I voted today

Whew! Even though I ignored the plethora of judicial races (I have no idea why Nevada has such a bewildering tangle of different courts), it took me about two hours sitting at my computer to look up and read about all the other candidates in the wide assortment of elections on this ballot. I always vote absentee, whether or not I technically qualify, because I prefer being able to do it all at once, rather than mark some sort of sample ballot at home then have to copy the results onto an official ballot at a polling place. The Review-Journal has a handy and reasonably neutral voter's guide here, which helped streamline the research process.

Because I didn't trek out to a poll, I didn't get one of those "Kiss Me, I Voted" stickers. But I feel that somebody should kiss me anyway. Volunteers?

Poker gems, #393

John Vorhaus, in Card Player magazine column, October 20, 2010 (vol. 23, #21), page 74.


They can't figure out your strategy if you don't have one.

Guess the casino, #667

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




Answer: Golden Nugget

What's in a screen name? #12

I believe that a certain somebody of my close acquaintance will find this name and photo combination quite satisfying.

Betrayed!

I can scarcely believe that the Deuce-Four would turn on me like that, after all I have done for it.

I am left speechless.

Blushing....

...but extremely flattered at this, from VegasRex (now transitioning to Pacific North Rex, after a move to the Seattle area):

I've surfed a bit over the past month and there are a few locals that are
turning out fresh, non-press release content on a daily basis. Abowitz has
his own site now and Poker Grump is still going strong, so I think the Vegas
blogosphere is in good hands. As a matter of fact, if I get around to
voting for the Trippie Awards this year (which I am obviously no longer eligible
to receive), I will pull the lever for those two. Consider this my
endorsement.

See: http://www.casinotop10.net/whats-in-a-name.shtml

And for those who don't know who the "Abowitz" referred to is, see here: http://www.goldplateddoor.com/about/ Definitely worth adding to your RSS feed.


While I'm at it, I just realized it's been a few months since I Googled myself to see who what other bloggers might have been saying about me. Most of these I saw when they were first written (since I have about 87 kajillion poker blogs in my RSS feed), others were new discoveries just now:

http://eotf.blogspot.com/2010/10/for-poker-grump.html

http://wolynski.blogspot.com/2010/10/very-rude-blogger.html

http://veryjosie.blogspot.com/2010/07/ive-got-bad-news-and-good-news-i-won.html

http://hardboiledpoker.blogspot.com/2010/09/search-for-system.html

http://lowstakeshands.blogspot.com/2010/07/squeeze_07.html

http://craakker.blogspot.com/2010/06/mind-reading-at-meadows.html

http://tymimo.blogspot.com/2010/06/early-fathers-day-vegas-excursion.html

http://steeser.blogspot.com/2010/08/big-saturday-of-poker-and-horses.html

http://taopoker.blogspot.com/2010/05/wsop-link-dump-welcome-to-america.html

http://jgoat.blogspot.com/2010/09/your-weekly-dose-of-crazy.html

http://pokerandbridge.blogspot.com/2010/06/theres-no-crying-in-baseball-or-poker.html

http://hardboiledpoker.blogspot.com/2010/06/2010-wsop-day-18-beating-2-4.html

http://hardboiledpoker.blogspot.com/2010/06/2010-wsop-day-23-act-youve-known-for.html

Poker gems, #392

Phil Hellmuth, on the PokerStars Big Game, October 6, 2010.


I mean, I've added stats and math to my game completely, because, y'know, one of the things I love is the way that the mathematics, the new mathematics in poker, defines the moves that I've made for decades. And I do completely incorporate mathematics and statistics in my game, because why wouldn't you learn that stuff? It takes a couple of hours to really understand the math in poker. Why wouldn't I learn it? I think it's more difficult for them, the mathematical players, to learn what I do, because that's a God-given talent.


[Pardon me while I barf. I bet that Chris Ferguson, Bill Chen, and Jerrod Ankenman are jealous that Phil was able to master the mathematics of poker in just a couple of hours.]

Guess the casino, #666

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




Answer: Club Fortune

Bad etiquette all around

A hand on the PokerStars Big Game concludes with Tony G checking the river, Jason Mercier bluffing his missed draws with 10-high, and Tony G calling. Mercier does not show his cards, just says, "You got it," but doesn't muck. Tony G shows his ace-high and wins the pot. Mercier mucks.

Tony G asks the dealer to open Mercier's hand. Dealer kills it by tapping it on the pot, then shows. Mercier is clearly offended by this request: "Why do you want to see my hand?" Tony G replies, "I just wanted to see what you called the flop with, that's all. I'm sorry. It's nothing personal, right?" Mercier doesn't respond, but makes a face.

At this point, commentator Joe Stapleton adds, "Asking for a hand to be opened is a big no-no in live poker."

Tony G doesn't drop it: "That's fair enough, isn't it?" Mercier says, practically through gritted teeth, "I guess." Tony G says, "I don't want to be nasty or anything." Mercier says, "I don't think it's being nasty, it's just bad etiquette." Antonio Esfandiari repeats Mercier's words: "It's just bad etiquette." (There's also a comment in there from Isaac Haxton which I couldn't make out, but I get the impression he's reassuring Tony G that he did nothing wrong.) Phil Hellmuth pipes up to add his opinion that it was "bad etiquette." Later, Stapleton adds that Tony G's request "was within the rules, but is frowned upon."

