Warning: Poker Story!

Playing $2/$5 NL Hold'em with $500 of the $1500 I profited a couple days ago at the same game. Wasted $400 of that profit (and 9 and a half hours of my life) playing the first ever 'DoubleStack' Deepstack Extravaganza tournament ever at the Venetian yesterday. Don't know if I mentioned this before, but I HATE tournaments at the Venetian. Think yesterday may have been my last Venetian tournament - I'll stick with the Wynn...

But I digress ... this story is about my day, today, at the Bellagio. As I said, I went in with $500 - pretty much the least and most I ever bring to play $2/$5 NL at the Bellagio. It's the cap on their game and the most I'm willing to lose in one day so it's become a standard play of mine. I buy 3 stacks of red chips (60 $5 chips) and 2 blacks ($100 chips). I put the blacks in my pocket and sit down with the three red stacks. The idea here is that $300 is plenty to play with; and, if my luck goes as usual and a freaking donkey kicks me early, I can leave with the $200 and not make my day a complete bust.  If, however, I’m playing and unable to accumulate any chips but don’t bust; I have extra resources in my pockets.  If I’m not winning, I keep my playable chips on the table around $300 by adding a black whenever I drop down to near $200 on the table.  I can do this twice to extend my play although each time it’s done, I’m basically risking $100 more for my total daily loss.  If I drop to around $250 after the second black chip is in use, I leave.  It’s a good system and it has saved me a somewhat substantial amount of money since I’ve been actually sticking to it…

Now granted, today is a Friday.  Weekends are dangerous when it comes to these lower-stake poker games.  Dangerous, and for some, quite profitable.  You see, it’s the weekends when you see all the tourists gambling away the money they’ve earned prior to their much anticipated ‘Vegas Vacation’ where they’ve planned to hit it big in a poker game or two.  They’ve done the research.  They’ve all read “Super System” and have watched many many hours of poker on their idiot boxes.  Rest assured that each and every one of them honestly believes that they are the greatest, most proficient and completely unbeatable poker player ever to walk this Earth.  In other words, it’s an absolute plethora of donkeys here in Vegas on a weekend.  This, of course, is seen by some professional poker players as candy for the taking; although I, myself, see it as more of a problem.  My reasoning for this is that one or two donkeys at your table can be quite profitable - they’re going to make the mistakes you want made and call your huge bets when you trap them.  When you get too many donkeys, it becomes more of a challenge to get to the heads-up battle you need to be in where pushing them to make these mistakes is viable.  Donkeys have a real bad habit of sticking around regardless of their hand strength.  It’s dangerous to push in a huge bet when the possibility exists that more than one donkey will call you.  Each call, no matter how improbable the draw is, decreases the odds of your hand holding up.  You want to make sure that there’s only one fool calling with his improbable draw against you – that’s how you maximize your chances…

On a Friday, though, things don’t really get too out of control until later in the afternoon.  If you get there before noon, you’re usually guaranteed a few hours of play before the madness ensues.  I arrived at 11:30am today.

As soon as I arrived, a brand new $2/$5 NL Hold’em table was started.  This is exactly how I like to start things off – a new table where nobody is sitting with a huge stack.  I’m quite often the only one sitting with less than $500 on the table, but that’s okay – it’s not a problem if I play smart…

I quickly made an assessment of the table.  It was about half filled with locals (or at least people I’ve seen before) and the rest were unknowns.  Two of the locals I knew were basically “Super System” players (aka betters/gamblers – an over-simplification I admit, however these players often play bets rather than cards…) and I was able to use this knowledge to my advantage early on and quickly turned my $300 stack into a bit over $500.  I still had the two reserve black chips in my pocket as well.  It was a good start to my day.  However, as is far too often the case for me, the cards just went dead.  In approximately 2½ hours, I had already resorted to the black chip additions twice.  I was getting my second wind though and was able to get my table stack-size back up to a bit under $500.  During this 2½ hour period, a new player joined our table.  I was paying close attention to this guy as he quickly started showing obvious signs of being a donkey.  He was consistently raising pre-flop and betting amounts that were almost always too large for the situation.  I rather quickly targeted him for a take-down.  All I needed to do was wait for the correct spot and I was sure I could get him to double me up.  Hell, he initially sat down with $500 and had to re-buy for another $500 after donking-off his entire stack to the lady sitting next to me.  She knew what she was doing as well … that poor donkey should NOT have been sitting at our table…

I got dealt a pair of K’s in the big-blind.  After a couple limp-ins, my target raised to $15 (as I said earlier, NOT a surprise – he was always raising pre-flop…) and three other players called his raise.  When the bet got to me, I raised to $75 (basically a pot-sized raise) in the hope that my target would re-raise me.  I figured my bet would most likely get everyone else out and it did; everybody folded but my target – he just called.  He didn’t raise, but that was okay – he called.

Flop comes 4-4-8 rainbow.  Now I’m first to act and would usually bet that flop heads-up holding K’s however I’m pretty sure this other guy will bet – donkeys always do.  Sure enough, after I check the flop, my opponent makes a huge bet.  It wasn’t quite pot-sized but looked to me like about $150.  My response to his obvious mistake was to instantly push all-in.  Granted, he might be holding a 4 but that seemed quite unlikely to me even for a donkey.  I figured he was probably holding a couple face cards or possibly an A-something; either way, I was pretty sure I had him beat and sprung my trap.  He appeared a bit shaken by my push and even asked me if I was holding J’s.  Of course I responded that we’re not allowed to discuss hand contents and left it at that.  I knew I had him now and was just hoping he’d call.

A few more seconds passed and he tossed a chip out signifying a call.  I then showed my K’s followed by him showing his Q-8 and doubling me up!  Boom, it’s just that easy!

