My #1 online poker pet peeve

Lots and lots of things annoy me about online poker--see here and here just for starters. But in reflecting on the situation, it's probably not fair to lump them all together as I have, without differentiating between them, because some irritants are definitely worse than others.

Hands down, the most annoying online sin is the player who chronically, repeatedly slows down the game. I mean, one of the chief advantages of online poker over live poker is that you can play so many more hands per hour, and when one or more morons at the table take the maximum time allotted every time the action gets to them, it kills that quality.

Most often these slowpokes just aren't paying attention to the game. This could be because they're drunk or stoned, or playing on more tables at once than they can effectively keep up with, or because they're simultaneously doing email or web surfing, cooking, or whatever.

As a typical example, the other day I chided a guy for holding up the show every time it was his turn. His explanation was that he's a single father of three young children, and was having to change a diaper and fix the kids' dinner while he played. (Never mind the "Ewwwwww" factor of combining those two activities.) He genuinely thought this was a perfectly legitimate reason for making everybody wait for him every time around. I suggested that perhaps he could find a better time to play poker than when family responsibilities were his primary focus.

Some people just can't grasp the concept that it's simply rude to make seven or more other people wait for you, time after time, because you're too busy doing something other than paying attention to the game. For most of these knuckleheads, most of the time, it's simple selfishness and a wholesale lack of consideration for others.

But of all of the causes of delays, the one that chaps me the most is the people who chat when it's their turn to play. Here are a few examples I've been collecting over the last several days, all from razz games (which is what I've spent most of my online time with lately) on Poker Stars, but you could pick any game on any site and find comparable offenses.

Dealer: ericg512, it's your turn. You have 15 seconds to act
ericg512: this is a bad call but gh sleepy
Dealer: sleepywag has Lo: 6,5,4,3,2
Dealer: Game #16599398639: sleepywag wins pot ($16.40) with Lo:

Notice that ericg512 used up most of his time allotment typing in his observation about what a bad call he was making. This requires either a massively overinflated ego, or a pathetically fragile one, and it's not always easy to tell which is at work. Arguing for the former is that he apparently thinks that one or more other players at the table care about his assessment of the situation sufficiently that they're willing to wait while he types it in. How self-absorbed is that??? Arguing for the weak ego is the inference that he cares deeply what the other players think of him--heaven forbid that he should make a bad call without having announced in advance that he knew it was bad. Of course, it's arguable whether it's more stupid to make a bad call knowing that it's bad, or make it without knowing that it's bad. But either way, I can't fathom why he cares what the other players think of him. If he's a bad player, they'll figure it out no matter what. If he's not, but they think he's bad, isn't that an advantage for him? Either way, it's just incredibly stupid to care whether a handful of strangers scattered around the globe think your play on one hand of poker was good or bad.

JJ_Grunt: who cried?
JJ_Grunt: NOT FKIN ME
ishouldcallU: play some cards you need people to put there money in when they are behind
Dealer: ishouldcallU, it's your turn. You have 15 seconds to act

Very typical situation here. ishouldcallU decides he needs to weigh in on the discussion occurring about the previous hand, and doesn't care that it's his turn. He needs to get his opinion out into the world right this instant! It's so vitally important that he can't possibly wait until after he takes his turn to finish composing his little gem of wisdom and share it with everybody. Who cares that the whole table is sitting around waiting for him?

P0K3R HUSTLE: weak flush draw?
P0K3R HUSTLE: i'll go with ya

P0K3R HUSTLE: i know im fcked
P0K3R HUSTLE: oh well

P0K3R HUSTLE: no way you will beat me
P0K3R HUSTLE: no frickin way
P0K3R HUSTLE: KK/
P0K3R HUSTLE: AA/
Dealer: P0K3R HUSTLE has 15 seconds left to act
P0K3R HUSTLE: ?
P0K3R HUSTLE: fck it

As you can see, this guy was a repeat offender. Again the ego thing--he clearly was so delusional that he believed the other seven players were dying of curiosity to know his thought processes behind every significant decision he had to make. If it slowed down the game, well, that's a small price to pay for allowing his legions of adoring fans to see what he was thinking at every critical juncture. The truth is, pal, nobody gives a rat's ass what you're thinking, or why you're making the plays. If you imagine otherwise (as you clearly do), well, you're psychotic. Get help.


XSeditX: i give u that
Dealer: kanonk, it's your turn. You have 15 seconds to act
kanonk: but It may not be the most profitable raise, I agree

Dealer: XSeditX, it's your turn. You have 15 seconds to act
XSeditX: i dont know my odds in this game like u kononk but i have a very good idea when im ahead and how far head/behind

Again, nothing special here--just two more examples of the all-too-common phenomenon of players engaging in otherwise harmless (though fairly mindless) chat--just at the wrong time. There's no reason to make the whole table wait while you type in your thoughts, when you could just as easily take your turn, then finish typing. It's just plain rude to plow ahead with chatting instead of first moving the game along.


RatMal: No walk??
Dealer: RatMal, it's your turn. You have 15 seconds to act

Here, I was to the right of the bring-in. I had three low cards, and everybody folded to me. Naturally, I raised. RatMal couldn't just fold and move on. No. He had to try to engage in dialogue (or perhaps a monologue) about the situation. Was this just a complaint? If so, it's a pretty stupid one, and one that could have been registered just as well after the hand was over. Was he seriously trying to start a conversation? If so, what could he possibly expect me to say? What could he possibly expect me to do--take back the raise? No matter which way you look at it, it was just stupid and rude to hold things up in this way. Yes, here it was just a few seconds, but this kind of thing happens over and over and over again, and those delays add up to games often getting in only half of the hands per hour that they could if everybody paid attention and kept things moving.


RatMal: I luv this king...
Dealer: RatMal, it's your turn. You have 15 seconds to act

Here's Mr. RatMal again. This time, he decided to make this astute and important observation before posting the bring-in that was required of him--because, obviously, he sensed that the rest of us were far more interested in his hilarious remark than we were in getting on with playing the hand. Egotistical jerk.


Dealer: RatMal, it's your turn. You have 15 seconds to act
RatMal: A rough ten..

Yep, it's RatMal yet again. (You see how the players that do this tend to be chronic offenders.) This time, he thought it was important that we all understand what hand he was folding before he clicked the "fold" button. Because, of course, all seven opponents around the world were simultaneously obsessing on just one thought: "What could RatMal possibly be holding here?" Whew--good thing he somehow knew that we were all eagerly awaiting his announcement, as if watching for the white smoke to come from the Vatican's chimney, and relieved our collective tension with the vital news. Information that crucial just can't wait until after one has clicked the "fold" button, you know.

Well, I think that's enough examples to make the point. There are virtually no situations in which it is worth eating up the time of seven or more other people while you pontificate (oooo--there's an unintended but interesting juxtaposition, using the Vatican chimney analogy in the previous paragraph, then the word "pontificate" here!) on what your cards are (which, by the way, is against the rules anyway, unless you're the last one with a possible decision to make in the hand), what you're thinking, why you're choosing the action you're taking, or continuing whatever inane conversation is in progress. In essentially every case, the rest of us will thank you to follow this simple guideline: Take your turn first, then chat to your heart's content while others take their turns.

