Blind: Poker, geocaching, and other thoughts

Omaha at Bowlero Lakewood

2011-03-06T11:12:00.000-08:00

I played poker at Bowlero in Lakewood yesterday afternoon, and I get the feeling that this could be a very profitable game, if I could survive the variance.

First things first: I'd previously tried to play there last Saturday night, but the room was closed up. The poker room manager, Lou, tells me the games usually only run from about 9:00 AM to 6 or 7 PM. I called in on Wednesday to ask about their 2:00 PM tournament. It was a no-go, and it sounds like they won't be going any time soon.

The reason: the only games they spread are Omaha variants. This is a great thing, because there's very few places in the state that spread anything other than hold 'em, and as far as I'm concerned, hold 'em players have gotten too smart. They've only got two tables, and When I arrived on Saturday afternoon, the table of 10 players was full and I was third on the waitlist. As would be expected, everyone seemed to know everyone else. Unexpectedly, there were regularly eight players to the flop and three or more to the river. In the two hours I was there, I never failed to see a showdown at the river.

In a rarity for the west coast, the house doesn't take a rake from the pot. Instead, every half hour, they charge the players $2.50 to continue playeing. Also, unlike any other poker room I've ever encountered, they don't have an employee dealer. Deal rotates around the players, and the dealer chooses the game. Etiquette seems to be that the games called will be one of four Omaha hi/lo variants: 2-card, 3-card (Tahoe), 4-card (Omaha), or 5-card (Omaha Bonus). All games are $3/$6, with a full kill. "Full Kill" has always meant to me that if a player wins two pots in a row, they post $6 the next hand, and the game plays as a $6/$12 game with $1 and $3 blinds. In Bowlero's version, "Full Kill" means this happens if a player drags a pot of more than $50.

Do the math: for a $6/$12 game, with $15 in the pot to start out and a table full of loose players, the next hand is almost always another kill pot.

The winner of the pot is expected to tip the dealer $4-$6.

Their ad in the Western Gambling Journal insinuated that the staff was running it like the games at Parkland's Paradise Lanes used to be. I wouldn't know; I never played there. However, the chips Bowlero uses appear to be the chips from Paradise Lanes (see photo).

I would think that a super-tight player could make this high-action game quite profitable. Game play is about 40 hands an hour, so you'll see four rotations, and a blind cost of $16. The house charges you a $5 seat charge per hour, so you're down $21. You've dealt four hands, so you're getting $20 in tips. Thus, you're paying $1 an hour to sit and wait for a monster hand, as I did with AKQQ, dragging down a $60 pot.

Unfortunately, after waiting more than an hour on the wait list, I only had 40 minutes to play, only dealt once, and loose river play on my part netted me -$22 for the day. I'm pretty sure I'll be back, though, if I can find another available afternoon.

Nevada slot machine house advantage

2010-12-22T15:54:00.000-08:00

(A short post, mainly so I'll know where to find this info later)

> The Palms asked the Las Vegas Advisor to conduct a study of slot machine payouts. The results show the following.

Location	Hold	House edge
Strip	92.8%	7.2%
Downtown	93.6%	6.4%
Clark County	93.7%	6.3%
State of Nevada	93.9%	6.1%
North Las Vegas	94.0%	6.0%
Balance of County	94.7%	5.3%
Boulder Strip	94.8%	5.3%
Palms	95.5%	4.5%

Twenty tips for Vegas noobs (and infrequent visitors)

2010-12-14T23:01:00.000-08:00

A group of my friends and I are going to Vegas in January. Some of them have never been. For them, and for anyone who finds it useful, I've put together 20 tips that will help make it a better trip.

This will be my 7th trip to Vegas, and I seem to learn something new every time. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, so take everything I say below with a grain of salt and a jaded eye. Also, http://www.cheapovegas.com has some additional good suggestions.

1) Your vacation time has value.
Wasting your time in Vegas has a cost. I'm not talking about wandering around, taking in the scenery; that's a valuable being-a-tourist time. I'm talking about time spent doing non-fun stuff, like waiting in line. Don't park your car when you can valet. Don't wait in line if you can do it later. Don't show up to the airport 2½ hours early. This tip is inherent in many of the tips below. For example...

2) Couples shouldn't take a shuttle bus from the airport
Shuttles cost $12.50 per person. Cabs to the center strip cost about $25. With two people, it's a wash if not for the fact that the shuttle buses can make two or three lengthy stops before they reach your hotel. Take a cab instead, but...

3) Don't let the cab driver long-haul you from the airport.
When the cab leaves the airport, they should be turning left to get to the strip. If they turn right, they're headed for the tunnel, which will add about $5 to your fare. If they ask to take the tunnel or the freeway, just say no.

4) Try the $20 trick.
When checking into the hotel, slip a folded $20 bill between your credit card and drivers license, and say the magic words, "Do you have any complementary upgrades available?" The worst that can happen is you get snubbed (right, Becca?). The best? It happened to me at Caesars: an upgrade to a four room suite. See http://www.frontdesktip.com for success and failure reports.

5) Collect and use coupons
You'll find coupon books at the airport, in the cab, and in your hotel room. There's some great coupons in the 2011 American Casino Guide and in the 2011 Las Vegas Advisor Pocketbook of Values. (The 2011 Vegas Entertainment Book... not so much). Many of these are good for first-time players club signups only. Also, Restaurant.com, with promo codes, has some great deals (e.g., House of Blues or the Stratosphere rotating restaurant for $22 off a $35 purchase). The most ubiquitous "coupon," however, is...