Unfortunately, for me, it’s never that easy … and I mean never.  Everything stated above is correct except for the part where this donkey doubled me up.  That didn’t happen.  Yeah, I showed my K’s and this idiot was holding a Q-8; however the dealer dealt the turn and river.  The turn, mind you, was a fuckin’ 8!  Once again, I got to play the part of the poor sap feeding the donkeys.  This idiot knew I had a pair and even went so far as asking if they were J’s.  What did he think – that I made a huge pre-flop bet with a pair lower than 8’s that weren’t 4’s then check-raised him all-in after the flop?!?!  Yeah, he probably did think that – that’s what he would have done…  And that, after all, is what I was counting on!  I wanted him to make a stupid mistake and he did.  I wanted him to risk damn near $500 on an 8.603% chance of winning and he did.  (Well, to be honest, I wanted him to be drawing dead and call; however I’ll take a 91.397% chance of doubling up any time I can get it…)

I honestly don’t know why my luck is so rotten so often.  I’m not playing too many hands – that could account for a seemingly high number of bad beats … but I often go hours at a time without getting involved in any hands at all.  I really just cannot understand how often it is that I lose when the odds have been shown to be strongly in my favor.  Isn’t that basically the object of the game – to only play the hands that you’re a strong favorite to win?  Shouldn’t that, over time, result in more wins than losses?  Who’s responsible for this whole “probabilities and statistics” racket and could I please get a word with him?  I’m not at all satisfied with the results I’m seeing…

bis später,

Coriolis

Curses!

Played a tournament today.  Wasn’t going to; however I played yesterday (same tournament, two ‘Day 1’s) and was upset enough by my poor play that I figured I pretty much owed it to myself to put things right.  You see, yesterday I made the amateur mistake of over-playing a posh A-J in diamonds on an A-5-7 flop (rainbow, one diamond).  Guy under the gun bet it rather large and I min-raised it.  He quickly pushed all-in and I, like a special-needs student, quickly called.  Granted, that was stupid – basically the only hand I beat there was A-10.  My opponent proceeded to show his hole cards – A-5.  Suffice it to say that I missed my 3-outer on both the turn and river.  To add insult to injury, the turn – although not the J I was looking for – was in fact a diamond.  This actually brought my number of outs for the river up from 3 to 12 as any diamond would have flushed me.  The river was one of the other 32 cards that made my hand a loser.  You see that’s what happens to me when I play poorly – I lose!  Unfortunately, if the roles had been reversed there, something tells me I still would have lost.  Don’t know if it would have been the runner-runner diamonds or a J showing up, but the poker gods would have done one or the other.  That’s just the way the “luck” aspect of the game works for me.  It’s this damn curse I appear to be carrying around with me.

Now granted, the above hand wasn’t the hand that knocked me out of the tournament yesterday; however it was the hand that crippled me beyond repair.  Don’t rightly recall whether this was during level 1 or 2 but I do rightly recall that I was eliminated prior to level 2 completing.  There’s really not much worse than getting crippled so early in a tournament.  Granted, the blinds are still relatively small, but the path ahead to success is so long that you’re going to have to do something to re-build your stack quickly else blinding-out becomes an issue as the blinds steadily increase.  For you see, everyone else sitting at your table notices your situation and they’re most definitely going to make you pay to see anything.  You’re forced to rely on pure luck in this situation; and luck and I don’t seem to be getting along these days…

So I headed back this morning (well, noon, actually) to see if I could redeem myself.  I was not going to make any bone-head, amateur mistakes today.  I was going to play smart and let my skills overcome the issue I’m having with luck.  That was the plan…  If you continue reading, you’ll discover how well it worked for me.  Spoiler alert:  it didn’t!

As seems to be standard with me, the hand that crippled me today came early as well.  It was in level 2 where the blinds were a mere 100/200.  That’s quite small in these “deep stack” tournaments as each player starts the game with 15,000 in chips.  As it was only level 2, both me and my nemesis where approximately hovering around that starting stack-size.  I was dealt a K-J, posh – both hearts.  I was also sitting on the button which, of course, gave me final play for any action post-flop.  Everyone else folded around to me so I decided to put a bit of pressure on the blinds and made a standard raise to 600.  This, of course, steals the blinds (granted, a mere 300) if neither call; however it also gives me information if either chooses to make the call.  Granted, this early, and with the blinds being as small as they are, the information obtained isn’t very meaningful; however you’re pretty certain that your complete garbage hands won’t be making the call.  It’s just not worth risking 6 times or 3 times your already forced bet for a chance to win such a small pot.  The small blind folded.  The big blind called.

So now there’s 1,300 in the pot.  I’m sitting with a K-J of hearts and my opponent is sitting with an A-10 of diamonds.  Of course I did not know that he was sitting with that hand but, to help clarify the story for you, the reader, I’m going to let you know early what I was up against.  It was an A-10 of diamonds.

Flop comes Q of diamonds, 10 of hearts and 5 of hearts.  This, of course, gives my opponent second pair with three diamonds to the nut flush.  It also gives me an open-ended straight draw with four hearts to the second nut flush.  Those are both pretty decent hands.  My hand, although behind to the second pair, is actually much better as a drawing hand.  There are eight cards that fill my straight (four 9’s and four A’s).  The observant reader will see that this number is actually seven being that one of the A’s is in my opponents hand; however, I did not know that and my calculations are being written as I was calculating them during the game.  Besides the eight for my straight, there are seven cards that make my flush.  There’s actually nine, but the 9 of hearts and A of hearts are already accounted for in the outs for the straight.  That gets me to 15 cards that make my hand a winner.  Now, if I want to be a bit optimistic, I could also include the three K’s that would give me an over-pair to the board which would increase my number of outs to 18.  With and without the K’s I’m looking at a winning draw percentage of 60-72% – better than a coin-toss either way.

My opponent, however, does not know what I am holding and needs to make his decisions based on “his” hand alone.  As I said, his hand is also pretty decent.  He’s already got a made hand of second pair with the 10’s.  He most likely also believes that he’s got outs with the two 10’s that would make him a set as well as the three A’s that would give him 2-pair.  Of course we already know that the A’s are bad for him as they fill my straight; however he is not aware of this.  He also might be able to see that he’s got a slim chance (approximately 1-in-25) of drawing the runner-runner diamonds to complete his nut flush.  As a matter of fact, many players over-value this rarity and play it as if it were destined to happen.  These players are correctly designated as the “donkeys.”  They can be dangerous at times…  He does, however, have the pair of 10’s and decides to bet 1,100 – basically a pot-sized bet.

