Two poker rooms closed this week

So says Dave Ferrara, writing for Pokerati. Specifically, Jokers Wild and Aliante Station. See http://pokerati.com/2012/11/hpt-rolls-through-town-ante-up-tour-takes-off-jokers-not-so-wild/.

By my count (I'm looking at the records of where I have played), 64 different casinos currently have a poker room or have had one at some point since I moved to Vegas in July of 2006, two of which (Speedway and Railroad Pass) I never got to play at while they were open. Current count is right around 50. Thinking about each of them individually, I count only 23 that have been open continuously and in the same location since I've been in town, and I really think that two or three of the ones I virtually never visit have moved, though I can't picture exactly where they used to be, so I'm crediting them with constancy. If 23 out of 64 have gone basically unchanged in six years; 41 out of 64 have moved, closed, and/or opened in that time span.

Ya think things change fast around here?

How to vote for limited government

To people who care deeply about limited government as a principle, it's perfectly obvious why one cannot vote for Barack Obama. But Judd Weiss provides an excellent explanation of why such people also cannot reasonably cast a vote for Mitt Romney. A few choice excerpts:

Both Romney and Obama will drive full speed towards the cliff. The only difference is Obama will drive a little faster, but it's a negligible difference, and certainly not one worth spending energy on.  

Our only hope to prevent a bleak dystopian scenario from unfolding is to send a powerful NO!! in the face of the forces that are pushing us there....  

People complain about politicians not having principles, but that's only because it's the ones without principles who win. If having principles makes a politician unelectable, that's not an indictment on the politician, it's an indictment on the voters....  

It's not just that Mitt Romney lacks clear principles, he is actually worse on economic principles than many of the Republicans that the Tea Party overthrew in 2010. 

Everything the successful Tea Party stood for is abandoned with Romney. Sure there's limited government rhetoric, mixed with statements like "Regulation is essential. You can't have a free market work if you don't have regulation".

If you think Democrats are sorely disillusioned with Obama after 4 years of disappointment, can you just imagine how most Republicans will feel after 4 years of daily nonsense like that from Romney?  

...Romney doesn't actually understand or have concern for limited government free market principles, he's only concerned about coached talking points. Romney doesn't even understand principles, period. He spends much of his time defending himself from his inconsistencies.  

I cannot for the life of me see how Romney represents hope for something better than Obama....  

If we get enough votes for Johnson, and Romney suffers a decisive loss against a weak President as a result of it, you can be sure that it will be noticed. Gary Johnson is a very effective protest vote to let the rest of the political establishment know that there is a strong movement for liberty that you dismiss at your own peril.  

Obama was an embarrassing mistake for those on the left. Romney will be far more embarrassing and disastrous. Don't constrain yourself to options that you know are awful. There is no hope for anything good to come out of a Romney presidency. If we want limited government principles but we all jump on board and vote for Mitt Romney anyway, then we truly have no hope for the future, and we have ourselves to blame.

Fremont Street Halloween

Last night I walked over to the Golden Nugget for a little of teh pokerz. I won some money, which was about as exciting as I have just made it sound.

The trip over and back, however, was as amusing as it has been every Halloween that I've been in Vegas. First, I ran into a parade that I didn't even know was going to be there:





After playing, I just meandered through the crowd for a while, looking at the people in costumes. It occurred to me that most of you probably had not had the experience of pushing through the Downtown Vegas Halloween Scrum, so I just turned on the video and shot what I was seeing as humanity and I streamed past each other. By far the most popular costume theme this year was "zombie."

Warning: This video is just 14 minutes of me milling around in a crowd, looking at whatever caught my interest for a few seconds. If that sounds worth watching to you, great, have at it. If not, move on. Either way, no complaining allowed.





I was in costume, too, though you can't see it. As is my tradition, I went as "sexy poker player."

Finally I came across an opening in the crowd where a bunch of amateur street performers were just unleashing their version of "Gangnam Style."




And so ends the fun and nuttiness of another Halloween in Vegas.