6) Collect and use players' club cards
Every casino offers players cards for tracking your play, similar to Safeway cards. Play enough, you'll get free money on the card (although at my play level, it's minimal). However, many players cards come with free sign-up bonuses. The two big casino chains on the strip are Harrah's (their "Total Rewards" card is usable at Harrahs, Imperial Palace, Flamingo, Bally's, Paris, Planet Hollywood, Caesars, and Rio) and MGM (their "Players Club" card [soon to be "MLife"] is usable to at MGM, Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, New York, Monte carlo, Aria, Bellagio, and Mirage). Some casinos also track your non-gambling spend, so hand it over when you check in, at meals, or if you buy something stupidly expensive at the casino's mall. The best offer going right now is at Tropicana, so be sure to...

7) Take advantage of Tropicana
For a limited time, they're offering an "Even the Odds" promotion for people who've never had one of their players cards. Sign up for the players card, lose money at slots, and you'll get 50% of your net loss back the same day (as free slot play, up to $100), and another 50% of your loss back after the third day of the next month (as free play, up to $100). Strategy: Make stupid big bets on high roller machines, and if you end up above $200, cash out and don't look back. If you lose all $200, take the 50%, and grind it through slowly on a penny machine, then come back within a year and do the same with the second 50%. If you enjoy slot play, then...

8) Odds on slots are based on three things: Location, location, location.
The airport airport has the worst slot payout in town, because it's got a captive audience. Slot machines on the strip are better, but still bad, paying about 89%. Downtown pays about 92%. Off-strip pays about 94%. That house edge adds up. Speaking of which...

9) Friends don't let friends play 6:5 blackjack.
Getting 6:5 on your money when you hit an Ace and a face card shouldn't even be called blackjack. The proper payoff is 3:2; your $10 bet should be paid $15, not $12. But 6:5 "blackjack" has invaded the strip like a virus over the last 18 months. Just. Say. No.

10) It's further away than it looks.
Sure, you can see the Eiffel Tower from Mandalay Bay, and the Venetian and the Sahara look "only" a few blocks apart. It's a long walk. The strip is four miles long. That said, it's worth it to take the better part of a day walking between Mandalay and Encore. North of that, though, it's acres of desert and crappy casinos. But when you're walking...

11) Obey pedestrian controls as if you were in Seattle
On average, a pedestrian gets killed in Vegas every four days. Not good odds for the price. Take a hint from the chicken -- there's better ways to cross the road. And while you're hoofing it to the next casino...

12) Ignore the porn slappers and time share weasels
Be rude without feeling bad. There's sleazy people on the street handing out cards with porn on them hoping you'll call their client for a good time. If you take one, the rest will surround you like a pack of hyenas trying to get you to take theirs, too. There's weasels on the street offering free show tickets in exchange for watching a time share presentation. If you waste your time doing this, well, see tip number 1. Don't say no, don't acknowledge their presence. Just keep walking.

13) You can't catch the bus at the casino; you can't catch a cab on the strip; you can't catch the monorail anywhere convenient.
Cabs aren't allowed to pick up passengers on the strip. Catch one at the nearest hotel. On the strip, you can catch the double-decker bus ("The Deuce") at $5 for a two hour pass, or $7 for a 24-hour pass. During busy times, the Deuce isn't much faster than walking, but it will get you there. There's also free trams between Treasure Island and Mirage; between Monte Carlo, Aria, and Bellago; and between Mandalay Bay, Luxor, and Excalibur. The monorail is expensive and sucks. The Deuce is the most cost effective way to get downtown, but...

14) Save Fremont Street downtown for later.
If this is your first time in Vegas, you'll be doing too much to waste time downtown. Save it for next time. Instead...

15) Watch the Bellagio fountain show.
It's the best free show in town, hands down. Pirate wenches, sleeping lions, and fake volcanos are distant wannabes. Bellagio also has a beautiful conservatory and great Chuhuly glasswork in the lobby. It also has good food, like most of Vegas. So don't forget...

16) Splurge on a good meal
Some of the best chefs in the world have their restaurants on the strip. Your tastes certainly vary from mine, but you're sure to find what you're looking for. After you drop $100 on a meal...

17) Max out the Buffet of Buffets
Harrah's is offering the "Buffet of Buffets" for $39.99: 24 hours of all-you-can-eat access to seven of their buffets:

Harrah's Las Vegas: Flavors
Flamingo: Paradise Garden Buffet (nasty! don't do it!)
Imperial Palace: Emperor's Buffet (even worse!)
Paris: Le Village Buffet
Rio: Carnival World Buffet
Caesars Palace: Lago Buffet
Planet Hollywood: Spice Market Buffet (yummo!)

For the most value, start with a late dinner one night and finish with an earlier dinner the next. Follow it up with a show. And by the way...

18) Don't pay full price for a show
http://www.tix4tonight.com has booths up and down the strip. Your hotel magazine or the coupon book you grabbed in the cab probably has a discount on their service fee. They sell show tickets at between 20% and 50% off.

19) Buy a case of water for your room.
Get it from the ABC store, or Walgreens, or somewhere cheap. You'll want it when you wake up with a hangover, or even with no hangover. Even though it's winter, you're still in the desert. Drink up.

