Walking back home from Binion's this afternoon, I noticed this crazy Jeep in the parking lot at Fremont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard.
Of course deer--even dead ones--are allowed at the poker table, if they can come up with the buy-in. But not, I repeat not, with extra cards stuffed (so to speak) in their pockets!
(I assume they're playing Omaha here. Lots of deer in Nebraska.)
Image from the Crappy Taxidermy blog, here.
Spotted this license plate in the parking garage at Harrah's Thursday morning. Not really sure what to make of it.
After I had been watching Cardgrrl play for a while Thursday night, this guy got moved to her table:
(That's Kathy Liebert in Seat 10.)
As you can see, he had a big headdress thing in a clear plastic bag on the floor beside him.
During a 20-minute break, he decided to don the whole outfit:
OK, I thought, so he wanders around, lets people take his picture, then takes the big flashy piece off again when he's playing.
Nope. He left it on for the rest of his time at the table:
I overheard pieces of a brief conversation in which somebody asked him what the deal was. He said something about his great-grandfather having been made an honorary member of some tribe. He said this with an accent that I believe to have been British, possibly Australian. (I usually don't have any difficulty telling the two apart, but the room was noisy so I was only hearing snippets.)
Of course, whether that story is true or not has nothing to do with the bigger question of why he is wearing it for a poker tournament. To which the only plausible answer, if you ask me, is that he wants attention. Yeah, I know, I have just given it to him. But I have taken a blood oath to bring to my readers all items of pokery interest that I come across.
Today's poker: I walked down to Binion's. I won some money. I came home.
The end.
There being no other poker content of interest today, we now turn to the non-poker portion of this post: some of the odd sights on my way home.
Before I even left Binion's, I saw a bunch of these guys:
I admit it. I had never heard of the "Soldiers for Jesus Motorcycle Club" before. Heck, I didn't even know Jesus rode a motorcycle!
Then I came across a band playing on stage:
Another thing I did not know: Both beehive hairdo wigs and wearing plastic bowls upside down on one's head are back in fashion! I would like to give credit to the band, but I saw no sign anywhere that would inform a viewer of who they were. Nevertheless, based on the calendar of events here, my research was able to determine that it was a group called "Loveshack."
The next thing I encountered was a bunch of these people:
I had no idea what that was all about. However, upon returning home and looking it up, I surmise that it is part of this thing. Seems harmless enough, but pretty silly, if you ask me. What's that? You didn't ask me? Oh, well, then--never mind.
Finally, I spotted a couple of the sign boys. I've been seeing them out on the Strip at night for something like a year now, and kept meaning to take a picture of them, but was never at the right place at the right time. Tonight I was, sort of:
They carry these electric signs around on their backs. Looks like a pretty crappy job, especially when it's hot. These particular signs are pretty tame. The ones on the Strip tend to be advertising prostitutes nice young women who will come visit you in your hotel room and help keep you company if you're lonely on your trip far from home.
If the simple trip from Binion's back to my apartment is any indication, this may be the strangest city on the planet.
I'm not sure what a mariachi band was doing sitting/standing around the slot machines, but there they were.
So I was playing at Bill's last night when a young man joins the table in the seat to my left. He is already drunk when he sits down, then proceeds to consume three Jagerbombs in less than an hour on top of that. He reeks, both literally and in his play.
At one point, he is facing a difficult decision as to whether to call a large bet. He absent-mindedly lifts his cards up toward his face and slips the corner of the cards between his lips. I'm confident there was zero thought associated with this move. Between being bombed and trying to concentrate on his decision, his hands were just seeking something to do mindlessly.
I have to mention that these cards were gross--worse than average casino poker decks. They had three or four times the average amount of globs of gunk adhering to them, the largest nuggets of which I had been trying to scrape off with my fingernail as the night progressed. The last thing that either they or those of us handling them needed was additional bodily fluids thrown into the mix.
So, upon seeing where he was holding them, I said to him, "Please don't put the cards in your mouth."
He removed them, then slowly turned to me with an insulted, if-looks-could-kill glare. "I did NOT put them in my mouth!"
Oh, sure, right. I was just hallucinating there. Yeah, that's it. I didn't see what I thought I saw. Idiot.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwww!
I have previously mentioned strange stamp markings on the backs of $100 bills here and here. Above are scans of some of the latest ones that have come my way.
This is my last plea for definitive answers about who is putting these marks there, and why. If I don't hear from somebody in the know this time, I'm sticking with the Satanic cult terrorists theory.
As I was leaving the Excalibur poker room a short time ago, I saw these two guys playing the wheel of fortune. They're wearing these strange white paper hats. You can't read them in this low-resolution cell phone photo, but the one on the left says "It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again." (That's one of the creepier lines from "Silence of the Lambs," for those of you who have never seen it.) The one on the right says something about being Mexican and the INS coming to get you.
