Really, Borgata?

I just read this post from my friend Josie. She had been planning to play in her first-ever World Poker Tour tournament at Borgata. She arranged for time off work and somebody to care for her son, then flew from Boston just for the event. Got to Borgata, found that she couldn't register for the tournament without getting a Borgata player's card, and couldn't get a player's card because their own internal policy wouldn't accept her official Massachusetts-issued ID card (she doesn't have a driver's license). Nobody she talked to would even consider making an exception.

The Borgata's web page for the tournament series is here. It does warn people that a valid ID is required, but then specifies, "Drivers License, Non-drivers License, Domestic or Foreign Passports are acceptable forms of valid ID." The phrase "Non-drivers License" is pretty silly, because you don't get a license to be a non-driver, but surely what they meant was a state-issued ID card issued for those who choose not to get a driver's license. Which is exactly what Josie had.

(If I'm reading between the lines correctly on Josie's post, the state formerly issued ID cards without expiration dates, but have more recently changed to issuing ones with expiration dates. She still had the old style, unaware of any need to update.)

So the Borgata has a customer standing there wanting to hand them $3500. Instead of taking the money with a smile and a "thank you," they say, "Nope. Sorry. Our policy book says that we don't recognize that kind of Massachusetts-issued ID card. We only take the other kind of Massachusetts-issued ID card. Of course this policy isn't important enough that we would bother to inform you in advance about it. Now please leave before we have security throw you and your obviously inferior and unacceptably pathetic identification out the side door."

Worse, their corporate attitude toward customer service is so shitty that nobody in the chain of command would step back, look at the policy, realize that as applied to this particular situation it was absurd, pointless, and likely to result in hurt feelings and terrible PR, and then on that basis authorize a temporary exception so that they didn't unnecessarily piss off a customer, who would then tell all her friends in Boston and on the internet what a shitty place Borgata is if you want to play poker.

I've heard of idiotic things that casinos manage to do, but this ranks right up there with the best (or worst) of them.

I'm going to see if any friends of friends know somebody in charge at the Borgata poker room, in the hopes of getting some sort of on-the-record explanation for why they would treat a potential customer/player so shabbily.

Deuce-four wins big, big, big at Borgata

The above image was just emailed to me, accompanied by the following message. I have no immediate verification, but also no good reason to doubt its authenticity:

Good Evening Mr Grump,

The attached photo shows the the bad beat jackpot that was won at
Borgata yesterday by 2H 4H rivering a straight flush against another players
flopped Quads. By Atlantic City standards it was a small jacpot, only
$52,000. $24k for the quads as the loser, 12k for the straight flush as
the winner, and $3k for everyoune else dealt in the hand.

What chips to take to a new table?

When I did a table change yesterday at Planet Hollywood, it reminded me of something I left out of my room review of Harrah's Atlantic City. They have a strange rule there that I've never seen or heard of anywhere else. If you have more chips in front of you than the maximum buy-in, if you change tables you must pocket the excess. I.e., you can't move to a new table with more chips than if you were joining it as a new player in the room. This is decidedly odd, as it reduces the number of chips in play, and casinos usually have every incentive to keep more chips on the table.

It's a dream come true for players who like to lock up profits and not put their winnings at risk--i.e., the squirrelers or pigeonholers. Instead of having to try to sneak chips off the table and into their pockets when nobody is looking, they can just ask for a table change and management forces them to go south with the amount that is over the table max.

This really makes no sense. You might as well make it a rule that anything you win over the table max must automatically be taken off the table, whether you move or not. Why is it any worse to come to a new table with more chips than the max, but OK to stay where you are with more chips than the max? It is illegal to take your profit off the table if you stay put, but mandatory to do so if you're just moving to a different table of the same game. That may be the single most illogical pair of rules I've ever run across in a poker room.

Incidentally, a couple of months ago I learned for the first time that Mandalay Bay has the opposite rule: If you're changing tables, and you're below the minimum initial buy-in, you have to rebuy to at least the minimum to go to a new table. This makes some sense, because (1) it keeps more chips in action, which is good for both the casino and the players, and (2) when there's an empty seat to be filled, the players at the table have a reasonable expectation that it will be filled by somebody bringing at least the minimum buy-in.