20) A final tip: Tip.
Tips are the grease that lets the Vegas machine work smoothly. That $20 tip in number 4 above is a good example of this. Among some others you'll encounter:

Waitresses: $1 a drink. $2 will be remembered. Starting $5 will get you instant drink service for your next several.
Table game dealers: $5 an hour. Or make a bet on their behalf.
Poker dealers: $1-$3 per pot, when you win. 5-10% of tournament winnings.
Housekeeping: $1-$2 a day. Maybe I'm a jerk, but I find it a good way to get rid of my change so I don't have to carry it back through the airport.
Cab drivers: 15% of the fare.
Valet: $1-$2 when you retrieve your car.
Slot machine attendants: For handpays (i.e., winnings over $1200), $20 or 1% of your winnings, whatever's more. I should be so lucky to have this problem.

(Edit: formatting clean up)

New old poker room in Lakewood

2010-12-07T20:01:00.000-08:00

I was reading the Western Gambling Journal at lunch this afternoon and was surprised to see an article/ad for Bowlero Card Room. I walked through there several weeks ago and nothing was happening, so they must have just recently re-opened. There's no talk in the article about blackjack or Pai Gow or any of the other house banked games, so I'm guessing that it's just an old-school poker room.

The regular game, according to the article, is $3/$6 with a kill, Hold 'Em or Omaha. The last time I was there, they seemed to spread Omaha exclusively. I've got no idea if this has changed. Unlike every other card room I've been to in the northwest, their rake is a timed rake -- every 30 minutes, players pay $2.50. It's unusual for here, but I hear that it's not uncommon on the east coast.

They also tantalizingly mention a "quarter game", which I first thought meant $25/$50, but the Journal's poker room listing shows as a 25¢/50¢ game, with a $1.50 per half-hour rake. I'd play Omaha at that level.

Another surprise: twice a day, they're offering a $5 buy-in tournament. Realistically, with add-ons, it's a $25 tournament, but I can see some folks buying in for the minimum.

South sound tournaments

2010-12-07T19:58:00.000-08:00

I couldn't find a good, comprehensive list of tournaments in the south sound, so I compiled my own. (WashingtonPokerTournaments.com is the best I've found). My list follows. Note that Emerald Queen, Red Wind, and Great American Lakewood don't have poker rooms, so they're not in the list.

Casino	Out-of-pocket max buy-in	When?	Game
Bowlero (Lakewood)	$25	Daily, 2:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Bowlero (Lakewood)	$25	Daily, 7:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Freddies (Fife)	$40	Daily, 11:30 AM	Hold 'Em
Freddies (Fife)	$65	Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, 7:00 AM	Hold 'Em
Hawks Prairie (Lacey)	$100	Tuesday, 7:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Hawks Prairie (Lacey)	$60	Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, 6:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Hawks Prairie (Lacey)	$40	Daily, 10:30 AM	Hold 'Em
Little Creek (Shelton)	$35	Sunday, 5:00 PM	Limit Omaha Hi/Lo
Little Creek (Shelton)	$25 + $20 rebuys	Monday, 7:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Little Creek (Shelton)	$35	Tuesday, 7:00 PM	Hold 'Em (bounty)
Little Creek (Shelton)	$45	Wednesday, 6:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Little Creek (Shelton)	$55	Thursday, 7:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Little Creek (Shelton)	$35	Friday, 10:00 AM	Hold 'Em
Little Creek (Shelton)	$35	Friday, 6:00 PM	Hold 'Em (bounty)
Little Creek (Shelton)	$35	Saturday, 10:00 AM	Hold 'Em
Little Creek (Shelton)	$35	Saturday, 5:00 PM	Hold 'Em (bounty)
Lucky Eagle (Rochester)	$40	Tuesdays, 6:00 PM	Omaha high, bounty
Lucky Eagle (Rochester)	$135	First Wednesday, 6:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Lucky Eagle (Rochester)	$40	Wednesday-Friday, 6:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Lucky Eagle (Rochester)	$60	Saturday-Sunday, 1:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Lucky Eagle (Rochester)	$60	Monday, 6:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Macau (Lakewood)	$35	Daily, 11:30 AM	Hold 'Em
Muckleshoot (Auburn)	$60 + unlimited $20 rebuys	Saturday, noon	Hold 'Em
Muckleshoot (Auburn)	$65	Monday-Thursday, 7:00 PM	Hold 'Em
Palace (Lakewood)	$22	Monday-Friday, 8:30 AM	Hold 'Em
Palace (Lakewood)	$42	Saturday, Sunday, 8:30 AM	Hold 'Em
PJ Pockets (Federal Way)	$20	Daily, 10:15 AM	Hold 'Em
Point Defiance (Ruston)	Unknown

Supremes, Pokerstars say no to Washington poker

2010-10-06T21:30:00.000-07:00

How'd I miss this? From the September 23 Seattle PI:

High Court upholds state ban on Internet poker, online gambling
The state ban on Internet gambling does not violate the U.S. Constitution, the Washington Supreme Court ruled unanimously in a decision released Thursday morning.

Hearing a lawsuit by a Washington online poker player, the state's high court heard argument that the Legislature violated the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution when it enacted a ban on Internet gambling. ...

Writing for the court, Justice Richard B. Sanders disagreed, finding that the Legislature did not overreach in restricting online gambling.

The immediate result? As of September 30:

Same for real money tournaments. (EDIT: And freerolls.)

Happy Days: paperwork filed, but back taxes remain

2010-10-05T11:55:00.000-07:00

According to an October 2 story in the News Tribune, Happy Days finally filed their accounting paperwork with the state on September 16. Expect a slap on the wrist from the Gambling Commission.

