That Was Stupid...

Well, that’s done.  One mid-life crisis completed.  Did I learn anything?  Perhaps…  Was it anything useful?  Nope.  What it was – and still is – was an idiot (me) throwing away some forty-plus years of life on a completely misguided attempt to become something I’m not and, after trying, don’t ever want to be.  The result of this is that I have now become exactly what I now am, nobody.

About a half year ago, I moved into my buddy’s apartment in California.  The idea was that I would be able to get back into the career I basically abandoned some five years ago.  The horrible job I left and the douche-bag of a boss that forced me out are just side stories that I won’t bother to mention here; the point being that I made the choice then to throw away my 20-years of professional experience.  To be honest, I figured that I would be able to use that experience to get back into my field of expertise later if what I was attempting didn’t pan out.  Boy was I wrong…  Moving back to California was a way to get closer to where most of the jobs doing what I know are located.  Granted I’m living in southern California and most of the work for my skillset is up in The Valley (the Silicon one…), however I figured it would be better than having a Nevada address.  Turns out it really doesn’t matter.  With a four-plus year hole in your resume, you could be living in a company’s actual building and they wouldn’t bother considering you for any open positions they might have.  You are un-hirable.

I was, with the help of my buddy, able to pick up a bit of contract work here in the L.A. area.  I mistakenly saw that as a positive thing.  Made a bit of money and got the opportunity to hone my skills a bit with some technology a bit more advanced than I had on my resume at the time.  Turns out I was wrong about that as well.  The company I worked with was flaky as they come.  I was actually visiting their office once when, on no less than two occasions, they refused to answer the door when people were knocking.  I don’t know why they didn’t answer however I saw how tense the employees got when the knocks were heard and distinctly remember the boss telling everyone not to answer the door.  As far as my interaction with them went, it was basically them giving me the inputs I needed and me completing the work requested.  I constantly attempted to discuss the work with them but was basically ignored and had to figure out everything on my own.  There was literally no professional interaction between us other than a bare minimum.  A complete month had passed after delivering my work before they told me that we were done and asked me to return the equipment they loaned me (well, I had to inquire several times as to what was happening and whether they wanted their equipment returned before they finally said we were finished) and they never even looked at what I had delivered – I asked…  I’m still quite baffled as to what all that was about.  It wasn’t anything I could use other than, as mentioned earlier, the pay.  Having such a short contract job on my resume after a four-and-a-half-year sabbatical actually looks more suspicious than positive.  I successfully completed the contract without issue, however it does still look suspicious…

So, this brings us to today.  I have been keeping a detailed spreadsheet on all of the jobs I’ve been applying for in these last nine months – more than 150 different positions with over 90 different companies and recruiters.  I’ve had a few interviews that all seemed to go well although they’ve all gone mute.  I’ve heard nothing back from any of them even after sending post-interview inquiries.  It’s like I never existed.  Makes me wonder why they bothered getting in touch with me in the first place…?  Was it some kind of sadistic game?  Granted a couple of those interviews were with people that didn’t notice the hole in my resume until I was basically forced to point it out to them during the conversation.  The tone of the interview consistently changed at that point and I knew I had no chance.  20 years of experience means nothing then…

I am currently trying to move back in with my parents.  My savings are most definitely not what they used to be – I will admit that I lost a large chunk playing poker for four years – and there is absolutely no way I could afford an apartment here in sunny Santa Monica without any income.  I very much doubt I would be able to obtain a lease.  I’m pretty sure they’re expecting a tenant to be able to show steady income no matter how high their credit score may be.  No, I need to move back home.  Housing is much cheaper in Michigan – free if I move back in with the parents for a while – and my buddy’s kicking me out.  Not that I blame him – I never expected to be here this long.  Hindsight being what it is, I never should have moved in with my buddy.  Sure, as far as Santa Monica rents are concerned, he gave me a great deal (no, I wasn’t living here for free…) and I honestly thought I would be able to land a steady job by now; unfortunately, the world appears to have had other plans for me.  All I know is that moving back home directly from Nevada would have been so much easier than what I currently face.  What I’m dealing with now is a nightmare…

