An apology of sorts

I used to pride myself on timely reporting of my poker exploits—the CA State Poker Championships, the Commerce Free-roll, Super Bowl Sunday at the Mirage—but the ownership gig really cuts into my time to relax, pour a few ounces of bourbon and fire up the laptop. Invariably, when I start working on a write-up, someone barges into my office with item requiring immediate executive decision-making:

“The second ice machine is down!”
“Seat 2 in 15/30 is complaining about karaoke!”
“One of the hostesses showed up in short shorts!”

As a good manager, I make it a point to respond quickly to these imperatives with hands on attention and measured responses.

“Send security to SaveMart for ice.”
“Tell that whiner to use his headphones.”
“Let’s have a look.”

Unfortunately, my commitment to customer service distracts from regular blog posting, and I’m forced to look for stretches of free time to piece together an account from memory.

At present, I’m sitting in business class on a United flight to Nice, en route to Monte Carlo, the first stop in a 10-day cash bonfire I’ll be witnessing in Europe while my wife enjoys her summer vacation. The inferno starts at the Hotel de Paris, my first trip to another casino as an owner and as far from Club One, literally or figuratively, as one can get. The conflagration then moves east to the Four Seasons in Florence for a couple of days so, as my wife put it, “We can stay somewhere nice.” The blaze then gets contained at a pre-paid yoga retreat at a Tuscan villa, where my wife will search for inner balance and allegedly, I’ll be able to self-immolate by the pool in peace and quiet.

I’m actually looking forward to the trip to catch up on sleep, eating and writing, all of which used to be part of my daily routine. In the meantime, I’ve got 10 hours to kill between LA and Frankfurt and I intend to unload my CVPC recap, which has been lodged in me like bad British food. I’ve been frustrated by fits and urges without meaningful result, so like a man angered by constipation, I’ve resolved to sit here until I get the damn thing out.

Ok, we'll need a couple of ringers

For those of you who missed the 7-day bender we called the 2008 Central Valley Poker Championships, mark your calendar for the sequel due out in the Summer of ’09. The inaugural series offered remarkable value for your poker and bar dollar, of course, but with a few months to stew on what we did wrong and another nine or so to pressure our vendors for even more promo dollars, CVPC Deuce should be at once entertaining and frightening. I’m hoping the Patriots will take the same approach to the 2008/09 NFL season.

The week started with Adanthar, TT and Shaundeeb all confirming attendance. Nath and SirWatts opted out, for the installation of a new grill and a wedding, respectively. Another less confident host might take offense at the rejection. Missing a trip to Club One in Fresno for a trip to the dentist or a hitching in Canada? That’s like turning down a backstage pass at a strip club to do laundry, but I reminded myself that both are still youngsters and my own superb decision-making took years of trial and error to hone.

With the three confirmations in hand, I caned our staff into a frenzy, pitching the trio as visiting dignitaries with deep poker resumes, proven social skills and vast influence throughout the poker community. I figured that would be more inspiring than the more truthful…”Ok, three geeks who spend most of their day in front of the computer in shorts will be wandering around this week. Encourage them to wear shoes in the casino, and be sure to put a tarp under them when they eat.”

My ruse worked and the staff rushed around most of the week re-training our dealers and hosts, stocking the bar, assembling gift baskets—“What? There’s no mini-bar at the Holiday Inn? That’s not going to work…”—and reminding the hotel staff that the typical HI guest’s work and sleep schedule was the exact opposite of that of our guests. By Thursday, I felt we were ready to accommodate our visitors or, at the very least, distract them from our own shortcomings.

The Holiday Inn in downtown Fresno is attached to our building and changed hands late last year. The property had been closed for several years and the new owner completed an ambitious renovation in June. We’ve got a good relationship with the management and the property is now a standout for this town, but there are still a few spots for improvement. For example, the pool’s renovation is “pending” and we’re keeping a close eye on the progress. Not that we’re nosy neighbors. It’s just that their pool happens to be directly above our security room and leaked during the demolition. I showed up one day and found our staff in ponchos and the security equipment under plastic. That said, the Holiday Inn Fresno is stupid convenient to us, the nicest place in town and home for our guests for the next few days.

Like Motel 6, only better!

Shaun was the first to arrive at Fresno International (so named, I think, a traveler once fled Fresno and ended up in Mexico) with laptop in tow. I contemplated sending a hottie waving a “Shaun %^$&#* Deeb” sign or perhaps a modest sample of the area’s leading cash crop, but my better judgment took over and I picked him up myself in the Club One cruiser.