Or is that just too much to ask?

Expelling a jerk from a tournament

Back in March, lots of poker news sources and blogs reported on the unusual expulsion of a tournament chip leader, a guy named Lesley Thornburg, from the final table, due to ongoing bad behavior. These were essentially all based on the report of Nolan Dalla, which you can read here. I didn't repeat or point to it at the time, because I didn't have anything useful to add to the story, and anybody who peruses poker news outlets or blogs would almost certainly have come across it elsewhere.

I was pleased and surprised to find in the May, 2008, issue of Poker Pro magazine an editorial comment from John Wenzel, who describes the situation with other details not previously reported. It's not clear whether Wenzel was there, or just reporting secondhand on what others told him, but at least he gathered perspectives other than that of Dalla. And even with these additional pieces of information about what the culprit was doing, it's clear that there is a lot being left out.

It's such a remarkable story that I'm posting it here, in the form of a scan of Wenzel's piece, since I know that Poker Pro magazine isn't nearly as widely circulated as other publications, which means that many people won't ever see this. (Click the image to embiggen it sufficiently for reading.)

The only question left is why the tournament director didn't disqualify the guy sooner.





Addendum, April 27, 2008

I started wondering if this Thornburg fellow had attempted any explanation or defense of his actions in the various poker forums, so I Googled his name and found one, of sorts, from somebody claiming to be Thornburg, which you can read here. Even if the post is really from the person in question, it's a pretty implausible defense, basically saying that he did nothing out of the ordinary, and he can't imagine why they picked on him. The threshold for conduct that will get you ejected from a poker tournament (for anything short of being caught red-handed cheating) is about a hundredfold higher than what this writer is saying happened. Furthermore, if Wenzel's witnesses are even remotely on target, the guy was hopelessly out of control, and probably drunk enough that he couldn't be counted on to even remember his own conduct, let alone be a reliable judge of it.

Making a stop at the Station(s)

Last night I played at two of the Station casinos--Texas Station and Santa Fe Station--each of which I had previously visited just once. I nabbed a bunch of short stories and observations about each.

The image above, incidentally, is not from North Las Vegas (where both of the above-mentioned casinos are located). Rather, it is Claude Monet, "Gare Saint Lazare: the Train from Normandy," 1877, a painting that one may see at the Art Institute of Chicago. About ten years ago that museum had a mind-blowing show, pulling together roughly 150 Monets--the largest assembly of his paintings in one place since the artist's death. I was privileged to see it. Best art experience of my life.

Texas Station

My friend James Klosty used to be a shift manager at the Hilton, then moved up to be the poker room manager at Fiesta Henderson. He sent me an email recently telling me that he had moved yet again, and is now in the same position at Texas Station. So I decided to go see what he has done with the place.

This is a small poker room--I counted nine tables. It's too smoky for my taste, with an ineffective half-wall on three sides, exposing players to smoke and noise from the surrounding main casino floor. Last night, a Friday, between 7:00 and 9:00, there were four tables in action, two $2-4 limit and two $4-8 limit hold'em games--nothing in the no-limit category. That alone will severely restrict my interest in returning. The games were pretty typical for a locals-oriented poker room. Most of the players plainly knew each other, and the dealers knew most of the players. There's a series of weekly freeroll tournaments going on now--qualify with ten hours of play--and a lot of the seats were filled with players punching the clock.

Texas Station's poker room is far from the worst of the lot, but, frankly, there isn't much there that would make me interested in visiting it again.


A variation on "I knew he had..."

One of the more annoying stupid things that people say at the poker table is "I knew he had..." (fill in: the straight, the flush, aces, or whatever). Of course, people only say this after their hunch is confirmed. It's pretty easy to be right 100% of the time when you only reveal your "prediction" after the evidence is in.

That's why it was refreshing last night to hear the very rare admission of an error. I won the biggest pot of the night with 7-8 of hearts in the hole when the flop came 4-5-6 rainbow. The betting had been capped with five players before the flop. My bet on the flop got three callers, two on the turn, and one called the river. The woman to my right said, after the hand, that she "knew" I couldn't have 7-8, because she "knew" that I wouldn't call all of that aggressive pre-flop betting with such a holding.

There have been only two or three times that I've noticed a player using the phrase "I knew" when describing what proves to have been an erroneous conclusion. Of course, nobody ever really knows what another player is holding--which is precisely why I find the whole "I knew he had..." post hoc boast to be so stupid and annoying. One's best guess or deduction does not constitute knowing in any meaningful sense. So I appreciated this young woman's honesty. Whether consciouly or not, she showed that what frequently and casually gets labeled as certain knowledge of what an opponent has is usually highly tenuous and fallible.


Applause for a unique rule

During a short stint at a $2-4 table while waiting for a $4-8 seat to open up, the player to my right asked the dealer to give the cards a scramble on the table before putting them into the Shufflemaster. This is a topic I've addressed before, here and here. I've never seen a dealer refuse the request--until last night.

To my great surprise, the dealer said, "I'm not allowed to do that. I have to call the floor." She called over the floor person, and was told that house rules do not permit giving the cards an extra "wash" before putting them in the Shufflemaster.

I wanted to stand up and cheer. Finally, a poker room that implements a rational policy that prevents stupid players from wasting everybody's time with a pointless gesture. Hoorah!

The only way this could be made better would be to have the rule specify that the dealer must administer a dope slap to the idiot player making the request, simultaneously asking "How stupid are you anyway?"


Somebody failed junior-high English

I spotted this sign just outside the Texas Station poker room last night. Notice the erroneous apostrophes in "10's" and "Ace's." Oddly, it's "Aces" in one spot and "Ace's" in another--apparently the sign writer wasn't sure, and so made one each way, figuring it was better to be half right and half wrong than to risk getting it wrong twice. Notice also that he manges to correctly make the plural of "flush" and "player" without inserting superfluous punctuation.

I'll never understand why so many people insist on using apostrophes to make a few randomly selected nouns plural. (There's an entire blog devoted to this pervasive problem. See here.)

Sante Fe Station

After I had had my fill of limit hold'em, and there was no sign of a no-limit game getting started, I left Texas Station and proceeded up Rancho Drive a couple of miles further northwest to Sante Fe Station. I had been to this place only once before. That was on opening day of "Lucky You." I took a friend out there to see the movie and try the then-new "Salt Lick BBQ" restaurant (pretty good, but mostly indistinguishable from about a thousand other barbecue places). There was a little down time before the show started, so I played maybe 30 minutes of limit hold'em while waiting.

Last night was surprisingly different. The place has 14 tables, and 12 of them were full, with waiting lists for everything. I had not anticipated it being so busy. They had only one cocktail waitress for the entire room, which just isn't enough for 12 tables. It took 45 minutes to get a lousy bottle of water.

As with Texas Station, this is primarily a locals casino. Many of the players clearly knew each other. Play was the standard weak/passive that one usually observes in such places. Easy to beat if you just pick your strong spots, and avoid bluffing, because you're surrounded by calling stations. (Hey, it just occurred to me--maybe that's why they named the casino chain the "Station" casinos!)

