they apparently had to call in the bloodhounds to track down my wandering card, at least half of the time it is filed under the right letter, but not really in alphabetical order, so the poor brush person has to lift out all of the"W" cards and look through them manually. It's all an enormous, inexcusable, pathetic, ridiculous waste of time for staff and patrons alike.

Here's an idea: How about using a COMPUTER to keep track of this stuff, instead of acting as if we're stuck in 1957? Even better, how about using a player's MGM card and a magnetic card reader, the way that some of your corporate sister properties do (MGM Grand, Aria, Mirage, and, until its recent sale, Treasure Island), and the way that most of your competitors do (Binion's, Station properties, Harrah's properties, South Point, Suncoast, M Resort, Stratosphere, Palms, Venetian, Hooters--heck, just about all of them that do food comps).

I swear that the room manager must be the actual embodiment of an old Phil Hartman Saturday Night Live character: "I don't understand your modern technology. Your 'magnetic card readers' frighten me. My primitive brain cannot comprehend your 'computers.' After all, I'm just an unfrozen cave man poker room manager."

Deuce-Four makes nuts, wins big pot, ho-hum

I did an early session at Mandalay Bay today. Only one hand is worth reporting.

I had 2-4 offsuit in the big blind. Four limpers, so I let it ride. Flop K-7-2 rainbow. I checked, guy to my left bet $7, one middle-position caller, and I called.

I must interrupt the tale at this point to relate something kind of woo-woo. I had a weird feeling come over me, one of certitude that (1) the next card was going to be another deuce, and (2) the hand was going to become blogworthy. Yeah, I know, people get such feelings all the time, and they don't mean anything. After every plane crash, there are survivors who say they just knew it was going to happen (though they got on board anyway, the morons). Of course, on every safe flight there are also people who have exactly the same kind of premonition, which turns out to be wrong, and it is quickly forgotten. I am not unaware of this human tendency to make a big fuss when an inkling turns out to be correct, and dismiss it when it fails. Still, I don't get such sensations often, so it was more than a little strange.

Anyway, just as I had predicted to myself, the turn was another deuce for me. I checked. Same guy bet $7 again, and again got a call. I check-raised to $21, and they both called.

River was another deuce. Let's see, that's one of them in my hand, and one, two, three of them on the board. I'm not sure I have all of the deuces, but I do seem to have the majority of them. What's more, the calls on the turn suggest that both opponents have a pair, both likely holding a king, so they now have full houses and might pay off. It was very hard to know how much to bet, but I went conservative: $30. Both called. The first guy tossed in his chips while looking at me suspiciously and asking, "You got a deuce?"

Yes. Yes, I do. $179 pot (after rake) goes my way.

I tried to tell the table that the 2-4 is the most powerful hand in poker and always makes the nuts, but they just guffawed and chuckled, apparently thinking I was joking. Some people just will not believe, even after you show them. Oh well. It helps keep my edge against the tourists if most of them throw away the best hand before the flop on the mistaken belief that it is weak.

The topper was the comment after the hand by the fellow on my left, who, it must be said, was very pleasant and friendly, but not especially bright: "I had a king. If you hadn't hit those two deuces, you'da lost."

The guy should have Mike Sexton's TV commentary job. He's got it all figured out.

Guess the casino, #614

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




Answer: Luxor

New poker room at South Point

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Guess the casino, #613

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Answer: Gold Coast

Guess the casino, #612

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




Answer: Circus Circus

Warning: Dangerously funny

Remember the Monty Python sketch about the joke that was so funny that everybody who heard it died of laughter? I was reminded of that when reading the press release, posted at Pokerati (here), about today's sale of Cereus (UltimateBlecch and Absolute Puker) to a company called Blanca Games, Inc.

If you're willing to risk death, let's look at a few of the howlers in the memo.

"Stuart Gordon, Chief Executive Officer of Blanca Games, said, 'The acquisition of Cereus is a significant opportunity for us. Cereus is a major platform of well-managed assets.'"

"Well-managed assets"! That's a good one, Stuart! It's so well-managed that it's bleeding money and needed to sell before it attained a value of exactly zero.

Mr. Gordon continues: "From our perspective, we have acquired a large, sophisticated online gaming operation with state-of-the art capabilities, ranging from compliance to business intelligence to online marketing to customer service."

Oh, he's piling them on now! "State-of-the-art capabilities," by which he presumably means an operation that doesn't encrypt the data stream, so that anybody on a wireless local network is vulnerable to having their hole cards read in real time, as well as having their account data read, and their funds subsequently transferred to a thief. Or maybe he meant software that awards to the pot to the company's most prominent sponsored pro, instead of to the player who actually had the best poker hand. "Compliance"? I guess that refers to "complying" with the absurdly low standards of the Kahnawake Gaming Commission--which basically only requires that they keep paying their licensing fees and pay a fine when somebody discovers wrongdoing (the "somebody" never being the KGC itself, which can't be bothered to actually, y'know, regulate anything or anybody, especially when it is tightly enmeshed in ownership of the entity supposedly being regulated). "Business intelligence"? This, one must guess, refers to the highly profitable business practice of owning a poker site and using one's privileged status to play against one's customers while looking at their down cards. "Customer service"? I reckon this is a sly reference to running the biggest and longest-lasting online poker cheating scheme in history, then lying about it to your customers for several years after being caught.