Mercier, Stapleton, Esfandiari, and Hellmuth all have a point, but they're also missing a bigger one. The chain of bad etiquette was started by Mercier himself. Tony G called his bet. His obligation then was to either expose his cards or muck them, and to do so quickly. He failed in that duty.

Tony G was well within his rights to ask to see Mercier's cards under the circumstances, but a much better alternative would have been for him to sit quietly, do nothing, and wait for Mercier to take one of his two required actions--waiting until the heat death of the universe, if necessary. Or he could have reminded Mercier of who bet and who called, and therefore who had the obligation to show first.

If he had called and Mercier had insta-mucked, then I would agree that Tony G was out of line to ask for the show. Still technically within the rules, but something I would never do. If a guy mucks without showing after getting called, he had nothing, and the informational value you get from forcing him or the dealer to show his cards isn't worth the bad feelings you engender.

But here, Mercier was the one who created the problem by not showing when it was his turn to do so. Tony G's solution to the problem was not the most graceful, but I assign the greater fault to Mercier for not performing the simple act that he clearly knows is his duty.

Offsetting penalties, no yardage awarded.


I can't say I'm surprised at Mercier's conduct. He was at Cardgrrl's table on the second day of her HORSE event at the World Series of Poker, so I got to observe him from just a few feet away. He basically threw a little hissy-fit at the dealer, who was only doing his job. Mercier had arrived at the table without his identification, and the dealer, following the instructions he had been given, refused to deal him in. He called his supervisor over to handle it. Mercier wanted to play while the problem got sorted out, but the dealer told him he wasn't allowed to deal to him. Mercier got irrationally snippy with the dealer when the problem was one of his own creation!

Then, once that got straightened out, Mercier proceeded to tell another player about his outrage the previous day when a cashier wouldn't violate some protocol for him (I can't remember the details now) in order to get him bought into an event. Again, it was a situation that Mercier had caused by waiting until the very last second to try to register, as I recall.

My amateur diagnosis is that Mercier is a snot-nosed brat who thinks that all sorts of special accommodations should be made for him. His attitude in both stories struck me as the classic, "Don't you know who I am?" sort of thing. Which is why it does not surprise me at all to see him break a rule of play, then accuse his opponent of being the one with bad etiquette. The kid has some serious growing up to do, if you ask me.

Tony G knows

I'm just now getting around to watching the new episodes of the PokerStars Big Game that I missed while I was in Utah. In this shot you see the loose cannon folding when he realizes that he's beat.

There's an error in the graphics, obviously. It was 100% for the Deuce-Four from the moment the cards were cut.

What's in a screen name? #11

I especially like it when a good screen name is paired with an appropriately silly avatar photo.

It's way good, obv

He never had a chance.

Guess the casino, #665

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




Answer: Jokers Wild

Blegging

You may have noticed that all of my sidebar stuff has disappeared recently. Well, it didn't vanish, exactly, it just got shoved down to the bottom of the page instead of showing up where it belongs. This happened when I tried to insert a new page element in the sidebar (the PokerStars banner). It turned out to be too wide and bled over the text of posts, so I removed it again a minute later (insertion and removal both done via the "Page Elements" graphic feature of Blogger). That's when the sidebar contents mysteriously banished themselves to the bottom of the page.

Even stranger is that if you click on "older posts" at the bottom, or click a link to any single post, the formatting is normal. It's only when the blog is loaded without specification to a particular post or class of posts that it fails (i.e., if you use a label or the archives index, eveything works right).

This has me baffled. I've spent an hour or so scrutinizing the HTML, and have concluded that the glitch most likely resides in the "sidebar wrapper" instructions, but I can't pinpoint it. I suppose I could start from scratch with the template and add the other stuff back in one at a time, but I'd really rather not do that if it can be fixed with a simple edit to the template code.

If there exists a reader with proficiency in web tech who feels like volunteering a little (at least I think it would only be a little) time to locate my glitch and suggest a cure, I'd be grateful. Email address is in the "Profile" section (which, sadly, you will now have to scroll to the bottom to find).


Addendum, October 19, 2010

I didn't do a thing, but the problem has resolved. I have no idea what happened overnight. Utter mystery.

What's in a screen name? #10

I think that is sufficiently self-explanatory!

Guess the casino, #664

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




Answer: Bally's

Why I'll be voting for Sharron Angle

I'm well aware of Angle's "extremist" positions--some of which I agree with (e.g., privatize Social Security, get rid of the Department of Education) and some of which I disgree with (e.g., her views on abortion and immigration). I'm also aware that she won't play well with others in the Senate, and thus will likely be unable to get her way much, not to mention the loss of ability to represent Nevada-specific interests, being at the bottom of the power totem pole rather than having Harry Reid at the top of it.

But for all her faults, she'll be getting my vote. The reasons for this are best expressed by two other writers, so I'll just point you to them.

Steve Chapman: http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/16/the-tea-party-and-the-value-of Excerpt: Angle and her ilk "are often accused of craziness—one MSNBC commentator said Angle 'sounds like a mental patient.' But to the tea partiers, that's not a bug; it's a feature. If a $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit represents sanity, they would prefer a candidate who escaped from the psych ward."

Tunku Varadarajan: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-14/are-carl-paladino-and-christine-odonnell-too-much-for-libertarians-to-stomach/ Excerpt: " However distasteful she may be, the political and symbolic importance of defeating Reid is so great that its imperative trumps all distaste. Reid, to libertarian eyes, is the incarnation of our big-government malaise. If he survives, all our hearts will sink and the world will go dark."

