Yesterday I was chatting with Bond18 on AIM and confirmed that he and BondGirl will, in fact, make the trek to Fresno to visit this weekend. We've no specific plans for the travelers, but we'll do our best to refresh them with amenities and Club One hospitality (aka cheap liquor and hotties). We've identified a good Korean restaurant, doubled our weekly liquor order and upped our liability coverage. I think we're ready.

In and of itself Bond's trip should yield a noteworthy post, but I'm even more encouraged by a message I received on my voicemail this a.m. In the small cardroom world, an overnight voicemail could be staff seeking guidance on fixing an overworked piece of HVAC equipment, directions for making a proper mojito or counsel on posting bail for an overzealous employee. Today, it was a message which sounded like an Asian man being savagely tortured.

I listened carefully for clues to the source, but after a minute and a half of disturbing howls and shrieks, the message abruptly cut off with an Asian woman's voice, "Hello? Hello? Oh my god! Oh my god!" and the caller then hung up. Any other casino exec would immediately notify either the FBI to advise of this kidnapping plot, but I quickly realized that, in truth, our new karaoke equipment has arrived and was being "tested" by our capable staff. I made a mental note to provide keypad lock training for our hostesses and tripled the liquor order.

This weekend obviously has the potential to comp up vs. the prior period. I'll keep you posted.

Edmond

Every good cardroom should have its own tournament series, yes? Hence the First Annual Central Valley Poker Championships held Aug 3 through Aug 9. This week-long series will offer deep stacks, generous level times, relentless attention from the best player relations staff in the surrounding 200-mile area, good food, strong drink, shelter from the hot August sun and the insightful companionship of yours truly. If someone's willing to pay $2.1 million for lunch with Warren Buffet, why wouldn't you put this on the calendar? With buy-ins from $100 to $500, we're practically giving these tournaments away!

CVPC Schedule - PDF

Edmond
Club One Casino

I'm happy to report that we held our WSOP satellite tournament at Club One today, and it drew enough entrants where we didn't have to cough up too much extra dough to satisfy the seat guarantee that I agreed to months ago in a bourbon-fueled burst of confidence.

I was bracing myself for the worst since I've been running bad lately. For an owner, "running bad" is defined as paying out back-to-back bad beat jackpots and dealing with an HVAC system that, like many folks in the region, doesn't want to work when it's hot out. Fortunately, through a last minute blitz of fliers, posters and begging, we pulled just enough entrants to cover the guarantee.

Unlike many other WSOP satellites, we gave players pretty good stacks to play with (10,000 chips with 25/25 start blinds) and 30-minute levels. LakeofFire capitalized on our largesse by burning up 9 hours of the one day off I give him, finishing 12th out of 99 entrants. Unfortunately, we're only giving away 3 seats. Back to work, Lake.

As for lakong, he managed to bounce out within moments of the start when he got it all-in on the turn with the nut straight, and his opponent, armed with two pair, boated at the river. He (kong, that is) didn't seem pleased by this. I recovered bits of a broken Blackberry at the edge of the tournament section and I haven't heard from him since around 2p.

As for me, I figured I could savage the field of misguided pretenders with my usual surgical play and superb hand-reading skills, but it dawned on me that cutting through players like Leonidas at Thermopylae, while good for my ego, might conflict with the "customer-focused" strategy I'm trying to implement. Ergo: I skipped the tournament.

As for my ego, I intend to toss myself into the sea of Asian hotties currently participating in our 2nd karaoke night. Pics to follow, obv.

Edmond

MontBleu
While everyone else headed to Vegas for the WSOP, I headed up to South Lake Tahoe with LakeofFire to attend the card room trade association meeting. Since there are no direct flights from Fresno to anywhere, we sparked up the Lexus and headed north. It’s a 5-hour drive that Lake made highly interesting by running at 80 mph approximately one and a half car lengths behind other fast lane travelers and howling about their lack of driving skills and judgment. The entire way.

The card room association meetings are a chance to get some regulatory updates and re-connect with other card room owners and I’m pleased to report I accomplished very little of either. The only really interesting tidbit was the legislation to study the prospect of intra-state online poker in California. It’s an interesting notion, and one, if history is any guide, that will be introduced about 4 years after the poker boom has completely fizzled.

Last year, Lake made the trip a success by running stupid hot and winning 3 of 4 tournaments he entered, including demolishing a Grand Sierra tournament for $5500. Unfortunately, this year there would be no time for a repeat performance. Just roll in, have a steak, sleep, do a little stretching to fight gravity and OLD, attend some meetings, blow back to Fresno in time for the Friday night rush.

We stayed at the MontBleu, formerly Caesar’s Tahoe, which tried to remake itself a few years back as a contemporary resort but only ended up with tacky décor and bad service. That said, the casino’s Ciera Steak House is a good choice if you find yourself in the Lake Tahoe area. Chopped salad, New York steak medium, nice glass of Rodney Strong cabernet. I’d do it again.

When we visited Mont Bleu last year, the poker room was set up opposite to the sportsbook and had several tables running. Since last year, they’ve moved the poker room into the sportsbook area and it’s become a ghost town--there were no tables running at 3p on Friday. It looks like Harvey’s is probably the only reliable NL action in the South Lake Tahoe area, and if you have a choice, always stay at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe in Incline Village. North end of the lake, but much better accommodations, service and view.

Club One
As for Club One, we’re starting to fire up a daily changes and promotions that have kept me busy round-the-clock. Real plants, more flatscreens (including a 65" monster in the bar), baccarat and fortune pai gow (new games for us), a “Win a hybrid” promotion, players’ cards and match play coupons. Add in a mangled opening of an adjacent hotel, failing refrigeration equipment, daily parking snafus, ongoing people management challenges and the lack of a decent office desk and chair and my blogging career has stalled like a '74 AMC Gremlin with sugar in its tank. The sick jukebox LakeofFire dug up is a hit, though. I can confirm that bar traffic and hotties are up 10% year-to-year. We’ll take it. And we've rescheduled another karaoke night, obv...

If anyone’s interested, you can check out some of the things we’ve got going on out here in Fresno. The photos are dated, of course; our bar and restaurant are packed with hotties of types 24/7 and there are no more old school TVs left on premises. Now if I could only solve the parking issue.

Club One Casino's blogspot page provided in lieu of the website we can't seem to get launched.

Edmond

In the spirit of Bond18, I's reflect a little on the things I've learned in the last three months of running a card room.

Good dealers don't let games break. Bad dealers make you want to break things.

A good dealer can shuffle and deal faster and better without a ShuffleMaster machine.

Good chairs matter.

Good bartenders and servers make eye contact and have a following. They’re hard to find.

We sell a ton of Corona.

Some women still drink Kailua and milk.

NL poker players complain like crazy. Pai gow poker players ARE crazy.

Jerry Yang is extremely nice and never complains.

When parking gets screwed up, it's a problem.

No hotel in Fresno has a decent restaurant.

Don't leave your laptop charging in the hotel lobby. Corollary: the new Macbook Pros rock.

A leak from the pool being renovated on the roof adjacent to the casino will find its way to the computers in surveillance.

The Foxwoods Casino with 7400 slot machines pays $200 million to the state of Connecticut. The Pechanga Resort and Casino, the biggest in California and within two hours of 10+ million residents and now ok'd for 7500 slots, will pay about $100 million annually to California. Give me 7500 slots within an hour of $5 million people and I'll send $200 million annually to California and $100 million to Connecticut, no problem.

The ATM business is a total racket.

Everybody has ad space to sell.

Limit poker is more fun and profitable than you know.

4/8 with full kill is a chip-flinging free-for-all.

If you throw someone out, they'll come back. This includes employees.

Armenian people communicate loudly.

Asian hotties like karaoke.

If a white guy, mid 40s, dances like no one is watching, surveillance will still have the video.

The facility is never clean enough.

It's all about butts in seats.

Edmond