"All of a sudden..."

The funny line of the night came from a guy named Joe. Four players were in the hand, and nobody bet at it the whole way. The board ended up showing a straight, which nobody could beat, so the pot was chopped four ways; each player got his $2 back. Joe was at an end seat, and raised his hands like a catcher in baseball, encouraging the dealer to throw the two blue chips his way. She obliged. But at the last nanosecond, the player sitting next to Joe deftly reached out and single-handedly nabbed the two chips in mid-air--a very nice interception. He was just kidding around with his friend, and after pretending to pocket the chips put them down in front of Joe where they belonged.

Joe pointed to his buddy and quipped, "All of a sudden, he became my ex-wife!"


Whiner

I watched one guy win a small pot when he had pocket 8s and the other two 8s came on the flop. His lone opponent had nothing and folded to a small bet on the turn. He whined for five minutes about how he couldn't get paid off, and that it was his unluckiest day in poker.

The only thing worse than a player who whines when he loses is the guy who whines when he wins. (See here for a similar story.)

Don't trust your life to 911

As I was leaving Santa Fe Station, I passed through the intersection of Rancho and Lone Mountain Road, where I saw a very drunk guy stumbling around. He randomly staggered between the sidewalk and Rancho. Cars come along pretty fast on that stretch of this major street, and I was worried that he would stumble out at the wrong time and get hit. So I called 911 on my cell phone to report the situation, and hopefully have the cops take him somewhere safer to sleep it off.

I'm aware that calling 911 from a cell phone doesn't necessarily get you to the right people for help on the first try, because the systen isn't really set up to know where one is calling from. I'm used to having to specify where I am and what service is needed before being transferred to the appropriate call center. So when the call was answered, I quickly explained the location and problem, and heard, "One moment please while I transfer you." OK, that's cool.

Second call answerer. I go through it again. This time I am surprised to hear the "wait while I transfer you" again. A third person answers. I ask, "Do I really have to explain this for a third time?" She says she isn't aware of whatever I may have said to previous people. I'm annoyed, but I rattle off the information yet again. She asks which part of the intersection. I say the southwest corner. She then asks which of the two roads I'm traveling on (Rancho), and which direction. How can that matter, since I'm past it now? But I oblige. Then she wants a detailed description of the man in question--race, age, hair, shirt color and style, pants color and style, etc. After about three of these questions I'm getting seriously irritated, and finally cut her off with this: "Look, if your officers get to the intersection of Rancho and Lone Mountain Road and see a drunk guy stumbling around in the roadway, it's probably the same one I saw. And if he has left and there's a different drunk guy stumbling around into the road, then they can help him."

She apparently took the hint and stopped asking for further information. I still can't see the point of asking for all of those details. I mean, isn't it obvious that if they arrive at the intersection specified and see somebody wandering in the street drunk, that's probably the man in question, regardless of what color shirt he happens to be wearing?

I'm sure glad I wasn't trying to report a rape or murder in progress. It would have been done and the perp long gone before I (1) got transferred to the right agency, and (2) finished answering all of their pointless questions.

Pull up your pants, dude!

This is Kofi Farkye, a 19-year-old college student who got to the final table of the North American Poker Championship (season 6, episode 5 of the World Poker Tour). In addition to the humiliation of being knocked out on a kind of dumb play, he has to live with having neglected to wear a belt when it might have done him the most good.

Don't they have any sort of dress code for this show?

Not only does this guy not how to wear pants, he is apparently an online poker cheater who has been banned from Poker Stars for multi-accounting. See story here.

Annie

I ran into Annie again tonight at the Tuscany poker room, a place I've never seen her before. I used to see her only at the Hilton, but it no longer surprises me to run into her anywhere, because she really gets around--especially if there is a freeroll tournament in the offing for hours played. I've introduced you to Annie before here; I suggest reading that post before this one, so that you have some sense of who I'm talking about.

Seeing her again reminded me of two other Annie stories.

Annie plays a pretty classic tight-aggressive game, and makes her money from the tourists who underestimate her. One day she came into the Hilton and the poker room manager asked, "Are you here to take everyone's money again?" She cupped her hands as if holding an imaginary bowl, transformed her face into that of the saddest, most pathetic street beggar, cocked her head to one side, and plaintively replied, "No, I just want to make enough money to buy a little rice to feed my family." It's hard to convey how funny this was, coming from a player who often needs a wheelbarrow to cash out her winnings.

Another time she was obviously sick, coughing and sniffling, looking like hell. One of the dealers asked why she didn't just stay home that day. Annie looked at him as if he had just asked the world's stupidest question. She scrunched up her face and said, "Because I not dead YET."

I am now actually managing to eke out a decent living playing poker. I do love this game, but still, there are times, when I've been playing too many long sessions in a row, that Annie's answer is about the only one I can come up with for why I'm still sitting there, rather than being home in bed:

Because I'm not dead YET.

Podcast #2

Episode #2 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show, with another small contribution from moi, is now up here.

A few nice things to do in Vegas (no poker content)

With my sister still in town, I'm taking a few days off from poker, so no new stories are being generated. In the meantime, we bring you this substitute blog content.

Tonight we ate at Lindo Michoacan, which has been voted "Best Mexican Restaurant" by Las Vegas Review-Journal readers five years in a row. I thought it was excellent, and there were several things on the menu that I'd like to go back and try.

Then we went and played a round at the only miniature golf course in the city: King Putt. The guy who owns it used to be a poker dealer at the Hilton, and it was interesting keeping up with the progress, while he was still dealing, of getting business loans, scouting locations, getting permits, etc. He's also a fellow graduate of the University of Illinois, which alone is reason enough to know somebody. (Hey, it worked out for me, Barry Greenstein, Hugh Hefner, and Roger Ebert, right?) He has turned it into a surprisingly nice outfit--looks like he spent a fortune on the Egyptian-themed decorations.

Finally we stopped at Marble Slab Creamery for some truly superb ice cream, just a couple of blocks south of King Putt. I had the banana ice cream with marshmallows mixed in. Mmmmm.

And that was my exciting evening out on the town. I realize that a "proper" Las Vegas fun night is supposed to involve lots of reckless gambling, strippers, night clubs, copious amounts of expensive booze, maybe a hooker, maybe a spontaneous wedding that you don't remember the next day. But I'm content with a nice Mexican meal, miniature golf, catching up on family news, and some high-quality ice cream.

Maybe I don't really belong here....

Bellagio is a nice place to take visitors (slight bonus poker content right at the very end, if you're patient)

My sister is in town for a meeting, so we went out to eat at "In 'n' Out Burger" (her choice--she had never been there) and bowling at Gold Coast (I got a 164 in my second game, including 3 strikes and 4 spares--my best score in years). We're talking high-society outings here.