We made the quick run into downtown Fresno and offloaded him to one of our staffers to check him into the hotel. Leaving Deeb alone in a Club One-comped room in the middle of the Central Valley is like giving him diplomatic immunity and tossing him the keys to Cheech and Chong’s van. We get certain latitude by virtue of our good citizenship and sizable employment, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t concerned given his reported appetite for leafy greens.

“Make sure his smoke alarm is disconnected, and if he leaves, follow him.”

Around four or five o’clock, Barbara Enright and Max Shapiro, a writer for CardPlayer and her significant other, rolled up in a PT Cruiser she’d won in some So Cal tournament.

Us: “Welcome to Club One!”
Her: “What’s this? I thought we were staying at Motel 6!”

We obviously managed her expectations well. I should note that I spend a good portion of any Club One sales pitch managing people’s expectations. I think we’re a quality poker shop, but I’m always leery of a customer base whose frame of reference includes the Commerce, the Bike and Bellagio. That said, what those guys do with facility, we do with people. So far, it’s worked.

Within minutes, we got Barbara and Max checked in and figured we’d see them in the restaurant later. Around 8p, I headed back to the airport to pick up Adanthar (in from NYC) and was heading into town when TT called—he’d just landed. We made a quick U-turn back to the airport and loaded him in the van. By 8:30p, our staff had checked them in and I was leading them on a quick tour of our property before dinner. I gave a thorough overview and laid the ground rules.

“Here’s the bar. The 15/30 kill game is there. And despite what you’ve seen on YouTube, we use chips for bets.”

They nodded in acknowledgment.

Dinner and poker with friends

We spent the next few hours stuffing the entire crew with Asian food and our best red and white wine. I watched for their reactions as they tried each of our menu recommendations and took the grunts and clean plates as compliments to the kitchen. After dinner, Barbara, Su, TT and I all stumbled into to casino to check out the 15/30 kill game, our big game.

As it turns out, we had one 15/30 game going with a nice list, so with the four of us, we put down another. To my immediate left were Su, our head of player relations and a limit specialist, and Barbara, an experienced all-game pro, both of whom could drink most guys stupid and relieve them, laughing, of three racks of white. To my right, TT, a thinking mixed game expert, settled in. Perfect.

I resolved to play solid and prudent poker but my guests would have none of it. Every hand was lesson in verbal inducements and clever angles that would end with one of them scooping the pot with 3rd pair no kicker or a flopped boat. After each little altercation, Barbara would howl “More wine!”, slop some more of my cabernet into everyone’s glass and demand that the dealer initiate another hand.

Like my first car, a ‘71 Buick with alignment problems, my chips veered left, careened off Su’s stack and eventually stalled in Barbara’s rack. The finest of many aggravating hands involved Su and another player chasing my pocket jacks down with inside straight draws and snapping me off for an extra bet when a third jack on the river gave me top set but completed their straights. It was too much—I jumped up and shrieked, “You’re horrible! All of you!” and berated the table until my own floor man pulled me aside and reminded me that these were our guests.

“I call bullshit! These are known thieves and harlots and if vice were here, they’d shut us down for fostering moral turpitude in a licensed facility!”

My tirade was greeted by taunts from the table to reload and I made a mental note to short them all T1000 in Friday’s celebrity event.

Shortly thereafter, I racked up under the guise of getting caught up on some work. I’d sold Barbara and TT hard on our 15/30 kill game. It’s highly predictable game and three-quarters of the table fights over each kill pot. I often read on poker forums that the Bay Area has the best limit games in California. Nonsense. There’s a reason why guys drive down from San Jose and camp out in the Holiday Inn. I later heard that Barbara and TT played the 15/30 short-handed ‘til 6a or so. Ah, vindication.


Next up…CVPC Part 2 – Game Day. In which we entertain the following “celebrities" and come to grips with an adult male shaving our logo into his head.