"Repeat critical violations"

A few months ago I tried, liked, and recommended to you a Cuban/Mexican restaurant just a block from my apartment building.

Tonight I walked by it, noticed that it was closed, thought that that was peculiar, and looked more closely. This sign is posted on the front door:

It's from the health department. The place is ordered closed because of "repeat critical violations" of the food code.

That does not sound good.

I hereby retract my recommendation.

Addendum: Apparently it's been closed for a while now, and I never noticed:

http://vegas.eater.com/archives/2012/04/10/mamitas-stays-closed-after-health-district-reinspection.php

Life in Summerlin

No poker content, but there is blood and gore ahead!

The target for this morning's bike ride was this chain of trails (marked in red) out in Summerlin, the rich part of town.

Have you ever wondered what the city provides when it builds bike trails where the wealthy people live that it does not provide when it builds bike trails where we working-class folk live? Well, I'm here to answer your question!

You get beautiful, manicured trailheads!

Trees!

A ginormous floodwater basin!

(I had to digitally stitch together several shots to make this panoramic composite, and it still doesn't adequately convey the size. I checked on Google Earth, and it's about 120 yards across, and just over 2/3 of a mile long. The volume of water that has to be contained when we get one of our occasional flash storms is just staggering.)

Tunnels!

Tennis courts!

Soccer fields!

More tunnels!

Bridges over the busy streets so you don't get killed crossing them!

Purple shrubbery, sufficient to placate the most demanding forest knights!

Whole parks and playgrounds!

More bridges over busy streets!

Baseball fields!

Skateboard parks!

Mormon churches!

Sign posts!

Benches!

Doggie doo bags!

(They have boxes just like this along the trails in the poor parts of town, too, but I look at them as I ride by, and have never, ever seen one that was stocked with bags. 100% empty. In Summerlin, every single one that I passed had bags in it.)

Nicely maintained trails! No broken glass! Lights for night riding!

For when the weather's not nice, an indoor sports complex!

Exercise equipment!

Basketball courts!

Picnic tables and drinking fountains!

I also saw six--six!--very cute chipmunks, but none of them stuck around long enough for me to pull out my camera and take his picture.

The difference in the quality of the amenities provided in the suburb-like Summerlin neighborhood and the central, working-class neighborhoods in which I did my first rides is nothing short of stunning. I'll bet that city politicians would try to claim that such differences have nothing whatsoever to do with the income (and consequent political influence) of the residents. I would laugh in their faces.


Oh, I almost forgot the blood and gore part of the program! That skateboard park was deserted, and it sorely tempted 14-year-old me. At first I just rode around the perimeter, marveling at how lethal everything looked. But then I saw some gentler slopes at the far end, and that mischievous 14-year-old me took over. I can do those! No problem! So I swooped down into the pit and in my lowest gear pedaled hard, and came to a triumphant stop on top of the crest. "See?" said the 14-year-old. "Easy!" He even stopped to take a picture looking down over the handlebars:

He texted that photo to his girlfriend, and coasted down. Whee! Exhilarating! The 51-year-old me thought that that little taste of long-ago recklessness was enough. But the 14-year-old me looked at the next slope over, which was just a little bit steeper, and said, "That one! We can do that one!" Against my better judgment, I gave in to him.

And we almost made it. "Almost" being the key word there.

Just about six inches from the top, Impetus, the Great God of Momentum, looked down upon our foolishness and thundered from Mt. Olympus, "No more of that for you!" Quicker than I would have thought possible, I switched from rolling forward to rolling backward, an eventuality for which I was wholly unprepared.

I wish somebody had been shooting video, because I suspect it would win a prize on "America's Funniest Home Videos." Legs flailing wildly, handlebars twisting this way and that, all while rolling backwards, in a desperate attempt to keep the wheels under me. I did manage to make it to the bottom of the slope before I toppled over, so there was only minimal sliding along the concrete.

As gravity was taking over, the only thing I could think was, "This is not going to end well."