Politicians are fond of labeling everything a "crisis" so as to justify whatever interventional policies they claim are needed to fix it. I am skeptical and disdainful of most such "the sky is falling" alarms. But I am convinced that the single most threatening public policy issue facing us is the runaway spending and federal debt, and the associated general growth and unconstitutional overreach of the federal government (including, not least, the abominable stimulus package, bank bailouts, takeover of the auto industry, and Obamacare). For the foreseeable future, credibility on taking drastic measures to curtail and reverse such matters will dominate any other considerations in my choices of candidates.

Guess the casino, #663

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




Answer: Sunset Station

Guess the casino, #662

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




Answer: Luxor

Stratosphere stories

I played at the Stratosphere last night. There's lots of things not to like about this room, but the games tend to be much softer than average and it's one of the closest casinos to my apartment, so I go through periods of holding my nose and giving them some of my business. I'm in one of those cycles now, having played there three times this month so far.


Bluff, lose; big hand, lose

Soon after sitting down, it became obvious where the money was going to come from. Our table had a perpetual bluffer. He was burning through C-notes, repeatedly trying all-in bluffs and getting picked off.

I got lucky and twice made strong hands against him and had easy calls to make. Then, for what turned out to be his last hand of the evening, I called his pre-flop raise with suited K-J. Flop K-K-5. Ding! He bet, I called along with one other. Turn: 5. Although this gave me a full house, I didn't like it, because I thought it might kill the action. Fortunately, it didn't. He bet again, I called again. Third guy dropped out. River a blank. Fish bet yet again. I raised all-in, he called immediately. I showed the top full house. He flipped over A-A with a look of disgust.

You can just imagine this guy's level of frustration. He bluffs and bluffs and bluffs, desperately trying to win a pot with nothing, then finally, finally!, picks up aces, figuring that he'll get paid handsomely because of the table image he has developed, and CRACK!

He gave up and left the game. Sometimes it's just not your day.


Weird non-chop

I had an inexperienced player on my immediate right, as betrayed by his not knowing some basic mechanics of casino play. When the first opportunity to chop the blinds came up, I didn't wait for him to make the offer (which I think it slightly better protocol), because I thought he might not know about that option. I asked, "Do you want to chop?" He said, "I can't--I've got a pretty big hand here." And with that, he raised to $8. I showed him my 10-3 offsuit and folded.

He obliged my curiosity by tabling As-6s as he raked in his $2 profit, and said, "See? That's why I had to play it." There was not a hint of humor or irony in his voice or face or demeanor. He absolutely meant what he said.

Wow, dude--a suited A-6. Yeah, I can sure see how you couldn't possibly pass up a chance to play that.

I didn't say anything, but if a possible chop situation had come up again, I was prepared to explain to him that we were now committed to playing them all out, based on his precedential decision. As I've explained before, I'll either chop or not consistently with somebody, but I'm not stupid enough to agree to let the other player selectively choose whether to chop based on the strength of his starting cards.

I didn't get the chance to educate him on this point, however, because a few hands later I took the last of his chips with A-K on a king-high flop, and he left the table without another word.


Superman

Towards the end of my session, our game was joined by this gentleman:




He was in a wheelchair, obviously the subject of some sort of neuromuscular disorder. He had very limited strength and dexterity. But from some hiding spot on his wheelchair he pulled out the wedge-shaped wooden block you can see in the photo, and asked the brush for some Scotch tape to anchor it to the table and to prevent cards from jamming against its leading edge.

I was pleased with how nearly everybody reacted to his presence. The dealers made the small accommodation of carefully pitching his hole cards to the base of his ramp (which, by the way, had the words "Rock On" carefully engraved in script on its face), sweeping them away when he verbally declared a fold, and helping him with getting chips into the pot as required. Players, for their part, were patient about giving him the time he needed to slide his cards up the ramp to where he could peek at them before acting. Well, with one exception--there was an extremely surly Eastern European dude (when chatting with a friend who was standing behind him, the language sounded Slavic) two seats to his left who showed undisguised irritation at the delay, and routinely mucked out of turn rather than wait. Jerk.

I loved what I assume was the deliberate irony of this guy wearing a Superman shirt.

Guess the casino, #661

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




Answer: Gold Coast

Nostalgia

My brother just sent me this scan of a picture taken of me with my two siblings when I was about four. Who would have guessed that a kid that cute could grow up to be such a degenerate?

For comparison, here's what we looked like a year ago at my brother's wedding:



Notice that I'm the only one who still has the same hairstyle 45 years later (even if there's a little less of it).

New computer

I just bought a new computer, thanks to Cardgrrl pointing out to me this good deal:

http://www.woot.com/Blog/ViewEntry.aspx?Id=14592

My current one is also an Acer laptop. I've had it for 4 years and 8 months, doing hard daily duty, and I have liked it. But it has been showing signs of age and possible failure to come. The case is cracked. The display has a two-inch vertical band that is lighter than the rest of the screen, which seems to be due to a wonky connection between the screen and the graphics card. The DVD player croaks sometimes. The battery no longer holds a charge of more than 10 minutes or so of work time--enough to shut down properly when the Nevada Energy blacks out the neighborhood, but worthless on a cross-country flight. It is subject to random crashes that are becoming increasingly scary, looking nearly lethal, and requiring more time and finesse to recover from.