Its next deadline: paying the city of Lakewood $35,500+ in back taxes before the end of October, or risk losing its business license.

And, well, these contrasting paragraphs don't sound good:

Happy Days owner Douglas Searle said the Aug. 28 closure is temporary and that interest is high among potential investors who could provide capital to help reopen soon.

[T]he Washington Recreational Gaming Association of Washington, a card room trade group, said the chief “killers” of the businesses are the economy and Indian casinos, which can offer more games – including craps and roulette – higher limits and more tables than card rooms. “Happy Days is a complete victim of that... It just can’t compete with the Emerald Queen,”

Dave and Busters in Seattle?

2010-09-30T16:59:00.000-07:00

Interesting tidbits from this quarter's Focus on Gambling newsletter from the Washington State Gambling Commission:

Dave and Busters is asking for changes to amusement game rules. Does this mean the chain's planning on having a restaurant closer than Sacramento?
Texas Hold 'Em wagering limits won't increase to $100 until at least May 2012, except for those casinos in a pilot program.
The number of "house banked card rooms" (i.e., non-tribal casinos) in the state dropped from a high of 96 in 2006 to 66 this year. This is the largest change -- positive or negative -- since 1999, the year after they became legal.
No news about Happy Days, because it's only reporting April, May, and June violations.

Another Lakewood poker room down

2010-09-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

Happy Days has been closed since August 30. According to the state Gambling Commission, they've yet to file their financial statements, which were due April 30. Perhaps not coincidentally, the WSGC filed a Notice of Administrative Charges against Happy Days. No telling if they're closed for good, but I'm not optimistic.

See WSGC Pending Cases and Final Orders > then to Organizations > 2010 > Happy Days.

One less poker room in Lakewood

2010-08-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

Great American Casino has gotten rid of their poker tables. There's only three poker rooms in Lakewood now: 8 tables at Palace, 4 at Macau, and 3 at Happy Days. Great American replaced them with a Let It Ride table and another blackjack table.

This isn't much of a surprise, since I never saw all three tables running, and they replaced one of the three with a blackjack table last month. The last three times I've tried to play poker there, there hasn't been a game going, and the dealers were just sitting around watching the clock. I think we have a good sense of how many tables the economy in Lakewood will support.

I might as well update y'all on the local poker room status: There are other poker rooms nearby at Freddie's in Fife, at Hawk's Prairie in Lacey, and I think there's still Omaha being spread at the Point Defiance Casino near the entrance to Pt. Defiance Park, in Ruston. There are no poker tables at either Emerald Queen location. The next nearest, as far as I know, are Red Wind near Yelm, and Muckleshoot, the largest poker room in the state. PJ Pockets in Federal Way is currently "closed for remodeling" according to the sign out front, but the reasons were really economic. Federal Way recently cut its gambling tax from 20 percent to 10 percent in order to help the casino return to profitability, and so the city won't lose 100% of the casino's gambling revenue.

Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act hits my bank

2009-09-30T17:51:00.001-07:00

From my bank's statement today:

Not that it'll matter much, since all the good bonuses dried up a couple years ago, and I've been living off the same PokerStars deposit since 2006, but still... that just ain't right.

The (Un) Lucky Dog closes

2009-09-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

The Lucky Dog Casino on Hood Canal, which I referred to in 2006 as "the ~~coziest~~ ~~crappiest~~ only casino on the canal", is closing, according to the Kitsap Sun.

The owners blame the recession. I suspect it's more the fact that it's a weak casino in a bad location, particularly in light of the fact that it's the only indian casino to close during the recession. When it opened, it was slot machines only. When I checked it out in 2006, they had slots, blackjack, pai gow, and 3 card poker. They didn't open a poker room until mid-2007, and although I've stopped in a few times since then, I've never seen a game actually being played. The last time I was there, I looked for the poker room, but I think it'd been replaced with pool tables.

Beyond that, Little Creek Casino has more games, is more luxurious, and is only 16 minutes away. It's like comparing Happy Days to Emerald Queen. I get the distinct impression that the people who live near the Lucky Dog don't mind a few minutes of driving. If I lived in the area, I'd drive past the Lucky Dog every time, unless they had better promotions or poker tournaments. I don't recall that being the case.

Also interesting in the article: the Seattle Times is quoted as saying that statewide tribal casinos netted $2.11 billion in 2008, up from $1.96 billion in 2007, but that Snoqualmie Casino's revenue is currently only a quarter of what they expected.

What a trip - Vegas and the Inland Empire

2009-08-30T00:21:00.000-07:00

It's been quite the week. If you've followed my Twitter feed, you know I've been all over Vegas and southern California's Inland Empire. Here's the details.

Sunday
I drove up to Bellingham (about 130 miles each way) to catch an Allegiant Air flight to Vegas. For a total price of $232, I got one round trip ticket, a room at El Cortez, and one additional companion ticket for free. It would have been more expensive to get two tickets without the El Cortez room, so I considered that to be a throw-away room.

My good friends Bill and Becca had already flown down to Vegas earlier in the day from SeaTac, and Becca had checked us into our hotel room at Planet Hollywood, at $54 a night, including a free bottle of booze per night, $25 buffet credit, and $40 in freeplay. The $20 trick failed -- the desk clerk told them "We don't do that; that's why we're still in business." Jerk.