She had seen the Bellagio fountains for the first time when she was here for the rodeo in December, so we stopped by again. They remain enjoyable no matter how many times you may have seen them before:




Then we went inside the Bellagio to stroll through the conservatory, dressed in its fancy spring attire. I regretted not anticipating this. I would have brought my real camera, instead of the crummy low-resolution cell phone camera. (For much nicer photos, see Vegas Rex's sampling here, as well as the link within that post.) Anyway, here's what we saw:
















As we were about to leave, it dawned on me that one of the biggest poker tournaments on the calendar was taking place right that minute within that very building. So I dragged my sister over to the Fontana Lounge, and sure enough, there was poker being played. Ted Forrest walked right by me, returning from a break. With only my crummy camera and no admittance to the room by spectators, I was reduced to these two pathetic shots:



Above, that's Burt Boutin standing there in the camel jacket, getting in the way of people I actually wanted to take a picture of. He's obnoxious. I didn't really want a picture of him.



OK, see that rectangular light sort of in the middle? Directly below that you see a person seated at the table wearing a white shirt with a black baseball cap on? That's Phil Ivey. And if you look just a hair down and to the right of Phil, the face that is sort of in profile is Men "The Master" Nguyen.

So there's your very slight bonus poker content for this post, right there!

Penn and Teller (no poker content)

I've loved Penn & Teller for maybe 15 years now. I'd watch anytime they went on Letterman, including videotaping so that I could play it back in slow motion and try to figure out whatever trick they were doing. I've seen all of their prime-time TV specials, their 1989 movie "Penn and Teller Get Killed," their three BBC specials about magic in India, China, and Egypt, and I have two of their books. I've watched all of their Showtime series, "Bullshit!" I've listened to Penn's famous "This I Believe" essay about atheism on NPR (their most-searched-for piece). I think I've seen all of the YouTube videos that feature them. I saw their show at the Rio four or five years ago. I even got to participate on stage for the famous "Magic Bullets" trick. I got to speak to them briefly after the show and tell them how much I appreciate all they do for skepticism and libertarian values. (I'm not sure why those two things seem to go hand-in-hand for so many people, but they do.)

And Saturday, I got to see the show again--for free! They do a very cool thing every January, which is offer free tickets to locals who donate blood. A friend of mine gave a pint, and took me to the show for my birthday.

It was as great as I had hoped. About half of the acts were different from what had been in the show the last time I saw it. In the very first one, pictured above, Teller walks onto the stage with his head encased in a concrete block. An audience member is invited onstage. Penn takes her glasses and slips them into his pocket. He has her confirm that an object he produces is a genuine billiard ball, and raps it against Teller's concrete for further verification. After a while, Penn takes a hammer and smashes open the concrete block, and under it we see that Teller is wearing the woman's glasses! The whole time, Teller's hands never move from where you see them in the photo. This is one of those tricks that I would love to see a second time in order to solve the mystery of how it's done. (Actually, I think I have it, and I'll reveal my guess below after the spoiler alert, so you can choose whether to read it or not.)

I loved a bit in which a blindfolded audience member first has knives thrown at her (but not really), then ends up throwing them at Penn (but, again, not really). It's not magic in the traditional sense, because everybody in the joint sees exactly what is happening except for the poor woman up on the stage--but it's still wonderfully entertaining.

I've spent many hours thinking about the "Magic Bullets" trick--easily their most famous illusion. I've Googled it and read just about every description of it people have posted. They specifically ask for audience members with handgun experience, so, predictably, lots of shooting enthusiasts end up talking about their on-stage observations in firearms-related forums. Between my two live viewings of it, having seen it once on television, as well as a YouTube video of an earlier incarnation of the same trick, I'm quite confident now that I have worked out how it is done.

I've debated whether to explain the details. On the one hand, when I first saw the Rio show, Penn had a long monologue in which he talked about the phenomenon of stage magic, and I was impressed by one thing in particular that he said. Paraphasing, it was that you could figure out everything we do if you put your mind to it. You generally don't put in the effort because you enjoy being baffled. It struck me as essentially an open invitation to dissect their performance. On the other hand, I so respect and admire their work both on and off stage that I would feel kind of cheap and sleazy to divulge what I've figured out--particularly when the final confirmation of my ideas came from them so generously giving away free tickets to blood donors.

The latter considerations are outweighing the former in my mind, so for now I'm going to keep it to myself. I'll just say that it's very, very clever and sophisticated, and I would never have even begun to crack it without having had lots of experience with handguns, including making my own ammunition in my basement for practice and competitions. The solution is, I think, highly technical.

It's a great show--the only Vegas act I've seen twice (well, unless you count the "Game Show Spectacular," about which see this post). Read more about the P&T show and its Vegas history here. Then go see it.




SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Here's what I think happens in the show-opening eyeglasses trick. When Penn stands next to Teller to rap the billiard ball on the concrete, he slips the glasses to Teller. (I didn't catch him doing this, of course, but in retrospect, it seems like the only possibility. That's why I'd like to see it again, to pay attention during those crucial few seconds, and see if I can verify this hunch.) But then how do they get on Teller's face, when his hands never leave the front corners of the concrete block? Well, I couldn't figure that out until I saw the photo posted above as I was preparing to write this. I think those aren't really Teller's hands. I think they're props, and his arms are free to move around under his suit. You can sort of see a strange bulge right above the big support belt he's wearing. (During the show it occurred to me that his arms must get very tired, being held in that position for so long. Now I think not!) He can therefore put the glasses on once Penn slips them to him. If I'm right about this, it's remarkably simple--yet extremely effective and surprising.

How to win with a full house--in Razz!

I started off with an unraiseworthy A-6-A, intending just to steal, since nobody raised before it got to me. I got only one caller, and when he paired on 4th street, I was more confident that the steal would work. But my lone opponent was having none of it. We both ended up with full houses, but mine was lower, which, in Razz, is better.