My handlebars were knocked out of alignment. There's some scraping on one brake lever. My helmet--which I'm very glad to have been wearing--has a little scuff mark on one side. My shirt and pants got dirty but, surprisingly, not torn. I got a couple of boo-boos:

There was, fortunately, no damage to expensive things, like my teeth and glasses. Or bones.

In spite of these massive wounds, the 14-year-old in me still thinks that that place looks like it would be hella fun to play in, given a bike better suited for such shenanigans. Sadly, the 51-year-old me realizes that the 14-year-old me is no longer in charge of the reflexes and balance part of the riding process. He could have done it. I don't think that I can, or should.


Oh, and one other little thing about the biking, since if you've read this far you must find something interesting about it (though I have no idea why you would). I've rigged up this front fork mount for the back of my car to keep the bike from flopping around when I drive:

The rear wheel tucks up between the front passenger seat and the frame, like so: 

Note that the larger side of the rear seat stays usable in its normal position. Pretty nifty, eh?

Better lucky than good

Today I played at Mandalay Bay. All of my profit came from one big hand, which I played so badly at every decision point except the last one (after a lucky winning card had come my way) that I'm not even gonna tell you about it. It's too embarrassing.

So there.

Gary Johnson

The guy I met a couple of weeks ago at Mandalay Bay--the one who gave me the Gary Johnson t-shirt--invited me to a private "meet the candidate" thing tonight at the Palazzo. I went, but I had incorrectly remembered the starting time, and ended up getting there just as Mr. Johnson was telling the crowd, "Thanks for coming. Gotta run and catch a plane!" And he was out the door before I had a chance to shake his hand. I was going to tell him that he's the first presidential candidate in my lifetime that I am enthusiastic, rather than lukewarm, to support. Oh well. I'm sure he's heard that thousands of times already.

The gathering was at the Dal Toro restaurant, which I had never even heard of before. This created a bonus situation. You see, they have a small but nice collection of cars there, and I got to walk around and lust after them when there was almost nobody else around to get in the way. Some bonus pictures for you:

In other news, today I did a 24.1-mile bike ride, including about 1100 feet of up then down. It was the full length of that trail I first tried last week. I am now ready for the Tour de France. Well, as soon as I can walk again anyway.

What are these?

Out on a bike ride this morning, I saw these things that look like trapeze bars hanging from power lines:

Right-click on photos to see them full size.

The ones in the first picture are over a wash. The ones in the second picture are over the adjacent bike/pedestrian trail. The lower one in the second picture is obviously broken.

I can't figure out what they are. They look like they're made for somebody to hang from, but that can't be right, because hanging from a thin power line, they couldn't support much weight.

So my second thought was that they are height markers of some kind, like the bar you pass under before entering a parking garage, to warn too-tall vehicles not to proceed. But that doesn't make sense. They're hanging over a wash, where there shouldn't be any vehicles to warn. Besides, they're way high--you'd need a cherry-picker kind of thing to reach them. There's nothing else anywhere around of comparable height for which they could serve as a height marker.

I'm stumped. But I'll bet that somebody among my highly intelligent readers will know the answer, or at least be able to guess at it better than I have.

Newspaper editorial board endorses Gary Johnson

The Chattanooga Times-Free Press gets it exactly right: "Romney may be less eager to tax, spend, attack personal freedoms and disregard the constitutional limits on government than his Democratic opponent, President Barack Obama, but only slightly."

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/oct/24/1024b-fp1-gary-johnson-for-president/?opinionfreepress

Poker gems, #463

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, October 17, 2012 (vol. 25, #21), page 36.


If it's nearly impossible against certain players to get your sets paid off for 200 big blinds, doesn't it follow that your monster bluff is a near lock to work against these same players?

Decision time--conclusion

Sunday I published a post in which I set up a decision I had to make and asked you to think about what you would do if faced with that same situation. If you have not already read that post and wish to do so before seeing the spoilers below, go here.




OK, so I had a medium-strength flush, was facing a raise, and had to decide whether to raise or fold.