Kim and I, however, were stuck at the Bellingham airport, because lightning had kept our plane grounded in Vegas. Fortunately, I had my laptop with me, so 90 minutes after our scheduled departure time, and learning that our plane had just left Vegas to pick us up, I ordered a pizza from Dominos, getting an evil look from my hungry cohorts in the waiting area.

The plane finally arrived, and after an uneventful flight, and after not getting longhauled by the cabbie, we arrived at P-Ho, woke up Becca at 2:30 AM to get our key, and checked into room 2764. Excellent. It's the Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey themed room. For our first date, Kim and I (and several dozen people from local BBSes) had seen Excellent Adventure, so this seemed pleasingly appropriate. But tonight.. zzzzz..

Monday
The next morning, I let Kim sleep in while I went down to the P-Ho Starbucks to chat with Bill and Becca. From there, we wandered over to Bill's Gambling Hall and Badly Painted Awning Emporium to check out the Tix4Tonight booth and see what's worth seeing. The line was too long, so after winning $5 from R2D2, I went back to the P-Ho to wake up Kim while B&B continued on to the Forum Shops to get an iPhone charging cable.

We met up again at the [begin Thurston Howell voice] Belahhhgio [/end voice] and I won $85 at the table games, then lost $20 on the slots. We wandered the conservatory, then headed over to the Flamingo, where Kim and I promptly lost $100 at 3 Card Poker. On the advice of a caller to the FiveHundyByMidnight podcast, we went back to the Bellahhhgio and got a table on the patio at Olives at 2:30. Lunch prices, and you still get the fountain show at 3:00 and 3:30. We got the fountain show, all right -- the finale of the 3:00 show drifted heavy droplets across our table. It. Was. Awesome. As was the food. I'd highly recommend this.

From there, we hopped a cab to Sahara, where the four of us looked forward to cheap poker against bad players. Unfortunately, only 3 seats were open (Kim playes slots instead), and worse, the bad players don't seem to hang out at Sahara at 4:00 on Monday afternoons. Lost $9. We took a cab back to the P-Ho to freshen up for dinner, and I'm pretty sure I got longhauled after the driver talked me into taking Koval instead of the Strip due to construction on Harmon.

We grabbed another cab to Mandalay Bay and had dinner at Strip Steak. My steak was good, but not spectacular. Bill, however, is a scotch snob, and was very pleased with the flight of scotch that he ordered. After dinner, we wandered through the Luxor and up to MGM, where Bill and I played the plastic ponies of Sigma Derby ("the stupidest thing I've ever done with $5" he said; I ended up ahead 50¢), and then played for a couple hours in their poker room. I ended down $17 there, and began wondering where my poker skills have disappeared to. Meanwhile, the women wandered back to the P-Ho, picking up drink mixers on the way and grabbing our free bottles of booze.

Late. Time for bed. Tuesday's gonna be busy.

Tuesday
We're up in time for 10:00 breakfast at Mon Ami Gabi, which was good, as usual. We do a slow wander up the stripm ending up at the Mirage tram and riding into TI, where Bill plays blackjack, and Kim and I lose another $100 at 3 Card Poker. The women decide to head back to the P-Ho for a nap, and after I lose $40 at the blackjack tables, Bill and I take the Deuce downtown.

We first stop in at Binion's, where Bill and I sign into a $2/$4 limit game, I lose $29, and Bill makes the best checkraise ever. That's a story for him to tell.

Then, we head to the El Cortez to check out my free room. To my surprise, I get a room upgrade and a $25 dining credit. Checking in with Bill and with no luggage, I suspect the clerk thinks I'm gay. *snicker.* NTTAWWT. The room turns out to be nicer than I expected, kind of a shabby Holiday Inn quality, but yeah, I could see staying here. We then head to Fitzgerald's, where I hit quad 3's on Double Bonus video poker for $20, then lose $10 of it on the slots.

On the way back to the bus, we call the wives, and pick up tickets to Fab Four Live. This was a fun show, worth the half price tickets, but probably not for full price. We then went to Margaritaville and watched the volcano blow, twice, and then wandered up to Caesars and rode the spiral escalators. Then, back to P-Ho for the nightly booze line. Holly Madison and her doggy were in line behind me. Either she's an attention seeker, or even the headlining star of the casino's headline show doesn't get celebrity treatment at Planet Holly.

We head up to Bill and Becca's room, drink a little, then head to bed.

Wednesday
We use our buffet credits at Spice Market for breakfast (very good), then bid Bill and Becca goodbye. Kim heads to the pool to do some sunning, and I use the $40 freeplay coupons at slots and roulette, ending up ahead $71. As I'm doing this, I get a tweet from @LuxorLV: "How many Twitterers do we have in Las Vegas right now? If I were to say meet me at Luxor at 2 pm for a free gift how many of u would come?" I show up at 2:00 and get a Dexter DVD and $10 match play (which I turn into $8 cash).

I meet up with Kim again at 3:00, after waiting in the 103° shadeless heat for the Deuce, across from Luxor (the tram between Luxor and Excalibur was down). We wander down to the Flamingo and check out Nathan Burton's show. Fun, and I figured that with the free buffet included, it'd be well worth the $20 ticket. It is alone worth the $20. The buffet, we'll learn tomorrow, is a negative on the balance sheet.

We've got a bunch of downtown coupons to use, and Kim wants to see the Binion's $1,000,000, so we hop the bus downtown again. I try to impress her with the El Cortez coffee shop (my $25 credit covers the $24.92 bill), the slots at Binions (I lose $6 with a match play), and free tickets to Kevin Burke's show at Fitzgerald's, but she mostly spends the time downtown coughing from all the cigarette smoke. Eventually, we escape downtown (though I did see a few minutes of the Fremont Street light show), and head back to the P-Ho.