There must be a weird story behind these hats. My guess is that it involves both alcohol and a lost prop bet. But I didn't inquire.
I first reported the alarming trend of mysterious ink stamps on the backs of $100 bills here last month. Nobody supplied me with a convincing explanation of where they are coming from. I have continued to notice them. Here's the latest batch from my wallet.
I tell ya, folks, this is something big and sinister. I can feel it. I think maybe they're coming from some Satanic cult. Or terrorists. Or Satanic cult terrorists. Yeah, that's the ticket--Satanic cult terrorists.
I was playing at the Luxor tonight before I moved over to the adjacent Excalibur. While there, I saw one of the strangest poker situations of my career. It's one of those things that makes me realize there will never, ever be a poker rule book that covers every situation, because nobody could possibly anticipate the exact mix of circumstances that gave the floorman tonight a very difficult judgment call to make.
The two players involved we will call Mr. Straight and Mr. Flush, because one of them flopped a straight and the other flopped a flush. It must be noted that Mr. Flush was very, very drunk.
Mr. Flush had been sitting on my immediate right for a couple of hours. (I was in 9, he had been in 8.) Seat 5 became available, and he decided to move there, for unclear reasons. He picked up one stack and moved it, came back and picked up another stack and moved it.
Just then, the big winner of the day in seat 6 decided that he was done, too (up about $1300). So Mr. Flush changed his mind about where he wanted to sit, and decided to take the "lucky" seat. A new dealer was simultaneously just sitting down, saw Mr. Flush moving to seat 6, and helped him push his remaining chips there. The new dealer, unfortunately, didn't know that the two stacks of chips at seat 5 also belonged to Mr. Flush, because this new dealer hadn't been there when those got moved. Mr. Flush is way too drunk to realize or remember that he now has chips in front of two seats. He takes his hand sitting in 6. He has about $300 there, plus the roughly $200 in seat 5. There is no list of people waiting for a seat, so nobody is coming to claim seat 5, which would have uncovered the problem before disaster struck.
So we have a flop, and Mr. Straight bets, Mr. Flush raises big, Mr. Straight--who is in seat 3, with about $500--says, "I'm all in." Mr. Flush calls. The hand plays out, and Mr. Flush is the winner.
The dealer matches Mr. Straight's chips with the $300 or so in front of Mr. Flush. Mr. Flush still hasn't remembered that he has another $200 in front of seat 5. Mr. Straight hadn't been aware that those chips belonged to Mr. Flush; he hadn't been paying attention to Mr. Flush's seat change maneuvers, and assumed that there was a new player coming in to whom they belonged.
Another player points out to the dealer that the seat 5 chips are also part of Mr. Flush's stack. (I hadn't said anything because I thought they were his, but I hadn't paid enough attention to all the goings-on to be sure.) Mr. Flush himself is a little foggy on it at first, but finally remembers that, yes, he did put those there before deciding to take seat 6 instead.
Well, now Mr. Straight doesn't want to cover the additional $200 or so for the chips in front of seat 5. The floor is called.
Mr. Straight's argument is that when he moved all in, he assumed he was only actually putting at risk the amount that he saw in front of Mr. Flush, which was about $300. He says he might not have been willing to risk his entire $500 if he had known that Mr. Flush had about the same total amount. It's not his job to know that a player has distributed his chips between two different seats.
The argument for Mr. Flush (which he was entirely too drunk to think of or articulate on his own; this is the point of view taken by a couple of other players who thought he deserved to have all of his chips counted, and spoke up for him) was this: Suppose that Mr. Straight had won the hand, then discovered that Mr. Flush was actually sitting on $500 instead of just $300. Mr. Flush would surely then argue, "I said all-in, he said call, so he's responsible for the entire amount, even if some of his chips are in front of another seat." If Mr. Straight would claim the whole amount had he won, then it's only fair for him to be responsible for the entire amount when he lost. Besides, Mr. Flush had been hugely overaggressive for hours, bluffing at nearly every pot, so nobody really thought that Mr. Straight would have played it any differently even if he had known the correct amount that he was putting at risk; he was highly confident (but wrong) that he had the best hand when he pushed all-in.
The floor guy did not have an easy decision. I kept my mouth shut, although when it was over and the player on my left asked my opinion, I said that I tended to side with Mr. Straight. Yes, he was probably being less than candid in saying that he might have played differently had he known that their stacks were about equal, and yes, he might well try to claim the entire amount if he had won it--but the larger responsibility, in my view, lies with Mr. Flush, to keep his chips in clear view, and in a manner that isn't deceptive (even if unintentionally) to opponents. It was, in effect, the same as if he had two black $100 chips hidden behind his three stacks of red chips, not visible to an opponent.