If this rule is in place and enforced at any other casino in town, I have not encountered it. (If readers know of such, please speak up in the comments.) At the time I learned of it, I thought it was unique to Mandalay, but when I came home and looked it up, I was surprised to find it suggested in Roy Cooke and John Bond's Cooke's Rules of Real Poker. On p. 56 they write:

9.02 Minimum buy-in

The minimum buy-in applies to a player's initial buy-in when entering the
game, or a re-buy after going all-in in a pot or when returning to the table
after leaving during a period that would constitute the same playing session. If
a player is transferring from a game of the same type and limits then he does
not need to buy additional chips. (ALTERNATE RULE: A player transferring to
another game of the same type and limits must enter the game he is transferring
to with at least the minimum buy-in, unless he is coming from a broken game. The
logic behind this rule is that insofar as the players at the new table are
concerned, the transferring player is a new player. This alternate rule induces
action and is preferred, but because it is not widely accepted, it is the
alternate rather than the main rule.)

I like the Cooke/Mandalay Bay rule. I hate the Harrah's A.C. rule.

More A.C. photos

I can be such a dodo sometimes. I completely forgot that I had pictures from Harrah's A.C. taken with my real camera out the hotel window. I had downloaded them to their own special folder upon arriving home, then zoned out when I was doing the previous post, and only used the crappy ones from my cell phone camera.






From the hotel window I could see these unusual but kind of visually interesting things (don't really know what they are) on the roof of the adjacent parking garage. Maybe the leaves spread out and join to provide shade when it's sunny, or maybe they're purely decorative. Who knows?





Much better view of the windmills during one of the brief sunny interludes we had in what was mostly unbroken cold, rain, and clouds.







This dome encloses the swimming pool, which becomes a nightclub after hours. It's tropical and kind of pretty inside it. I'm surprised that this sort of thing isn't more common in Vegas. Despite being in the desert, winter gets cold enough that outdoor pools are virtually unusable for a few months of the year. An enclosure like this would fix that problem, as well as counter the intolerable heat of mid-summer.

Harrah's Atlantic City

I finished my brief Atlantic City trip with Cardgrrl two weeks ago yesterday, which means that my promised report of Harrah's A.C., where we stayed, is now two weeks past promise. Sorry about that.

I suppose that the most general thing to say about the place is that it's perfectly acceptable. It didn't blow my socks off in any way--nothing like, say, the Venetian does when I have stayed there. But I had a quiet, comfortable room without problems and with a nice view. In terms of a hotel, I don't need much more than that. What little time I spend in the room is mostly unconscious, and amenities don't carry a lot of weight with me at that point.

As regular readers know, I'm not much of a gambler, so I can't tell you anything about Harrah's A.C. as a casino--except that it's really big, and an annoyingly long walk from the Bayview Tower to the poker room, which is the only part of the casino I care about.

So how is the poker room? Again, it's perfectly fine. Nothing special, but--and this is uncommon for me--also not a lot to gripe about. But you just know that I'll find something anyway, right?

Here was my first experience: I get my name on the list. A while later I hear it called. I go to the desk. The guy there tells me, "Go talk to David [I'm not sure that was the name, but it doesn't matter]. He'll get you seated." They apparently just assumed that I would know who this "David" was and where he was. I didn't. I had to ask. When I found him, he was quite busy, and I had to follow him around from table to table for a couple of minutes before he got to me. Then he was surprised that I was asking him for a seat, because he hadn't been told that anything was available. It was a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. He finally found me the seat that had opened up. It was only then that he informed me I'd have to go fetch my own chips for the initial buy-in. It sure would have saved time if somebody--anybody--had told me this beforehand, and I could have had it taken care of while I was waiting. To make it worse, David just said, "Go get your chips from the cage." I had no idea where the cage was. From where I was standing in the poker room, I could see two cage-like windows, but both of them had signs on them reading something like "Race bets only." I asked David where this cage was that he spoke of. He just pointed in the direction of those windows. I told him that it looked to me like those signs were indicating a cashier. He then explained that there is another window around the side of the same area (which wasn't visible from where I was) that was the cage.

In short, everybody seemed to assume that I already knew my way around and knew the room personnel. As a point of customer service, it seems to me a better default position to assume that it is the patron's first time there, rather than that they know all the ins and outs.