We stop for a kiss in front of the Bellahhhgio fountains, grab our fourth and final bottle of booze, Kim heads to bed, and I head to the poker room. Over the next three hours, I win $55, watch three hookers get escorted out, and see a parade of nightclub-bound women wander past with necklines so low that one of them actually popped out. Ahh, Vegas. It pays to play tables late at night, where everyone else is drinking.

Thursday
It's our last half-day there. We walked up to Coke and M&M world to get a few gifts, and it's so dang hot we take the bus back to the Flamingo for a brunch buffet. Big mistake. At free, it's way overpriced. The ribs are like chunks of lumber slathered in BBQ paste. The waffles are like styrofoam. The drinks take 10 minutes to arrive. And the swarming flies remind us that just outside the window is a moat of flamingo poo. Big mistake. Should've followed FiveHundy's advice. (And table service? It's telling that we forgot the small bag of gifts on the table, wandered around the flamingo exhibit for 20 minutes, then made it out to Margaritaville before realizing we'd left it behind. When I went to pick it up, the table was untouched.)

We check out, catch a cab from P-Ho to the airport, and have an uneventful flight and drive home, giving me 12 hours before I have to be in a meeting in southern California.

Friday
My flight to the Ontario airport was uneventful, and I made it to my 11 AM meeting 30 minutes early. My work went quick and trouble-free, so I grabbed a late lunch at In-N-Out, then headed to the San Manuel casino for some $2/$4 poker. After several hours of play, and frustratingly down $77, I hit the road and made it to my hotel in Palm Springs just before dark. Grabbed dinner, surfed the web, and went to bed.

Saturday morning, I drove to the Agua Caliente casino, played the $3/$6 limit game, and lost my $100 buy-in in just over an hour. I'm still holding onto overcards too long (I've gotta learn to fold AK when the flop comes 579). I'm playing the right starting hands; it's my aggression that's losing me money when I miss the flop, or when someone playing an unexpected hand catches up. I'm grumpy.

To cool down before my flight, I drive towards the mountain that seems to be planted right at the edge of town. When I get there, I'm surprised. Yup. There's a mountain here. Looks like a near-vertical wall. And there's no town that direction. Google's topo maps show why -- less than 7 miles away is San Jacinto Peak at 10,804 feet. I'm at about 520. There's a trail here, but there's no telling where it leads. I should've looked for a geocache (there's one 100 feet from where I parked), but it was 104°, and that's too warm to do anything. I grabbed lunch at Taco Del Mar instead, used the airport's free wi-fi to post the start of the Tri-Cities cache machine page, and had an uneventful flight home.

Exhausted? Heck, yeah. Did I have fun? Heck, yeah. Would I do it again? Once I learn to play poker, heck, yeah.

Goofy gambling laws

2009-08-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

Part of the fun of playing poker and other games in states other than Vegas and Washington is the unusual hoops the casino has to go through to allow gambling. In Washington, as you may know, the slot machines and video poker machines are really "video lottery terminals", which pull virtual scratch tickets from a virtual pile of pre-programmed prizes, then animate the reels to match the prize.

In Wisconsin, it's virtual bingo. A virtual card is drawn from a virtual pile, a set of X bingo balls is selected, and the pattern they make on the card determines the payout. The reels are then animated to match that payout.

I just experienced Arkansas slot machines at the Oaklawn racetrack. Buttons numbered 1-10 are lit up, and you select three of them. A horse race is selected from what must be a very deep pool of races (I saw some going back to 2002). If the finish of the race matches some or all of your picks, you win. The reels are animated to match that payout, as a 4-second clip of the finish race is shown in a little 2x3 windown on the screen. They call it "instant racing". The alternative is a bank of slot machines that spins the reels twice -- you pick which reels to hold after the first spin.

Also, to play poker, I had to sign up for the players club, load the players club card up with money, then use that card at an electronic poker table (no human dealer, no real chips, no real cards -- just 10 touch screens and a center screen). What a hassle. The only game they spread was $1/$2 no-limit hold 'em, which, I'll admit, I prefer a lot less than limit games. I left $100 lighter. Poor Arkansans.

WSGC: All in for $500? Oops.

2009-07-07T22:55:00.000-07:00

Back in May, in response to the Washington State Gambling Commission raising the all-in bet limit, I pointed out the following oddity of the rule:

You're holding pocket aces, and you've got $600 in chips in front of you. What can you bet while still complying with the law? Remember, "the maximum amount of a single wager must not exceed $40, except that an all-in wager ... may not exceed $500."
I think you're stuck tossing in $40, but that doesn't seem right at all."

Well, this quarter's WSGC newsletter is out, and they admit they were confused, too. They write:

The change allows "all in" wagers, only, to exceed the $40 poker wagering limit. The rule does not allow players to make call or matching wagers exceeding the $40 limit. Additionally, the rule is ambiguous as to who is eligible to make an all-in wager. For example, if a player has $550, could they wager $500, or, would they be ineligible to place the all-in wager? In other words, does a player have to have $500 or less to be able to place the all-in wager? Prior to the "all in" wager change, all [poker room] wagers were limited to $40.

Their proposed solution, which I expect they'll fast-track: removing the "all in" reference, allowing the rule to revert back to the $40 limit.

No other big news this time, except that they clarified that a poker room supervisor is allowed to accept tips.

Ruleslawyer rule number 1: Know the rules

2009-06-07T16:58:00.000-07:00

The situation is as follows: It's late in a $1 + $0.10 single table double-or-nothing Omaha tournament. Top five positions pay $2.00 each, and the game ends once the 6th player is eliminated. There are six players remaining. On the button is the small stack, Eye Candy X, with 245. I've got 320 UTG, and blinds are 200/400. (See the attached screen shot for clarification.) I'm dealt A♣ K♦ J♦ 6♣. I'm going to be in with a random hand next time, or this hand now, and this isn't a terrible Omaha hand. I'm all-in for my 320.

As I'd expect, the big stack to my left calls, cutoff folds, and Eye Candy X ~~folds~~ pushed his 245 into the pot. What is he thinking? There's absolutely no reason for him to get involved in this pot, unless he's certain that his hand is good enough to beat the three players who are already in, plus the small blind if they call. There's no way to be certain of that, so even if he's holding AAKK there, folding is the right move.

Small blind folds, the board is irrelevant, as the bigger stacks correctly just call it down. The big stack to my left wins, and Eye Candy X and I are eliminated on the same hand.

The rule in this case: "5. If two or more players are eliminated on the same hand, the player with more chips at the beginning of the hand is placed higher." I started with 320. Eye Candy X started with 245. He goes out in 6th. I go out in 5th. The remaining four players tie for first. I and the other four players each get $2.00. Eye Candy X gets nothing.

WA rules update: No electronic poker tables; all in for $500

2009-05-04T14:52:00.000-07:00

The April 2009 issue of the Washington State Gambling Commission's Focus on Gambling newsletter is out today. Poker-related items include:

Minors will now be fined up to $125 and 4 days community service for gambling. The governor is expected to sign this bill. Currently, only those to allow minors to gamble are penalized; there is no punishment for minors.
The WSGC did not approve PokerTek's electronic tables. We won't be seeing them around here any time soon.
There's a rule change up for action in July, allowing quarters or 50¢ pieces to be used for the rake. I expect this will actually reduce the rake a little bit.

And here's the big one: Currently, WAC 230-15-135(1)(c) states that the maximum amount of a single poker wager must be $40 or less. Effective July 1, the limit is the same, except that a player may go all-in in Texas Hold'em for $500 or less, if they have no more than $500 remaining. This is at a way higher level than I'd ever play at, but I'm trying to figure out how this would work. Assuming a $2-$40 spread game, which is the closest we have to No-Limit Hold 'Em off the reservations, we could get a round of:

Small blind: $1
Big Blind: $2
UTG: $40
UTG+1: Call $40, raise $40
Middle position: "All-in for $250"
Fold, fold, fold, and it's to you on the button. You're holding pocket aces, and you've got $600 in chips in front of you. What can you bet while still complying with the law? Remember, "the maximum amount of a single wager must not exceed $40, except that an all-in wager ... may not exceed $500."

I think you're stuck tossing in $40, but that doesn't seem right at all.

Fish in Vegas and L.A.

2009-04-03T16:52:00.000-07:00

C'mon get in the pot, fish Work sent me on a trip to Las Vegas and Los Angeles to do some data collection. Vegas was Tuesday, L.A. was Wednesday. Wrapped around this was a vacation day Monday and a buffer day yesterday, which gave me quite a bit of time to splash around the poker tables.

End result: up $123 in Vegas, and up $86 in L.A., for a net of +$209.

Before I left, I took a look at the reviews of the Vegas poker rooms at AllVegasPoker.com, and after sorting them by the weakness of the competition, made myself a to-do list: hit the soft poker rooms at MGM , Venetian , Bally's , Fitzgerald's , Bill's , O'Sheas , and Sahara .

I also planned to play 25¢ roulette at the Gold Spike, play video poker at The Palms , play Sigma Derby at MGM , visit the Pinball museum , and see Watchmen .

I got less than half this list done.

My plane got in two hours late on Sunday, at about 10:00 p.m. My luggage didn't arrive until the next day -- it took a detour to Washington, DC.

I took a shuttle to the Sahara, and tried the $20 trick at the front desk. For my $20, I was able to upgrade from their el cheapo $20 room to their top of the line ($39) premium room for 3 nights. The clerk also gave me a $10 off café coupon. Cha ching! I dropped my bags off in the room, then headed down to the poker room.

The Sahara's an old hotel -- according to their stationery, they're 55 years old -- and the place really oozes the retro mafia vibe. That's not a bad thing. The poker room is a good-sized 16 table affair, with some ugly fluorescent lighting and tournaments going on around the clock. I sat down at one of the only two non-tournament tables going, a $2/$4 limit hold 'em game. Strangely, there was only a single $2 blind. Players were as weak as promised. A couple hours later, tired, I headed back to the room $96 richer.

The next day, Monday, was my vacation day. I slept in until about 8:30, had a leisurely breakfast at the counter of the Poodle Dog-like Caravan Café, then hopped the monorail to pick up my rental car from Wynn. Sad thing is, the monorail doesn't get close to Wynn, so it was a long (but enjoyable) meandering stroll back up from Harrah's. I hopped in the car and drove downtown.