PokerStars Game #16873553723: Razz Limit ($0.50/$1.00) - 2008/04/20 - 17:29:51 (ET)
Table 'Coelestina II' 8-max
Seat 2: Pr0fChaos ($26.95 in chips)
Seat 3: Lacrosse9 ($15.80 in chips)
Seat 4: Osgood99 ($22.90 in chips)
Seat 6: Rakewell1 ($19.90 in chips)
Seat 7: Donnersslu ($4.95 in chips)
Seat 8: Tiurin ($18.45 in chips)
Pr0fChaos: posts the ante $0.05
Lacrosse9: posts the ante $0.05
Osgood99: posts the ante $0.05
Rakewell1: posts the ante $0.05
Donnersslu: posts the ante $0.05
Tiurin: posts the ante $0.05
*** 3rd STREET ***
Dealt to Pr0fChaos [3d]
Dealt to Lacrosse9 [Ts]
Dealt to Osgood99 [5s]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [Ad 6h Ac]
Dealt to Donnersslu [Jh]
Dealt to Tiurin [7c]
LTK_888 leaves the table
Donnersslu: brings in for $0.25
Tiurin: folds
Pr0fChaos: folds
Lacrosse9: folds
Osgood99: raises $0.25 to $0.50
Rakewell1: calls $0.50
Donnersslu: folds
*** 4th STREET ***
Dealt to Osgood99 [5s] [5c]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [Ad 6h Ac] [8d]
Rakewell1: bets $0.50
Osgood99: calls $0.50
*** 5th STREET ***
Dealt to Osgood99 [5s 5c] [2d]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [Ad 6h Ac 8d] [8h]
Osgood99: checks
Rakewell1: checks
*** 6th STREET ***
Dealt to Osgood99 [5s 5c 2d] [8c]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [Ad 6h Ac 8d 8h] [4d]
Osgood99: checks
Rakewell1: checks
*** RIVER ***
Dealt to Rakewell1 [Ad 6h Ac 8d 8h 4d] [8s]
Osgood99: checks
Rakewell1: checks
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Osgood99: shows [Ah 2c 5s 5c 2d 8c 5h] (Lo: 2,2,8,5,A)
Rakewell1: shows [Ad 6h Ac 8d 8h 4d 8s] (Lo: A,A,8,6,4)
kosa28 joins the table at seat #1
Rakewell1 collected $2.45 from pot
Rakewell1 said, "lol"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $2.55 Rake $0.10
Seat 2: Pr0fChaos folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 3: Lacrosse9 folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 4: Osgood99 showed [Ah 2c 5s 5c 2d 8c 5h] and lost with Lo: 2,2,8,5,A
Seat 6: Rakewell1 showed [Ad 6h Ac 8d 8h 4d 8s] and won ($2.45) with Lo: A,A,8,6,4
Seat 7: Donnersslu folded on the 3rd Street
Seat 8: Tiurin folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)

More evidence that online poker is rigged

I've previously shown you definitive, irrefutable evidence that Full Tilt Poker is totally rigged--see this post. Well, here is more proof, as if any more were needed. It is worth noting that all the money got in before the flop, and I had two of the three opponents covered.

Oh, maybe I forgot to mention that once in a great while, the sites are rigged in my favor, and I don't see how anybody can reasonably object to that. You can view the full animation of the hand at the very cool "Poker X Factor" site here.

When the cards were revealed before the flop played out, my heart sank, because I knew that beating the J-J would be difficult with two of the other aces and one of the other kings in view. Then when I saw the queen on the flop, I thought it was basically over, and I'd end up with the third-best hand. It took a couple of seconds for the nut flush to register in my aged brain.

That hand was worth almost 16,000 chips when the blinds were still 80 and 160--not bad, eh? It pushed me into one of the top spots for a while, as well as collecting me two simultaneous bounties (this was a knockout 90-player SNG). Alas, variance caught up to me and I finished just out of the money in 14th place. But that one hand had sufficient entertainment value to be worth the staggering $3 entry fee.

By the way, this was my first shot at this format of tournament. I hadn't ever tried a sit-and-go of more than one table, but this post from Ted at Red Bull and Poker convinced me that these $3, 90-player tourneys might be a worthwhile investment of time. Just on the basis of my first try at it, I'd say he's right about the horrendous quality of play, suggesting a reasonably positive EV. He was also right about how fast they fill up, which surprised me. Not wanting to sit in limbo for a long time was a primary reason I didn't try the larger SNGs previously, but even though I was one of the first three or four to register, the whole thing was ready to go in maybe four minutes. I will definitely be trying this tournament format again.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

This is a sensitive subject, one that I've toyed with writing about for months. On Sunday I decided to post about it, but still I put it off, because I'm not quite sure what it is I have to say about it.

But here's the question: Are there any gay professional poker players?

Well, the first problem is defining "professional poker player." There are probably many thousands of us low-level grinders squeaking by. Never mind that group. I'm really thinking about the upper crust of the poker world. Suppose we limit the field to, roughly, the group that did qualify or would have qualified for the Professional Poker Tour a couple of years ago. That field was somewhere between 150 and 200 players. That might be the most restrictive, limiting definition of poker pro that one could reasonably come up with. (They included few if any online tournament specialists, and not many cash-game specialists, so it is indeed a narrow selection.)

Statistically, it would be quite remarkable if there were not at least one gay person in a group of that size, wouldn't it? Yet I am not aware of a single name-brand player who has identified himself or herself as gay or lesbian.

Nearly every professional sport has experienced one or more players coming out of the closet. How can poker be different?

What brought this from an occasional idle passing thought to the point of deciding to post about it was Sunday's broadcast of the first installment of the NBC heads-up championship. In particular, I hadn't previously seen Tom "Durrrr" Dwan on television. During his first match with Phil Hellmuth, I was immediately struck by his speech patterns and non-verbal mannerisms. They weren't quite Jack-from-"Will-and-Grace"/Truman Capote/Harvey Fierstein flagrant--but they weren't exactly subtle, either. They were quite typical of what I've observed in many, many uncloseted gay men.

Since then, I've looked up several on-line video clips of other interviews with him, and seen the same things repeated. I've also searched his name with "gay" and found that at least several other people in various public forums have concluded or assumed that Dwan is gay, though never with any evidence specified.

I hasten to add that I have exactly zero information on Tom Dwan's personal life. I don't know if he's gay or straight or somewhere in between, and as far as I know he hasn't publicly addressed the matter. Furthermore, I honestly don't care, as far as the guy himself is concerned. As a good libertarian, I'm about as purely live-and-let-live as one can get. I'm interested only because of the rather striking (when you stop to think about it) absence of any gay high-visibility poker players, and the possibility that he might be the first to break ranks, so to speak.

Even if it's not Dwan, sooner or later, inevitably, somebody that we all recognize from televised and/or online poker events (even if it's somebody who is not currently well known) will out himself. Every time this little curiosity has occurred to me, I've wondered how this incredibly macho, sexist, swaggering, "I am the MAN" poker world will react to the news. My guess is that there will be a lot of public quoting of the famous Seinfeld line (a la the title of this post), accompanied by a lot of quiet, private, nasty bashing. You can imagine the kind of things that will be written by the scads of anonymous contributors to the poker forums--those who can't make a comment about a female professional player that doesn't involve judging her attractiveness or lack thereof. I don't envy whoever it is who takes on (voluntarily or otherwise) the role of the first openly gay poker pro. I think it will be a difficult mantle to wear.

And just in case the very writing of this post makes readers wonder--no, I'm not. Not that there's anything wrong with that....

Poker gems, #107

Roy West, in Card Player magazine column, April 9, 2008 (vol. 21, #7), p. 106:


I'll remind you of what my boyhood idol, all-American basketball player "Easy" Ed McCauley, said about practicing: "When you are not practicing, someone, somewhere is practicing. And when you meet, he will beat you." Many of your opponents, right this instant, are somewhere studying poker. Many read every word in Card Player and every poker book they can lay their hands on. Many have taken my private lessons. You had better get ready to meet them.

47 and still kicking

April 17. April 17. That date kind of rings a bell, like it should mean something to me. But I just can't remember for sure. The memory is getting kind of fuzzy these days....

Stories, stories, stories

I got six, count 'em, six stories out of a long (for me), eight-hour session at Planet Hollywood yesterday. None of them is particularly profound, and none of them prompts me to write a longer diatribe about some subject, so I didn't think any of them merited a separate post. Instead, I'll just collect them here. They have nothing in common, except for having occurred on the same day in the same place.

1. Excellent situational awareness

This occurred on just the second or third hand after I sat down in seat #1. I was not involved in the hand. The flop was A-Q-x, and the turn and river were both small cards, no flush, no obvious straight possibilities. On both the flop and turn, seat 8 checked, seat 2 bet, and seat 8 called. On the river, the same happened again, except that this time seat 2 held an ace up to full view of everybody for about ten seconds as he pushed $35 forward. Seat 8 never looked up, just asked how much the bet was, then said, "I call." He then turned over his queen (second pair), looked up (immediately after seat 2 had put his ace back face-down on the felt), and asked, "Do you have an ace?" The whole table burst out laughing. Seat 8 had no idea what was so funny. Somebody said, "Dude, he was showing you his ace while he bet." At first, seat 8 didn't believe this, but when everybody at the table, including the dealer, confirmed it, he could do nothing but join in the laughter at his own expense for having been too absorbed in his thoughts to lift his eyes a few degrees above the horizon and see the plain evidence that he was beat before he made the final call. I've never seen anything like that before.

2. Not my turn

At one point I was in late position. Seat 9 (PH runs 9-handed games, so seat 9 is on the dealer's immediate right) looked at his hole cards and left the table. This is rude and against the rules, because it suggests that one is folding out of turn, which gives improper information to the players taking their turns. Anyway, the action got to seat 9, and he wasn't there. But his cards were still where he had put them down. He had not pushed them forward or towards the muck, so it was not obvious to me that his hand was dead. For all I knew, he might be a few feet behind me about to return, or maybe he had whispered to the dealer that he'd be right back. The dealer was in the middle of discussing something unrelated with the floorman (about breaks, and who was to push whom, and who would be going home early, blah, blah, blah).

The guy in seat 5 started pressing me to take my turn. But it seemed to me that I couldn't just assume that seat 9's hand was dead; as I said, he might have asked the dealer to hold things up for a minute. Far stranger things than that have happened. Seat 5 apparently thought I was a complete idiot and couldn't figure out what was going on. Three times--each with increasing emphasis--he insisted that I go. I just ignored him and waited for the dealer to take action. Finally she finished what had been distracting her, saw 9's cards, looked around, didn't see him, and killed his hand. I then folded in turn. Seat 5 looked at me disgustedly and shook his head. After all, I had cost him something like a precious 15 seconds of his life.

I still maintain that I acted properly. I just don't have the right or authority to kill another player's hand or to assume that it's dead before the dealer takes action. Yes, I have a pretty good idea what's most likely to happen, but I don't want to make incorrect assumptions, then have a big mess result because of some small fact that I might have overlooked.

3. Today's brilliant strategic advice

There was a funny and attractive young woman in seat 6 nearly the entire time I was there. But she wasn't a very good player. In one memorable hand, she had pocket jacks, but limped in along with about five other players. The flop was something like 6-7-8. She checked it, as did everybody else. The turn was a blank. She made a small bet and got called in two places. The river brought a 10. One of her opponents bet big, the other called. She realized that one or both of them must have made a straight, and folded her jacks face up. Indeed, both opponents did have the same straight and split the pot.

She was lamenting her rotten luck. Somebody asked her, "Why didn't you raise before the flop?" She said, "I didn't want to scare people away." She was then asked, "Why didn't you bet on the flop?" She said, again, more emphatically, "I didn't want to scare people away!"

Ingenius strategy, eh?

For the rest of the session, anytime somebody won the pot with a bet on the flop, the guy in seat 2 and I would quietly make a sarcastic comment about how the winner had misplayed the hand by scaring off all of his opponents. "He doesn't understand that you have to let them catch up and beat you."

4. Underprotecting and overprotecting

Early in the session, before the cool guy joined us in seat 2, that chair was occupied by a grumpy guy I've played with a few times before around town. An odd series of three hands resulted in him leaving the game.

He won a large pot on the first hand. He was then in the big blind, and still busy stacking up the chips as the second hand was dealt. He hadn't even picked up his cards when the under-the-gun player in seat 3 folded. But in the process of flicking his cards back to the dealer, they accidentally skidded across the top of seat 2's down cards, which were still quite far out in front of him, unprotected. The dealer, therefore, correctly scooped up both hands and put them in the muck. (If your hand is unprotected, and another player's discards run into yours, your hand is deemed dead. The underlying reason for this is that in such a situation it becomes impossible to know that you have been left with the same two cards you were originally dealt.) Seat 2 didn't understand what had happened. When the hand was over, he politely asked the dealer to explain it, and received an equally polite response. It seemed that all was well, no feelings hurt.

On the very next hand, however, the opposite problem arose. Seat 2, now being hyperaware of the need to protect his cards, went to the other extreme and completely covered them with his large hands. The player in seat 8 bet on the flop, seat 9 folded, and the dealer thought the hand was over, because he couldn't see seat 2's cards. He had already turned the three flop cards face down when seat 2 spoke up and stopped him. Everything was still playable: the dealer had not intermixed the stub of the deck (that's the cards still in his hand) with the muck, and merely had to turn the flop back face-up to get everything the way it had been. But in the process, he gently scolded seat 2 for hiding his cards, reminding him that the cards have to remain visible to the table at all times. However, no damage had been done, and seat 2 could still respond to the current bet.

Instead, seat 2 mucked his hand angrily, while claiming that he wanted to play it because it was a strong hand, but he said he wouldn't stay another minute at a table where the dealer was treating him so badly. He picked up his chips and stormed off.

The dealer had done everything right. Both I and another player, who was an off-duty dealer, reassured him of that.

Apparently this guy just couldn't grasp that there is a happy medium between leaving your cards unprotected way out in front of you, where they might become fouled by somebody else's discards or accidentally picked up by the dealer, and keeping them completely hidden from view.

Poor dealers: You do everything right, the player screws up, and you get blamed for it. I guess you have to develop a thick skin for that job.

5. Celebrity non-sighting

I had chosen PH rather arbitrarily for the session, not having been aware until after I got there that it was the venue for last night's star-studded premiere of the new movie "88." Apparently Al Pacino was there for the premiere (since he's the star of the film). But he didn't bother stopping in to say hello at the poker room. Bastard.

6. The Brotherhood

The big convention in town this week is the National Association of Broadcasters. A couple of players at the table were here for it. Down at my end of the table, a conventioneer in seat 4 asked seat 2 (not the jerk who stomped off mad, but the cool guy who replaced him) whether he, too, was here for the conference. Seat 2 asked "What conference?" Seat 4 said, "The NAB." Seat 2 asked, "What's the NAB?" Seat 4 got an impish look on his face and was obviously trying to think of a clever fake answer with which he could pull seat 2's leg, for not knowing about the big meeting. But he finally couldn't think of one, and had to give the straight answer. I said the first thing that popped into my head: "It's the National Aryan Brotherhood."

This not only brought laughs (fortunately; some people obviously would react differently), but provided fodder for a series of running jokes through the session. When one of the three of us would win a pot, one of the others would say in mock seriousness, "A win for the Brotherhood." We decided that we didn't like spade or club flushes: too many black cards. We declared that we liked aces best, because they had the most white on them. Etc. It was great subversive fun.

There aren't many places left in this country where one can be so openly politically incorrect and not run a serious risk of being fired or arrested or assaulted or sued. Thank God the poker table seems to be one of the last remaining refuges at which one can let humor take its natural course, without excessive self-censorship.

Another intolerably bad poker movie

I just watched "The Big Blind."* It is as bad as the worst of any of the poker movies I've previously reviewed.

There's a caveat to that, however--it has a lot more poker than most. It's not very good or interesting poker, but at least the movie does largely revolve around the game. It might better be called "Scenes from a Poker Room," because there isn't any central plot. Instead, there are something like 12-15 characters, forming about five distinct story lines. The only thing they all have in common is the real-life Lake Elsinore Casino.

The production values are about half a step above home movies.

There are a few recognizable poker faces. Here are Matt Corboy, Jennifer Harman, and, in a non-speaking, uncredited role, Daniel Negreanu (looking remarkably like Worm, the Edward Norton character in "Rounders"):



Corboy is best known in poker circles as one of the commentators for the one-season, ill-fated Professional Poker Tour. Here's another shot of him, with a look that the producers of the PPT, oddly, did not ask him to recreate for their shows:



Then there's the inimitable Scotty Nguyen, who plays a character named "Scotty," a poker player. Imagine that. He stars in what I thought was the best scene in the film (though it had nothing to do with poker). He is in a store, gets treated kindly by one stranger, badly by another, and deals with them both accordingly--but never loses his cool, speaking only a few carefully chosen words.



The poker is reasonably true to life, as movies go. The most glaring bit of phoniness about it, as you can see from the next screen shot, is that in this casino they play high-stakes cash games with plain, solid-colored chips--the kind you can purchase at K-Mart. That would certainly make buying into the game a lot cheaper: pick up several dozen generic chips at the discount store for a song, then take them to the casino, where they will be honored as worth hundreds apiece. I can't figure out why they had permission to shoot lots of scenes in the casino, but not use real chips. It's a glaring error, like shooting a war movie with water pistols as props.



But the whole thing is badly written, badly acted, and badly shot, so there's really no reason to expect anything better from the props, I suppose. If you're big-time into poker, you probably need to see this stinker just so that you can say you did. But don't expect much from it.

This customer review from amazon.com (you can buy the DVD used from a few of their affiliated vendors) has it about right, though I think he's too hard on poor Scotty Nguyen:

This is a low budget widescreen movie (in LPCM audio=48 khz,16 bit, 2
chnnl--though, it sounded perfectly fine), sprinkled with a few poker stars. I
only rented this, so it was easier for me to watch the whole thing without
feeling ripped off. Jennifer Harman (top poker player), does an okay job playing
the very minor role of a woman (Linda-I think), who's temporarily playing poker
along with her boyfriend Lane (played by Matt Corboy-best known as one of the
PPT tv announcers, or as Officer Ray Carlson, in the tv series, "The Shield"),
until they win enough to get out of town. Corboy was good enough in the movie as
well (he had a goofy, yet, still charming persona), and I liked the way he would
often sing Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" (You got to know when to hold 'em...) to
annoy people or please himself. After doing well, Lane decides to stay and keep
playing, while Harman's character decides to leave town (that's the last we see
of her in the movie).

However, Scotty Nguyen is so bad, it is actually quite funny. Half of the
time I couldn't understand what he was saying. He plays a wise poker player
named Scotty. He says baby, quite often, so I guess he's just playing himself.
But he's so bad, he needs to work on even playing himself, before his next small
screen appearance. At least at the end, they showed his WSOP win (with audio
only at the very end of it). Poker star, Daniel Negreanu, is just in a brief
scene near the beginning, sitting beside Jennifer at the poker table. He says
nothing and was obviously just doing his real life friend, Harman, a favor.

The movie also features several other characters that are struggling with
poker and some who are also ultimately searching for love. It has an annoying
narrator, who comments throughout the movie, but after awhile his drab comments
blended in with the awful storylines, so I was less repulsed. There is enough
poker in the movie, but it mostly centres on bad play and angry reactions,
rather than any quality poker.

So, yes, the movie is awful, but if you're a fan of poker great, Scotty
Nguyen, and want to see him in a train wreck of a movie, then look to rent it.
Whatever you do, don't buy it, or you just might decide to stop watching poker
movies, forever! You've been warned, baby!

*The date on this movie is somewhat mysterious to me. The usually reliable IMDB lists it as 1999 (see here), while the DVD is apparently labeled as 2003, at least according to the information on the torrents directory from which I downloaded it. (It's not available for purchase, nor from Netflix, so one's choices for accessing it are limited.) Jennifer Harman is credited as "Jennifer Harman Traniello," implying that she was married when it was produced. According to a book I have, she was married in late 2000. My best guess is that it was shot in 1999, but not released until 2003.

Poker gems, #106

Roy Cooke, in Card Player magazine column, April 9, 2008 (vol. 21, #7), p. 66:


One of the ugliest spots in poker is drawing dead and getting there.

More about the Benjamins

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.

Not much cussing

Created by OnePlusYou


Gadzooks64 had this in her blog, and it made me want to check my own level. Pretty damn low, for a blog that is primarily dedicated to bitching (oops--may have just upticked there), and many of them are just me quoting other people.

New challenge

I just tried doing something new and demented. I played a $5 no-limit hold'em sit-and-go at the same time as a $5 HORSE limit sit-and-go, both on Full Tilt Poker. It was a little crazy jumping back and forth. I kept looking for the raise amounts in the limit games, and accidentally putting in min-raises in no-limit. I also made mistakes that I probably wouldn't otherwise make, such as thinking I had the nut flush in Omaha with just the ace and a four-flush on the board. D'oh!

I won the NLHE tournament. The HORSE, not so much--was leading, though, until I donked off most of my chips chasing draws in Stud, about which I know nothing.

It was a fun challenge, just to see if I could pull it off. But it made my brain hurt.

Recommended viewing

Go to the NBC Sports poker page here. Click on the "Heads-Up" section. Even if you don't want to watch the whole 64-player match, or even the whole two hours of the first show (which aired earlier today), at least treat yourself to the three-hand match in which Phil Hellmuth busts out at the hands of Tom "Durrrrrr" Dwan. It's "1st Round--Clubs, segment 2." It's only six minutes long.

For a second, it looks like Phil might handle the bad beat in a sportsmanlike manner, but then his true self shines through, and he starts haranguing and criticizing and making fun of his opponent for bad play.

The above is an actual photograph of Phil, taken just moments after this match ended.

Didja notice...

...anything different about that last post? If not, here's the secret: For the first time, I managed to figure out how to embed HTML links in the text, rather than include an entire URL.