Now, since I pretty much know where I stand here – even if he flopped a set, I’m still a 3-to-2 advantage at drawing a hand that beats him – I min-raise the bet to 2,200.  This should give him some pause with his second pair.  I just raised his pot-sized bet on a flop with a Q and two hearts.  He thinks about this raise for a minute or so and then calls.

So now the pot’s at 5,700.  The turn is then dealt – a 9 of diamonds.  Interestingly enough, my opponent decides to check his bet here.  Most likely it was because of my raise on the flop.  Perhaps he was concerned that I might have hit a straight with that 9 (which, of course, I did – the nut straight) and didn’t want to risk betting his pair of 10’s again even though he was also now looking at a river-draw to the nut flush.  Or, as it probably actually was, he was trying to set a trap for me.  It’s only a 20% chance to draw the flush; however donkeys are donkeys – why worry about probabilities…?

I bet 3,000.  I’m currently holding the nuts.  It is impossible for my opponent to be holding a made hand that beats me.  I’m concerned by the two diamonds on the board but really can’t fathom anyone calling my flop raise with the intention of drawing a runner-runner flush.  I mean that would be just stupid, right…?  Besides, even if I am up against a donkey here he’s still a 4-to-1 underdog at hitting a diamond on the river.  And heck, to justify a call like that, the pot would need to be 15,000 as opposed to the 8,700 I’ve just made it.  Granted, a K on the river could be trouble as well.  That would give anyone holding an A-J a “Broadway” which, of course, would actually beat my K-high straight.  Either way I’m pretty sure he’s not calling…

Without any thought, whatsoever, he calls my 3,000 chip bet.  So the pot has now grown to 11,700 and the river is dealt – a fucking K of diamonds!  I mean sweet Jesus, no worse card could have been played.  Now I get to worry about both the flush and the “Broadway” beating what was, prior to the river, my nut straight.  It’s here that my opponent bets 6,600.

I find this bet interesting as it is the perfect bet to justify his call of my 3,000 on the turn if he were drawing for the flush.  It basically gives him his needed 5-to-1 payout on his 1-in-5 odds.  It’s also an excellent bluff for the exact same reason.  After contemplating this for a bit and concluding that an A-J would not have thrown a pot-sized bet on the flop and that my flop raise and turn bet would have gotten rid of any non-donkey runner-runner draws, I incorrectly make the call.  Boom!  Just like that, I’m crippled … sitting with less than 1/3 my starting stack as those around me are steadily chipping up.

I was able to survive a bit into level 5; even managed to grow my stack back to near 18,000 for a bit.  In the end though, it wasn’t enough.  The tilt the above hand put me on was too much for me to get over.  I don’t know … seems to me that I’m playing a constant tilt.  It’s this damn curse, I tell ya!

bis später,

Coriolis

A Bit of a Funk

So … a bit of an update on that ever-exciting world of online dating. In one word – useless.

I posted a blog article a few weeks ago that basically outlined my initial attempts at using Chemistry.com to perhaps find a date. I have since tried my best to remain positive and hopeful that the procedure outlined would, in time, produce positive results. Unfortunately, I am now realizing that “positive” results was far too optimistic of an expectation. I have basically been getting somewhat sporadic results in general and the number that I would consider “positive” stills remains zero.

Here’s a warning for anybody that thinks these dating sites are packed with honest-to-goodness real people, like yourself, that are interested in meeting someone new – they’re not. What they are filled with is countless fake identities set up as Internet-fishing schemes. Of course I only have my experience on Chemistry.com to go by; however I’m prone to think that things would be similar at the other sites as well.

Although it took quite a while for the scam responses to start arriving – I had been implementing my routine for over a month prior to the onslaught – they are now hitting my account at a rate of several per day. And they all look pretty much the same. It’s always a “lady” giving some sort of extremely general compliment about my profile followed by some seriously stupid explanation as to why she never logs onto the site and that I should email her at her personal email address (which, by the way is always a {random.crap.name}@yahoo.com). Without fail, these accounts end up becoming “no longer available” in a few days as the scams get reported to Chemistry.com which gets me to wondering why they were sent to me as possible matches to begin with…? Perhaps because I was stupid enough to pay the fee required for a six-month membership at Chemistry.com and they want it to appear that I didn’t waste my money. But I’m not fooled – that money was most definitely wasted.

And speaking of wasting money, I headed back to the Commerce Casino yesterday. On Sundays they have this decent little $65 buy-in tournament (with a $50 re-buy option) that I had played once before. I figured that, if nothing else, it would be a nice little warm up for the WSOP tourney that I’m going to be playing later this week at the Rio in Vegas. Now, granted, the scale of these two tournaments has a large delta (WSOP tourney #30 has 60-minute blind levels, is expecting to be seating over 2000 players and is scheduled as a 3-day tournament whereas the Commerce tournament has 20-minute blind levels, far less than 100 players and will easily finish in one afternoon) however my frequency of playing tournaments has gone down quite a bit since leaving Colorado where I used to waste quite a bit of time at the Denver Poker Tour games. Now the one thing I do know is that playing poker tournaments is like most skills where the finer details can fade with extended down-times. Of course the flip-side of that is also true where too much playing can hurt your play (especially in these low-buy-in tournaments – aka “free-rolls”) but I have no worries about that – I needed the practice as a refresher…

Unfortunately I didn’t get too much practice as flopping two-pair got me knocked out of the tournament right at the end of the first round. I thought the other guy was power-betting a flush draw with the two hearts that hit but was a bit shocked to find out that he was on the flush draw with an already made straight – bad play by me… The flush didn’t hit; unfortunately a straight usually beats two pair in most respectable casinos… Oh well, que sera sera … that’s poker. Unfortunately paying that $115 for the tournament (I did the re-buy right away so was unable to continue after my stupid play) ended up being a complete waste. Not only that, but the money I foolishly spent in a couple ring games before made the day a bit more expensive than I was hoping … but I’m just gonna rack all that crap up as the horrible ending of the horrible weekend I had.