It would be nice if computers sent an explicit message, like, "I'm going to die one week from today, so this would be a good time to shop for my replacement." But they don't. Which means that you have two choices: (1) Wait for it to die. This means frantically trying to do comparison shopping when you need the replacement now, plus the obvious problems trying to get precious files from old to new. (That's less of a problem for me, since I have both an external hard drive backup and Carbonite off-site backup. Kind of belt-and-suspenders, but it helps me sleep well at night.) (2) Buy a replacement when the old one is still functional, which means foregoing what would possibly be many months or even years of service from it. Given the age of the current machine, the amount of wear I've put on it, and the signs of trouble it is giving me, combined with my general aversion to risk, I think Cardgrrl is right that option (2) is wiser. I can take my time moving files and getting it set up and making sure everything works, while the old one is still holding in there, before I make the final jump from one to the other.

So now I'll have four times the hard drive space (though the current one is only half full, so it will mostly go wasted), a much faster processor, longer battery life, a card reader for my digital photos (no more hauling out the USB cable!), a built-in webcam instead of the clip-on one, a Blu-Ray player, and Windows 7 instead of XP. And it costs half as much as I paid for the old one. Seems like a worthwhile upgrade--maybe long overdue.

Palms reading

I had a good time at the Palms tonight. It's been several months since I was there, and I can't really conjure up a good reason why. It remains generally one of my favorite places to play, and I can't put my finger on what has made me pass it by for the last while. It has been so long since my last visit that they have issued at least five new chips (pictured above). Plus, I got lucky and collected a handful of older ones that have been missing from my collection.


Keepin' me wai-ai-ai-ai-aiting

It didn't start off well. I arrived at 5:30, and was put at a table with three others, anticipating getting a second table going soon. It didn't happen. Three people soon left the main game, and the three ahead of me got put in. But then it stagnated, and nobody was leaving. I ended up waiting 90 minutes before a seat opened up. It's almost unheard of for a table to go that long with nobody leaving, but it happened. I did a whole New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle (I usually carry one with me for just such occasions), plus read the whole new issue of Poker Player newspaper, caught up on Twitter by cell phone, and still had to twiddle my thumbs for a while before getting a seat.

There's a reason for this that I had no trouble identifying. Since I was last there, the Palms has added two incentives to keep butts in chairs. There is a weekly freeroll tournament, requiring just six hours to qualify. Plus, for every eight hours of play, you get a free ticket to their buffet, in addition to the regular $1/hour food comps. That's worth up to $25 or so (depending on when you use it), so effectively quadruples the food comp rate. The net result appears to be a substantial increase in locals punching the time clock.

I watched the table while I was waiting, and there were four players who spent as much time away from the table as playing. All were locals. Also, all were Asian, if you want to read something into that fact. One of them did the dreaded "walk around for an hour then come back and cash out without playing another hand" thing. It is so incredibly rude to tie up a seat when you're not going to return to play. I don't know what makes people think this is OK.

Unfortunately, the Palms has no mechanism in place to prevent people from abusing their giveaways like this. They are not clocked out for time away from the table, and there is no "third man walking" rule.

Management there has got to get a handle on this, or it's going to kill what I have usually found to be one of the most action-packed games of its kind in the city. It is incredibly short-sighted to let their games get nitted to death. The nits will not reward the room with long-term loyalty once the promotions go away; they'll just move on to whatever other casino is offering them the most freebies, having given the room a bad reputation as dullsville in the meantime.


Juicy Game

All that changed at 8:00 p.m., though. The nitty locals left and were replaced by action players. That's because I had unwittingly stumbled into the Thursday night "Juicy Game," a fairly recent new promotion. The regular $1-3 game gets modified: They change from 10-handed to 9-handed (for reasons that are unclear to me; I still prefer 10). They up the maximum buy-in to $1000. They add an optional button straddle, your choice from $6 up to all-in, with the button having last action regardless of how many raises have gone before.

These changes definitely get any game out of the gutter. It rapidly turns into LAGtown, and the pots build rapidly. It is high variance and not for the faint of heart. It will make a nit's eyeballs bleed.

I decided to get into the spirit of the game and joined in the button straddlers (though only for the minimum). Glad I did--I tripled up doing so once, after an UTG raise to $15, followed by every player calling, I screwed up my courage and shoved with 8-8, got called by the original raiser (he had A-J) and won the hand, including the dead money from the callers who all folded. Another time I doubled up by limp-reraising all-in to a button straddler after he raised to $25 or so. I thought he had nothing and was just trying to take the many $6 calls, but he apparently had enough of a hand to call me. My A-J offsuit won. I don't know what he had.

It's not the style of game in which I'm most comfortable, but I buckled my seat belt and made the best of it. I guess I did OK, because when I racked up to leave, I not only had a tidy profit, but got a compliment from the most aggressive player there: "You're a good player. Every time you were in the pot with me, I was scared!" I smiled and said, "That's the effect I was going for."


Sad news

While I was waiting for my seat, a bit of news was passed on to me by Linda, who now works at the Palms poker room, but whom I have known since my Hilton days; in fact, she was the first Vegas poker-room employee to greet me and learn my name, and her attitude was so welcoming that it was a major reason the Hilton caught my attention and affection early on as my poker "home." The news she gave me was that Annie died within the last several days. I know nothing more about it, the hows or whys.

Who is Annie, you ask? Well, Annie is one of the most colorful characters among the Vegas local poker players, a tiny, 50-something Asian woman with a propensity for swearing, dirty jokes, and inappropriately young men. If you've spent much time at the tables here, you've probably played with her. I have written about her at least twice: here and here.