I realize that this is something already known by every other blogger in the universe (yes, including those on Alpha Centauri), but it had escaped me until now. Even though Blogger provides a one-click wizard button for doing it, so that one doesn't have to mess with manually inserting tags, I'm so technologically backwards that for a long time I couldn't deduce how to make it work. I tried several things, then gave up. Then, because Blogger's help files are not particularly good, it took me 30 minutes of searching to find the simple instructions on using it. Oh--you highlight the text before clicking on the button! Why didn't anybody tell me this? And what's wrong with my brain that I couldn't figure it out on my own?

So this should address the objections that a couple of commenters have had in the past about long URLs uglifying my posts.

Slowly, slowly, step by step, I'll catch on to how things work. Unless somebody volunteers to put in the work of site design at no charge (and please don't take this as a fishing expedition to get such a volunteer--it's not; I kind of like it being a one-man operation), you'll just have to put up with things improving very gradually.

Poker massages

These are some scattered thoughts about getting a massage while playing poker.

1. In Las Vegas, they are available at Caesars Palace, Rio, Venetian, Palms, MGM Grand for sure. I assume they probably are also available at Mirage, Bellagio, and Wynn, though I don't play at those places often enough to have noticed. If they are available anywhere else in town, it's news to me.

2. The standard rate seems to be $2/minute, though I was surprised that the one time I indulged in one at the Rio I was charged $2.50/minute. At the MGM, you can't pay in chips--cash only. That's the only place I've seen that policy. I assume it was implemented because some players objected to anything more than trivial amounts of money being taken out of play.

3. Beware of a player contesting the pot while he's getting a massage. Most would rather sit back and enjoy the experience and sort of tune out of the game for a while, and will tend to play only premium hands, and get out of it if they don't improve. I have never yet seen a player caught bluffing while receiving a massage. It seems that there's some sort of fundamental incompatibility between trying to pull off a bluff while relaxing at the hands of a masseuse.

4. I think I've had a total of six table massages--all of them 10 minutes each--in nearly two years of playing here, so I can hardly claim a wealth of experience. But it seems to me that I don't play as well after it's over. I think I get feeling so relaxed that I lose both focus on and interest in the game. I kind of go through the motions, but tend to stay pretty much stagnant in chip count thereafter. So while I'd like to think that the massage is a nice way to break up a long session and get reinvigorated to keep playing, so far my experience is that it effectively ends any serious money-making. As they say, your mileage may vary. I'm sure there are others who get the opposite reaction, feel charged up by it, and can get back into the game even more aggressively than before. That's what I thought might happen the first few times I tried it, but it never works.

5. It's a sample of only one, but the young woman at the Rio was the roughest massage therapist I've ever encountered, in or out of a poker room. My shoulders hurt for two days after she was finished with me. Not a pleasant experience. It was also the only place at which the masseuses do not have cushions for their clients to use, which meant that I had to rest my chin on either my hands or the hard back of the chair--mighty uncomfortable.

6. Sometimes it feels so good that I want to propose marriage on the spot. Luckily, I have so far restrained myself. (Because, obviously, none of the young women would be able to resist such a tempting offer, and then I would be stuck.)

7. I usually only go for a massage when my infraspinatus is hurting me (see this post). I use this not only to help direct the therapist's attention to where it is needed, but as sort of a test for whether they are really licensed massage therapists, as all claim to be. If they don't know where the infraspinatus is without me telling them, they probably didn't go to school. So far, all have passed with flying colors.

8. You know that there has to be something to gripe about on this subject, right? Well, here it is. Several times, in the larger rooms, when more than one massage therapist is present, I have overheard men planning to get a massage, and discussing with their pals which one to choose. Invariably, the selection is made not in a rational manner (e.g., by having watched their styles as they work on other players, and picking what looks like it more or less matches what you know you like), but by physical attractiveness. It seems uber-important to these guys to be sure to get their massage from the "hottest" woman on duty.

This is so messed up it's hard to know where to start. How does the therapist's attractiveness tell you anything about her skill or technique, or even her personality, for that matter? Why do her looks matter, when she's going to be standing behind you, out of sight? Do you harbor some fantasy that she's going to want to date you as soon as she has touched your back? Do you think your friends watching will think less of you if you get a table massage from a rather plain therapist? Hear this, you meatheads: HER LOOKS CAN'T POSSIBLY MATTER!

One time at Caesars Palace there were two therapists available, one of whom was substantially more conventionally attractive than the other, and after watching for a couple of hours, the more attractive one was frequently busy, but the other did not get a single client, as far as I noticed. I had been watching to try to see which one looked more my "style" (I like gentle--I'm just a big ol' softie, you know), but I couldn't get any information on the second young woman, because she never got hired.* It was a horrendous imbalance, and the reasons for it must have been painfully obvious to both women. So when I had seen enough, I waited until the underemployed one wandered by, and asked her to work on me. It was a complete crap-shoot, as far as I was concerned, which one would be more to my liking, and I found it an easy call to let the decision be made by doing my small part to even the score between the two of them. I'm willing to say that the players who made their choice that night based on comparing these young women's looks were loathsome, shallow, warped pigs. I'm no hero for making the opposite choice, but I think that a touch of human sympathy is a far better motivation for a choice than the misguided ego-stroking that appeared to have behind the selection made by everybody else that night.

I think that a male trying to make his living doing poker table massages would go broke fast. But how does that make any sense? I'm ashamed of the degree and prevalence of sexism and chauvinism in the poker-playing population. Most of them seem to be about as shallow and homophobic as George Costanza (below, in two parts)--and how unflattering an assessment is that?

Oh, and by the way, that massage was the physically nicest, most perfect of the six I've had. I'd pick her again in a heartbeat.







*Yes, I know that I can tell them what I want. But as with picking a barber, it's just a lot nicer and easier to luck into one that automatically "gets it" than one that you have to direct in minute detail.


Addendum, May 18, 2008

I was at Mandalay Bay's poker room last night, and saw two massage therapists working the room. I had never noticed them there previously. However, it's not one of the places at which I spend the most time, so they could have been there for a while without me knowing it. Or it could that they're only there on weekends, so I just haven't been there at the right times to see them. Anyway, you can add Mandalay Bay to the list of places where table massages are available.

Addendum, October 31, 2008

Since writing the above, I've also seen massage therapists in the poker rooms at Red Rock and Excalibur.

Addendum, February 3, 2009

I can now also add Aliante Station and Boulder Station (yes, Boulder Station!) to the list of poker rooms in which massages are at least sometimes offered.

Addendum, February 7, 2009

Last night saw one wandering around the poker room at Imperial Palace offering massages, so the list grows again.

Addendum, February 14, 2009

Yet another addition: I saw massages being offered at the Harrah's poker room last night.

Addendum, March 1, 2009

Treasure Island has them, too.

Addendum, April 30, 2009

Now Bally's, too.

Addendum, July 14, 2009

Flamingo.

Addendum, August 30, 2009

Red Rock.

Addendum, September 24, 2009

Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon.

Poker gems, #105

Chris Ferguson, as quoted in Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman, The Mathematics of Poker, p. 1:


If you think the math isn't important, you don't know the right math.

Poker gems, #104

Phil Laak, in Bluff magazine column, April, 2008, p. 92:


Math, like gravity, is just one of those things you will have to eventually accept, like it or not.