I’m not a big fan of life right now. I sure hope things go a bit better in Vegas…

bis später,

Coriolis

It's a Trap!

Okay, let’s not get into this “Oh no! California’s taken control of Cori!!” bullshit … however yesterday, at my yoga class, I began to really see some of the benefits with living here in southern California. I think it was whilst transitioning from “cobra” to “downward staring dog” for the fifth or sixth time that my spiritual and emotional energy forces teamed up and pulverized my common sense into submission. I guess it’s time for me to get to work on selling my house in Colorado – which, in today’s market, I’ll be lucky to break-even with – purchasing one of these apartments or townhomes (real houses are far too expensive) here in Cali – for the low low rate of “way too much” per month – loading up my truck and moving to Beverly … Hills, that is…

Of course this will quickly be followed by my waking up – all covered in sweat and screaming! Although at one time (high school…) I believed that California was the “place to be”, I have since realized that the propaganda shoveled into our brains via the multitude of mass media outlets available today is composed primarily of crap. Hold on … let me rephrase that a bit… For me, most of this popular hoopla is crap. That’s just me… I’ve got this bad habit (I guess the “badness” of it is open for debate) of automatically avoiding things (experiences, items, TV shows, music … your basic “things”) with direct proportion to their popularity. Following the latest fad just seems like such a waste of time to me – heck, if I’m not careful I might need to blog about it and who knows how much time I’d be wasting with that…

Funny thing is … my social calendar – for the next few weeks at least – has become rather full and I’m not exactly sure why this is. Yesterday, as I mentioned, I actually did attend a yoga class. A yoga class! Me! Now how weird is that?! Granted I won’t be attending any more … it was pretty much what I thought it would be … however yesterday I went. For full disclosure, it was actually a teaser class that Naoko – our HR executive extraordinaire – was able to set up at the request of Roberto (who, by the way, didn’t even go…) for the employees of AltaSens. This, of course, meant that it was free…

Tonight I will be heading down to Beverly Hills with Nini to attend what is being billed as “Lewis Black in conversation with Joel Stein” at the Writers Guild Theater. I’m not sure what to expect at this event – it was listed as a stop on Lewis’ publicity appearances for his Me of Little Faith book release – however I should at least be able to pick up a copy of the book and even get it signed by Lewis. Whatever else happens will just be a bonus…

Eddie Money is playing a concert Saturday at Constitution Park in Camarillo. It’s free (I think they expect a “donation” but that’s cool…) and, since I currently live in Camarillo, very convenient. I’m pretty sure that Nini and I will be making an appearance there – I saw Eddie Money years ago when he was opening for Journey in Detroit – a little classic 80’s rock could be interesting…

On Sunday we’re heading over to Hollywood to attend a couple tapings of The Gong Show hosted by Dave Attell. Since Dave is a MySpace “friend” of mine, I saw his bulletin posting on free tickets to The Gong Show tapings and – being that Hollywood’s not very far from where I am currently living – I jumped at the chance. I got tickets to both tapings on Sunday…

And to wrap up this latest flurry of activity, the big “Vegas / Colorado / possibly more Vegas” trip begins in just over a week. We’re currently booked for three nights at Paris and have reservations for Cirque du Soleil’s Mystère next Sunday. After that we will be heading back to Colorado so I can renew the registration on Precious, head to the doctor for a physical and enjoy a little quality time at my actual home – somewhere around four to five days… Then we retrace our path on the road trip back to California with another possible (completely unplanned as of yet) stint in Vegas. Should be an interesting trip – a lot of miles for Precious but that’s what cars are for, right? … driving…

Now you may have noticed something rather interesting in all of those plans – I’ve lately been replacing my formerly numerous I’s with we’s. I suppose that’s the reason behind my much more eventful social calendar – I now have somebody to do stuff with. In the past I’ve complained time and time again about the difficulty in finding things to do alone – heck, I’m pretty sure it’s the key topic on several of my previous blog postings – and finally finding someone that is willing to put up with my strange idiosyncrasies long enough to actually spend time with me has definitely expanded my options when it comes to free time. Not to mention that Nini’s always a pleasure to hang out with (which, by the way, is a good thing since she has officially been living with me since June 1st…) and life for me is looking pretty good…

So I’m beginning to wonder – perhaps my distaste for all things California is a bit unfounded. Maybe this thin slice of land just prior to the Pacific is the Promised Land so seemingly believed by a rather large multitude. Perhaps the pluses actually do outnumber the minuses in this state…

Oh Hell no! I’m not falling for that trap! I’ll do my time here for as long as need be; but damn it, I’m a Coloradoan! It’s only a matter of time before I return home … with Nini by my side…

bis später,

Coriolis

A Typical Vegas Night

Okay … so where was I…? Oh yeah, Vegas. I had just completed a couple hours of poker resulting in a $417 profit (obtained on the last hand) and needed to get back (along with the Toddster) over to Treasure Island for the “Bounty Hunter” tournament that we bought into earlier in the day. I believe I may have ruffled a few feathers at the table when I announced I needed to leave directly after taking what was pretty much the biggest pot of the day; however time – she was a’tickin – as she so consistently does and I wasn’t about to miss a tournament that I had already paid the buy-in for … so, I left…

Todd and I rather quickly made our way back to Treasure Island (much quicker than I expected, in fact, as it was still something like a half hour before the tournament started when we arrived). Todd headed off to grab a bite to eat at one of the available eateries and I bought a rather expensive can of Red Bull (I forget how much I paid although I remember that it seemed quite overpriced at the time) and patiently waited for the start-time to arrive. I smoked a couple cigarettes (something that I no longer do … haven’t smoked since a week ago yesterday…), drank some Red Bull (needed the “wings” I guess…) and watched the ever-growing crowd of people line up for Cirque du Soleil’s Mystère show … it, as well as the “Bounty Hunter” tourney, was scheduled to begin at 7:00pm…