I did not at all like how they handled the member card for tracking hours. There are no card readers at the tables, only one at a computer in the center of the room. That means that everything after the initial swipe requires the dealer to call out to the floor person that a player has changed seats or left the game. I can only imagine that that relay system is highly prone to errors and failure. I have no idea if I actually got the proper credit for the hours I put in.

Speaking of hourly credits, I learned that Harrah's A.C. gives 30 "tier points" per hour for playing $1/2 NLHE, and 60 per hour for $2/5 NLHE. That compares to the 28 per hour given by the various Harrah's properties in Vegas for any game. "Tier points" are what give you Gold, Platinum, Diamond (or higher) status, with their associated perks.

There is one seriously strange thing about how this poker room is run. Apparently fills have to be brought by a security team, rather than by a chip runner, another dealer on break, or whatever. This means that they are incredibly slow in coming, and dealers routinely run out of change-making chips long, long before a fill will ever come. The result is that players end up volunteering to go buy--out of their own pockets--$1 chips from the cage, then bringing them back to the table and selling them to the dealer. They do this because otherwise the game grinds to a halt. It's utterly ludicrous and moronic to run things this way. I have no idea what state regulations there might be, if any, that cause things to be done this way, but I could hardly believe my eyes the first time I saw it. That the casino management just blithely allows this insane practice to continue is the most tangible sign I saw there that they just don't care about presenting a professionally run poker room.

The dealers were mostly unremarkable--neither especially great nor awful. But there was one who was truly incompetent, so remarkably so that she deserves to have the following stories told about her, all of which occurred during a single down during the one tournament I played there (Sunday afternoon):

1. She took a full three minutes to get herself signed in. This was largely because she noticed a problem with how the previous dealer had signed the sheet (something about his badge number or employee number or whatever not having been recorded), and spent time trying to fix it for him, while nine players sat there impatiently watching the tournament clock tick by. She seemed completely oblivious to how she was affecting the game and annoying the players by her stupid insistence on fixing that problem right that minute.

2. She was the slowest dealer I saw the whole trip, by a large margin.

3. During one deal the ace of clubs flipped face-up to the under-the-gun player. No big deal--that happens to every dealer occasionally. But how she handled it was inexcusable. She replaced the card as per protocol. But then when that player folded, the dealer took it upon herself to peek at the two mucked cards, then got a look of obvious relief on her face, and said, "That's good." To anybody paying attention, that made it clear that there was not an ace folded there, and probably not two clubs, either. There is no reason whatsoever for that kind of thoughtless dissemination of potentially crucial information. The dealer has no business even knowing what cards a player mucks, let alone hinting to the table what the cards were.

4. There was one giant hand that involved five players and two side pots. This dealer screwed it up beyond all recognition. She just didn't know how to set up two side pots, so she was reduced to taking instructions from the players, who, of course, completely disagreed with each other about how she should do it. It became a mass of confusion. The hand took about ten minutes because of her utter incompetence.

5. The tournament clock had tipped over to the next level while that hand got sorted out. One of the players didn't notice that and put out the previous blind amount. I pointed out that he needed more. He said, "Oh, the blinds went up already?" I joked, "Yeah, we only got that one hand in on the previous level." The dealer heard this and freaked. She stopped in the middle of pitching cards, fixed me in her glare, and said, "Do you want to sit here and do this?" Note that I hadn't said anything about her directly, or why the hand had taken such a long time. But it was an indisputable fact that it had taken a large part of one entire blind level. I couldn't believe (1) that she was being so sensitive about a joke that was nearly literally true and that, additionally, didn't blame or even mention her as the cause, and (2) that she would further slow down the game to complain to me about it, rather than doing the honorable thing and apologizing to the players for having screwed up so badly. So I just stared back at her, curious to see how long she would hold up the action. It was about 30 seconds of her repeating her question to me and me doing nothing but staring back at her, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of engagement, before she gave it up and went back to the task at hand.

This woman doesn't deserve her job. But as I said earlier, she stood out from the pack as the sole example that I saw of somebody who truly was sub-par.