I’m actually half-way done with my move out of Nevada.  I chose a moving company, had them empty out my apartment in Nevada and put my stuff in storage (for a monthly fee that I am currently still paying) until I was able to acquire an apartment in California that they would then deliver my possessions to.  It’s all described in the paperwork/emails that I have.  I then loaded up my car with a selection of my clothing, a couple of my guitars, my laptop computer and a bunch of things I thought would be useful and drove to my buddy’s.  So now I have a few problems.  I now need to get myself and all the crap I took to my buddy’s over to my parent’s house in Michigan.  I’m also planning on driving my 16-year-old car for this trip.  The same car I drove to my buddy’s apartment from Nevada; however, Nevada to California isn’t quite the same as California to Michigan.  I’ve done my best in keeping my car as pristine as possible but it is still 16 years old – you never know, right…?  And if I load it up with all the crap I drove to California, it’s basically a target for theft anywhere I stop on my trip.  And what about the crap I have stored in Nevada (at the moving company that, by the way, was sold to new owners a couple months ago)?  Will they be able to deliver to Michigan once I get an apartment there (assuming I’ll be able to get that all figured out…)?  Everything is a huge mess now!

I’ll say this much, “I never thought my life would be what it has become.”  I’m basically homeless, jobless and pathetic.  Thinking of shipping the guitars to Michigan, flying a buddy out from Michigan, loading up my car (without the guitars it shouldn’t be too bad) and cruising Route 66 with my buddy from Santa Monica to Chicago then driving home from there.  Fuck it, might as well make an adventure out of this madness.  I’ll deal with the crap in storage sometime later…

bis später,

Coriolis

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

It Ain't Easy

The blog…  I used to enjoy writing little articles for this basically unread blog.  Haven’t done it for quite some time … a bit over five years to be more precise.  Had a bad day at the poker table today and figured I’d share my sorrow.  No better way to do that than post it on a blog that nobody reads, right?

First off, a bit of background to explain exactly why I was sitting at a poker table at the Bellagio here on this Tuesday after Labor Day:  You see, it was close to a year and a half ago that I decided to do something quite daring; something rather adventurous; something a decent amount of people want to attempt but never actually pull off … something freaking stupid – I moved to Las Vegas (Henderson, actually; although I am only a 15-miute drive from the infamous “strip”…)  and became a self-proclaimed professional poker player.  There were multiple reasons that contributed to this decision although I really do need to admit that, after all is said and done, it appears to be no more than the mid-life crisis so often heard of but rarely believed.  Doesn’t matter much now how this happened – the fact of the matter is this is where I am…

Been doing this for quite some time now.  So far it’s not quite working out the way I was

hoping.  In fact, it’s just not working at all.  I burned completely through my initial poker bankroll about a month ago – completely.  Any poker I now play is dipping into “my” money.  Yeah, I realize that the bankroll I started with was also my money; however that was accounted for separately from the money I have been using to live off.  It – the bankroll – is gone now.  This has changed everything.  The hours of poker that I now play are miniscule compared to what I was doing with the still intact bankroll.  It’s extremely difficult to justify risking money after seeing what became of the bankroll I began with.  But it’s poker.  I know poker.  I’ve read the books, seen the shows (oh, by the way, watching poker on TV is going to do nothing but hurt your actual game … few realize this…) and am quite proficient at calculating hand odds.  Hell, I’ve got a Bachelor of Science in engineering.  I know probability and statistics.  That, unfortunately, just doesn’t seem sufficient to get around this bastard concept known to many as luck.  Take today’s play as an example…

I bought into a standard $2/$5 no-limit cash game for $500.  Interestingly enough, this is the cap on the $2/$5 game at the Bellagio.  It’s also why I play the $2/$5 game at the Bellagio.  You see, you can play a $2/$5 NL game pretty much anywhere in Vegas.  Even the jackpot houses (basically all casinos except for the main four poker casinos – the Aria, Bellagio, Venetian and Wynn) offer a $2/$5 NL game although it’s rare to see them running apart from weekends at these casinos.  The main four always have $2/$5 NL games running.  The buy-in cap (maximum amount of money a new player can join a table with) for most $2/$5 NL games is $1000.  That even includes the jackpot houses although I never (well, very rarely) play jackpot houses to avoid paying larger rakes to cover jackpots that I’m never going to win – I stick with the main four and play only for the poker winnings.  The Aria and Venetian cap their $2/$5 NL games at $1000.  The Wynn caps it at $1500.  The Bellagio, unexpectedly, caps their game at $500.  It’s personal taste, but I prefer playing a game where the rich (and there are a LOT of rich people in Vegas) can’t sit down with a stack advantage just because they’re rich.  At the Bellagio, you need to earn your stack advantage.