At 7:00 (well, a few minutes before…), Todd returned from his meal and we both took our assigned seats for the game. I wouldn’t be sitting in mine too long – I was eliminated shortly after the first break – however Todd fared much better and would be occupied for quite some time. This, of course, meant that I had some time to kill. Time to kill in Vegas can quickly become expensive for many … for me it actually became a bit profitable. I got bored just sitting there waiting for Todd to finish the tournament so I headed on out to the casino (you know – where they keep all those “one-arm bandits”) and did something that I don’t usually do … I started playing slot machines…

You see, I’ve never quite understood the allure of slots. After all, these machines are basically nothing more than computers programmed to take your money and they (the casinos) don’t even bother to hide this fact. They actually use signs stating something like “98% return on our slots!” to lure in their victims. I understand exactly what that means – it means that you are pretty much guaranteed to walk away from these machines poorer by 2% of the money you play. How is this an incentive? And, if you factor in that – on the rare occasion – somebody’s going to hit big and walk away with many times the amount they were playing, it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to realize that it’s going to take a heck of a lot of people walking away with nothing to keep that median payout at a mere 98%. But I guess that’s the dream – to be the one that causes these losses to be necessary. I was, however, bored … so I thought I’d attempt to be “that guy”…

I wasn’t “that guy” – I never hit anything huge; however I was able to walk away with some profit. I started at a few quarter machines – turned ten bucks into twenty five, another ten into nothing, the twenty five into some smaller amount (I wasn’t really keeping track – just cashing out and pocketing any profits made and considering the busts bad choices at machines…) and finally decided to try out one of those dollar machines. It was a typical slot machine in that you could bet various amounts (1-3 dollars) per spin and, of course, your winnings would have slightly higher proportional payouts if you chose to gamble more. And it had a special “hit” on the third wheel that would let you play the bonus game. The bonus on this machine was a Deal or No Deal type game where you would get offered an amount of money that you could choose to accept or deny on up to four chances. If you denied the first three, you were forced to take the fourth offer. Being that it was a dollar machine, the offers were pretty good. I was actually lucky enough to hit the game somewhere around 4 or 5 times and never ended up taking less than $35 … not bad on a $1 spin…

So basically I sat there playing with any bills I had that were less than $100 until I collected payouts of more than $100. I then headed over to the cashier and got the money and returned to the same machine to play with any new sub-$100 bills until $100+ was won again. It was a nice way to waste some time – I played slowly, smoked a few cigarettes and had a few drinks “on the house” – and I actually walked away with something like $70 in profit (may have been more … may have been less … I really don’t remember…). In time, Todd emerged from the poker room and found me…

The good news was that he was able to place 5th (if memory serves me correctly) in the tournament! The bad news was that payouts began at 3rd … the even worse news was that he didn’t succeed in collecting any bounties either. So basically his results were the same as mine (complete loss of the buy-in) even though it took him a few more hours to achieve the loss. He wasn’t happy about this… But, that’s poker. Especially with tournaments … it can often be a long trip to nowhere… The night, however, was still young and we decided to head out…

We walked back to Caesar’s, hopped in the car and headed out for the Palms. There we paid for our free drinks by playing several slot machines. We both lost a decent amount (the figures have long since been forgotten by me) but did our best to make up for the losses in free drinks. In time we decided to head on over to the Rio where we did basically the same before deciding to return to the strip. I’m pretty sure we parked at Paris … pretty sure… Whatever the case, I remember us being at Paris. I also remember heading over to Harrah’s and briefly considering going to some sort of after-hours club that we couldn’t even get into – we were wearing sneakers which apparently wasn’t allowed… Come to think of it, the club wasn’t even in Harrah’s – it was located in that casino on the way to Harrah’s … it’s all pretty much a blur to me now…

One thing that I do remember is that we (Todd and I) must appear to be “easy money” to your standard Las Vegas prostitute. We’re not, mind you; however we sure as hell must appear to be since they were approaching us pretty much everywhere we went. I don’t remember any at the Palms or the Rio; however they were out in full force once we returned to the strip. It was rather comical to see these women in action with little to no regard for the police that were also there. I guess being a cop in Vegas is akin to being a child in a chocolate factory as far as vice is concerned… One lady approached us not more than 20 feet away from a couple of cops that were basically herding prostitutes like cattle. Sin City, indeed…

I think it was somewhere around 5 or 6 in the morning when Todd and I finally called it a night. After all, we still needed to drive the rest of the way to California later that day and we needed to check-out of the hotel by noon – amazingly enough, we were able to accomplish this. Getting Todd up before check-out was not easy (I ended up returning the key with Todd still in the room) but we did leave the hotel without getting penalized… We stopped off for breakfast (well, lunch as breakfast was no longer being served) at the surprisingly decent, extremely no-frills restaurant located at the Knights Inn. I think I had a BLT… It’s not important what I ate … I’m still amazed that I was able to function considering the lack of sleep I had recently had and amount of alcohol I had drunk the previous night. But, hey, it was Vegas; so we finished eating and drove on down to New York, New York … we wanted to see if they had a poker game…

In case anyone was interested in learning, they don’t. We walked around the casino looking for a poker room or at least a sign that might direct us to one; but completely failed in our quest. I even broke down and did a very un-manly thing by asking the lady at the information desk. Interestingly enough, New York, New York appears to not have gotten swept up in the poker craze of late – they do not offer any live poker games. We were directed to try either the Excalibur or the MGM Grand – both located directly across the street from NY, NY; one south and one east. We headed east, across one of the many pedestrian crosswalks, to the MGM Grand Casino. We knew there was poker there…