This was a close decision. It could have gone either way. But in the end, I decided to raise all-in. (A smaller raise was never a consideration, since I would be pot-committed anyway and might as well maximize whatever fold equity I might have, though I judged it to be pretty small.) I was nudged to this side of the decision largely by the two pieces of information I discussed previously: The intel that he was a bad player who had just had the luckiest night of his poker life, and the fact that he rechecked his hole cards only after the third heart had hit. I decided that his most likely types of hands were, in descending order of probability, (A) something other than a flush, (B) a flush higher than mine, and (C) a flush lower than mine. I thought that the sum of (A) and (C) was greater than (B). Hence the shove.

ABP called.

He actually had 4h-5h. He had flopped an open-ended straight-flush draw and turned a small flush.

The river was the 6d, changing nothing, and I won the pot.

To be honest, I had not considered the possibility of a combo draw like this, so shame on me for that. As to my other thoughts, I had been both right and wrong. I was right that he was a sufficiently bad player that he might raise me with a worse flush. But I was wrong about assigning the relative probabilities of the categories of hands he could have. I was also wrong about the tell, at least as it pertained to ABP. (It might have been accurate with respect to the third player, but I'll never know.)

I think the advance notice I had been given about him being a bad player was accurate. Raising the turn was dangerous, given that flush draws would be a large part of my range there, and every possible flush draw was bigger than his. Furthermore, he had another player yet to act behind him, who might also have made a higher flush. If he wanted to raise as a probe for my strength, he could have made it a smaller amount. Then, when I moved all-in, he could have safely concluded that he was facing a higher flush and that he therefore had just two outs to win and should fold.

The beauty of the straight-flush draw seduced him. He freely explained that that's what he was counting on, and that he was pretty sure I must have a higher flush. Plus, he cited the always-popular, "Besides, I had so much in there already."

As a final thought, consider what an interesting and exciting card the 7h would have been for the river.

Stinkeroo

Wow, this trailer for a poker reality show with Johnny Chan looks unfathomably awful in just about every possible way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkzGYtUJ4Mc

The only redeeming feature is that it shows The Mighty Deuce-Four winning a big fat pot at about 1:54.

Decision time

I'm just home from my favorite football-Sunday hangout, Mandalay Bay. I thought one hand was worthy of a blog post. As usual in this occasional game I play with readers, I'll set up the decision point as thoroughly as I can, lay out my options and the arguments for them, then give you 24 hours to register with comments about what you would do, before a second post reveals what I decided to do and what, if anything, I know about the ultimate outcome.

I was in Seat 10. We had a new player in Seat 1. He had been there maybe 15 minutes. He played a lot of hands, mostly passively, but had not been involved in any big pots. If he had shown any hands, I had either missed it or they didn't register as giving me any useful information about his play.

The most potentially useful intelligence I had on him had come a couple of hours earlier. He was hanging around our table, chatting with the players in Seat 7 and Seat 8. Apparently all three of them had been in a game together at M.B. Saturday. Our villain had cashed out for a remarkable $2200. After the three of them chuckled over a few stories from yesterday, he walked away. As soon as he was out of earshot, the two players with whom he had been chatting began telling us all what an awful player he was. Both of them were somewhat above-average tourist-level players, and they had no particular reason (as far as I could tell) to be spreading disinformation about him, so I tended to credit their accounts as reasonably reliable. They said that he was having the lucky night of his life--calling raises with garbage and hitting every board. Because this Allegedly Bad Player (I'll refer to him as ABP here) had walked away, I assumed that this insight was not going to be useful. But then, as I mentioned, a couple of hours later he showed up again and took the seat to my left.

So to the hand of the day: I had 9h-10h under the gun. I limped in. This was not an aggressive table, and I thought it likely that I would trigger a cascade of limpers, which it did. Five of us went to the flop, which came Kc-3h-6h. I bet $6 and got two callers--ABP and Seat 4, a timid player with a short stack. I didn't much like getting two calls, because the most likely scenario seemed to be that one of them had a king that he was unsure of, and the other had a flush draw, which was most likely going to be higher than mine.