But, once again, I’ve gotten off track a bit.  Back to my poker story…

I sat down at a full table (9 people) with $500 in chips.  The table apparently had not been running long as nobody was sitting with much more than $500 in their stack.  I took this as a good sign – nobody was going to be able to push me out of a hand by “big stacking” me.  (“Big stacking” is what I call it when a very large stack pushes a smaller stack all-in, sometimes holding nothing, counting on the small stack not wanting to go broke.  It’s a dangerous play, but you’d be amazed at how often it’s attempted – mainly due to people watching too much poker on TV…)  I noticed that the current big stack – had slightly less than $600 – was playing rather loose.  That basically explains why he was big stack at that point as loose play can sometimes work to a player’s advantage but rarely brings in more than stealing the blinds.  Whatever the case was before I came to this table, I made note of this guy’s play and basically watched him dwindle back down to near $500 before I got into a hand against him.  I was sitting on the button and got dealt a Q-8 off-suit.  Not a great hand, but not a bad hand either – one hand better than the “Computer Hand” (Q-7) which is, statistically speaking, the weakest hand that has an advantage in heads-up against any other random hand.  I was able to limp-in with my hand (nobody raised pre-flop) and see the flop – Q-J-8.  The guy that was playing loose then bet $30 and everyone else folded to me.  I raised to $60.  The loose player thought for about 10 seconds then pushed all-in.  This, of course, would put me all-in if I called – a total of $470 counting the $60 I had already bet.  After little thought, I called.  Yeah, he could have flopped a set if he were holding J’s in the hole; but, due to the play I’d witnessed thus far, I put him on a Q-A.  I was wrong, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t holding wired J’s.

The dealer then dealt the turn and river – an A on the turn which scared the crap out of me and some useless river that I don’t even remember.  My opponent than shows his hole cards – J-8.  I then turn over my cards and double-up my stack.  Not a bad start to my day.  This all happened within the first 15 minutes of my sitting down.  Just like that I am now the table big-stack by around a 2-to-1 margin on all other players.  This, unfortunately, is also when things turned on me and my far too often bad luck came roaring back in.  That was the last hand I would win today…

I basically lost all of the near $1,000 I was then sitting with in three hands.  They weren’t three hands in a row – there were several hands that I didn’t play or just lost minimum bets with – but these three losses are what killed me.  All-in-all I was sitting at that table for slightly less than one hour in total so the rapidity of these beats should be apparent.  A quick double-up and a complete bust in less than an hour.  I swear I’m cursed!

The first hand I’m not really that upset with.  I lost this hand with bad play.  It came down to me holding a straight & flush draw on the turn.  My opponent was betting, so I knew I was behind.  I also knew that he was getting low on chips so I pushed all-in.  This is pretty much what I was talking about earlier with the “big stacking”.  If my opponent lost, he would be out of money.  If I lost, it would bring me down to around $650 at that time.  Also, considering my outs, there were 9 cards that would make my flush and 6 that would make my straight (that’s 4 cards for the top-end of the straight, 4 cards for the bottom minus the two that would make my flush) giving me 15 outs or approximately a 30% chance of hitting what I was pretty sure would be a winner.  It’s what’s known as a semi-bluff.  I wanted him to fold, but still had an opportunity to win if he called.  He called.  I missed.