Her style was Rocky McRockerson--top five hands and not much else. Frankly, it made it very easy to play against her most of the time, because she might as well have been playing with her cards face up. But it was sufficiently effective against tourists who hadn't figured her out, and she usually left with more money than she came in with.

The first time I tangled with her in a big pot, I got extremely lucky and cracked her A-A with my A-K after all the money went in on a king-high flop. I rivered a third cowboy, and thereby earned myself a tongue-lashing in her broken English for being a stupid luckbox. She didn't talk to me for a couple of weeks after that, she was so mad. But we gradually developed a mutual friendliness and respect in spite of that rough beginning.

One time at the Hilton, by fourth street there were three 8s on board, and from her body language and betting I was about as sure as I could be that Annie had the case 8 for quads. (She did.) But my two hole cards plus one of the eights and whatever the other card was (can't remember the details now) gave me an open-ended straight-flush draw. She eyed me quizzically when I called, which I did because she would absolutely have lost her entire stack to me if I hit (as anybody would in that situation). I missed. I asked her later if she would have been mad at me if I had made my hand and felted her. "No way," she said. "It's just poker." I laughed out loud, because I knew it wasn't true. I was never sure whether she was deliberately lying there or just had a horrendously misguided concept of how she reacted to bad beats, but everybody that knew her well with whom I shared that story agreed that she would have delivered a rant that would have put Phil Hellmuth to shame if she had lost with quads to a straight flush on the river.

I'm sad that I won't get to run into her at the tables any more. She was one of a kind.

Nice start

I just started a razz tournament on Stars. Within the first few minutes, I managed to make three big hands against an opponent who either has no concept how razz is played or decided to spew off his chips and go do something else instead. Each of these three hands was played out with me raising at every opportunity, and him either calling me down or capping every street:







That's 23 big bets on the first hand, 14 on the second, 49 on the third. (The second hand was, as you can see, an attempted steal that just happened to break my way.)

Shortly after that hat trick, and after our fish went broke, I made a wheel and got called down on all but the last street, for another 7 big bets in the pot:



So 30 minutes in, I have more than doubled my stack (usually hard to do in a limit game) and zipped into the tournament chip lead. Now we'll see if I can hold on.


Update

Sigh. Of course it couldn't last forever. Made final table, but out in 8th place (only 4 paid) after a series of four crushing suckouts.

Minor mystery/irritant at PokerStars

I continue to play a few HORSE single-table sit-and-go tournaments a week, mostly on PokerStars. I typically sign up for a $5, a $10, and a $20 game, and go with whichever one or two fill up first.

Something that bugs me every time I go to register is how the tournament lobby is organized:



Once you have clicked on "game" to sort by game type, the next level of sorting is apparently done by tournament number, which is a completely useless way of organizing things. You could logically make the next category of sorting either turbo/regular (because there are surely people who care more about that structure than the buy-in) or by the buy-in (because there are surely people who want, say, a $10 game but don't care much whether it's turbo or non-turbo). But sorting by tournament number--which is completely arbitrary and which nobody could possibly care about--makes no sense at all. In order to sign up for my three games, I have to hunt around for the right buy-in levels, while checking to be sure to avoid the turbo games, which I dislike.

Compare this to how Full Tilt has its tournament lobby:




It's perfect. The turbos are separate from the non-turbos, and within each category the games are automatically sorted into descending order of buy-in. It's clean, simple, logical, and as easy to navigate as it could possibly be.

Hey, PokerStars--why can't you do this as well?

WBCOOP

Guess the casino, #660

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




Answer: Circus Circus

Tuscany acting strangely

I received this flyer in the mail today. It has me puzzled.

It's not too strange for a poker room to close and then later re-open. It happened to the Hilton and the Rampart, for example (though both later closed yet again). I understand that the Tropicana will be opening a new poker room in December, two years after closing the old one.

But what's strange here is the timeline. I can't quickly find anything that tells me the exact date, but the Tuscany poker room closed only about two months ago. With the other examples I can think of (at least the ones that aren't just a temporary closing for remodeling or for moving the room), it was years between the closing and re-opening, enough time that the poker economy could plausibly have changed. It does not appear from this announcement that they have overhauled the room or moved it. (If they had, I would expect language about a "new" room, rather than the old one being "back.")

Nothing could possibly have transpired in the last two months that would make it a good business decision to not have a poker room then but to have one now. What did they accomplish by closing for two months? They gave their few loyal regulars a chance to find new places to play, so that they will have to build their customer base from scratch again.

I am forced to this conclusion: Either it was a bad decision to close the room in the summer, or it's a bad decision to re-open it now.

I have mixed feelings about the place. It's a horrid little room in terms of aesthetics and management and game availability. Their worst sin: Twice when I called asking if they had a no-limit game going, they lied to me and said yes, apparently hoping that either they would have one would be going by the time I got there or I would be part of a list that would start a game soon thereafter. But on the other hand, on the rare occasions that I have found a NLHE game going, the players just hand you their stacks. OK, not quite literally, but the Tuscany remains at the top of my list in terms of average dollars won per session. I'm willing to put up with a lot for the chance to get into that kind of game.

So I'll cross my fingers and hope that the planned resurrection works.

Guess the casino, #659

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Answer: Aria

Poker gems, #391

Phil Laak, in Poker Pro magazine, October, 2010, p. 68, on discussing hands at the table.


If you spend your time learning and thinking about the game, what's the point in talking about it? It's like playing Capture the Flag, then having an open meeting about where you hid your flag and letting your opponents hear. Make it harder for them.... You don't need to impress friends or influence people and have them think you know poker. Your objective is to walk away with more than you started with.

Not so Smart

I'm back from my trip to Utah.

I love my old Honda Prelude, but with 18 years and 171,000 miles behind it, I can't completely trust the old boy not to have a breakdown in the middle of nowhere, so I usually rent a car for these long trips. On three previous trips I've had a Toyota Yaris, a Toyota Corolla, and a Suzuki SX-4, and have been happy with all of them. The cheapest economy class is fine for me; my needs and tastes are pretty simple.

Well, maybe not quite as simple as Advantage Car Rental thought. This is their particular vision of an "economy" car:




That's right--it's a Smart car. I was surprised, because I didn't know anybody rented those. But I thought, what the heck. I've been kind of curious how they are to drive anyway.

This is one of those "It seemed like a good idea at the time" stories.

I can't remember the last time I drove a car this uncomfortable. Let me count the ways:

• Harsh suspension--lowered and made harder still in this special "BRABUS" edition, which also adds low-profile tires to further degrade the ride (but look oh-so-stylish!).
• No cruise control, combined with a heavy accelerator spring.
• Non-adjustable steering wheel, combined with nearly non-adjustable seats.
• Almost unpadded seats.
• No armrest.
• Terrible road and wind noise.
• Car that gets catapulted sideways with every gust.
• A shoulder belt that cuts across the neck (or at least did mine).
• Seats that don't recline for a nap at a rest stop, because there's not enough space behind them.
• An engine that hesitates badly on takeoff combined with an automatic transmission that lurches the car forward and back on every upshift, which together make acceleration to highway speeds a whiplash-inducing experience.

These features blend to make this the most awful, miserable, fatiguing highway cruiser I've ever been in. You remember how John Candy's car ended up in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles"--roofless and on fire? I'd have rather driven that for 820 miles than this thing. Never again.

I honestly don't understand why anybody would buy one of these cars. No exaggeration here--I can't figure out what niche they serve, other than being able to park where nothing else will. Yes, they're good on gas. I got 40.1 mpg on this trip. But so what? I got 39.2 in a Yaris on the same journey, with far more comfort and far more room for extra stuff and extra people when you need it, for essentially the same purchase price. A Honda Fit would be comparable, with even more space. As far as I can tell, you're buying half a car but for full price. I just don't get it.

Would you like to guess how this vehicle's 70 horsepower, 3-cylinder engine did trying to keep up with the 75-80 mph speed limits going uphill in the Rocky Mountains? That's right--pretty damned poorly. That's about 35 hp less than either the Yaris or Fit, with no extra economy to show for it.

Just before I left for Utah, I had occasion to be reviewing the medical records of a woman who had been rear-ended by a oil tanker truck and was suing for her injuries. She had been in a Volvo. Here's today's piece of advice: If you're going to get rear-ended by a semi, do not choose to be in a Smart at the time, unless you like the idea of "Peterbilt" being permanently stamped into your backside.

I derived one other important conclusion from my trial of this brand: No matter how hard you try, you can neither look nor feel like a race car driver when you're behind the wheel of a Smart:




Here's what my favorite car magazine had to say about the Smart fortwo and the Brabus version.

Bonus section

As usual, the drive back was beautiful. I don't know how people make that drive without stopping to take pictures of the mountains. Today I got going earlier than usual, so didn't have directly overhead sun as on previous trips. Some light fog and low-hanging clouds combined for a rather spectacular display, the glory of which my little snapshots can only hint at:

Guess the casino, #658

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Answer: Suncoast

Guess the casino, #657

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Answer: Riviera

Guess the casino, #656

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Answer: O'Shea's

Guess the casino, #655

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Answer: Flamingo

Guess the casino, #654

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Answer: Aria

Up, up, but mostly AWAY!

Tomorrow morning I'm driving up to Salt Lake City to visit my family. I don't have any particular plans as to how long I'll stay--a few days to a week, most likely. (See the flexibility that comes with this whole unemployment thing?!) I'll let you know when I'm back.

Lying or mistaken?

In the October issue of Poker Pro magazine, Carl Sampson reviews a hand from the 2008 NBC Heads Up Poker Championship. It's Andy Bloch versus Chris Ferguson in the final round. It's played best two out of three, and Bloch won the first match. Here's the first hand of the second match:




I'm sure I watched this when it first aired, though it didn't make any lasting impression on me.

Sampson questions whether Bloch really misread his hand. If Bloch genuinely thought he had Q-8 instead of Q-5, wouldn't he have made the continuation bet on the flop? He was in position, and his hand would have been as good as he could expect it to be. He had raised pre-flop, and so could represent having the ace. Besides, the I-have-you-beat-whoops-no-I-don't schtick seems kind of phony, a little Hollywood.

Which is all true. However, I'm inclined to think Bloch was being honest about his error.

Why check behind on the flop if he thought he had caught second pair? Pot control. Avoid a check-raise, which would have meant making the difficult decision about whether Ferguson did or did not have an ace. Also, he didn't have to bet to protect against any flush or straight draws, because the flop presented almost none.

Sampson reasons that Bloch had floated Ferguson's turn bet with the intention of the river going bet-raise, an audacious bluff on the river, having sensed weakness in Ferguson. However, when Ferguson didn't follow up his turn bet with a river bet, that plan went to hell. Sampson's theory is that Ferguson is more likely to make a thin call there after a check and a bet than after a bet and a raise, so the planned river bluff lost much of its value.

Sampson also argues that Bloch's plan was to keep Ferguson from knowing that Bloch had raised pre-flop with a hand as marginal as Q-5. But that doesn't make sense to me for two reasons. First, Ferguson well knows that proper heads-up strategy means raising in position a hefty percentage of the time, including with hands like Q-5. It's not like he's going to recalibrate his idea of what Bloch is capable of by gaining that bit of data. And Bloch knows that Ferguson knows that. In other words, the fact that Bloch had raised on the button with Q-5 is not something that he needs to keep secret, as if it's some wildly creative bit of play that will give away his game plan. Second, if Bloch was lying about the misread of his hand, and if Sampson's theory is correct, then Bloch would have simply mucked his cards unseen after Ferguson showed the winner. That would have left Ferguson wondering if Bloch had raised pre-flop with a big ace that missed, with a tiny pair (2-2 or 3-3), or with air.

Something that Sampson doesn't address is the breach of ethics that Bloch would be guilty of if he had deliberately miscalled his hand, announcing to Ferguson that he had him beat. It's inconceivable that he would shoot an angle trying to get Ferguson to pick up his tabled hand and throw it in the muck; there's no way that Ferguson would do that, or that Bloch would think such a trick would work, or that Bloch would be so sleazy as to try. But even the phony announcement of having the winner, quickly followed by the truth, is a pretty scummy thing to do to an opponent, especially one that you respect and consider a friend (and in this particular case, one that is Bloch's business partner in Full Tilt). I have a hard time believing that Bloch would do that. What is there to be gained by it? As a joke? Nobody is going to think that's funny in such a high-pressure situation. Maybe in a penny-ante home game, but not on this stage.

Overall, my conclusion is that it is more plausible that Bloch genuinely made a mistake here. At some point, his brain saw the 8 on the flop and translated that into a memory that he held Q-8 in the hole. (I have done such a thing a few times. I get in my mind what cards I want to see come, and crossed mental wires lead me to believe that what I want to see is what I have and vice-versa.) I think his play, his actions, and his words are reasonably consistent with that scenario. However, it is not wholly out of the question that Sampson is right and that Bloch was lying about misreading his hand. If he was, though, I'm hard-pressed to understand what he hoped to accomplish with the song-and-dance.

What do you think?

Guess the casino, #653

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Answer: Wynn

Guess the casino, #652

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Answer: Stratosphere

Ed Miller is obviously clueless

In a recent column for Card Player magazine, available here, the demonstrably idiotic Ed Miller* writes:

The “Cold Decked By A Drunk” Beat

There is a loud, drunk person at your $1-$2 table. Every third hand or
so, he moves all-in before the flop. Usually he wins the blinds and a $2 limp or
two. When this happens, he taunts everyone at the table for being scared of him.
Every once in a while he gets called. When that has happened he has shown hands like Jd 5s and 4c 2c . He’s usually up against a big hand, but so far he’s been lucky to win about half of these pots. Whenever he wins, he cackles gleefully. Whenever he loses, he rebuys for $100 from a thick wad of bills.

Ahem! In what conceivable way is J-5 anything like the most powerful hand in poker, the 2-4 (in crubs, no less!)?

On behalf of the Holy Order of the Mighty Deuce-Four, I demand an apology and retraction!


Incidentally, Miller's column continues the hypothetical story like this:

Last time around, drunk guy lost with Qd 4d when his flush
draw missed. He’s sitting on $100, and he moves all-in. Everyone folds to you in
the big blind, and you have Qs Qc . You call. He starts laughing
and says to you, “You’re going to love this one,” and tables Ad Ah.
No queen hits the board, and you lose.

For me, that's no hypothetical. It actually happened. This was back when the Aladdin was in transition to becoming Planet Hollywood and the poker room was temporarily upstairs, at the top of the escalator. There was a drunk Irish guy who was shoving blind every hand. I watched him to be sure he wasn't peeking at his cards first, and he wasn't. About the fifth time in a row that he did that, I picked up J-J. Plenty good enough to call a blind shove. Yep--the luckbox flipped up A-A that time. Arrrggghhh!


*I'm just funnin' here. I actually like Miller's writing a lot. Of all the columnists that churn out stuff for Card Player, Miller is by far the most likely to present a specific tactic or idea that I can actually remember and use the next time I'm going out to play. His book with Sklansky on NLHE also probably did more to change how I think about the game than any other.

Guess the casino, #651

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Answer: Rio

Guess the casino, #650

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Answer: Orleans

Dealing and ego don't mix

Today was one of the rare days of perfect, gorgeous weather that we get around here. We're in that very brief interval between when I complain about how hot it is and when I complain about how cold it is. As a result, instead of driving out to Mandalay Bay for NFL Sunday afternoon, I decided to take a stroll downtown.

When I head to Fremont Street to play poker, it's virtually always to Binion's. The only other reasonable choice is the Golden Nugget (El Cortez, Plaza, and Fitzgerald's are not "reasonable" choices), and I like nearly everything about Binion's better: it's more profitable, more comfortable, has better comps, etc. But it's been nearly a year since I played at G.N. and I decided to give it a go.

The real reason I made that choice illustrates how arbitrary my choice of where to play on a given day is, and how little it takes to influence it: G.N. was on a cool episode of "C.S.I" Thursday. In fact, it played the role of two casinos. Its famous shark-tank swimming pool was the scene of an unlikely murder by shark, while its new lobby with the indoor fish tank was used as the fictional rival casino "across the street." I liked seeing the familiar cast (I've been watching since the first season) stroll around the familiar halls. That's why the place was on my mind, and why I made the last-second choice to turn left instead of right after crossing Casino Center Boulevard.