The floor guy apparently couldn't make up his mind as to which way to go, so he ended up splitting the difference. He eyeballed about half of the disputed amount, and made Mr. Straight match that. In other words, Mr. Straight ended up losing about $400, rather than the $300 that he thought he should lose or the $500 that Mr. Flush thought he should have to give up. Mr. Flush was content with that resolution, but Mr. Straight was not. He was hopping mad.
I got the rest of Mr. Straight's stack on the next hand, when I recognized that his all-in on the flop--an enormous overbet--was classic steaming, and I called him with bottom pair. I was right--the flop had missed him completely. I was pretty proud of that call, because it was all about understanding Mr. Straight's frame of mind at the moment, rather than what the cards were. Calling that big a bet with bottom pair does not come easily or naturally to me. That's when he reached his boiling point, left the table, and got into the really heated argument with Mr. Flush, who had decided to take a cigarette break maybe 20 feet away. It very nearly came to blows, and they had to call security to separate the two of them.
As I said at the start, this was one of the most peculiar confluences of circumstances I've ever seen. I don't envy the job of the floor, to settle such matters, when there isn't a clear right or wrong.
The guy sitting on my right for a while tonight at Planet Hollywood had this small, plastic, engraved card sitting on the rail next to his chips. While he was away from the table I snapped a picture of it so that I could try to decipher it later, because it mystified me.
Try to make your own guesses as to what principles this player is trying to remind himself of. After you do, scroll down for my best guess.
1. Don't play hands out of position.
2. Play your own game.
3. Follow your own reads. Or, maybe, Fold ? or raise (i.e., call rarely compared to folding and raising).
4. Quit winner.
Comments are open for other guesses.
Addendum, February 25, 2008
See Shamus's comment.
Both suggestions certainly plausible.
But if so, then I think this guy is giving himself two pieces of bad advice.
I think that "play your own game" is the first piece of bad advice, if it can be translated roughly to "play the way you play." Different opponents, and different mixes of opponents at a table, call for sometimes radically different tactics. If you're set in your ways and can't adapt, you're going to lose, or at least not maximize your profit. I'm not comfortable playing loose and wild, but if you're in a loose and wild game, your only choices are basically to move your style in that direction--but more skillfully and selectively than your opponents--or play complete lock-down poker. The latter will probably yield a small profit, with low volatility/variance. The former, however, is clearly the more profitable approach, as long as you're willing to live with the high variance that it will inevitably bring. If you have only one way of playing, smart opponents will quickly figure it out and exploit it mercilessly.
If Shamus is right about deciphering #3 as "follow your original read," that's this player's second piece of bad advice. It is far smarter to be willing to modify your guess as to an opponent's cards based on the additional information you acquire with every decision you see him make. For one example of this, see my detailed analysis of an interesting (well, I thought it was interesting, anyway) hand here: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/play-hand-with-me.html. Every decision that this player made allowed me to narrow the range of her possible holdings.
Here's another example from last night at the Palms. There was a guy fairly new to the table. He was tight enough that I hadn't seen him play many hands. I put in my standard raise (to $13) from middle position with Q-Q. He reraised to $50 from the big blind. Because he hadn't been around long enough to know that I had been playing quite tight, it was hard to know how broad to make his range here. Some players will put in a big raise with pairs down to about 8-8, to take a small pot now rather than have to make difficult decisions after the flop, especially from out of position. So I called, but very warily. The flop was A-x-x. He checked. I couldn't tell whether he had hit big with A-A or A-K and was trapping me, or maybe had K-K or a lower pair and hated that ace on the flop as much as I did. So I checked, too. The turn was another non-connecting rag. Now he bet $50. In addition to having a monster, he certainly might do this with K-K, Q-Q, or even J-J or 10-10, once he decided that the ace on the flop didn't help me. So I warily called again, hoping that we could just check it down on the river. No such luck. He moved all in. This was the crucial piece of information for me. Once he saw me call $50 on the turn, I didn't think he would dare move all-in without having A-A, A-K, or, at a bare minimum, K-K. No way he would do that with J-J, which is what I was (perhaps desperately) hoping he had up until that point. I reluctantly folded, saving $95. I talked to him a couple of hours later as he was packing up to go, and asked him what he had had. He very plausibly said it had been A-K. He seemed completely truthful to me, and at that point he had no reason to lie about it. If I hadn't narrowed the range of hands I could put him on--that is, if I just stuck with my original read--I would have lost $195 instead of just $100.
It's foolish, IMHO, to basically put blinders on and ignore the additional information you get as a hand plays out, which is what "Follow your original read" seems to me to imply.
If you're going to go to all the trouble of getting reminders to yourself of how to play engraved in a little plaque to carry around, make sure you're giving yourself good advice!
This one was an ugly little Yoda, spotted at the Riviera poker room.
Still not quite as strange as this one, however: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2006/11/weirdest-card-protector-ever.html
This was in use by a guy at my table at the MGM Grand last night. All I can say is, "WTF?"
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