Jose Canseco - 1988 American League MVP, six-time MLB all-star, aspiring poker player

Ashley Collette – an FHM magazine model, voted one of the "100 Sexiest Women Alive"

Mike & Janet Dages - Fresno City Councilman and his wife, both good friends of Club One Casino

Shaun "shaundeeb" Deeb – Top-5 ranked online tournament player worldwide

Barbara Enright – member, Women in Poker Hall of Fame, the only woman to final table a WSOP main event and winner of the 2008 Legends of Poker Ladies event

Terence Frazier - former major league baseball player and local Fresno entrepreneur

Steve "TT" McLoughlin and Serge "Adanthar" Ravitch – moderators on TwoPlusTwo.com, the world's leading poker website

Matt O'Dette - captain of the Fresno Falcons hockey team

Max Shapiro – writer for CardPlayer magazine

Jason Von Flue – Club One-sponsored mixed martial arts fighter and contestant on Ultimate Fighter 2

Marsha Waggoner – “Lady Poker Extraordinaire”, member of the Women in Poker Hall of Fame and international rep for Crown Casino in Australia




What? You thought I was making this up?

Edmond

P.S. For those who like pics, here's a pictorial preview of Part 2 Pics from the CVPC Events

I'm still trying to shake off the toxic residual of the week-long assault on the Fresno poker community and our staff, but overall, I think the First Annual CVPC was a success worthy of repeat. When I feel like I can string a series of coherent sentences together, I'll provide a proper recap, but the quick highlights include:

Deeb and Adanther multi-tabling online in our bar, oblivious to 120 howling UFC fans.

Deeb winning $115,000 in the FTOPS H/U tournament sitting barefoot in our bar.

Barbara Enright and TT looting the 15/30 kill table. Short-handed. Lit.

Jose Canseco once again going deeper in our tournaments than any internet ringer. His girlfriend final-tabled the celebrity event, obv.

An adult male shaving our logo into his hair without any promise of compensation.

Of course, we grappled with that age old question...



or



Details to follow.

Edmond

As I’ve noted in past posts, Club One Casino has become thicket of activities that with the introduction of Bond & Girl, free karaoke, customer-focused hostesses, Red Bull-fueled MMA fighters and more EV- promotions than my partner would like, have become increasingly decadent and depraved. Three months ago, my typical day included cleaning everything, fixing computers, busing tables and ensuring basic compliance. Now I spend my daylight hours in careful negotiations with vice officers, liquor vendors and insurance agents and my evening hours, somewhat more productively, propping tequila sales in our bar and considering new ways to seduce every poker player in the Central Valley.

I’ve made repeated pleas via AIM and email for help—my liver and willpower can only take so much abuse—and I’m pleased to report that shaundeeb, Adanthar, nath and TT have responded and are enroute. I’d like to believe that it’s from “friend in need” altruism, but it’s more likely that the pile of dead money in our CVPC main event, another shot at Jose Canseco, free hotel rooms and this video taken at our own Club One Casino that’s circulated around 2+2.



Whatever the motive, I welcome the reinforcements and will have an epic report to post sometime after the hangover subsides next Tuesday or so.

Edmond

There's been a thread in the Brick and Mortar forum on 2+2 about jackpots with a number of regular players complaining that they're a tax on the system, just a scam for the benefit of the cardroom and should be eliminated. My opposing position (cardroom perspective) is that they're not a profit-center, and they're a legitimate tool to attract new and recreational customers. Regulars forget that their chosen profession requires a steady stream of new or rec players who will come in and make EV- plays because they're having fun and, consequently, fuel the ongoing poker economy. I'm not sure why they don't see that.


In any event, I figured I'd share some excerpts from my responses in the thread...

"...As a owner/operator, I'm very interested in keeping a grinder happy, but I also need to remember that most people come into the card room to have fun, get some good cards and win a few pots. They're not students of the game who discuss hands, strategy or edges on forums. They're at the table because poker's fun and that rush they get when they peek at pocket aces or scoop a pot with chased flush is awesome. Jackpots add to that excitement. It's true with slots and it's true with most poker players who approach the cardroom for entertainment and a maybe, just maybe, a shot at a nice score.

As for the fight over jackpots (Bike vs. DoJ circa 1995) a few years back, the big cardrooms fought it because they knew that recreational customers want them and they felt that they're an important constituency. That's not to say it was an altruistic fight; it wasn't. The cardrooms felt there would be a noticeable falloff in business, and based on my experience and interaction with the majority of our players, I agree with that.

The state's position IIRC was that the jackpots were an illegal lottery and was protecting the CA Lottery's turf. Similarly, if the state pressed to ban alcohol from all casinos, that might be eliminate abusive drinkers, improve the demeanor and health of most players at the table, but the cardrooms would probably fight it. Admittedly, when smoking was banned in CA rooms in 1998, everyone howled in protest, but the impact on business was marginal. Then again, only 17% of Californians smoke. I'm guessing most customers (i.e. a number higher than 17%) would prefer us to fight for their right to party and chase jackpots.