Anyway, things didn't go well at first, and I was down to a stack of something like $120 when the hand in question came up. I was in Seat 3, and Seat 2 and Seat 4 were with me in the hand. I had J-10 and called a bet from Seat 4 on the turn with the board reading Q-A-8-7 for a double-gutter. The river was a 9, giving me the nuts. Seat 2 checked. I checked, fairly confident that the aggressive Seat 4 would bet again.

He did, $20. Seat 2 moved all in for $73. I figured he probably had the same hand I did. I put in my last $81. Seat 4 groaned, but announced a call, without putting out any more chips. He showed 5-6 for the low end of the straight. Seat 2 did indeed have another J-10.

Here's where it got interesting. The dealer pulled Seat 4's $20 into the pot, told Seat 2 and me to take back our last bets, and started chopping the pot. He had heard Seat 4's call, but somehow didn't realize that that meant more chips had to be tendered. A player at the other end of the table and I both simultaneously stopped him and said he wasn't doing it right.

He thought for a second, then seemed to have a light bulb go on. "Oh! Right!" He put the $20 back in front of Seat 4, then took more chips from Seat 4 to match my stack. He then counted down Seat 2's stack, discovering that it was $73. He took the $81 from Seat 4 and said, "So $73 of this goes to him (Seat 2)."

Uh, no.

At this point, it was clear to me that he had no idea how to do this. He was just guessing, making it up as he went along. So I stopped him and asked him to please call the floor and leave all the chips where they were until the floor could sort it out. (I could have told him exactly how to do it, but I hate it when several players are all barking instructions to the dealer in contradictory ways--because there's more than one way to go about it--and making everything even more chaotic.) He obviously didn't want to. He said, "I've got this."

I try to be nice to dealers. I don't gripe about ordinary mistakes. But this was a disaster in the making. We were on the verge of losing track of which chip stacks were which. Furthermore, it was clear that the only reason he didn't want to call the floor over to handle it was because he was too embarrassed to admit that he didn't know what he was doing. Sorry, pal, but that's just not a good enough reason, and I'm not afraid to let you know it. I told him, "No, you haven't got this. You've screwed it up twice already, and I have no confidence that you'll get it right on your third try. Please call the floor over to sort it out."

He still just sat there, obviously fuming, but not doing anything. After a few seconds, another player not involved spoke up: "A player has asked you to call the floor. Would you please do that so we can get this finished and get on to the next hand?" That finally pushed the dealer to relent.

Floor guy came over, the situation was explained, and he rapidly and efficiently determined what needed to happen, moved the chips around expertly, explaining exactly what he was doing at every step. Nicely done, sir, a flawless performance.

When it was all over, I did not tip the dealer, which for me is a rare act of protest at his conduct.

I actually know exactly how the dealer felt in that spot. I went to poker dealer school just before moving to Vegas, thinking I'd get a job in the box. I vividly remember the first time I took the skills test and had to make right a pot with three side pots. I screwed up, and got myself so confused that I could neither finish the way I had started nor retrace my steps and get back to baseline to start over again. I went into deep brainfreeze and had no idea what to do next. I was embarrassed in front of the instructor and my classmates, and mad at myself for bollixing something I knew in theory how to do. But there was nothing to be done at that point except 'fess up: Sorry, I've made a big mess of it and now my mind has locked up to the point that I can't figure it out. I flunked, though I redeemed myself the next day on the retake.

Dealers make mistakes. That usually doesn't bother me. But not being willing to admit that you made a mess that you can't clean up, when it's my money you're about to give away to other people? That bothers me.

Being unable to admit that you're in over your head is as fatal a flaw in poker dealers as it is in poker players.

The Vegas recession

See article in the New York Times, here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/us/03vegas.html?_r=1&hp

(Hat tip: Gaming Counsel.)

Guess the casino, #649

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Answer: Imperial Palace

Just for fun

A bunch of optical illustions, many of which were new to me:

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/brain-teasers/brain-teasers-and-optical-illusions/1400154

But they're obviously lying about one of them. That cat is spinning clockwise, period.

What's in a screen name? #9

Here's a couple more I've enjoyed recently.

Guess the casino, #648

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Answer: Caesars Palace

Ha! We're not the dumbest!

It turns out that Las Vegas is only the SECOND-stupidest city in the country! So THERE! Take THAT, Riverside!

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/110890/americas-smartest-cities?mod=career-worklife_balance

(Yes, I'm deliberately conflating "stupid" with "uneducated." So sue me.)

Oooo, pretty!

Flipchip's photos of, respectively, Boulder Dam and the nearly completed bypass bridge:

http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/viewer/v/Boulder+Dam/Boulder+Dam+75th+Birthday.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1

http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/viewer/v/Boulder+Dam/Boulder+Dam+Bypass+Bridge+across+Black+Canyon.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1

Don't miss the left-hand margin, where you can see more of his pictures of the same subjects.

How come my snapshots never turn out that nice?

Guess the casino, #647

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Answer: Venetian

Separated at birth?

I give you Scott Seiver and Matt Affleck:






One of them should hurry up and patent that move, so he can charge licensing fees to the other.

Guess the casino, #646

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Answer: South Point

Poker gems, #390

Matt Perry, in Bluff magazine article, October, 2010, page 49.


Guys, at small stakes against bad players a 25 buy-in downturn isn't variance, it's you being a monkey.