I really had no other meaningful complaints about the room. It was reasonably comfortable, reasonably well-run, pretty good in terms of noise and smoke infiltration from other parts of the casino, readily accessible restrooms, and had the nice touch of drinking fountains for refilling water bottles. I can't say that I loved the place, but if it were in Vegas, I would certainly have little reason to dislike or stay away from it. For a chronic complainer to be able to come to that conclusion, they're doing pretty well.

Many people I have subsequently run into who knew that I took this trip have asked me about the competition. Frankly, I didn't notice any obvious systematic differences between the manner or quality of play between Vegas and Atlantic City. Plop me down blindfolded, and I sure wouldn't be able to say, "Oh, yeah, this table action can only mean we're in A.C." The addition or subtraction of a single player can change the game far more than putting the table down in either Vegas or the east coast. Or, as the statisticians would say, the within-group variation exceeds the between-group variation by a long, long way.

I played $2/5 for the last couple of hours before we got on the bus back home--something I don't do too often. Good thing I did--it turned what would have been a small overall loss on the trip to an overall win. The play was unbelievably passive--even more so than I usually see at $1/2. Cardgrrl, who was at the table with me, later agreed that it was seriously abnormal play for those stakes. She has played a lot of $2/5 in that room, and assures me that that's not how it usually goes.

So the big question: Would I go back? Yes. Absolutely. I very much want to. In fact, I'm already hatching plans. We'll see if I can persuade Cardgrrl to drive up there next time instead of taking the bus, so that we have both more time and more flexibility to visit other cardrooms. When and if we do, you know that I will spill all the details here.



Here's a few bonus photos of the place for you:



I love that this is the artwork most easily visible from a few of the tables in the poker room. Fish! Perfect!





Stepping out the poker room door and finding an ocean is not exactly the norm for Las Vegas casinos. It's an odd but pleasant sensation.





View from the hotel window. In the photo you can just barely see the power-generating windmills in the background. In reality, they were very prominent in the landscape, but the bleak weather, low-contrast light, window reflection, and my general incompetence as a photographer combined to make them almost disappear here.

Future of Atlantic City

Home from the D.C. trip. Still much to report, later. For now, those of you who frequent Atlantic City might want to read this story in the New York Times. (Thanks to Pauly's post for the pointer.)

Maybe my best 2-4 story ever

Sunday (yesterday) I played the afternoon tournament at Harrah's Atlantic City with Cardgrrl. She busted out fairly early (flopped two pair versus flopped straight, as I heard it), but I managed to hang on quite a long time. I finished 7th in the field of 45. Sadly, only five got paid, so I was the next-to-bubble-boy, which is quite annoying; 4 1/2 hours of work for nothing.

Anyway, when there were just two tables left, I had gotten critically short, so shoved with suited K-7 when it was folded to me in middle position. I got called by the woman to my left with A-Q, and she won, which then left me in desperate need of chips. When I was in the big blind, there was a raise followed by a reraise from the tightest player at the table, who had not three-bet the entire time I had watched him, so I had to let that go, much to my chagrin.

Next hand I was small blind. I think I started the hand with 6000, and had to post 1000 of it for the blind. The button raised to 8000. I had 2c-4h. Two live cards, surely, AND the most powerful hand in hold'em! I shoved.

My opponent had Q-10. The flop looked bad for me: Q-10-3, giving him top two pair. But I had nothing to fear. After all, I had the 2-4!

The turn card probably didn't scare my opponent: A harmless-looking ace. But I knew what that meant, and, in a move that is exceptionally rare for me, I even verbally called out what the river would be: "Five!"

Sure enough, the dealer paused for dramatic effect, then whipped down the five of clubs. Wheel for me! The table went wild!

I pulled out my cell phone and snapped a picture just before the dealer whisked away the cards. He has, at this point, taken my hole cards and tossed them on top of the board cards after mucking my opponent's cards and pushing the pot. There's action and I wasn't holding very still, so things are blurry, but you can still see the results:





On the very next hand I more than doubled again when my 10-10 bested somebody else's suited A-9.

I wish the end of the story were that the dramatic runner-runner save had propelled me to a $1200 first-place cash, but it was not to be. That, however, cannot be laid at the feet of the mighty Deuce-Four, which fully performed up to its legendary reputation.