Look at it this way. The baseball purist probably finds all the kids out for bat day kind of annoying, but the future of the game (both for the owners and the pro players) depends on a constant flow of new faces and repeat recreational customers. We BOTH want new customers and the regular "I know there's a 3-bet in front of me, but I have pocket 7s and the jackpot hasn't hit in three weeks. Call." player, right? To me, talk about eliminating jackpots is the equivalent of tapping the tank. Dude...shhhh..."


From a later post in the same thread...

"...If we eliminate the jackpots and, while we're at it, other taxes on the system like advertising and comped food, how do we continue to bring in the players that we both need to survive and make a living? Should we count on the regulars to recruit their friends down to the cardroom to enjoy the camaraderie? Should we count on the WPT or ESPN? Maybe we should hope that the 100,000+ players on 'Stars decide that the "play on the laptop by the pool and generate more hands in two hours than a live player sees in a week" lifestyle is too convenient and anti-social and they'd prefer the challenge of driving down to the cardroom, getting on the list and engaging in the social niceties of live poker?

Jackpots and promotional tools are part of the business of bringing in new customers and keeping recreational players anxious to sit and stay at tables. In some markets, like Vegas, you can count on a continual stream of tourists--unless, of course, the economy sours and people are less-inclined to part with discretionary dollars. In other smaller or local markets, we can't just fire up a Cirque du Soleil show or a few white tigers and hope the husbands will waddle into the poker room. Therefore, we advertise and come up with promotions, jackpots and other things to stimulate traffic and butts in seats...

Complaining about jackpots is akin to Derek Jeter beefing about answering the same inane post-game questions or signing autographs for some kid he'll never see again. Or Tiger Woods refusing to play the pro-am because he makes his money on the weekend. They don't because they know that without the sponsors and the fans, their paydays wouldn't be what they are. Similarly, without the new or recreational players, how profitable do you think your games will be?

If you don't think promotions or advertising matter, ask yourself how good the live games were before the WPT, PartyPoker or guys like Moneymaker winning the WSOP? Ask yourself how good the games would be if there weren't new players getting in, chasing, making mistakes. What you only want good players who understand the game, read books published by 2+2 and play solid poker?

Put differently, jackpots are like your girlfriend's makeup. It may seem like a waste of time and a fraud on the purity of the sport, but I'm not sure you'd like the look of the game without it. Charles Revson, founder of Revlon, once said, "In the factory make cosmetics; in the drugstore, we sell hope." Embrace the hope. It's why the new and/or recreational player comes in and blindly takes the seat to your right."


Anyway, thought you might be interested on the perspective from the other side of the felt.

Edmond

Bond & Girl headed off to Macau today leaving Club One, our hostess staff and my liver struggling to recover. We enjoyed their visit, of course, but even just hanging out with them was like being a new Army recruit stationed at Abu Ghraib circa 2003. The book says you’re supposed to follow direct orders, but this wasn’t exactly in the Be All You Can Be brochure and the constant presence of the digital camera is really unsettling. Even the most dimwitted grunt would know that grainy footage will be really awkward to explain under oath. In any event, Bond & Girl are gone now—off to some other live event in some exotic land—and we’re here trying to contain the resultant liability and erase any and all digital evidence before the process servers arrive.

Under advice of counsel, I can’t relate all the events of the 5 days past, but I can reference the tamer events including a viewing of The Dark Knight at the local IMAX theater—ten thumbs up from the five viewers in our party; a trip to the Sequoia National Forest; which Bond summed up thus, "Those are some big @#$%^& trees." and several shameful drinking/karaoke sessions in our full bar. In one of the gigs, Bond and I took a run at the song Kokomo, a former #1 Beach Boys hit, a tune that we thought would be improved with our own harmonics and a three syllable spin on Fresno. Fortunately for 2R readers, this “event” has been uploaded to YouTube by our capable staff and available for easy viewing below.

Fresono!



In and of itself, that mauling of one of VH1’s 40 Most Awesomely Bad No. 1 Songs should prove that we at Club One are in our own little world of surrealism. Once he’s safe in a country with no extradition treaty, I’m sure Bond will be happy to share other more lurid and twisted events that will hammer all doubt from your mind. Until then, I offer the following footage of a Club One customer attempting to place a blackjack bet with an ounce or two of a local cash crop, caught on our own surveillance cameras.

Betting with weed



No, I kid you not.

Edmond