Fourth street was the 8h. This completed my flush and even gave me a one-card shot at a straight flush. But I sure wasn't going to count on the latter coming in, and I had to doubt whether the former was good.

As I was pondering (though only briefly) what to do, I looked left and noticed both of my opponents rechecking their hole cards. This gave me more confidence than I would otherwise have had, because most amateur players will recheck the suits of their cards on the flop if they think they might have flopped a flush draw. After that, they don't need to check again when and if it hits. (I discussed the operation of this tell in some detail here.) I had not noticed either of these guys checking their cards on the flop, but it's possible that they did and I missed it.

Based largely on the inference that neither of them had just made a higher flush than mine, I bet again--$16. ABP quickly raised to $50. Third guy folded, and action was back to me. I had another $125 left, and ABP had me covered, having bought in for the $300 max.

My $16 had been something of a probe bet. If both opponents had a weakish king, I would expect both to fold. A nut flush might either call or raise, depending on propensity to trappy play. If one of them made a non-nut flush I would expect a raise to prevent the agony of a river draw-out to somebody who had just the Ah.

Basically, I had asked a question, and I had received an answer in the form of a raise, so I should fold, right?

Maybe, but not necessarily. It all depended on how bad a player ABP was. He might think a smaller flush was good. He might not be used to seeing people bet flush draws (especially from out of position), and on that basis conclude that I probably had just a top-pair kind of hand. If so, then a raise here would make sense, since he would fear me having the king of hearts, which might bink a higher flush on the river if he didn't guard against it. With similar reasoning, he could well raise with any set or two-pair hand. Heck, I suppose he might even raise with something like Kh-Qx.

So I had a genuinely difficult decision to make. Folding was a perfectly reasonable option, given the good probability that I was facing a bigger flush and had just one out (to the straight flush). Raising was a real consideration, because if he did, in fact, have anything other than a flush (top pair and a flush draw, two pair, or a set), I would want to get all the money in now if I could. Calling was not seriously on my mind, since it would just suck me deeper into the hand with no more information about where I stood. Furthermore, basically every river card except the 7h would force me into an even more difficult decision to make from out of position, a situation I try to avoid. So I'll give you this much of a hint: I did not call.

Put yourself in my shoes (my spiffy new shoes). As Karl Malden used to ask on behalf of American Express traveler's checks, "What will you do? What will you do?"

More bike stuff (no poker content)

Clark County has been aggressively expanding the number and reach of what they called "shared-use" paths; they're for walking, running, biking, dog-walking, horse-riding--basically anything non-motorized. (For an overview of the projects completed and underway, see here.) I've explored the ones that I can reach on my bike from home. Today I took a big step forward by throwing the bike in the back of the new car and heading out to what is probably the best urban trail the city has to offer.

It's the West Beltway Trail, which runs from across the street from Red Rock Casino to Tropicana Avenue. From there, you can ride on the sidewalks for a mile or so, then hop on to the Tropicana/Flamingo Wash Trail. Together these stretch about 12.3 miles end to end. There are also some branches off of them, which I did not explore. There's a nice review of the ride (plus directions on how to bridge the gaps in it--one big fault is that the county does not post good signs to guide people across the gaps) on Yelp, just posted a couple of weeks ago, with the route highlighted on a Google map.

Here's a sign from the trail that shows the whole system of which it is the backbone:

I started at the northwest end. I think that was a mistake, in retrospect, because it gave me the downhill half first, and the uphill half last. The grades aren't daunting, but you definitely feel them. I dropped, then rose, about 1100 feet over the course of about 9.4 miles each way. I stopped a couple miles short of the end because I was having a really great time and didn't want to spoil it by having the return half be so long and onerous that I'd be miserable by the time I got back to where I had parked the car. In retrospect, I could have made it and been only a little more sore than I am now, but I don't mind having erred on the conservative side. I rode 18.8 miles, which is a substantial increase over my previous longest ride of 14.8 miles. So I am stretching my legs, both literally and metaphorically. (Incidentally, if you're wondering why I'm sitting at home in front of my computer, writing about bike trails on a Friday night instead of out playing poker, it's because I'm stiff and sore enough not to want to take any more steps than necessary for basic life functions. I'll be fine in the morning, though, judging from past experience.)