Cardgrrl had come over from her cash game when she heard that I was in trouble and was standing at the table to witness this. She even tried to take a photograph of the hand, but was stopped by the tournament director. Apparently this casino is among the more paranoid about photographs. (They were so busy stopping her that they didn't notice that I was doing the same thing at the same time.) But, sadly, she still does not believe. In fact, today during a $2-5 NLHE cash game she outdrew my flopped second pair/top kicker to make a straight on the river using her own 2-4, but still refuses to accept its supernatural strength. I don't know what it's going to take to make a convert of her.

Standard odds calculators will tell you that my probability of winning after that flop was about 3.6%, and 9.1% after the turn. But my faithful readers and I know the truth: it was a 100% lock from the get-go.

All hail the Deuce-Four!

Back from Atlantic City

Just got back to D.C. about an hour ago from a weekend in Atlantic City with Cardgrrl. Too tired to write. This is just to post a promise of a long report on the goings-on. We ended up playing only at Harrah's. There just wasn't enough time to make it practical to try visiting other poker rooms, despite a kind offer from a reader (well, at least a reader of Cardgrrl; not entirely sure about me!)/fellow blogger Tarpie to take us with him on a side trip to Caesars Palace. It has definitely made me want to go back when I can take several days and sample more of the casinos.

Full report of the trip coming soon--probably tomorrow (Tuesday).

From D.C. to A.C.

Shocking, isn't it?

(Bad electrical humor.)

We're leaving in about 15 minutes to catch the allegedly luxury bus to Atlantic City for the weekend. Should be an interesting trip with much to report upon return Monday. However, computer is not going along, so no blogging between now and then (unless something so monumental happens that I decide to persuade Cardgrrl to show me how to do a post using her iPhone).

One of the interesting challenges is that I'm mostly used to short (1-4 hour) sessions of poker, rather than marathons. I may need to do differently in A.C. And, of course, for the first time in a long time I will be playing at unfamiliar places, where I'm not the one on my home turf. Will these things matter? We shall see.

Off to the east coast

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, early (too early) tomorrow morning I am flying to Washington, D.C. (after a plane change in Houston--didn't really want that, but it was $150 less than the nonstop, and I'm a cheapskate) for the next 12 days to see what Cardgrrl's poker world is like. This will include a bus junket to Atlantic City that first weekend. I'll probably take my laptop along in order to keep up with the world, but posting will be sporadic. I hope to end up with interesting stories to tell about all the new venues I'll be sampling, and maybe some of the characters I meet, too.

Kids, please don't destroy the place while I'm gone, OK?

I'm going to Washington, D.C., and Atlantic City

My friend Cardgrrl has kindly invited me to come play some poker on her home turf: an assortment of tournament leagues, private home games, and underground raked cash games in the environs of Washington, D.C. I have accepted the challenge. The games begin Thursday, October 15, and run through Monday, October 26. I understand that I have at least a few readers among the denizens of those games, and it will be fun to meet and play with them. (I briefly met about seven of her "A league" crew when they were out here for the World Series in June, but I'll have to admit I was in a pretty down mood that day and probably didn't make a good first impression. I hope they'll forgive that and give me another chance.)

Plans include a side trip to Atlantic City the first weekend (Saturday, October 17, through Monday, October 19), on one of Cardgrrl's monthly Harrah's-sponsored bus junkets. Harrah's AC will be the main hang-out joint, but I'll see if I can persuade her to take a cab to the other part of town and try playing a bit at Caesars and/or Bally's and/or Showboat, since all should provide equal Harrah's credits. Besides, it will be a chance to add to my poker chip collection.

Any reader tips about the poker rooms, hotel/casino amenities, restaurants, sightseeing (if anything in Atlantic City can be so labeled), etc., will be warmly welcomed in the comments section.

Ever since I moved here, I have thought that I should take a week or at least weekend trip to other poker venues: Reno, L.A., or even little ol' Laughlin. But I just never get around to it. The plethora of poker rooms here just seems too cushy to provide much of an incentive to go anywhere else. I'm glad to finally get--and take--the chance to do so, especially with a travelling companion/poker pal as delightful as Cardgrrl.



(Map shot above nipped from the Atlantic City page of www.thepokeratlas.com.)