That was me playing a bit looser than usual.  That’s why I call it bad play.  The problem there was that I don’t know the financial situation that my opponent lives with.  He looked to be retired, and the fact that he was playing poker in the middle of the day on a Tuesday just supports that; but this tells me nothing.  When I pushed, I believe he was sitting with about $250 that he could have lost.  Who knows, this might be nothing to this guy.  If he had lost, he may have just shrugged it off and re-bought for another $500.  Guess we’ll never know now…  Bottom line here was that I was now sitting with about $650.  Still more than I originally bought-in with, but I was a bit upset with myself…

The second hand in this trifecta from hell came shortly afterwards…  I was dealt K-8 off-suit.  A better hand than the one I doubled up with, but that’s insignificant.  The flop gave me an 8 but no K.  The other two cards were both non-royalty although I don’t remember what they were precisely.  Two of the flopped cards were hearts though.  Didn’t help me much as neither of my cards was a heart.  One guy bets $30 and I call – it’s now heads-up.  Turn comes – insignificant, not a heart.  My opponent bets $100 into about a $75 pot – signaling to me that he does not want me to call.  I think about this bet for a bit and come to the conclusion that he’s probably semi-bluffing a flush draw making my pair of 8’s likely the best hand.  If I am correct, I’m currently sitting as a 4-to-1 advantage against his flush draw so I decide to make a stand and push all-in.  This is very similar to the semi-bluff play I mentioned above with the roles reversed.  If, however, I was correct in my reasoning; my opponent this time had about 10% less probability of making his hand than I had above.  He calls and I discover that I actually was correct – all he had was a flush draw.  The river comes – a K!  Unfortunately, it was the K of hearts…  Boom!  Just like that I’m down to $150…

The final hand of the day is the worst yet.  I’m dealt a “Big Slick” (A-K) and flop an A-K-4.  Dude bets $30, I raise to $100, dude calls.  Turn comes – nothing important.  I check, dude checks.  That’s basically where I screwed up as I should have bet; however I’m pretty sure the end result would have been the same as I wasn’t going to get this guy to fold 2-pair with my measly stack…  River’s shown – a 4.  I push all-in – a whole $50 or so – and am instantly called.  My opponent turns over his A-4 and takes the rest of my money.  Now, if you were paying attention there, you would realize that I lost that last hand by having my opponent hit one of only two cards that would save him on the river – a less than 5% chance of happening!

Now if any one of those three hands went my way, my day would have gone completely differently.  Most importantly are the first two as winning either of those would have stacked me up quite well.  The third was just adding insult to injury.  The worst part about this is that, hind-sight being 20/20, I played the last two hands perfectly and just got very unlucky.  It’s even arguable as to whether or not I played the first of these three losers correctly although, as I explained above, I think I messed that one up.

All I know is that I completely understand how this damn poker game is often described as the hardest way to make money easily…

bis später,

Coriolis

My 2010 W.S.O.P. Story

I’m back in California; touched down Saturday afternoon; woke up early that morning in my suite at the Rio. I finished my first trip to the World Series of Poker a bit lighter in my net worth however quite a bit more experienced with this game called poker… It was an interesting trip…

Now don’t get me wrong – I did not play the “Main Event” … that doesn’t even begin until early next month. I did, however – as mentioned in my last blog – enter into the WSOP #30 Tournament – a $1500 buy-in, no-limit Hold’em tournament scheduled to run for three days (last Wednesday through Friday). Unfortunately for me, it was over in about 3 hours and 15 minutes. I was eliminated not long after the first break…

I was a bit bummed out; mainly because I had nobody to blame but myself. I’ll be the first to admit that I played my cards (as horrible as they were) poorly and basically bust out of the tournament on some very questionable maneuvers. I ended up losing it all attempting to avoid becoming a rather early short-stack forgetting the well-known adage, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” I doubt I’ll be making that mistake again anytime soon…

I arrived in Vegas early Tuesday evening – flew jetBlue from Burbank to Vegas. This was a great idea as flying out of Burbank ended up being so much nicer than flying from LAX. First off, the 45 minute flight only ran me $125 round-trip. Now that’s a bargain! The best part of it, however, was the lack of crowd at the Bob Hope Airport. I’m sure the fact that it was a Tuesday afternoon had a lot to do with the smaller crowds; however every time I’ve flown out of LAX has been a madhouse. Flying out of Burbank actually felt like air travel used to be – simple and easy…

Upon arrival I contacted Sam and let him know I was in town. You see, Sam was there basically for the same reason I was – event #30. He was also staying at the Rio and I figured we could hang out together during this trip – whilst not busy with the tournament that is… He was out having dinner when I arrived so we made plans to meet up a bit later and I hopped on a shuttle for the Rio.

The first thing I did upon arriving at the Rio was get signed-in for the #30 tournament. I needed to get a tournament receipt from one of the official 57 events in order to get the WSOP discount on my suite – brought the price down to $69/night Tuesday through Thursday and $169 for Friday night. I’m actually not sure how much of a savings this is compared to the standard room rates however I do know that it’s $80 less than the pre-entrant rates I was quoted when I booked the room. Whatever the case, I figured it couldn’t hurt. Of course signing up for the tournament required a Harrah’s Total Rewards card … so I guess signing up for the tournament was the second thing I did after obtaining my Total Rewards card (I got the WSOP version).

One thing I’ve got to make perfectly clear to anybody who hasn’t been there – the WSOP is a huge event at the Rio! The entire Convention Way section of the hotel is completely devoted to the World Series. They’ve got tons of tables set up in both the Rio Pavilion and Amazon rooms for the myriad of games always underway, a WSOP store to buy your trinkets and memorabilia, a not-so-spectacular cafeteria for the players to get their much needed nourishment during the oft-time short breaks for food, a “Bad Beat Bar” to help numb the pain when your opponent sucks out on the river and lots of displays of the former year winners and current all-star players. It’s actually quite interesting when you realize that anybody willing to front the buy-in cash can partake in this madness. It’s like being at the Hall of Fame with a ticket to play. Of course I still hadn’t got my ticket … now where, exactly, would one sign up for these games…?

It didn’t take long before I was directed to the registration room. This, of course, is where I paid my $1500 for a buy-in to the no-limit Hold’em tournament scheduled to begin the next day at noon. I then took the small hike back to the hotel registration and checked into my room with the proper receipt for the price reduction, stopped by my room to unpack – of course unpacking my one little duffle-bag didn’t take long – purchased some needed essentials from the gift shop and headed down to Rio’s standard poker room. I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get some practice in the night before my expensive (for me, anyway … the Main Event’s buy-in is ten grand!) tournament started…

Things went pretty well that first night. I sat down at a $1-$3 no-limit Hold’em table with $300. A little while later, Sam arrived and joined me at the same table. It was your standard small-blind, no-limit ring game – a couple “calling stations” that were getting hit in the face with the deck long enough for them to become large stacked, a number of rocks that basically lived there (talking with the dealers like they were long-time buddies…) and Sam and I – patiently waiting to put a hurt on the calling stations… I ended that roller-coaster ride of a night up $225. My patience paid off as I was able to get large sums from both our targets…

Now to briefly diverge from my story, one more bad aspect about me going to Vegas is the urge it gives me to smoke. You see, I quit smoking “cold turkey” last August. And if you know me well enough, you’re well aware of exactly how difficult an accomplishment that actually was. Suffice it to say that last August was NOT a good month for me (nor have been pretty much every month since, but that’s a whole different rant…). The one good thing that came from then was that I actually did quit smoking. Sure, I’ve had this completely unexplainable issue with sporadic claudication since then (very interesting as smoking is listed as a main cause for that … and I had just recently quit…) and my life has become nothing more than an ever-agonizing struggle to pry my pathetic ass out of bed every morning; but at least I quit smoking! I think I burned through a pack a day in Vegas. I gave what I had left (about ¾ of a pack) to some dude that was smoking outside the airport upon leaving and haven’t smoked any since; however the time spent in Vegas was definitely not healthy for me. It’s just so hard to ignore the cute “cigar, cigarette” girls… Now I get to experience the excitement of going “cold turkey” again … nothing like a good challenge, huh…? Anyway, back to what I was originally talking about…

So that first night was a positive sign of good things to come, right…? Well, not exactly. You see, that was the only time I left that poker room in the black. I ended up playing there quite a bit – basically due to the fact that I wasn’t spending nearly as much time as I had hoped in the main tournament I came to play – but, apart from that first night, it always ended up costing me. I will say this: If you go to Vegas, don’t go alone. Being alone in Vegas with nothing to do can become quite expensive. Heck, being in Vegas at all can become quite expensive; but not having someone else there to be a voice of reason can really cost you. Sure, I suppose if I were a normal functioning male of our species, I could spend my free-time (and what I’m sure would end up being some of my money as well…) hitting on the throngs of beautiful women that seem to flock there basically looking to be bad; but, as anyone who knows me knows, I do not possess the required skills. No … what I end up doing is primarily playing poker; and when I’m done with that (usually signaled by losing all the money I sat down with – sometimes a bit more…) perhaps sitting at a penny-slot smoking a cigarette (and I don’t even smoke…) and partaking of as much free booze as I can. Don’t worry … I tip the beer maids…

The next morning I met up with Sam and his roommates for breakfast before the tourney. I believe, if memory serves me correctly, it was somewhere around 10:30 in the morning when we stopped off at the São Paulo Cafe. We got some breakfast, played a couple rounds of pick-20 Keno (Sam and I), paid our bill and picked up our Keno winnings (easily done as there weren’t any…), then headed out for a smoke prior to the start of the tournament. Sam and I parted ways here as I needed to take a leak (I didn’t need to go into the tournament with yet another distraction…) which was fine – I’d see him at the tournament. He was seated at table #70. I was assigned seat 4 on table #64.

I believe it was something like 20 minutes prior to the tournament start when I headed into the Rio Pavilion. Finding my table was easily accomplished and I was quite eager to get this thing started. I took my seat as soon as the announcement for my tournament was aired and chatted it up a bit with my table’s dealer and the dealer of the table directly next to mine (which just so happened to be table #70 – Sam’s table). Upon speaking with these guys, I quickly realized that the quality of dealers found at the WSOP is pretty much a crap-shoot. From what I was told, somewhere around 1000 dealers are brought in from all across the country for this event although that number steadily declines as the event goes forward. Apparently (now this is from the dealers I was speaking with) the pay basically sucks and Harrah’s has a bad habit of cheating the dealers out of the full 70% of the tips that they’re due. This makes it difficult for out-of-town dealers to justify being there as they need to pay for their stay with a large portion of the income received making any profit earned miniscule. Now I have absolutely no way to verify these claims; however this was basically from the horse’s mouth – although I can’t really say how “gruntled” these guys were… I would, however, experience the divergence of quality that such a system creates, first hand, soon enough…

As I mentioned at the beginning of this story, I didn’t last very long in this tournament. I lost all of my 4500 starting chips (please excuse the photos … I only had my phone with me and the camera on my phone sucks…) in a bit over 3 hours. In this short period of time, however, two rather major dealer errors were made on our table – and not too surprisingly, I was involved in both hands… The first faux pas happened very early. Position 1 went “all in” and I called. I don’t remember what the hands were, and it really doesn’t matter – if you’ve heard one “poker story” you’ve heard ‘em all – but the end result was that I won the pot. The error occurred after the hand when the dealer informed the poor guy in position 1 that my chip-stack had him covered. It didn’t – he actually had 200 chips left after the official count however he was never informed of this. He was already up from the table and out the door long before the floor was called over and an announcement was made for “position 1 on table #64” to “please return to your seat”. Not that it mattered too much as he was seriously short-stacked at that point. It was, however, “a chip and a chair” and we all know how that goes, right…?

Now the second blunder came shortly after the first break in play. I was having my usual luck (and admittedly not playing my “A” game) and was quickly becoming quite short. I needed to make a move soon if I wanted any chance to survive the marathon so I pushed “all in” with top-pair and a king kicker. I was called (interestingly enough by position 1 again … different guy, same seat…) and lost – outkicked by an ace – however this guy’s stack didn’t quite have me covered. Now the blunder occurred when the dealer was counting off the chip differential to see exactly how bad off I was. At the end, he sent 150 chips my way and was about to sweep the rest toward position 1 when the guy sitting at seat 2 said that he thought the dealer miscounted. The dealer ignored his plea and swept the pile. I, on the other hand, did not ignore his claim – I was very interested in discovering whether or not this statement was true. It was then that the guy sitting to my left (position 5) also said that he had doubts about the dealer’s count and I was getting less and less happy.

A strange thing occurred then. Position 1 had no problem with attempting to rectify the situation quickly – fair play is fair play, after all… Since nobody was exactly sure how much the count was off, position 1 offered me 300 chips. Position 2 was saying that he thought the dealer was off by somewhere around 500; however I was more than happy to take the 300 and let the game continue – either way I was very short in the tournament and had little hope of surviving much longer. Position 1 offering 300 as a quick solution seemed fair enough for me. However the dude in position 10 basically had a hissy-fit when I accepted the 300 chips offered. He slammed the table with his fist and made some sort of statement that what we were doing somehow was unfair for him. Bear in mind that this guy wasn’t in the hand, his chip stack wasn’t going to be affected in any way and the only thing that was happening was that I was going from 150 in chips to 450 – still very short at this point in the tournament. He, however, wasn’t going to allow this! The end result was that we wasted more of position 10’s time by calling over the floor and “re-playing” the hand. The result of this was that I ended up coming out of this with 750 chips. I’m sure this made position 10 feel much better about his stupidity…

He didn’t need to worry about me for long though; our table was broken down shortly after that fiasco and we were dispersed to separate tables. I still don’t know why that dude was so adamant about my chip-stack size – and I guess I never will – but he was safely away from me and free to get upset with somebody else from that point. I was moved to my final table and, within minutes, eliminated from the tournament.

So I guess I didn’t need the four nights I booked at the Rio. I could have easily flown in the morning of the tournament, dropped $1500 and made it back home in time for supper; but who knew? Ends up I needed to kill two and a half more days in Vegas. It’s a shame there weren’t any poker games to play. Oh wait, what am I talking about – it was the middle of the World Series of Poker – there are constantly games to be played…

One of the best games they had running was this daily Deep-Stack tournament that started at 1:00pm. It was only $200 to buy-in and started you off with 15,000 chips. Other than the large stating chips, the structure was identical to the main event I played with all of the time periods cut in half. It was, at the time, not being capped on number of players and was running through to the wee hours of the next day’s morn. There were over 400 in the Deep-Stack game on the day I played my main event. I would probably have played it after getting knocked out if I hadn’t lasted long enough to miss the buy-in window; however I would now need to wait until Thursday to give the Deep-Stack a shot. I headed back to the regular Rio poker room to waste away the rest of that day…

And waste it away is exactly what I did. I dropped something like $500 playing the $1-$3 no-limit ring game for quite a few hours and then signed up for the nightly turbo tournament that they were running on this set of four or five tables they had set up directly outside of the poker room. The tourney began at 9:00 and, being a turbo tournament, finished something like 3 or 4 hours afterward. It was only $80 to play and I survived to the final two tables. Didn’t make the money, but it was a decent way to eat up the remaining time before hitting the sack. After all, I was planning on playing the Deep-Stack the next day…

I woke the next morning quite early. I believe it was prior to 9:00 when I headed back to the São Paulo Cafe for some breakfast … alone this time. Oh yeah, and if you’re wondering how Sam came out in the tournament, he didn’t make the money either. He did last longer than me – I think it was an hour or two after my elimination when I received his call – but neither of us succeeded in our goal of getting filthy rich by playing a silly game … perhaps next year…? At breakfast, however, my luck seemed to be changing. Since I had time to kill, I picked up a Keno card, marked off three numbers (5,10 and 25) and put $20 down as four $5 rounds. As I was eating my breakfast, I hit all three numbers on the first round; two numbers on rounds 2 and 3; and only hit one on the last draw – I collected $220 for my $20 bet! Not a bad start to the day as I had successfully won my buy-in to the Deep-Stack tournament!

That, unfortunately – apart from the $10 I won at a “Crazy-4 Card Poker” table and the $1.25 I pocketed at the airport playing video poker before my flight home – was the last winnings I would see on this trip. I did decent in the Deep-Stack – lasted 8½ hours getting knocked out just before racing off the black (100’s) chips – but missed the money by less than 70 people – not bad considering 717 people started that tournament… I tried it (the Deep-Stack) again on Friday where they capped the entrants at 200 but only made it 2 hours before being unlucky enough to flop a boat. (Yes, you read that correctly – “unlucky” enough to flop a boat…)

All in all, it was a rather expensive trip for me. I think I’m going to be heading back next year!

