An obvious conspiracy to annoy me

Yesterday I made an attempt at The Grump's Great Harrah's Challenge, in which the object of the game is to win at least $100 in the shortest total time from each of the seven Harrah's poker rooms clustered around the Flamingo-Las Vegas Boulevard intersection. I did well at Imperial Palace and Harrah's, but then ran into a brick wall at, of all places, O'Shea's, and shut it down for the night, after giving back 2/3 of my previous winnings. Despite ending the day up in cash, the day was an exercise in getting my goat. Three stories should illustrate why.


Dealer error and an angle-shooter

Before yesterday, I don't recall a dealer error ever directly costing me any significant sum of money. Can't say that anymore.

I was on the button in Seat 6 with Jh-10h. There were a few limpers. I raised to $15. Everybody folded except for the guy in Seat 1. He was the table monster stack, having been there for obviously many hours, and on the hot streak of a lifetime.

The flop was A-K-5 rainbow. As usual, I was watching my opponent carefully, and I got the sense that he was tempted to bet before settling on a check instead. Although I would often put out a continuation bet in this situation, I decided to be cautious and check behind. The turn was the beautiful queen of diamonds, giving me the nuts, though putting a second diamond on the board. My opponent bet $30. I raised to $100. He called, though with some fairly obvious trepidation, and after trying to quiz me on what I was holding.

I don't remember what the river card was, but it was a low one that didn't pair the board and wasn't a third diamond, so I still had the unbeatable hand. Seat 1 checked. I said, "I'm all in." My face was down at the time, because I was counting my chips, with the intention being that my next words would be what the amount was ($143, as it turned out).

The dealer said, "Twenty." He had obviously misheard me in the noisy environment of I.P. I instantly said, "No, I said, 'I'm all in.'" The dealer said, "I'm sorry. Player is all in." Then Seat 1 piped up, "I heard 'twenty,' too."

There is just no way in hell that two people independently heard "I'm all in" as specifically "twenty." It's peculiar enough that one did, impossible that two did. I am as sure as I can be, without actual evidence, that Seat 1 simply realized all of a sudden that this was a route to possibly getting a much cheaper decision than he would otherwise have to make. He lied. He was angle-shooting, taking advantage of the dealer's error.

The floor was called. The dealer explained what had happened, that he thought he heard me say "twenty," and the other player claimed the same thing. Nobody else claimed to have heard anything. The floor ruled that the bet would be $20. Seat 1 called, and showed 5-5 for the flopped set.

With undisguised irritation and sarcasm, I turned over my cards and said to the dealer, "Yeah, I'm betting $20 into a $200 pot with the nuts."

As the pot was being pushed my way, I overheard Seat 1 plausibly telling the player next to him that he had put me on A-K for top two pair, although he had verbally floated the idea that I had Broadway when he was deciding on his call on fourth street. In other words, I'm in the range of 90% confident that he would have called the full amount, even if reluctantly.

The responsibility for this minor disaster is divided three ways. First, I take some share of the blame for apparently not speaking up enough in that loud environment. Second, the dealer screwed up. He had to be at least a little uncertain about what he heard, because "I'm all in" objectively just doesn't sound very much like "twenty." If he had paused for just a second to wonder whether he had heard correctly, it should have dawned on him that $20 was an extremely unlikely bet for that situation, with over $200 in the pot--not impossible or unprecedented, but weird enough that it would be worth asking whether what he thought he heard was what I had actually said. Finally, of course, there's the lying scumbag cheating angle-shooter who didn't want to have to make a difficult decision, and exploited the situation to his advantage.

It was a collision of factors custom-made to tilt me.

Still, I had made $114 in two hours. It was then that I decided that that was a potentially decent start on the Grump Harrah's Challenge, so I took the money and ran, stopping next at Harrah's.


Unclear on the concept of "doors"

I made money even faster at Harrah's. First I executed what I thought was an admirably well-timed bluff using just position and a middling pair against two opponents, though if their later chat was honest (and I think it was), I was actually bluffing with the best hand. That gave me an uptick of $86 less than 15 minutes in, and the second stop on the Challenge was looking good. A short time later, a guy on tilt from a bad beat in the previous hand tried to run a bluff into me when I had pocket jacks with a flop of 10-8-2, which was an easy call. So I made $204 in 30 minutes, and took off for the third stop.

