Landlord79 says

As always, a wonderfully well written report. You should move up to where they respect your raises!

01/28/08

Anonymous says

Very colorful post! The casino looked packed.

01/28/08

Anonymous says

Sorry I missed the pleasure of your indian friends company. Great post

01/28/08

Mr_Taterhead says

Sir, here is your seat at our infamous crap shoot game. Good luck and don't forget to tip your dealer.

Glad to know you can beat it.

Nice post.

01/29/08

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Vegas for the Super Bowl?

Yikes, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated. We’ve been over the top busy with site-related updates and fixes, upcoming new features and partnerships. I’ve been splitting my remaining time between a casino project in Fresno and my day job as an ersatz piano salesman. Finally, I’ve been having computer problems almost daily which, for a liberal arts/content guy, is a total drag. None of these are good excuses for not posting but still—work can be such an intrusion to regular posting.

First things first, I’ll be in Las Vegas at the Mirage or Bellagio to watch the New England Patriots introduce Eli Manning and the Giants to men’s football. If anyone expects to be in town for that dark comedy, email me. BTW, if you’ve got the option to go to Vegas for the Super Bowl, I recommend it. I’ve been to the game live and watched it from a casino SB party. The Vegas play is far superior—better intensity (someone has something riding on every play), better food and, of course, the opportunity to fleece poker newbies before and after the game.

After I collect on my betting tickets, I’ll be back in LA and expect to take a couple of runs at LAPC events and satellites. I haven’t played a live tournament since my Club One Casino Ace of Diamonds flameout, so my entry fee should provide a nice overlay to the other entrants. If you’re in town, I’m the skinny, grey-haired guy with the voice recorder sucking up to casino personnel in between hands. Can’t miss me.


Comedy Night at Club One

On my last Fresno trip, I did manage to return to Club One for a little live poker. It was a busy Thursday night with about 15 cash games and another half-dozen tournament tables running. The Club’s biweekly $5/10 NL game and the Thurs night re-buy always draws a pretty good crowd. I got a couple of shots with my camera phone here...


The main board



The main room



Another look




I didn’t have much dough with me and there was a list for the $5/10 and the $3/5 NL, so I sat down in the $2/2 NL $40-100 min-max. The 2/2 game at Club One includes the usual mix of a couple solid players, more players who overplay 2nd pair and draws and a nice complement of limp/call/”Dammit, I missed the flop again” post-flop folders.

Some highlights from the session…


Hand 1

About an hour in, I was up a buy-in courtesy of a pair of jacks versus some other hand that felt the need to check/call to the river on a 33TKK board. In any event, I was in middle position with KK, bumped it to $8 and got four callers.

The flop came AKJ and the big blind, an Indian guy talking non-stop, pushed for $80+. I called knowing that my set of kings was good but he scooped with A4 when the 2 hit the river. The guy was annoying about the beat, celebrating and taunting that I “never should have called”, but in the spirit of my namesake I just made a mental note to even the score at a future date.


Hand 2

A woman shoved $500 into a $30 pot on a QJx rainbow board with at least three left to act and was called immediately by a player sitting with $200. Her T9 failed to get there and he picked up 100BB with TPTK. I saw her do it twice more over the course of the evening, each time with a straight draw. The guy to my left (her friend) commented to her that he can always tell when she’s on a draw because she overbets huge, to which she responded…”Well, I just wanted to take down the pot on the flop. I didn’t want a call.” I love low stakes NL!


Hand 3

I lost the balance of my stack when KQo < KJo on a KT7 board all-in on the flop. J turn and I was looking for a chip runner.


Hand 4

I tripled up with pocket QQ v AA v JJ all-in pre-flop. QJxxx board and I owed an apology to the AA player to my direct left.


Hand 5

A gross angle shoot was thwarted when the same woman who over-bet her draw above moved in at the river on a KQx9x board. She was called by my earlier nemesis, who now tabled AA. When she showed her K9 and moved her other stacks out to be matched, he backpedaled and tried to say she checked the river. What, are you serious?

What made the play laughable was that the woman had waved her arms toward the pot and clearly said “All-in!”. He then stood up and shouted “Ok, ma’am, I call you!” and threw down his aces…in front of 8 other players, a dealer and a floor person overlooking the table. Even still, it took a good five minutes of howling to sort it out and ended with him congratulating her on her “nice hand” in a lame attempt to whitewash his foul. Dude, enough already.


“I want to see the hand!”

At one point in the game, the player in seat 10 moved in on a 99xx board and was called by another player. The river blanked and seat 10 showed his A9 winner. The caller mucked but the annoying Indian guy, who had folded on the flop, shouted “Dealer! Dealer! I want to see that hand!” At that point, the dealer retrieved the losing hand from the muck and flipped it up.

For those of you who are newer to the game, it may not seem like a big deal and, in fact, the house rules permit the play. But it’s HORRIBLE table ethics. The genesis of the IWTSTH rule was to detect collusion but it’s now routinely abused by players to gain information. I’m happy to see that a number of rooms in Vegas are reversing the trend (thread on 2+2 about Vegas rooms and the IWTSTH rule) and I’d encourage other rooms to follow suit.

I ended the evening around 3a, up about $120 on my original buy-in. Not the life-changing dollars that shaundeeb et al. toss around at the blackjack table, but righteous bucks nonetheless. I look at it like I’m getting paid $30 bucks an hour to watch comedy? I’ll do that. Besides, I’ll be doing the same in Vegas this Sunday for a markedly higher wage.


Saturday night with two little screamers

Finally, I’m happy to report that I’ve fixed at least one of my offending computers. Hearing about the problems I was having, a hardware guru friend offered to take a look at my desktops and shrieked with laughter when I opened the cases. I didn’t follow what he was saying but I caught phrases like “that’s way too small” “grossly inadequate” and “obvious performance issues.”

Now I’d heard feedback like that before, albeit in a different context with different players, and it wasn’t criticism I was anxious to hear. Unlike the prior circumstance, though, he assured me that it was easily resolved with a trip to Fry’s, a credit card and a few hours work.

Ergo, I spent the better part of a rainy Saturday shuttling between Fry’s and the garage installing new motherboards, video cards and the like and re-installing operating systems. Now one of the computers (the one on which I’m writing) breezes along like Randy Moss one-on-one in the Giants secondary, but the other one still has some issues. It looks fine, but like Tomlinson in the AFC title game, it crapped out shortly after the first two runs and is now sitting petulant on the sidelines waiting for more attention.

With my one new and improved confuser, I feel strangely inspired, like the apes circling the monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’m certain my next post will come sooner than this one, especially with the blog tracker showing me in 9th place. And I promise it will have some interesting reading!

For those of you, too young to have seen Kubrick’s classic, you can catch the opening scene here…
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Edmond