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

BINGO! Umm, I mean poker???

A while back I wrote my initial article on the ClubWPT poker site. I have since noticed quite a few visitors on my blog landing on this particular blog and thought it might not be a bad idea to write a follow-up article with a bit more information for anyone interested. I’ve recently begun spending some more time there (for about 6 months or so, I stopped playing online poker completely) and figured people could use some more information than my original post provided.

One thing that appears to have changed is that the people at ClubWPT must have gotten a bit of static from members about the tournaments that “used” to require rather substantial TP (Tournament Point) buy-ins. I say this because I no longer see any tournament scheduled that has a buy-in of more than 500 TPs today. This, of course, invalidates some of what I said in my original article and, in my humble opinion, just plain sucks.

“Why on Earth would anybody be upset about being able to play the big games with a smaller risk?” you might ask. Well I’ll tell ya – it greatly reduces the skill-level of the players involved in the better tournaments by turning what used to be a source of protection against donkeys for the larger games into a blatant invitation. Not only that, but – since everyone is guaranteed no less than 500 TPs at the beginning of each day – turns the satellite tournaments that can be played for seats to these tournaments into moot wastes of time.

As a case in point, I’m scheduled to play a tournament this evening called the WPT Bellagio Super Final tournament. The winner of this tournament will be “off to Las Vegas, NV in April, 2009, to play at the Bellagio in a Super Satellite tournament” along with “$1,380 in cash for travel and spending” – which makes me wonder if the air-fare and hotel are even included – and you’ll be able to “join a top Poker Professional at dinner to discuss strategy and tips for playing in the Big Event.” Of course the “Big Event” here is merely a $2,620 buy-in Super Satellite to the $25,500 buy-in 2009 WPT World Championship which isn’t bad, but it’s not really what they appear to be selling it as…

The thing that irks me a bit about this is that I won a seat in this tourney. I played a satellite with, if memory serves me correctly, a bit over 800 players that awarded a seat in this game to the top 10 finishers (I placed 3rd). I was hoping that ClubWPT would get this correct and only let those that qualified through the rather large number of satellites they ran to play; but no – after finding the tournament listed, I noticed that anybody willing to drop 500 TPs as a buy-in was welcome to join. This of course translates to ANYBODY! Placing in the satellite was just a waste of time… There are currently (some six hours before the tournament starts) 1816 people entered and this number is sure to grow.

That’s just the way it is there. Sure, tournaments do exist that have decent payouts; unfortunately it inevitably ends up being nothing more than a long-shot played against hundreds or thousands of BINGO players and skill becomes secondary at best. I’m just wondering why they wouldn’t create a club environment where skill was rewarded as opposed to the “anyone’s welcome” lottery that they’re currently running. Having the large buy-ins for the big games was a good start however they’ve done away with that.

One other bet that I have most definitely lost was the original comment I made on their user interface. There have been several “updates” made to it since my original article; unfortunately it still sucks! As a matter of fact, I’m a bit confused as to what these “updates” were even for – seems like the same old crappy interface to me. Perhaps I expect too much in a fee-based, online poker club? I wonder how much bank they’re getting from the members as very little of it seems to be going toward improving the membership experience.

But I guess it is what it is. Just don’t go and fool yourself into thinking that this “club” is going to allow you to play against skilled poker players for fabulous prizes because it won’t. And if you’ve ever played any of those “play money” online tournaments, you should know exactly what I’m talking about. What you’re going to get at ClubWPT is the opportunity to sharpen your skills at playing tables filled with donkeys. Unfortunately if you ever get the chance to play in the “real” big games – the high-stakes games played throughout the world in the various real-life casinos – the donkeys will be rather noticeably absent. If you’re a fan of BINGO then ClubWPT is most definitely for you; if you want to play poker though, I believe you’re much better off heading to a casino.

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