So what was annoying about that? Something not directly related to the poker.

The Harrah's poker room has long been one of the best in terms of low levels of noise and cigarette smoke. That's because the room is one of the few in town that is fully enclosed, physically isolated from the surrounding casino floor.

But they have recently implemented a new policy: leaving the doors open.

This displays a profound lack of comprehension of the very concept of door. A door exists so as to selectively let people or things in and/or out. If you are never going to let anything in or out--i.e., if the door is going to be closed all the time--you might as well use a wall instead. Conversely, if you're going to let everything in or out--i.e., leave a door open all the time--you might as well take the door off of its hinges and remove it. It serves zero purpose.

Just outside the Harrah's poker room is the courtyard area between Harrah's and Imperial Palace. There's a bandstand, a bar, sidewalk merchants, etc. It's very loud at times, especially on weekend nights.

There was a extremely loud band playing, and it was making me crazy. Also, players would leave for a smoking break, and stand about six inches outside the room, the better to keep tabs on the game and run back in when it was their turn. (Is there something about tobacco that makes people rude and uncaring of how they affect other people? It seems to me generally that most smokers care not one bit how about how their nasty habit is inflicted on others.) I was seated at the table immediately adjacent to the doors, which were being propped open by chairs.

This is just insane. With one quick decision, they have turned what was perhaps the city's quiestest and most smoke-free room into one that is annoying infiltrated with horrible noise and cigarette smoke.

I asked the shift manager if they could close the doors. I was given to understand that the answer was no, and that it had come from levels of management in the Harrah's organization well above the poker room, so that nobody to whom I might have actual access had any power to change the decision.

The reasons, I was told, were twofold. First, to increase traffic. Second, to comply with the need for disability access.

These are easy to address. For the first, sure, it's understandable that at least some small percentage of potential patrons--especially those working up the nerve to enter a casino poker room for the very first time--might feel a little put off by closed doors, even though they are glass. This has an easy solution: You put on the doors a big sign that says something like, "Welcome to the Harrah's poker room. Please come in." That way, there is no risk that anybody will think it's a private place, like Bobby's Room at the Bellagio, for example. Problem solved.

As for disability access, I can grant that that's a legitimate consideration. But the solution, again, is easy: You have your engineering department install power door openers, just like you have with every other one of the hundreds of doors in the place. Duh!

I hate noise and smoke when I'm playing poker. I grit my teeth and put up with it at places like I.P. and Bill's and Sahara because they have proven to be such consistent cash cows for me. But when the situation is created by a retarded new policy that fails to consider why the room was built the way it is in the first place, when it eliminates what for me had been the room's most attractive attribute, it's completely unacceptable.


Bad beat at O'Shea's

I dreaded the next Challenge stop. O'Shea's is without question the noisiest poker room in the valley. The only protection from cigarette smoke is the fact that the tables are open to the sidewalk, so there is often some decent air circulation.

Anyway, poker did not go well here. Max buy-in is $200, and I lost that, gave up, and went home. The last big pot went down like this:

I was down to about $100. I had A-A for the first time in the night, all three casinos combined. The under-the-gun player raised to $12. I reraised to $30. He called. Flop was K-2-7. He moved all-in for his last $48. I called.

He showed--get this--9-10 offsuit. A pure bluff, and an incredibly stupid one at that. After all, there is no hand with which I'm putting in the pre-flop reraise that I'm going to fold when I'm being offered better than 2:1 ($48 call to win about $110). I don't really think he has flopped a set, but the possibility isn't going to deter a call for that price. It was a move that made no sense.

Anyway, I showed the aces, and was feeling pretty confident about winning. But then the turn was a queen, and the river a jack, giving him a nine-to-king straight. The only way he could win that hand was like that, or with an eight and a jack, or with some combination of nines and tens for trips or two pair. I was a 94% favorite (better than 15:1) when the money went in.

Gaaaaa!

I admit that I donked off my last $20 rather than cashing it out, which would have been a smarter, more disciplined, and more professional way of dealing with the fact that I had decided to give up on one of my most annoying nights of poker in recent memory.