And with that, I’m going to end this installment of my little blog. Apart from losing around $50 playing poker at the MGM for a few hours and a drive from Vegas to Camarillo that took quite a bit longer than was expected (Sunday afternoon/evening is NOT when you want to be driving from Vegas back to California … traffic is pretty bad…), this also pretty much completes this story. Vegas always ends up being an interesting trip and I’ve already got my next trip to Vegas scheduled at the end of June. The plan’s to meet with my parents, introduce them to my new steady girlfriend, take in a performance of Cirque Du Soleil: Mystère at Treasure Island then drive back to my home in Colorado for –get this – an emissions test. Since it didn’t occur to me that I needed to get this done for this year’s registration, I failed to get an emissions test prior to driving Precious back to California. Now I get to drive back to Colorado in order to complete this task … followed shortly by yet another drive back to California… Precious is finally beginning to acquire a few miles.

bis später,

Coriolis

Vegas by Day

So that was day one of our little trip – a lot of driving, a little poker and some much needed sleep. I was down a little, Todd was up a little and we had one more full day (and night) left before we needed to leave on the remainder of our trip to California. I seem to remember that I woke rather early Saturday morning – a bit too early for Todd if all his bitching and moaning was taken as an indication. On my agenda for the day was to find a local Wells Fargo (get some cash), find a local car wash (Precious wasn’t looking her best…), get a bite to eat and head down to the strip in search of a decent game. Todd got over his morning grouchiness soon enough and we headed out to find the needed services…
First was a quick trip to one of those automated, brushless car washes. The name of the joint was Terrible’s and all I can say is that this place was named amazingly well – the car wash was absolutely terrible! The poor quality of the automated wash added one more destination for our day: stop #2 – another car wash… For the second wash, I decided to stop in at one of those “wash it yourself with our hose and brush” spots that just happened to be located right next to the Terrible’s Auto Wash … great business planning by somebody as I’m sure they get quite a bit of business leaving their neighbor…

After all is said and done, I was able to get my car washed – twice, actually! She still wasn’t up to the admittedly high standard of cleanliness that I have set for Precious; but she was cleaner … not to mention that we still needed to drive to California the next day so lowering my acceptable cleanliness criterion seemed acceptable. Who knows how much filth she’ll be gathering on tomorrow’s trip…?

Now granted, from the first paragraph of this post, I may have led you to be thinking that it was still rather early in the day. It actually wasn’t… I think it was going on 11:00am after completing the second car wash of the day. It’s all good though – Todd’s not much of a morning person and we both needed the rest. The slightly-later-than-expected start ended up working to our advantage as it was good preparation for the day/evening/night/morning that we were heading into. It was, after all, the only full day that we were planning on being in Vegas and I’m sure I don’t need to explain how these “one day in Vegas” trips usually end up…

Being that it was, however, a Saturday and banks don’t seem to enjoy opening for any useful hours on weekends; we then needed to find a Wells Fargo. I didn’t bring much actual cash with me (for some reason I thought I could just purchase chips with my debit card at the casinos … you can’t, by the way…) and had already burned through the maximum amount of money I allow myself (pre-meditated controls…) to withdraw from an ATM on any one day so I really needed to find a physical bank that would allow me to get some fundage. I was still thinking that I might be playing some of the higher-stakes poker, however I never did; but that’s cool … I was prepared…

This preparation was accomplished when we rather quickly found a Wells Fargo bank. The good news was that it was open – if I remember correctly, it was actually scheduled to be open most of the day – that’s Vegas for ya, I guess… Getting “in” the bank required the ability to quickly figure out the intricacies of a rather convoluted double, automatic, pressure/presence sensitive set of doors with a metal-detector in between; the bank, however, was open. On something like the 3rd of 4th attempt, I was able to enter the bank and withdraw a grand… I was prepared…

After visiting the bank it was a short trip back toward the car washes to get a bit of breakfast (or lunch depending on how strictly you associate named meals with times of day…). Not that car washes are known for having great food available … there was this restaurant, felipitos, that we saw earlier that looked like it had some decent, rather inexpensive meals. It was here that we finally purchased some food. Heck, now that I think about it, I think this might have been the only actual meal that I ate that day … I believe Todd grabbed something at some small eatery in Treasure Island just prior to the “Bounty Hunter” tournament; but I can’t seem to recall eating another actual meal until just after checking out of our hotel. Seems like I should probably get back to eating on a more regular schedule – but I digress – this story’s about Vegas … not my irregular eating habits…

So we ate our rather authentic Mexican lunches and headed out toward the strip. Todd really wanted to stop, but I was able to convince him that we probably shouldn’t stop at the Liberace Museum (not an easy task – Todd just seems to LOVE Liberace…) and we continued past toward the strip. Upon checking the tournaments for the day on my cached web pages the night before, I had decided to park at Caesar’s Palace and hoof it from there to the various casinos we were planning on checking out. It was then just a bee-line (if the bee were disoriented and apt to fly routes in a completely indirect manner) to the Caesar’s Palace garage followed by an admittedly lengthy ordeal at finding an available parking spot. We did, however, find one – on the top floor, near the back…

A bit of a side note here: I highly recommend the Caesar’s Palace garage if you are parking a vehicle that you are a bit concerned about. I’m not sure if many other casinos in Vegas do the same (the list of one’s that don’t includes the Flamingo, the Palms, the Rio and New York, New York…) but at Caesar’s Palace you are required to show a valid picture ID to a live guard upon entering. Whether this equates to any sort of improved security or is merely a “feel good” extra for their patrons remains unknown to me … however, I saw it as a rather nice touch…

The first tournament I was interested in checking out was, according to the information I found online, a $330 buy-in tourney at Casear’s. It was scheduled to be starting at noon – which, by the time we finally arrived at the poker room, was quickly approaching – and was supposed to be a very good “Skill Level 6” event. The thing that interested me the most was that players started with a $10,000 chip-stack which made it a more skill-oriented tournament as opposed to the BINGO-esque free-for-alls that often arise in the tournaments where the starting stacks aren’t sufficient to cover the quickly increasing blinds. Add to that the 40-minute blind levels and this tournament sounded pretty good to me…

Unfortunately, due to the scheduling of the World Series of Poker circuit events, this weekly tournament wasn’t running. There were several WSOP tournaments that we could have played; however paying the cost required to possibly win a seat into a tournament that we weren’t even assured we could attend (life has its way of interfering with spur-of-the-moment planning…) seemed a bit silly. We decided to try our luck elsewhere and headed out toward the Mirage.

To be honest, I don’t even remember checking the poker room at the Mirage. I’m sure we did although my lack of recollection tells me that we didn’t find anything playable there… We basically did the tourist thing at the Mirage – walked around a bunch, saw the large aquarium behind what appeared to be the hotel registration desk (at least that’s what I believe I remember…), checked out a few of the interesting bars and attractions and spent some time near the Beatles, Summer of Love – Cirque de Soleil gift shop. We didn’t attend the show and, from what Todd has told me he heard from several that did, didn’t miss out on much – as far as Cirque de Soleil shows go, the Beatles aren’t quite the right material… We then decided to head over to the Treasure Island tram (one of the few no-cost travel conveyances left in Vegas). After arriving at the Treasure Island Casino, we quickly found their poker room and headed in to check out the possibilities…

Treasure Island has a rather interesting, somewhat low-cost tournament run on Saturday evenings – the “Bounty Hunter” tournament. I believe it’s actually run every Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7:00pm and is a standard no-limit Hold’em tournament with a bit of a twist. The buy-in is $125 with a $25 fee and the prize-pool is split 50/50 between the top 10% finishers and bounties. The way the bounties are paid is that every player in the tournament has a $50 bounty on their head – knock anybody out and you instantly claim the $50. This gives an opportunity to make the money without actually “making the money” … you could, theoretically, win back all or some of your buy-in without even making it to the prize payout. It’s an interesting twist and a rather decent tournament for your standard weekend visitor…

Todd and I decided to buy-in to the “Bounty Hunter” tournament, plopped down the $125 and received our starting seat assignments. Of course, since it was only early afternoon at the time, we needed to eat up the remaining several hours before the start of the game… We decided to check out Vegas a bit and began the activity that is ever-so-popular in Vegas – walking…

We headed over to the Wynn, waited a bit on a bus to take us to the north end of the strip – and perhaps downtown – that never came, walked past the Palazzo (apparently a newer extension of the Venetian) and ended up at the poker room in the Venetian. The games at the Wynn were a bit too expensive for Todd (and, a bit more than I was comfortable playing at the time) but we were able to get a couple seats (this time on the same table) in a $1/$2 no-limit ring game at the Venetian. I bought-in for $300 and Todd, I believe, for $200 and we ended up spending the remaining time prior to the “Bounty Hunter” tournament here. As poker usually goes, it was a bit of a rollercoaster ride … I was up, down, even … until the last hand I played…

I had been playing for at least a couple hours thus far – Todd, unfortunately, was out. The table had the usual cast of characters – the kid with the horseshoe stuck up his ass that kept getting slapped in the face with the deck (he had recently left the table), the guy playing with his poor girlfriend stuck watching (she must not have been a player and he was trying to impress her with his poker prowess…), the aggressive guy that I was patiently waiting to spank and a few obvious tourist fishes that really shouldn’t have been sitting there. I was back to my starting stack of around $300 when I was dealt a pocket pair of 7’s. Nothing to get too excited about – just a mid pair; however I was the big-blind and the miniscule raise made by the aggressive guy pre-flop wasn’t enough to get me out. I called the additional $5 in order to see a flop…

The flop that came was pretty good for me – ace, king, seven … none suited… I was first to act and decided to try to trap the aggressive guy – I checked it. This was quickly followed by a $5 bet from Mr. Aggressive and a call from one of the remaining fish. Excellent – my trap worked. I “hesitantly” raised the bet to $10 which Mr. Aggressive quickly took to $15 and the fish came along for the ride. I went “all-in” (somewhere around $300) and was called by both. This brought the pot up to a bit over $700 (I had more money than both remaining players) and all betting was over with…

Now the rules for ring games are varied depending on casinos. At the Venetian during a ring game, an all-in player doesn’t need to show his/her cards until after the river is dealt. It allows people to “save face” on stupid plays as well as creates a game where bluffing is a bit more fostered. Since my goal was to spank the ultra-aggressive guy in this hand (nothing bothers me more than machismo-induced, hyper-aggression – and it seems to me that the airing of the WSOP on ESPN has increased the likelihood of running into this type of player several-fold…) I decided not to wait for the river and slowly turned my pair of 7’s over…

After a few choice words and a lot of excited emotional spasms, Mr. Aggressive slapped down his Big Slick. I think all the fish had was an ace-nothing which, of course, lowered Mr. Aggressive’s already miniscule number of outs to three. After the remaining cards were dealt, my two opponents were busted and I pulled in a profit of $417 on that one hand. That actually ended up being my final hand at that game as Todd and I needed to get back to TI for the “Bounty Hunter” – it was scheduled to be starting in a bit over a half hour…

I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait for the rest of this story as I’ve written all I’m going to for this day. Thanks for reading my silly little adventures and remember to come back for the remainder of this trip – you can learn what not to do in Vegas… Actually, who am I kidding? I think the Vegas lessons have already been taken by most … whether or not they are ever “learned” remains the unknown. Heck, I’m sure I’ll be signing up for the course again in the near future … perhaps in late June…

bis später,

Coriolis

Vegas, Baby...

A couple weeks ago, Todd and I had ourselves a little adventure. I had, as mentioned earlier, flown back to Colorado to participate in the DPT semi-finals, get myself a new tooth (in the form of a porcelain crown) and pick up my Firehawk. It was in the Firehawk that Todd and I would be driving back to California and Todd had a flight back to Colorado scheduled for the following Wednesday. Of course a road-trip from Colorado to southern California just wouldn’t be complete without a short stay at this quaint little city that we would be passing through on the way – Las Vegas! So we decided to book a room at the Knights Inn for Friday and Saturday nights.

It’s about a nine hour drive from Longmont to Vegas and we left bright and early Friday morning – I believe it was about 9:00am when we began the drive. I had gotten enough sleep the night before and was feeling pretty good – a large bonus as I would be the one driving. Todd, on the other hand, could’ve used a few more hours… It didn’t matter though, we were Vegas bound and there’s not much better for a couple of poker players on a mission…

Okay, so let me qualify that last statement a bit… I was more of the “poker player on a mission” than Todd. I’ve been earning a pretty good bankroll as of late with my job in California and figured that this might be a nice time to give some of the more substantial games a try … perhaps I would buy-in to a $500 tournament, maybe play some of the higher-stake ring games … you know, give this whole poker-for-a-living idea a real world test. You can’t go pro if you never actually start… As it ended up, however, I never really played anything big. In hind sight, this is probably a good thing – Todd’s bankroll was somewhat smaller than mine and he had the sense to stay within his means (as much as is possible in Vegas…). And since I didn’t want to abandon the guy in Vegas, I ended up staying within my means as well…

Our first stop on the journey ended up occurring at Copper Mountain, CO. We both were in need of a nicotine hit (no smoking is allowed in Precious…) and I figured I could top off the gas tank. Also, it was a nice place to pick up a Red Bull to keep my wits about me whilst driving through the wet and slushy portion of I-70 that we were currently traveling through – as fate would have it, a little snowstorm had just passed through this section the day before. Amazingly enough, my little sports car actually performed pretty well in these conditions – a nice surprise to a guy that had previously driven his old Z-28 into not one but two freeway dividing walls in the past during snowstorms… The only problem with this first stop was the realization that we didn’t dress appropriately for it – it was 29° F at that stop and we were basically wearing jeans and T-shirts, standing outside the vehicle, quickly sucking down cigarettes and risking frost bite. It was a pretty good way to wake up though…

After a quick stop in Glenwood Springs for a bite to eat at Burger King, it was just a bit of driving … and driving … and driving … through a rather large portion of Utah and a rather small portion of Arizona before our next meal stop in Mesquite, Nevada. There was a $4.99 prime rib dinner in Mesquite – how could we pass that up? The best part about this stop – apart from the surprisingly good cheap meal – was that I was finally able to get in touch with my newly acquired girlfriend. Okay, so we weren’t technically “boyfriend/girlfriend” yet … heck, we weren’t even officially dating; however after leaving a couple voice messages on a couple unsuccessful contact attempts and not getting the anticipated return call from my new female interest, I must admit that I was beginning to worry. That just seems to be my luck in the relationship department – I finally meet somebody that I honestly connect with and she dies in some horrible twist of fate before we’re even able to explore the possibilities… Turns out she left her cell phone at home and I was able to contact her at her place of employment after the prime rib dinner. I was relieved, recently fed and excited to complete the 80-some miles left to Vegas. We easily covered the remaining distance in less than an hour…

The sun was setting as we arrived in Vegas. Unfortunately, I was quite a bit worn from the drive. But that didn’t matter – we were in Vegas! The first task at hand was to check-in to our extravagant hotel. (Don’t let the sarcasm pass you by … the Knights Inn is basically a dive. When in Vegas though, a hotel usually becomes just a place to crash and, to a certain extent, pretty much anything will suffice. The Knights Inn approached this extent rather precariously…) After some poor navigation by myself, we found the hotel, checked in and – in what was obviously a bad choice due to my worn condition – headed out to the strip to find a ring game…

Now this was a bit of contention between me and Todd – not the poker game, but how we were going to get to the strip… You see, driving Precious around the mean streets of Vegas with all the insane, possibly drunk tourists was not – I’ll repeat that for emphasis, NOT! – something that I was looking forward to. Todd – having really nothing to lose in the ordeal – just didn’t seem to understand my concern. Okay, he probably understood it, but he sure as hell gave me shit for having it. I finally gave in when we checked the shuttle schedule at the Knights Inn – best described as “not very often nor very late”. That and the realization that my car would probably be much safer in one of the larger casino/hotel’s parking structures than in the parking lot of the Knights Inn eased my concern a bit. We parked Precious near the top of the Flamingo’s garage…

We then set off to find ourselves a game. The Flamingo had one seat open on a $1/$2, no-limit table however, rather than wait for a second seat to become available, we decided to head on over to Harrah’s. Todd had played there before and thought the game was pretty good. Here we were able to find a seat for each of us (on different tables – no sense taking each other’s money…) at their $1/$2, no-limit game and sat down with $300 (actually, I think Todd may have sat down with $200) in chips.

Todd did pretty well. I don’t remember the exact amount, but within an hour or so he got up from his seat and called it a day. I was down about half my stack at this point. What I should have done, of course, was “cut my losses” and get some sleep; unfortunately I chose to continue playing until I went broke. The worst part about it is that I know damn-well that one should never be playing poker when they aren’t well-rested and eager for the game. I was neither and was even considering not playing this night and opting for some sleep instead. BUT – I was in Vegas… So, as is usually the case with being in Vegas, decided instead to pay $300 to once again take a class that I thought I had already passed. Oh well, perhaps I will learn better with iterations – costly iterations … perhaps…?

After generously donating my money to the nice people at my table, I got in touch with Todd and we headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest. We checked the cached poker tournament information my computer – the Knights Inn does not have WiFi so cached sites were all we had – for the next day, selected a few possibilities to check out and got some shut-eye. It really wasn’t that late either – somewhere around midnight although neither of us had adjusted our watches so it may have only been 11:00… Whatever the case, we got some sleep…

Well, as is sometimes the case, this posting is getting a bit on the long side. I also have other tasks that currently require my attention; so I will be stopping here. I’ll try to get around to posting the remainder of this story sometime in the near future; however I received a package Todd recently sent me that might limit my available time for blog writing a bit. Check back in a little while if you’re interested in hearing the rest of this story…

bis später,

Coriolis