One of the highlights of the journey is the recently completed bridge over Town Center Drive. I wish I had taken pictures of it. I assumed I would be able to find them online, but there isn't much. Too new, I guess. This one is from the county's web site linked above:

But it doesn't show you the best parts, which are the beautifully graded S-shaped ramps. They're gentle enough that you can climb them without killing yourself, but still steep enough that you can let loose and really get flying by the end on the way down. Great fun!

Here's an overhead shot from Google Maps, taken (it appears) when the north half was completed but not the south end:

You also pass what must be one of the largest holding basins for regional floodwaters, with an enormous concrete spillway controlling the gradual release of the water. Again from Google Maps (the spillway is that odd zigzag structure in the upper right, which looks tiny here, but is really impressive from the distance of the trail):

I had perfect weather for today's ride--about 80 degrees, clear, sunny. For the stretch that parallels 215, you get a mostly uninterrupted view of the bluffs to the west, and glimpses of Red Rock Canyon to the northwest.

This whole thing was far, far nicer than the mixed-use trails accessible from downtown. While it's nice to have those, their aesthetic qualities and utility are both severely marred by terrible maintenance. In particular, they are strewn with dirt, sand, and rocks washed over them by recent rains, and really uglified by all the junk that thoughtless people dump there. Worst of all, there is shattered glass everywhere. I don't know how often crews go through and clean them, but it's not often enough. By contrast, the trail system I rode today was almost entirely pristine, and I even saw a crew picking up debris between the trail and the wash. Does this have to do with the difference in wealth (and, hence, political influence) between people who live in the inner city versus those in Summerlin? The question is left as an exercise for the reader.

Here's my route mapped out on RideWithGPS.com, showing the gradual elevation changes in the graphic along the bottom:

It's really as lovely a path as you're likely to find in this city. I see on Yelp some gripes that there are no public restroom facilities, water fountains, trees, shade shelters, and other amenities. Which is true. But I guess my standards got set by those first city trails I rode, compared to which this West Beltway/Flamingo Wash trail is a luxurious upgrade, one I'm eager to experience again.

I wish I could say that my bicycle was as pleasing as the trails. The damn thing keeps needing trips to bike shops to fix problems. Remember that clunking sound from the cranks I mentioned? It turned out to be a bottom bracket (the thing that connects the pedals to the front chainring) in need of adjustment. I've ridden less than 25 miles since that was done, and that cursed clunking started up again today toward the end of this ride! I've also had it in twice for adjustment of the rear derailleur. Basically, I get to go for a nice ride, have a problem develop along the way, and take it in to the shop. I get it back, go for another ride, find another problem, take it back in. Four trips to the shop in less than two months of owning it, and a total of well under 100 miles of riding. That's just appallingly bad reliability for a brand-new bicycle, even if it is a cheap one. I don't know if I just got a lemon, or if all of Schwinn's mass-market retail bikes are this poorly built, but I have already decided that I will never, ever buy one from them again--especially given the unconscionable warranty policy they have (as I mentioned in that previous post).

But I'm trying not to let that deter me from having fun, enjoying exploring parts of the city I've never seen before, and getting my first taste of semi-regular exercise in decades. Today's ride was absolutely delightful in just about every way. If you live around here and have a bicycle, you really owe it to yourself to take it for a spin along these trails that a big chunk of our tax dollars have built.

Deuce-four has not forgotten me

It's been several weeks since I played online. Josie was kind enough to indulge me in some joint play tonight. We did three single-table sit-and-go tournaments. I cashed in all three, TYVM (2nd, 3rd, and 2nd).

I guess the Mighty Deuce-Four has been patiently waiting for my return all this time. First I cracked the AK (top pair/top kicker):

Later I caught runner-runner for a straight: 

While not nearly as exciting, I also manage to wrangle something worthwhile out of a measly ol' A-A: