Hungary?

I spotted this sign a few days ago in the Luxor poker room. It's an electronic sign, and was starting to change just as I snapped the photo, which is why it has the Bee Gees thing fading in.

A hand of, um, titanic proportions

I played at the Luxor this afternoon. I made a nice profit when a rivered king completed my straight but also completed a set for a guy who had played his pocket kings with complete passivity until he was beaten, at which point he elected to raise. (Brilliant strategy!)

But soon thereafter I locked up the lion's share of the day's profit with more than a double-up. I had Jh-Js and raised to $13 after a few limpers. Two of them called. Flop 4s-Qs-Jd. First guy checked. Second one bet $25. I raised to $65. That was smaller than my usual raise would be, because my ideal scenario was getting the first guy--who was kind of stationy--to call enough that he'd be pot-committed, then have the second guy reraise with what I hoped was either top two pair or bottom set. First guy folded, but second guy did even better than a reraise--he shoved. I called, of course. I had $266 left, and he had me covered. He was holding 9s-10s, giving him both a flush draw and an open-ended straight draw.

He probably thought he had 15 outs, which, if true, would make him a slight favorite if I had top pair or an overpair. But it was not so in this situation. He was actually a 63%/37% dog. This was because (1) I had one of his spades; (2) any runner-runner spades would give me a higher flush than his, and (3) most importantly, because I had seven cards that would make me an unbeatable full house or quads on the turn, and, if I missed that, ten that would do the job on the river.

As it turned out, I didn't have to sweat the river, because a queen on the turn left him drawing dead. The dealer cruelly gave him the 7s on the river to complete his flush, too little too late.

He didn't do anything wrong. Had I been in his spot, I, too, would have welcomed the chance to get it all in there. From his point of view, it was surely more likely that I had just one pair (especially AA, KK, or AQ) than that I had been lucky enough to flop a set. He couldn't know that the situation was much worse than he hoped.

So why the strange title to this post?

After playing, I went up to the mezzanine level and went through "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition." I've been mildly interested in seeing this since it came to town maybe three years ago. But a couple of days ago I read the cover story in the new issue of National Geographic magazine, which was all about the most recent expedition to the shipwreck site to generate a detailed map of the debris field, which revived my interest in the whole subject. I also had heard that James Cameron will soon be releasing a 3-D version of "Titanic," which I haven't seen since its first run, and I thought that might be interesting.

This convergence of Titanic-related releases is no coincidence. Next month is the 100th anniversary of the disaster, and you can expect to hear no end of tie-ins. I suspect the Luxor show will get jam-packed around that time, so today was my attempt to beat the crowd by a few weeks.

It's mostly a really nice, well-done collection. It's not more exploitative than such a thing will intrinsically be. Even for a mostly non-sentimental guy like me, there is unquestionably a sense of both eeriness and astonishment to be looking up-close at objects that went down with the Titanic and sat on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for 80 or 90 years, before being retrieved with the amazing tools modern technology has given us.

There are a lot more dishes, cutlery, and cookware than one really needs to see, but other than that, the selection of artifacts is reasonably interesting. They have good descriptions of what the items were. Where an owner has been identified, the objects are personalized by providing a short biography of the person, focused on the circumstances by which he or she came to be on the ship. The plethora of bios and photographic portraits scattered throughout and the complete list of names on a memorial wall in the final room effectively remind the viewer that the 1517 who died are not just to be seen as an anonymous composite number, but that many unique human beings, who happened to share a tragic fate.

Seeing recreations of the three levels of sleeping quarters was also interesting, and made the vast differences between them more memorable than by reading descriptions or even seeing James Cameron's faithful reproductions in a movie. Similarly, being in a large atrium with a replica of the famous grand staircase and its overhead glass dome conveys a sense of the scale and opulence that photographs just cannot do.

The crown jewel of the collection is the "Big Piece." It's the largest piece of the hull recovered so far--26 by 12 feet, weighing some 15 tons. Walking past it from just a few feet away, and knowing that it's maybe 1/30th of the length of one side of the ship makes it easy to mentally fill in the rest, and be impressed by its size.

Also emotionally powerful, I thought, was the remnants of the actual wheel that quartermaster Robert Hichens turned hard to port after a scout shouted the famous alarm, "Iceberg, right ahead!" Much of the wood has been lost to decay, but the hub is intact in its housing, and a few pieces of the wooden spokes are still attached.

No photography was allowed, and the prominent surveillance cameras everywhere were, I suspect, actively being used to enforce this, so I didn't even try to sneak a picture. I was sorely tempted, though, when in one display case I found playing cards and poker chips recovered from the ocean floor. The placard next to them said that the captain had circulated a warning among the passengers that three suspected professional card sharks were on board (it gave their real names and aliases), and advising them not to join the poker games that were being offered in private rooms. I did not think to check the wall at the end to see if the poker players survived the disaster.

Though the visitor is left with a sense that the whole subject is treated by the exhibition with a fitting level of dignity and respect, that feeling is utterly demolished by exiting through the tacky gift shop. Among other things, you can buy actual artifacts from the Titanic: tiny pieces of coal meant for the boilers, scooped up off the ocean floor. $25 apiece.

I'm glad I went. It made the whole catastrophe feel more real and tangible and immediate than the Jack-and-Rose story does.

G. Gordon Liddy sets an example

I was playing at the Luxor tonight. A guy joined the table that looked so much like G. Gordon Liddy that I had to stare for a while before I could convince myself that it wasn't actually him.* He not only had the same build and facial structure, but he had the shaved head and Tom Selleck moustache, too. I was tempted to challenge him to a contest of who could hold his hand over a candle flame for the longest to find out if it was him or not. You can see him (sort of) on the right in the photo above.

I don't remember playing with him before, but he is clearly a local nit--the archetypal nut-peddler that everybody warns you means serious business when he bets or raises.

I had A-A under the gun and raised to $10. One caller, then Liddy raised to $35. Hmm. This was the first three-bet he had done in the two hours or so we had been playing--and he was doing it against my UTG raise. All by itself, this fact narrowed his hand range incredibly far: About 90% chance he has aces or kings. The other 10% (and that's being generous) is queens and A-K, both much less likely than the Big Two. I could narrow it even further, in fact. Given that I had two of the four aces in the deck, it was six times more likely that he had kings than aces.

A fourth player called the $35, so this was starting to look like we were going to have a big, multiway pot. I started salivating. After nonchalantly wiping the drool from my chin, I slid forward two stacks of $50 each to add to the previous $10. A bet of $110 was not only conveniently about three times Liddy's bet, but had the added advantage of being about half of his remaining stack. (I started the hand with about $320, and had him covered.) I hoped that he would decide that if he was going to put in half his stack, he might as well put in the whole thing--or, alternatively, that he would just call and then feel pot-committed when I moved in on the flop.

First caller folded. Liddy thought for a bit, counting and stacking and restacking his chips. I couldn't tell if he was considering a shove or a fold. He well might have had both in his mind as legitimate options. He finally settled on a call. Fourth player dropped out.

As the dealer scooped the chips into the middle of the table, I was exerting my mental powers on him: Don't flop a king, don't flop a king, don't flop a king. I really wanted there not to be an ace, either, so that Liddy would be more likely to commit his stack, but that plea to the universe was made with an order of magnitude less intensity than the no-king one.

The flop was 3-3-4 rainbow. Of all the flops that do not improve pocket aces, that may be the very best that one can see. Absolutely perfect, utterly nonthreatening. "I'm all in."

And now the sweat began. Liddy was quiet and still, but obviously in some psychological distress. After a minute or so he broke the silence: "I know that you're good enough to know exactly what I have. So the fact that you go all in while knowing that means that you can only have one hand." Neither I nor anybody else at the table responded to this observation, and his silent vigil resumed. His only other sound was quietly adding up what the pre-flop bets had been to get an estimate of the pot size, then counting his own remaining chips--about $135.

Finally he let out a big breath and said, "You have aces. That's all there is to it. I have to fold." And with that, he turned his kings face up and slid them back to the dealer.

To his left was a young stereotypical European internet player, who had been waiting out this drama with obvious impatience. The kid's eye bugged out of his skull, and he said, "You're folding?! How can you fold that?"

Liddy was unperturbed by having his decision questioned. Matter-of-factly, without defensiveness or irritation, he replied, "He has aces. I have two outs. I'm not going to put in another hundred dollars drawing to two outs." Eurokid smirked and said, "You have to call there." Liddy brushed him off. "I know you couldn't fold here, but it's the right move. In fact, I was close to throwing it away before the flop." I believe him 100%. His tone was not defiant or argumentative--just supremely confident. It was the voice of a man who had made a difficult decision, and didn't like having to do it, but was at peace with what he had done.

I was seriously impressed. I don't know if I would have saved my last money the way that he did, after investing half my stack. I think coming to the conclusion that I had pocket aces was relatively straightforward for him, as was arriving at the obvious implication that that conclusion required a fold. But actually carrying out what he knew needed to be done was agonizing and took some mustering of his considerable internal fortitude.

The best episode of the World Poker Tour I ever saw was in the first season, with Paul Phillips heads-up against Mel Judah. Judah had fought back from a short stack to have a small chip lead. Then in the decisive hand they both had straights on the river, but Judah's was the nuts. Phillips had the dummy end. Judah moved all in, which was a massive overbet to a small pot. Phillips deliberated for several minutes, and they did not edit the tape. You see him talking to himself, trying to get some read off of Judah, sweating profusely, debating whether Judah would have taken the line he did if he had the only cards that beat him (Phillips). Meanwhile, in the voiceover, Mike Sexton ticks off for Vince Van Patten (and for the home audience) all the clues that Phillips has that Judah has him beat. It was one of the most cogent and insightful pieces of analysis I ever heard him do, and he was exactly right. Van Patten was much more sympathetic with the dilemma Phillips was in. He acknowledged Sexton's points, but then said, "But how do you fold a straight when you're heads-up?" Sexton's response was classic, and I've never forgotten it: "It's easy, Vince. You just pick up your cards and throw them in the muck." (Phillips didn't see it that way. He called and the tournament was over.)

Many times I've been faced with the painful conclusion that I'm beat and have to fold, abandoning some small fortune in chips in the pot. In such situations, Sexton's words come back to my mind: "Just pick up your cards and throw them in the muck." It hurts, but you make that one small physical motion, and it's done, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

It seems to me that this is a lesson that Mr. Liddy (or whatever his real name is) has learned well. He didn't care what anybody else would do, nor what anybody else thought of his decision. He simply was not going to throw good money after bad, once he convinced himself that his read of my hand was correct.

I did not show my cards. I thought it was strategically better to let Liddy, the kid, and the others continue to wonder if his certitude would have been vindicated. As a general rule, leaving opponents feeling psychologically off-balance and unsure of themselves is more effective than satisfying their curiosity.

But an hour or so later, after I racked up my chips and bade the table good night, I stopped by Liddy's seat and told him, sotto voce, "You were absolutely right. Very impressive laydown." He gave me a quick nod and a terse, "Thank you." I thought he deserved to know--though his confidence in himself was such that I'm not sure it really added anything to his perception of what had transpired.

*It has absolutely no connection to the poker tale, but I'm suddenly remembering a funny moment from the real Liddy. Many years ago I saw him on a late-night TV talk show. He and the host (Carson? I can't remember for sure) somehow got talking about guns. The host asked him if he owned any guns. He said, "As a convicted felon, I am legally prohibited from owning firearms. [Pause.] Mrs. Liddy, however, has an extensive collection."

Addendum, February 11, 2012

I found that World Poker Tour episode online here. The final two hands start at about the 37:00 mark. It's been years since I watched it, so this gives you a chance to see whether my memory of the action and dialog in my description above was accurate. (I got some details wrong--e.g., it was early in the second season, not the first, and Judah's straight was the second nuts rather than the nuts--but the general flavor of it was about right, I think.

People are so rude

For the past couple of months I've had a stiff, sore shoulder. It seems to be getting better gradually, but it has required a slow, painful process of frequent exercise and stretching. (If you play poker with me and see me pull on one arm with the other while making unpleasant faces, now you'll know why.)

Because of it, yesterday while playing poker I decided to pop a couple of ibuprofen. A segmented pill case is among the many items I routinely carry in what Cardgrrl calls the Fanny Pack of Great Awesomeness. I keep with me ibuprofen, Tylenol, aspirin, some allergy pills, and one megajolt of caffeine. A couple of minutes after I had swallowed the Advil with a sip of water, the guy on my left--who had not said a word to me since joining the table--leaned over and asked, "What kind of pills you takin' there?"

I don't know about you, but that's a question I would ask only of somebody with whom I had a very close relationship. Anybody else, it's none of my business. To compound the rudeness, he waited until I was in the middle of playing a big pot to ask.

The answer was innocent enough, so I gave him the one-word brush-off answer without turning to look at him. He followed it up with, "Whatcha takin' it for?"

That one I ignored.

People's brazenness frequently astounds me.

But I'm going to be better prepared next time somebody interrogates me as to what medication I'm taking. I'm going to lean in close to him and say, "I can't remember the name, but it's something really strong for my tuberculosis [cough, cough]."

I guess he did a 180

Last September when I played at the Luxor, it had suddenly been renamed the Bruce Buffer Poker Room, and his name was all over everything. See the post I wrote about it here. It was still like that the last time I played there, which was in February.

Today, however, I paid another visit and POOF! Bruce Buffer has vanished from the premises. No dealer t-shirts, no name on the felt, no big-screen TV with a slideshow of his photos, no gift shop, no lounge--nuthin'. Compare these pictures, taken today, with those in that post from September:

What happened?

Pure speculation based on flimsy evidence

When Criss Angel first appeared at the Luxor, they put out special commemorative $5 chips with his picture on them. This is a pretty standard part of a casino's publicity blitz for a big new act.

A couple of years ago, I explained in gory detail the proper method of stacking one's chips at the table. I'm sure some readers thought I was kidding, but I wasn't. During the first few hands after joining a game, it is far, far more important to segregate out the commemorative chips and get them hidden away from view than it is to do stuff like watching the action, figuring out how opponents are playing, and so forth. This is especially true at the Luxor, because the Criss Angel chips are just plain creepy. He's giving you the stinkeye, and if you leave his face exposed to view from the tops of your chip stacks, it will curse your game. These are just scientific facts, folks. The freaky chips must be buried underneath regular chips as quickly as possible.

It is because of my habit of doing this that I noticed something recently. For the three years or so that Angel has been at the Luxor, the Angel poker chips have consistently amounted to a little under half of the total chips in circulation. I'd buy into a game, segregate my chips when I wasn't in a hand, and find that usually there were a few more generic chips than Angel chips, but a nearly equal balance.

But last month when I played at the Luxor, after having not been there for a couple of months, there was a drastic change. I bought in for $200, and only 2 of the 40 chips were Angel ones. I thought this might be an anomaly (i.e., maybe the guy who had cashed out right before I got there separated his chips, too, so the ones I got weren't representative), but I watched the rest of that session as other players' chips went into the pot, and that ratio was fairly consistent throughout.

This, however, was a one-time observation, a single data point. Last night I added a second one. I played at the Luxor again, bought in for $200, and had just one Angel chip among the 40 I was given. Again I watched chips going into the pot, and again the creepy chips were almost completely absent.

This can't be a coincidence. The fraction of commemorative $5 chips cannot go from nearly 50% to less than 5% over the course of a couple of months without the casino taking active steps to make this happen. It appears that the Luxor has instructed its cashiers (or the people behind the cashiers, in the secluded counting/sorting area) to selectively take the Angel chips out of circulation as they come through.

This is not unprecedented. I have written before about noticing that the Venetian had pulled its Gordie Brown chips out of circulation when he moved over to the Golden Nugget, and that Ceasars Palace had done the same when Celine Dion ended her run there.

But if I'm right that the Luxor is deliberately pulling Criss Angel chips out of circulation, it will be the first time I've noticed this happening before the act is terminated. It makes me suspicious that somebody at the Luxor has already decided that Angel is on the way out. Obviously, I have no hard evidence of this, just this one very peculiar observation. It's no secret, of course, that his show has been struggling since it opened, almost universally panned by critics and ordinary patrons alike.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe what I have observed is just a crazy fluke. Or maybe there's some other explanation for it. But my prediction is that before the end of the year, we will see Angel and the Luxor part ways, and this will have been one of the early indicators of it.

This is who you want at the table

After my session at Mandalay Bay (see previous post), I decided to spend a little time at Luxor. One of the players at the table was plainly quite drunk. He couldn't even coordinate his hands enough to stack his chips, and just kept them in a messy pile.

After I had been there for a while, a man, who we soon learned was drunk guy's brother, came along to chat with him:

Brother: "There you are. I thought you went back to the room to sleep."

Drunk guy: "I tried, but I couldn't see the room numbers well enough to know which one was ours, so I came down here instead."

The Bruce Buffer Post

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

So that exhausted my knowledge of Bruce Buffer.

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

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





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




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




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




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




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




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




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




This player was sporting the Bruce Buffer Combover:




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

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

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

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

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

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

What goes around comes around

Last Friday night I was playing at the Rio, sitting on about my starting stack of $300. I had a J-10 of diamonds on the button, so decided to call the under-the-gun raiser, whose stack was nearly identical. Flop was J-10-6, giving me top two pair. He bet $25. I raised to $75, largely because of the draw-heavy board (two hearts in addition to the obvious straight draw). He looked unhappy about it, but called. Turn was another 10, making my boat. He led out for $100. I moved all-in. He again looked not thrilled about the situation, but gave me the resigned shrug, and said, "I call." I showed my hand. He winced and turned over A-10. Looks like a double-up for moi. But don't count your chickens before they hatch. River: Ace. Bye-bye stack.

Tuesday night I was at Luxor, again with almost exactly my $300 starting stack. Under-the-gun player raises to $10. I'm next in line with A-A, and push it to $30. There are very few pre-flop reraises in this game, and the move practically turns my cards face-up, but I still thought it was the best choice, on balance, since this passive table could easily all call $10 and leave me in a very difficult predicament. Everybody folded to the small blind, who called. The UTG player moved all-in. Unfortunately, it was for $48--$2 less than would have been required to re-open the betting, so I could only call. BB called, also.

Flop was J-8-3. BB quickly grabbed a $100 stack and put it down in front of him. (He had me covered by a little bit.) This caught me off-guard. I didn't think he would call a reraise--especially from out of position--with 8-8 or 3-3. I also didn't think he would lead with J-J. He was a good enough player to realize the limited range with which I had put in the reraise before the flop, so surely he would expect me to make a substantial c-bet if he checked to me, and, given the stack sizes, I'd be pot-committed. Therefore, if he had flopped a set, I'd think that the check-raise would be the better play. This line of reasoning made me conclude that he most likely had Q-Q or K-K, and was making this bet to take the pot if I had A-K (it seemed possible that he hadn't done the math to realize that I couldn't raise again pre-flop after the UTG shove, and on that basis decided that I might have only A-K instead of a big pair), or find out if he should get away from it if I shoved, on the assumption that this would mean he could be fairly certain I had aces.

So I shoved. He called immediately. I showed the aces. He showed 8-8. Oops. I don't know exactly what his thinking was, but I had misread the situation somehow. But I had little time to stew about it. Two seconds later, we both saw the dealer give me a fourth-street ace-ball, and that was that.


It's pretty uncommon that I win or lose $300 in a single hand. When it happens, it's really, really rare that the outcome is decided, either way, on the basis of somebody hitting one of just two or three possible winning cards after all the money is in the middle. But I guess that this week the universe decided that it should set things right on the first three-outer by giving me the second one.

Stupid policy

For the past several months, Luxor and Excalibur have had a "no photos" policy in place, complete with signs. Of course, everybody wants to take pictures of the signs as a gag. Well, it appears that the powers that be have recognized how pointless and unenforceable this policy is. Read more about it here:

http://www.vegaschatter.com/story/2010/6/2/125221/9352/vegas-travel/Luxor_and_Excalibur_Have_Lifted_the_No_Photos_Rule

Three hands, or maybe four

I'll tell you about two of the hands I played last night that were key to chalking up a W in each of two poker rooms instead of continuing my recent string of L's, plus a bonus one I saw play out the other day.


Luxor

I'm on the button with 3d-4d. The under-the-gun player raises to $12, and there is a caller before it gets to me. I realize that I have described a fair number of hands in which I have played junk like this--enough that readers might come to think that this is habitual for me. I feel some need to reassure you that it isn't; the circumstances have to come together just right. This fit the bill: UTG raise from a tight player that I can already put on a narrow range of hands, big pot brewing, on the button, and holding a hand that can either hit big or easily be determined to be no good and thrown away with just a small loss. So I call, as does one of the blinds. Pot about $45.

The flop is Jc-3c-3s. Ding! Unless the UTG guy started with pocket jacks, I should be good here. UTG checks. The first caller bets $60. He is one of two other pretty good players at the table. Interestingly, in the hour or so I've been at this table, I've seen him bet good made hands big in an attempt to prevent a flush draw, but been called and had the draw get there. He seems frustrated by this series of events. I have not seen him bet draws that I know of. He's just by general skill certainly capable of it. But this overbet of the pot smells to me like yet another in his series of "give up your flush draw, I've got top pair" bets. I call, not only to help make him think I'm drawing (and hence commit his stack if there is no club on the turn), but to be sure that the UTG player isn't going to do an all-in check-raise, which would make me leery that he flopped a full house. But the blind and he both fold. Heads-up, pot now about $165.

At this point, my lone remaining opponent does something I have not seen him do before. He rapidly puts his chips into a single stack and pushes it forward as he says, "I'm all in, in the dark." It's maybe another $130 or so. I have him covered.

I probably should have waited to see what the turn card was, but I had already decided that he was much more likely to have a made hand--AJ or KJ, maybe even QQ for an overpair--than a draw, so I didn't much care what the next card would be. I figured that even in the worst case scenario, which was him having either JJ or the case 3 with a better kicker, I'm not getting away from this hand, so I might as well call. Nothing the dealer could turn over is going to dissuade me at this point. I announce my call before the dealer turns and burns.

I was surprised and kicked myself when I saw that (1) I had been dead wrong on my read, and the guy had Ac-5c for the nut flush draw, and (2) the turn was the 8c, giving him his flush. Still, though, if I had waited to see the card before making my decision, it would have turned out the same, because I still would not have put him on the draw. The all-in dark move was much more consistent with somebody acting defensively against the draw than somebody on the draw. So I would have called anyway.

Such considerations all became moot, though, when the dealer put down the 4h on the river, giving me a full house: threes full of fours. It's a tiny little house, but it's full! And except in the sewage business, a full house beats a flush. Whew! But I got my money in with the best hand, so it's not like I was saved by an ugly suckout.


Excalibur

A short time later I cashed out my $300+ profit and scooted next door to Excalibur. Mandalay Bay would have been just as close (Luxor is in between them, so I could go either way), and is a much nicer place to play generally, but my clothes were already stinky from cigarette smoke from the Luxor, so I figured they wouldn't get any worse from the relatively smoky environment at Excalibur. Besides, I had not played there since late July, and this would be only my second visit since they canned the electronic tables. I do try to stop in to just about every poker room in town from time to time, and this was as good a chance as any to see what, if anything, was new at Excalibur.

Most of my profit there ended up being from one hand. I had A-Q offsuit in middle position. I put in my standard raise and got three callers. The flop was A-K-3 rainbow, which I thought was pretty good for me. To my surprise, the UTG player, who had limp-called before the flop, led out for $30 into the roughly $45 pot. I thought he most likely had a smaller ace and was testing the waters. I eyeballed his stack as having another $60 behind, which turned out to be exactly correct. I knew there was some small possibility that one of the two players yet to act had a monster like A-K or 3-3, but only one of them had me covered; the other was short-stacked and so couldn't do much damage. I decided I needed to raise or fold, baby. I took one chip off the top of each of two $50 stacks and slid them forward.

The next player moved all-in for his last $61, and the button folded. Back to the UTG guy, who counted and found that he had exactly the amount of my raise left, and he put it in. I flipped over what I thought was the winner. I winced when UTG turned over A-3 for a flopped two pair. I winced yet again when the third guy in the hand turn over ANOTHER A-3! Yikes! I'm beat in both places!

But sometimes the poker gods are kind to grumps, and this time they saw fit to bless me with another king on the turn, counterfeiting my opponents' second pair, and putting me in the lead with two pair (aces and kings) with my queen kicker playing. The river changed nothing, and I scooped.

I think I played it correctly, given the stack sizes, even though I ended up accidentally getting my money in as an underdog. (I was about 30% to win, 7% to get a three-way chop.) I don't mind being the one getting lucky for a change.


Bonus hand!

I had forgotten another story I wanted to tell. It involved the same guy who was UTG in the foregoing, and came a short time before the hand I just described. I had Ah-Jh in the small blind. There were a bunch of limpers. I pushed it to $16, and got only the one caller. I saw that he had just $30 left behind, so I said, "Let's make it interesting," and put out $30 before the flop came. After all, what he has left is less than the size of the pot, so there really aren't any flops on which I'm likely to fold there. It's basically a 100% c-bet situation. He was one of the weakest players at the table, and I thought I might gain a little fold equity with the intimidation factor of the dark shove. I.e., if he read that move as me holding aces, kings, or queens, he might fold even if he hit some small pair on the flop.

The flop was all small cards, two suits, all black, though I don't recall exactly what was out there. Not my ideal, but my chips were already committed. The guy thought for a minute, then looked right at me and said, "All in."

From the look on his face, it quickly became apparent to me that he thought he was being the aggressor here, and was waiting for me to call. It was only when the dealer turned and burned the next card that he snapped to and realized that I had beaten him to the punch. He had not noticed my comment about "Let's make it interesting," nor had he noticed that I had dark-shoved on him!

He had Q-10 offsuit. So he called off the last of his chips with no pair and no draw, mistakenly thinking that he might push me off of a hand with a bluff, when my chips were already in the pot before he did so! Excellent situational awareness, sir!

A-J held up. And you already know the next part of the story: I took his rebuy, too, on a lucky suckout.


Mandalay Bay

I was not involved in this hand from Sunday, but it was pretty remarkable.

Before the flop there was some limping, a raise from the blind, and three callers. The flop was Q-Q-9 rainbow. The original raiser led out with a strong bet--$50 or so. Next guy called. Third guy moved all-in.

This was the most solid, rocky guy at the table, never once even a step out of line. He also had the biggest stack there, some $800 he had amassed by waiting patiently for a monster, then capturing the stack of a weaker hand. With that bet and call in front of him, and him willing to commit the $300 or so it would take to cover his opponents, there were only two things he could have: 9-9 for a flopped boat, or Q with a very strong kicker, king or jack. (Probably not an ace, though, because before the flop he limp-called.) I thought that even Q-10 was probably below his range; he was so conservative that with that holding he would probably just call down an opponent for fear of being outkicked.

I was shocked, then, when the fourth player called off his last $150 or so. The other two quickly folded. The rock, not surprisingly, flipped over K-Q. The fourth player? As-Js. No pair, no draw. He had runner-runner flush and straight draws, but that was all. And no, they did not come to pass for him. Sadly, he left the game at that point. (This was his last rebuy. I had stacked him earlier when I flopped the nut straight and he flopped the low end of it.)

A long time ago I described what I thought was the worst, stupidest call I had ever seen in a live poker game. This one was in that same general ballpark of badness, a couple of orders of magnitude worse than the level of badness that usually prevails at $1-$2 games in town, and he didn't even have heavy drinking to blame it on. I thought it was worth memorializing here.

Perhaps I'm not losing my mind after all

The chips above are two new ones that I picked up at the Excalibur poker room tonight, where I was playing for a while.


November ups and downs

As I've explained here many times, I don't usually discuss much about my results or income, for a variety of reasons. I don't usually disclose on any given day or week whether or how much I'm winning or losing, and I try to keep my writing about poker unconnected to my results of the moment.

But once in a while I break that silence for some particular reason, and this is one such occasion.

November has been a highly unusual month. It started out like gangbusters. I couldn't lose. I had nine cash winning sessions and a big tournament score, punctuated by just one losing session.

Then things went all to hell. From November 12th to the 22nd I endured six consecutive losing sessions, for a total loss of $1526. (That's fewer sessions that I would usually put in during an 11-day stretch because I was taking days off in between the losses trying to get my head straight and not play with a mindset of making up for them, which is a deadly, sure-to-lose perspective.)

Losing that much money in that short a time frame stings, there's no denying that. But I can take the loss financially. It's what the repeated losing does to my head that I'm going to try to describe.

It's not terribly uncommon for me to have a week or two in which I just spin my wheels, with losses roughly equally balancing wins. That's kind of annoying, because it feels like I've just been wasting my time without accomplishing anything useful. But six substantial losses in a row is pretty darn rare for me. Even the couple of bad, prolonged losing spells that I've written about here before haven't been loss after loss after loss; they have been, rather, a long series in which the losses continued to exceed the wins in both magnitude and number, but there has been at least some winning going on along the way.

One losing session rolls off of me like water off a duck. Two in a row annoys me, but by the next day I'm fine again. Three in a row starts escalating the frustration. And at four, frankly, I start losing my composure. I shouldn't, I know. I should be able to shrug off as many consecutive losses as there are, because such streaks will happen no matter how soundly I play, and I'd better get used to that fact. But I'm not to that point of zen-like equanimity yet. (I try, without much success, to emulate Tommy Angelo's way of seeing losing ten times in a row as practice for the next time that he will lose ten times in a row.)

I tell you, losing that many times in a row does strange things to my brain. A task that was routine, ordinary, and even habitual (i.e., winning at least modest amounts at poker) suddenly became impossible. It feels like getting in a car, and you no longer can remember which pedal is the accelerator and which the brake, or how to make the thing turn. Worse, you keep crashing into things. It's not just discouraging, it's seriously disorienting. It's like I have forgetten how to be able to dress myself, or even speak coherently, after a massive stroke.

During such a spell, it seems to cease to matter what I do. I can play tight or loose: I lose. I can play aggressively or passively: I lose. I can play well or badly: I lose. I can have a table of experts or fish: I lose. I can pick any cardroom in the city for the day's work: I lose. I can move from one table to another, or even one casino to another: I lose. None of that makes any sense. None of it is how it should be. It is, I think, what experimental psychologists (those sick bastards who come up with new and devilish ways of torturing lab animals) call learned helplessness. It is poker futility writ large.


Cardgrrl on losing

My wonderful friend Cardgrrl has written about losing in poker as eloquently and thoughtfully as anybody I know. For example, this:

I think running bad is a little like getting lung cancer when you're a
non-smoker. It happens; you didn't do anything specific to bring it on, but
people keep asking you if you did. Everyone has advice on how to get better, but
few of them will hold your hand (or your forehead) while you go through chemo. A
lot of people will just disappear from your life, or avoid talking about "it"
altogether, as if your daily routine were continuing as normal otherwise and you
ought to be able to compartmentalize, for everyone else's sake as much as your
own. But some of them, often cancer survivors themselves, will offer sound,
practical advice on diet and exercise, recommend good physicians, listen to you
vent without judgment (as, if they were lucky, others did for them), and offer
strategies for coping with the rest of your life while you're ill. When you are
in remission, they will celebrate with you and also help you find equanimity in
the face of the possibility of recurrence.

If you are fortunate, you will actually emerge from the illness stronger,
more self-aware, with better habits for maintaining your well-being and a keener
understanding of what is and isn't within your control. And if you are truly
blessed, you will have learned how to live well even under the most adverse
circumstances.

In a long post from about a year ago, Cardgrrl details one astoundingly horrendous trip to Atlantic City where nothing, nothing, nothing would go right. (Let's try not to dwell too long on the part about her making out with another player at the table, OK?) Rereading it makes me glad that I either have never experienced days quite that bad, or I have blessedly blocked from conscious memory having done so. A couple of other old posts describe painful, though somewhat less dramatically concentrated, losing streaks: here and here.

But her best work on the subject is in three posts that I think are just too good in their entirety, too insightful and eloquent and wise to excerpt or try to summarize. It would be an injustice to them and to their author. Go read them in toto, here and here and here.


The pain does end

I'm writing this now because tonight this particular fresh hell (hat tip: Dorothy Parker) seems to have run its course. One of my tricks for breaking a losing streak is to head to one of a few places that I dislike as poker rooms (because of heavy noise and cigarette smoke problems, bad dealers, etc.) but which are reliable cash cows. The Luxor was the choice of just such a place tonight. And it came through for me: Up $316 in about 80 minutes.

I crossed the tunnel into the Excalibur (another such room), and hit again: $150 in exactly one hour.

I plan to describe a couple of the hands in a separate post, but not here, because exactly how it happened is beside the point. The point is that, as suddenly as it began, the just-can't-win streak is gone. Winning was easy again, the way I'm mostly used to it being. It feels a bit like a tornado suddenly ripped me out of my comfortable home, spun me around, bonked my head against a bunch of flying debris for 12 days or so, but then dropped me down again and went on its way, presumably to torment some other grinder.

Now I just have to brush myself off, and go about picking up all the hundred-dollar bills that got blown out of my wallet in the process.

Another Luxor session, another bad dealer

No surprise, really. But this time it took until near the end of the session (which was spent with Cardgrrl at the same table, something we haven't done in months) for the badness to be manifested.

The dealer was James. The "high hand of the day" was 5-5-5-5. That is, if one had pocket 5s and found the other two on the board, it was a $500 bonus. The flop came 4-5-5. Instantly, James said, "Oh, who's got those pocket 5s?"

It is perfectly appropriate, even laudable, for dealers to make sure that players know what jackpots and promotions are available, and what the rules and conditions for them are. (Side story: A young woman at the table hit quad aces and simply called an opponent on the river, rather than raising, because, as she explained, she erroneously thought that if he folded to a raise, there wouldn't be a showdown and she would lose eligibility for the high hand jackpot.) But a dealer should not volunteer this information in the middle of a hand in which doing so might alert players to something going on that they might otherwise have missed, and thus queer the action.

For example, suppose there had been a large raise preflop in this hand from a player with A-A, and a call. The raiser is contemplating what range of hands his opponent might have. He is unaware of the "5555" promotion. After seeing the flop of 4-5-5, he is not worried that his opponent could have 5-5 in the hand, because he thinks that his preflop raise was large enough to push out small pocket pairs. Now that the dealer points out the promotion, however, he realizes that 5-5 is, in fact, within his opponent's calling range, because that player might be willing to call an unusually large amount for the chance to hit the big bonus. If the opponent does actually have 5-5, the dealer's comment may reduce the amount that the player with quads gets from Mr. Aces, because now the latter is on alert. Conversely, even if nobody has the quads, the dealer's comment may increase the raiser's level of caution and cause smaller bets, or maybe even checking a street where he might otherwise have bet. In another scenario, perhaps a player who has poor eyesight or is too drunk to see the cards clearly thought that the flop was 4-5-6 instead of 4-5-5, and is about to play accordingly, until the dealer's comment draws extra attention to the fact that the board is paired.

Dealers simply must refrain from any comments that could potentially change how players play their hands. The Luxor dealers routinely ignore this mandate, and last night's incident was just the latest in a long line of such improper actions I've seen and documented here.

The most plausible explanation for the dealer's interjection here is that he wanted to be sure not to miss a possible large tip coming from a player who didn't know about the promotion and quietly mucked quads rather than showing them at the end of the hand. In other words, he selfishly puts his own needs ahead of the integrity of the game. I find that despicable.

This same dealer frequently, though not consistently, told players, "Nice hand," or "Good bet." Again, this seems likely designed to remind people to tip him, without overtly saying so. Cardgrrl has ranted about the wrongness of such dealer comments here. As she points out, this puts the dealer in the position of playing favorites--complimenting one player while ignoring or compounding the irritation or pain of the loser(s) of the hand.

She and I had a long talk about James on the way back from Luxor last night. She found this habit of his much more annoying than pointing out the possible quads. Conversely, I thought the quads thing was much worse, because it has the potential to compromise the integrity of the game, while the compliments are merely rude and irritating (and, admittedly, possibly bad for the game), but don't affect what is actually transpiring in a hand, because it's over by then.

As a final bit of unprofessionalism, both Cardgrrl and I felt a noticeable grating on the nerves when James called her "Honey" at one point.

Because of all of my griping about the Luxor dealers, it's probably only fair that I point out, again, that there are a few notable exceptions there--dealers who do their jobs very well indeed. One of the true standouts is Mark. If you've played there, you likely will have noticed him, if only because he keeps his hair cut in keeping with the pyramid theme of the Luxor, which is kind of a cool and interesting touch. More importantly, though, he is a real pro, in my experience. He keeps the game moving well, makes very few errors, is alert to players' needs, proactively deals with potential problems (e.g., last night he was the only dealer that noticed players who were inadvertantly flashing their cards while mucking, and politely reminded them to keep the cards down), uniformly enforces rules, and is unfailingly friendly and polite.

Why don't they make him the poker room manager, and have him teach his pathetic, hopeless, loser colleagues how to do their jobs right?

Fun and not-so-fun at the Luxor

Wow--it seems strange to sit down and start to write a real post of the kind that used to come out nearly every day. It's been a while!


Last night, I picked up Cardgrrl at the Venetian poker room, where she had been playing, and we went off to Mandalay Bay to do some fishing. After an hour and a half, we had both done reasonably well. (OK, I admit it--she had won quite a bit more than I had, thanks mostly to making a set of jacks on the turn and getting the all-in call from a guy with unimproved Q-Q.) She wanted to move on to the Luxor, so I agreed.

Good call, as it turned out.

By coincidence, we discovered in talking last night that Luxor is the place where both she and I first played casino poker--and both of us had no clue what we were doing back then. So it was kind of a return to roots, but hopefully this time with us nearer the top of the Luxor poker food chain than we were five or six years ago.


Unprofessional dealers--what's new?

Just about every time I write about a session at the Luxor, it includes a story about one of the dealers doing something stupid, unprofessional, and/or in violation of basic rules. (Just click here for a compilation of the relevant posts.) I'm not picking on the Luxor deliberately; I would complain about such things from dealers wherever they might occur. It's just that at the Luxor it happens a lot more than any other poker room I visit regularly. As I have noted before, I am not the only one with this perception; "Las Vegas Michael" spends even more time in poker rooms than I do and pays close attention to how they are run, and he agrees that the Luxor is in a class by itself in terms of how unprofessional the dealers are.

Last night it took only five minutes into the session before I had another humdinger of a bad-dealer story. The dealer was Jimmy. The final board on the hand in question was K-Q-3-7-3. Player A bet. Player B called. Player A showed K-10. Player B said, "Oh, you have a better kicker." Player B then turned a king face up, left his second card face down, and passed his hole cards back to the dealer in a clear and obvious fold.

Jimmy tapped the guy's face-down card and said, "Chop chop." Player B still didn't catch on, so Jimmy told him, "If you turn both cards up, it will be a chopped pot." Player B finally saw what he meant, complied (his other card was a 5) and the pot was split.

B's cards never hit the muck, but his intention was unambiguous, and the dealer's correct action would have been to turn the king face down, put both cards in the muck, award the pot to Player A, and say nothing about it.

Player A complained, but did so very softly, speaking quietly to the player on her right. (I was on her left, so heard it.) She didn't complain to the dealer or floor, as she should have.

If a player misreads his hand or the board or both, and wrongly decides to muck his cards, he must be allowed to do so. Neither the dealer nor another player may intervene to stop him. It is a strategic decision to muck rather than table one's cards, and dealers cannot make that decision for players, nor even help them make that decision.

I suspect that the dealer's reason for sticking his nose in where it didn't belong was the hope that he could pick up tips from two winners rather than one. He was a smart guy--he surely knew that what he was doing was against the rules. Dealers injecting themselves into poker hands and poker players' decisions is the single most frequent category of wrong stuff that Luxor dealers do that I have chronicled here. Clearly it is not going to stop anytime soon, because it has been going on for years. It is patently obvious that nobody in the poker room management cares about this stuff.

Here's another minor dealer error I saw last night: On the river, the action went check-check-check-check, then the button pushed out $35. The dealer, James, said, "Raise it up. Make it $35." Raise? Raise? How can there be a raise when there has been no prior bet? Players new to casino poker make this mistake all the time. Dealers never should.

One last dealer story: I had Tweeted about the first incident. Cardgrrl, two tables over, had apparently seen that post. A while later, she sent me a text message asking me whether Don was the dealer that I disliked. I responded that he was one of them, based on previous interactions. I guessed at what he was doing that annoyed her: being vulgar. She wrote back, "He was on about happy endings over here. Idiot." Bingo. Do I know my dealers, or what? (He's the same one that I referred to as "Dealer #5" here, when I heard him making stupid double-entendres about his "big carrot.")


An audacious bluff

Usually at the Luxor the players are such terrible calling stations that I deploy what I think of as my "Bill's strategy," which basically means no bluffing. There can be exceptions, but they must be selected with extreme care. Last night, such a confluence of circumstances occurred.

There was a large four-way pot. One player was all-in on the flop, with three of us calling. I had suited 7-8. On the turn I picked up both flush and gutshot straight draws, so I called another player's bet, as did the last guy.

The river missed me, but meant that the final board was K-5-4-3-2 with no flush possible. I didn't think either of my remaining opponents had an ace or a six, and thought that they couldn't call without a straight if I were to bet. Furthermore, they happened to be the only two players at the table that I thought were good enough (1) to have noticed that I had played my hand as if on a draw, and (2) to fold a hand like top pair or even two pair if they were sufficiently persuaded that I had just made my straight on the river. So when it was checked to me, I bet $50 at what was then a roughly $60 side pot. Both of them folded.

I had to show my cards because of the showdown with the all-in guy. As the dealer pushed me the side pot, he said, "You get this part for sure." I flipped my cards up and said, "I think that's all I'll be getting." I was right, of course--the approximately $150 main pot was won by the all-in guy who had a suited Q-J, and took it with queen high! Each of the guys I had pushed out of the pot claimed, very plausibly, to have had a king for top pair. Either one could have taken the main pot if not for folding to my river bet. I didn't profit, but the side pot was enough to make me approximately even for the hand (i.e., get me back what I had put into the pot before the river), which was good enough.

It is safe to say that my move caused quite a stir. I was massively unpopular with the two guys who folded winners, but the hand continued intermittently to be the talk of the table for about 15 minutes. Both of them admitted the obvious--that they were certain I had the straight. As one of them said, "Guy plays two hands an hour, you've got to believe he has it there."

I was exceptionally pleased with this move. At the risk of sounding overly self-congratulatory, it felt, well, professional. I understood the situation accurately, including my opponents' likely holdings, their temperaments and abilities, my table image, etc., then used that information to make an aggressive move that won me money I could have taken in no other possible way.

To make things even better, over the next 30 minutes I got three more calls from opponents who all said explicitly that they felt obligated to call me down because they had seen me bluff with 8-high. (This includes the guy in the story to follow.) So not only did I steal the side pot in that hand, but got paid quite handsomely in subsequent hands because of having had to show the bluff. I was enormously pleased with how it worked out.


The real happy ending

No, it has nothing to do with getting a massage, which is what I presume that nasty dealer Don was talking about. This is about the best way to end a poker session.

Cardgrrl and I had initially planned on leaving at around 10:00 p.m. But we both had slow starts, without much happening. So we decided (all by texting) to stay another hour or so. Good thing. As 11:00 hit, I played 8-9 of hearts, just as Cardgrrl texted me to say she was going to play two more hands, then quit.

I picked up a straight-flush draw on the flop with position on my opponent (flop 7h-5c-Jh). I called his $20 bet. As you can see from the photo below, I hit my perfect card on the turn, making the jack-high straight flush.





My opponent, who happened to be one of the two that I had bluffed off of a winner before, bet another $20 on the turn. I just called again, because his stack was short enough that if he bet anything on the river, as I thought he would, he would basically be pot-committed for any raise. Sure enough, he bet $20 again. I raised all-in and he called his last $50 or so. He mucked after seeing my cards. (He later said that he had had two pair, and I believe him. He also said that he was, of course, aware of the possible flush, but because of the eight-high bluff, he thought it was about 50-50 that I was bluffing again, so felt obligated to call.)

There was a short wait while the surveillance people were contacted and the high-hand jackpot money was prepared. I stood up and called Cardgrrl's name to get her attention (which is not something I'd do except under extremely rare circumstances--like this was). I motioned for her to come see what had happened. She responded that she was in a hand.

Was she ever! About a minute later, I heard the dealer at her table call out, "High hand, seat 3." Hey--wait a second. Isn't Cardgrrl in seat 3? I looked over again. Yes, she was. I trotted over and saw this on the table:




She started with pocket aces just after texting me the "two more hands" message. She then flopped a set, and turned quads.

My table had obviously figured out that we were friends from my calling out to her, so when I came back they asked if she had really hit a high hand at the same time that I did. Yep! The floor person came by about then with two stacks of red chips (i.e., $200) for me. There was a third stack in her rack, and she told me, "That's not for you--that's for my other high hand." Indeed it was. Cardgrrl won her pot plus a $100 bonus. (If she feels like telling how the hand played out she can--obviously I wasn't there to see what had happened.)

I don't even know how to start trying to figure out the odds against two friends coming to a card room together, playing at separate tables, both down to the last couple of hands of the night, and both hitting high hand bonuses at the same time--especially with this all happening in the poker room in which, years, earlier, both had independently played their first-ever casino poker. If it were in a movie script, they'd take it out in the editing process because it would be too freakishly improbable for audiences to accept as plausible.

But it actually happened (with pictures, as you can see, for those inclined to say "Pics or it didn't happen"). We were amazed and delighted, and laughed about the craziness of it all the way home. That reality can be stranger than fiction is as true in poker as in any other field of human endeavor.

It was the perfect way to end a fun and highly profitable evening of poker with the best poker companion I've ever known.

17 outs, swing and a miss

It's not very often that I find myself with 17 outs on the flop, so I thought it might be worth recording how it happened.

After a very successful session at Mandalay Bay yesterday afternoon (Sunday afternoons there are becoming a happy, habitual indulgence, with the money pouring in freely), I decided to try to make a little extra at the Luxor next door. I bought in for the max, $200, which after about 45 minutes was down to $125 or so due to losing one race (A-K lost to an all-in 5-5) and false starts on a few other hands.

UTG guy raises to $15. He's solid, so probably A-K or a big pair here. I have Kc-10c on the button. With crubs, how can I go wrong? I call, following a call by a MP short stack.

Flop is Ks-Jc-9c. This gives me top pair, the second-nut flush draw (in crubs!), and a gutshot straight draw. UTG leads out for $25. MP guy shoves for about $45. I reshove for my last $110. Original raiser calls. He has, predictably, As-Ac. MP guy never shows, mucks when he loses.

So I win with any crub for the flush (9 cards), queen for the straight (3 more cards), 10 for two pair (3 cards), king for trips (2 cards)--or so it looked at first glance. In actuality, since he had the Ac, that's one fewer crub available. And, of course, they are not all clean outs, since (A) I don't know what the MP guy had, and (B) runner-runner crubs would give him the higher flush, and oddball things like a Q-10 combo give him a higher straight, K-A gives him a full house, etc. Conversely, the Qc would give me an unbeatable straight flush and some big jackpot (I didn't check to see how much it was).

But I'm going to have to have a word with C.K., because the crubs did not get there. Nor did the trips, two pair, or straight. We went blank-blank. Oh well. As they say, all you can do is get your money in good, and I managed to do that. That $110 shove would have reaped about a $200 profit if any of my cards had hit, and I was a clear mathematical favorite.

Maybe this is why they call it gambling.

New Luxor poker room

The Luxor poker room has moved since the last time I was there. It's a distinct improvement. It is now right next to the walkway that leads to Excalibur. It's a much, much quieter location than next to the sports book, even though it's still a mostly open room. (There is one wall.) The cigarette smoke stench was almost zero. They have also replaced the chairs with more heavily padded and, hence, more comfortable ones.

There are a bunch of jackpot promotions: high hand of the day, aces cracked all day, fixed-payout high hands, bad beat. But, of course, you pay for it, with a double dip from the pot.

Same lousy dealers, same lousy management.

Collusion

Playing this afternoon at the Luxor I witnessed the most flagrant instance of collusion I've ever seen.

A boyfriend/girlfriend couple were occupying Seats 9 and 10, respectively. He was obviously a lot more experienced than she was. He was also the table big stack, with $600 or so.

In the hand in question, she was under the gun, and moved all in for her last $26. I was in Seat 1 and folded. The guy in Seat 2 called. He had a stack of $200 or so. Action then folded around to boyfriend in Seat 9. He announced, "All in," as he tossed out the $26 for the call. This prompted Seat 2 to fold.

OK, so maybe he has a hand like pocket jacks and wants to isolate and not have to play after the flop. Kind of an extreme way of accomplishing it, but within the realm of reason.

What followed, though, was not. As soon as Seat 2 had folded, Seat 9 threw his cards face down into the muck, without even waiting to see what his girlfriend had. She passed her cards back to the dealer face down as he pushed her the pot.

In effect, the boyfriend had given his girlfriend his own $26, plus Seat 2's $26. Of course, he ran the small risk that Seat 2 was slow-playing aces or kings and it would cost him, but he apparently decided that an easy triple-up for his woman was worth taking that chance.

I was not terribly surprised that the dealer--Frank, whose incompetence and unprofessional demeanor I've talked about before--said and did nothing. I was surprised, though, that Seat 2 didn't protest. He did, however, pick up his chips and leave in a pretty obviously disgusted mood.

What should have happened? The dealer should have alerted the floor. In my opinion, the floor should have given Seat 2 his $26 back from the pot, then booted the couple out of the room--or at least the boyfriend. I have no way of knowing if they have done this before, or if she knew what he was planning. But for the sake of the integrity of the game, they obviously can't be allowed to play together, and he clearly cheated. Her guilt is not as obvious, but I can tell you that she didn't look one bit surprised when her man mucked his cards, surrendering the pot without a showdown. If a friend of mine did that, I would be so aghast that I can't imagine I'd be able to avoid it showing.

This continues to be one of the worst-managed poker rooms in town.

Today's least surprising news: there's another bad dealer at the Luxor

By now regular readers know that nearly every time I play at the Luxor I end up ranting about how bad their poker dealers are. It's time again. (Click this label for the previous horror stories.)

Yesterday there was a young woman dealing whom I had not seen before. That, combined with her rather slow speed, makes me think she is most likely fairly new. That in itself is no problem. I actually have a soft spot for new dealers trying to learn the ropes, and I cut them a lot of slack. They may be slow, but they're usually doing their utmost to get everything right, and I respect that.

This woman, though, was an exception. Her cardinal sin was not paying attention, so she frequently didn't know what or where the action is, though she probably could have told you every detail of the basketball game she was watching in preference to the poker game. It was not uncommon for a raise to go unannounced until four or five players had subsequently acted. I don't think she even one time told us how many players were in the hand. She let table talk about the hand in progress go without notice. One guy was habitually splashing the pot, and she said nothing to him. She frequently forgot to take the rake until after pushing the pot to the winner. She always killed the winning hand before pushing the pot, which is just asking for a big fight to break out sooner or later, when she either gives it to the wrong player or somebody thinks she did.

But perhaps her strangest trait, in light of the serious and problematic infractions that she let slide, was how she would warn or correct players for completely innocent actions.

For example, she was fanatical about players not making their own change. One time I was in the $2 big blind. A middle-position player raised to $6, so when it was my turn and I wanted to call, I added a $5 chip to my two $1 chips, and took back one of the latter. She said, "Don't make your own change. Let me do it for you." I saw her give other players the same warning in similar circumstances.

This is nuts. She absolutely should prevent players from taking change from the chips that have been put out in front of other players, or which have been gathered into the center in the pot. That's a nasty home-game habit that one frequently sees among players who are new to casino play, and it's strictly forbidden for very good reasons. But not only is there nothing wrong with a player making his own portion of the pot right, it is a more efficient practice than having the dealer do it. This happens on nearly every hand of poker, and I have never, ever before seen any player or dealer or floor person complain about it or even hint that there is anything improper about it. I think she learned the rule about players not making change from the pot or from their neighbor's chips, and erroneously generalized the prohibition to include making change from one's own chips. It's just silly.

Here's another example: After the flop, the first player made a bet. Two players folded. The last one left to respond to the bet was an older and obviously experienced player. He deliberately mucked his cards face up, chuckling about how completely he had missed the flop. The guy clearly knew that he was the last one to act, so that there was nobody who could be improperly affected by his action. It's something I do myself from time to time. It is not against the rules, nor is it bad etiquette. It's harmless, except for the extra fraction of a second it might take. But this clueless dealer said to the "offending" player, "Can you keep your cards down, please? I don't want to have to kill your hand."

Huh? He was folding. What more did she think she could do to his hand? Furthermore, the penalty for exposing one's hand prematurely, when there is more action pending, is not killing the hand.

Speaking of cards being exposed when there is still multi-way action pending, that happened yesterday, too. This time it wasn't the new dealer, but Frank, whom I've complained about several times before. I wasn't involved in the hand, but on the river there were three players left. Action was check-check-bet. First guy was contemplating whether to call, and asked the bettor something like, "Do you really have it?" The answer was, "I bet because I don't think you have a king." (A king was the high card on the board.) To which the early-position player responded by looking at his cards, then deliberately turning his king face up for several seconds, then back down, while grinning back at the guy who had made the bet and the challenging comment.

When the dealer didn't say anything about this rather obvious infraction, I asked him if that was allowed, given that there were three players still with live cards. He asked, "Is what allowed?" He had been so engrossed in watching the television that he had not noticed the improper discussing of the hand nor the guy exposing his king for the entire table to see. Note that this was the only thing happening at the table at that moment. Nobody was talking to Frank or causing other distractions. He just didn't care enough to notice what was going on. That is Mr. Magoo level of blindness and inattention. But it's par for the course for Frank, and for most of the other dealers at this low-class, badly managed poker room.

After every visit there, I become more and more convinced that the way they recruit their dealers is to administer a proficiency test to applicants, then hire the ones who fail it. It's hard to imagine any other explanation for the astonishing level of incompetence and lack of professionalism.

Casino poker is TOTALLY rigged

Luxor today. The table's two big stacks (about $400 each) get into a raising war. It takes the fifth raise, but they get it all in before the flop. The table maniac has finally picked up a real hand: the two black kings. His opponent has Ah-Kh, and would have been seriously overplaying it against any other player, but our maniac was raising and reraising pretty indiscriminately, so it's hard to criticize him too severely for not crediting the maniac with a one of the only two hands he should fear. (I folded 9d-10d when the third raise came.)

The flop was all blanks, except for two more hearts for the Ah-Kh.

Turn was the ace of spades. Ouch! With no straight draws, the maniac is down to one out; only the king of diamonds will save him.

River: That's right, the king of diamonds. Maniac wins.

Of course, this isn't really a bad beat in the traditional sense, because the pot went to the player with the best chance of winning when the money went in. Still, one doesn't often see 400-big-blind pots determined by a one-outer on the river. The table let out about as big a collective groan in sympathy for the victim as you'll ever hear. Probably didn't help the poor bastard feel any better, though.

Agreement on the Luxor poker room

"Las Vegas Michael," editor of allvegaspoker.com, is an exceptionally knowledgeable and personable guy, but in the past he and I have had very different--even polar opposite--preferences in poker rooms. For example, he used to smoke (quit a few months back) and complained about the trend toward non-smoking rooms, while the level of smoke is one of the main factors that will tend to drive me away from a room. I have a thing for small, quiet rooms (all else being equal--though it never is), while he seemed to like lots of action and people. He avoided rooms where locals were putting in hours toward freeroll tournaments, while I was one of the ones participating. That sort of thing.

So it has been interesting to me that over the last several months our opinions have tended to coincide (with the stand-out exception of the electronic tables at Excalibur), for example, on the new rooms opening at Hard Rock, Binion's, and Eastside Cannery. (By the way, I see on AVP that the Eastside Cannery has already moved its poker room to a new, smaller location, only six months after opening. Not a good sign. See here. I'll not be bringing you an in-person review of the new place, for reasons that you might well imagine....)

Anyway, the latest area on which Michael and I are in complete agreement is the Luxor. He had apparently not been there in a while, but a few days ago posted a formal "editor review" of the room. See here. Michael always tries to find good things to say about a place, and tries to be gentle in his criticisms (at least that's how I read him), but he struggled to come up with any compliments for the Luxor, other than the convenient location of the restrooms. He came down particularly hard on the dealers:

Dealer rating: 2.

The dealing staff at the Luxor is yet another weak link on the Luxor poker
room chain. The staff seems to be a mix of younger dealers with attitudes and
older dealers who don’t care. It is apparent that many of these dealers have
been at the Luxor a long time, and perhaps due to this fact proper dealing
protocol seems to have been softened greatly over the years due to many simply
being “set in their ways”. It is rather common to see dealers complaining
publicly about various management decisions and scheduling in plain view and
hearing range of the patrons. It is also a frequent occurrence to see commonly
accepted procedures and protocols tossed out due to what can only be explained
as sheer laziness: rolling the deck, matching stacks after an all-in win,
watching televisions instead of paying attention to the action, mixing the muck
and the stub immediately after the last card is boarded, etc. These are dealer
idiosyncrasies that are common in dealers that have simply lost the passion for
the game and their jobs.

I have witnessed more rolled eyes, snappy answers, and lack of interest for
conversations from the dealing staff here then from nearly all other properties
combined. When a dealer makes a mistake, and is corrected by a player in the
game, more often than not, the staff responds very negatively and with an
attitude.

Of course, there are always exceptions. There are a few dealers at the
Luxor that do their job well, welcome new and established players, and maintain
good solid game control. Unfortunately, these good apples are the minority in
the bunch.

This caught my attention, because I have ranted here several times about how the Luxor dealers are working hard to capture the "worst dealers in Vegas" title. See, e.g., here, here, and here.

It's nice to see a confirmatory opinion along these lines, and to know that I'm not just imagining things or blowing them out of proportion. There really is a serious, chronic problem at the Luxor that nobody there seems interested in fixing.

The only reason I put up with all the crap that goes on there is that, as Michael also notes, the competition is definitely on the soft side. It's easy to win there, which in the end trumps other concerns. But I tend to use it as a "hit-and-run" room for a quick buck, because it's just not a pleasant place to linger. It's too bad, because the problems are things that could be remedied rather easily, if there were just a poker room manager who knew how things should be and was given both a mandate to make a good room and the authority to make it happen.