Gordon continues with yet another knee-slapper: "We intend to leverage the existing strengths of the Cereus Poker Network, particularly in the areas of security and customer service. Although we are impressed with many of the new security features on the Network today, security is and will remain our top priority." Stop, stop--you're killing me!

Whew! I somehow survived reading that thing for a second time. I fear, though, that I may have killed off a substantial fraction of my readers. Oh well. There's more where they came from (as UB and AP clearly feel about customers).

Duke of Fremont beaten and robbed

See story here: http://www.lvrj.com/news/-duke--calls-attack-just-a-bad-hand-101544848.html

Guess the casino, #611

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




Answer: Aria

Air and Space Museum

Yesterday Cardgrrl drove me out to Chantilly, Virginia, to tour the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. (I find the "Udvar-Hazy" name completely too obscure to remember, so in my mind it has become the "Uber-Nazi" center. I find this much more amusing than Cardgrrl does. However, it turned out to have at least a touch of accuracy, as some of the warplanes in the accompanying photos represent the first time that swastikas have appeared in this blog.)

It's a very cool and interesting place to visit--a fact which I can best support not by describing stuff, but by showing you a ton of photos that I took while there. See here.

Most surprising fact learned at the museum: The U.S. had flying aircraft carriers in the 1930s. Who knew?! Second most surprising fact: The SR-71 Blackbird housed here flew coast to coast on its last run (20 years ago) in 64 minutes. Third most surprising fact (tie): The urine collecting devices on Skylab were yellow, and they shot their urine out into space after collecting it. In space, no one can hear you pee.

Go see this museum next time you're in the D.C. area.

Online mystery

I'm back in Vegas after a delightful week with Cardgrrl.

While I was visiting in her apartment one evening, we tried playing a sit-and-go tournament on PokerStars. I had my laptop with me and tapped into the wireless network that she has set up so that she can use both her desktop and laptop from the same DSL line. But as soon as one of us was registered for a tournament (single-table or multi-table), the other couldn't register for it. Instead, the second one to register would get a message saying that security wouldn't allow it while the first person was in the tournament.

OK, I can understand that--a little extra protection against two people sitting next to each other and sharing information in order to collude.

However, I've heard stories before of many, many people who live in the same residence and share a common internet connection and who are yet able to play simultaneously in tournaments while using different computers--husbands and wives, roommates, brothers, etc.

How is it that some people can do it and others not? Cardgrrl thought it had to do with the router settings, specifically whether the local network assigns the computers the same IP address or different ones. Is that it? If not, what makes this work? Inquiring minds want to know.

Guess the casino, #610

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Answer: Suncoast

Things I've seen

In the morning, I'll be flying back to Vegas. It has been a lovely and delightful week with Cardgrrl, as always, but life must go on. All play and no work makes Grump a broke boy. Or something like that.

My first day here (Wednesday last week) I went for a walk while Cardgrrl was on an extended work-related conference call. Here's some of what I saw.

Some very pretty flowers (pansies? I'm not sure):



A big, old tree with wrinkled skin:



A sculpture that I kind of liked, for reasons I can't exactly articulate. It is identified as "Divine Nature" by Chris Tousimis, 2006:



This is part of the outside of a Jewish center. I just like the assemblage of interesting lines--two peaks, one of them under a gentle arch, some vertical lines, some horizontal lines, some criss-crossy lines:



A lovely, simple, red door at St. Albans parish:




Many years ago, my brother told me about having seen a bunch of ants paired up two by two, heads together, mostly not moving, but occasionally the dyads would break apart and they'd each find new partners. He was at the time somehow in contact with E.O. Wilson, the world's pre-eminent ant researcher, so asked him what that was about. Wilson apparently told him that it was a territorial battle between adjacent colonies, and the pairs were soldier ants that had their jaws locked on each other. I thought that sounded pretty cool, and for a long, long time I have hoped that someday I would get to see such a thing for myself. (You might think photos would be on the web. Maybe they are, but do a Google image search for "ant wars" and you get all sorts of things, but not that.)

I stopped to look at a bunch of ants on the sidewalk, wondering what bit of food had attracted them. I was surprised to find that there was none. They were also mostly stationary, not milling about. When I looked more closely, I noticed that they were in pairs, head to head. I had found it! My own little ant war! And now you can see it, too. Look at the big version, and it's easier to see what's going on.

(The macro setting on my camera seems to have some aberration in the lens toward the right side. Never noticed it before, and don't know what it's about. More exploration needed when I get home. Sorry for the partially blurred image.)



Here's a shot from the basement of Cardgrrl's apartment building. Kind of a Hitchcock "Vertigo" thing going on, though it feels a lot safer on the bottom looking up than the other way 'round:




Finally, while on a trip out to the burbs for some errands, we passed by this sign, which is one of the finest examples of oxymoronity I have come across:





(Yes, I know that it's referring to Bush 41, not 43, and not to his own personal intelligence but to the gathering of security information about other nations. Still funny.)

Guess the casino, #609

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Answer: Sahara

Guess the casino, #608

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Answer: Orleans

An experiment in variance

Worth reading: "Poker's Inconvenient Truth." (Hat tip: Pokerati.)

Guess the casino, #607

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Answer: Imperial Palace (Where else are there cookies in the poker room?!)