The Gold Spike, where I'd wanted to play 25¢ roulette, was further out of downtown and dingier than I expected. Parking was inconvenient, so I never made it there. Instead, I wandered into the Fitzgeralds poker room, but they didn't expect a game to get started until noon. I donated $20 to their slot machines, then wandered down Fremont Street to El Cortez, and when I saw that they also had roulette for a quarter, I was in. Yes, that game has lousy odds -- it's my weakness. I justify it by telling myself that it's a slow moving game, so the loss per hour is way less than most other games in the casino. I played 20 spins (about an hour), leaving $5 poorer than when I came in. Next stop: MGM.

Sigma Derby is the most-loved game of the listeners to the Five Hundy By Midnight podcast, and consists of five mechanical horses racing around a cheesy plastic track every 90 seconds or so. It's one of the only coin-op games I saw the whole week, and at 25¢ a wager, it's worth every cent. The Low Roller in Sin City blog has some more good photos and YouTube video. The only remaining Sigma Derby machine is at the MGM, and I pumped $10 into it. Good times.

I then went to the MGM poker room and played a $2/$4 limit game, with blinds of $1 and $2, as it should be. The poker tables at the MGM are, physically, the nicest tables I've ever played at. Better than the Bellagio. Better than Wynn. Yeah, they're that good. The padded rail of the table has cup holders built in. There is a three-inch wide ring of marble around inside of the the rail, which smooth, cool, and super-flat -- a great place to stack chips. Some players complain it makes their chips slide around, but I didn't experience that. The raised, padded felt has a thick, bright yellow commitment line. In addition to the standard auto-shuffler, each table has a networked computerized display that allows the dealer to let the brush know when a seat is open, to call the floorman, or to call for drinks. The same system is also used for their player's club members to check in and out of a table. The only problem is the players are a little better than I expected; I left ahead only $5 after two hours of play.

Back to the hotel room, and my luggage arrived. A quick shower, and I headed out again, first grabbing dinner at Chipotlé (thanks, Cha Cha), then on to the Bally's $3/$6 limit game. The poker room there is right on the casino floor, next to the craps and roulette tables, so it gets a lot of players who think, "hey, I've seen this game on TV, I should give it a try." I like this a lot. The room felt a bit disorganized -- the brush added me to the wait list, told me it'd be about 30 minutes, then called me back about 45 seconds later to point me to my seat. The players are wild. The noise from the band makes it hard to hear the dealer. Bit I played a couple hours and left $54 richer, so no complaints, really.

I wandered over to the Bellagio fountains and watched them twice -- one Rachmaninov piece, and one Elton John song (which I mis-Twittered as Manilow). Then to the Mirage volcano, which was down for repair. Next stop: the Venetian. I looked in on the poker room, and saw that there was an extensive wait list for their low limit hold 'em games. I dropped $1 on their slots, wandered back to the poker room, and decided that since it was after midnight, I should probably head to bed.

I woke up early Tuesday morning, and drove to the location for my 10:00 meeting south of town, arriving at about 8:15. Having almost two hours to waste, I grabbed my first breakfast ever at Sonic (quite good), then drove to the nearby Green Valley Ranch casino, and on their Star Trek slots, won back the $1 I'd lost at Venetian.

After the long day working, I dropped off my gear in my room, then headed to Treasure Island. I'd read a discussion on AllVegasPoker.com that they tend to have a low limit game running after 6:00 every day, and had a new bonus-spin wheel when you get a specific hand. I signed up on TI's list, but after two hours of waiting (and losing $20 in their slots), no game had started, so I headed back to the Sahara and played until 10:30, winning $23. A quick dinner at the Caravan Café, then off to bed.

Wednesday morning came early. 2:45, to be exact. I have a 6:00 a.m. flight to catch to L.A. The flight, the drive, and the arrival was uneventful, except that I was an hour early for my 10:00 a.m. meeting. Another long day working, finally getting out of there at about 6:30 p.m.

I checked into the Holiday Inn (under heavy construction), and then drove over to the nearby Hollywood Park casino. Worst. Casino. Ever. Imagine a high-ceilinged airport waiting area. Not a nice airport, though; think of LAX before they did any remodels. Add the scent of hundreds of humid people. Add the blinking lights and arcade machines of Chuck E. Cheeses. Toss in a loud guy on a microphone who never stops. Sprinkle heavily with the air of degenerate desperation. Their $1/$2 game has the bizzare structure of a $2 big blind, $1 small blind, and a $1 button payment that plays. Rake is $1 + 10% up to $5 total. I don't know what number was higher:

the average number of players to the flop,
the number of missing fingers at the table,
the number of missing front teeth at the table,
the number of games that didn't result in a showdown at the river, or
the number of games a really clueless newbie saw before losing his $40 buy-in

I suspect it's the missing fingers, but I'm not sure of that. After 90 minutes, I got out of there with $75 more in my pocket and a bad taste in my mouth. I got rid of the bad taste with dinner from Panda on a Stick and an episode of Dollhouse on Hulu.

Thursday morning, my plane wasn't scheduled to leave until 5:00, so I slept in until 8:30, then drove to the Bicycle Casino, where I last played two years ago. At the time, I described the rake as "insanely huge" at $2.50 for any pot above $5. They've since raised it to $4+$1. I literally saw a guy win a $7 pot which was checked to the river, but he only got $2 of it, because the casino took the rest. I played $3/$6 Omaha 8 for the first time ever, other than online. The guys at the Ante Up podcast say that the split games like Omaha 8 really bring out the argumentative players, and from what I saw, I can't disagree. Apparently, he was upset that the dealer was trying to split money he hadn't put in the pot. Whatever.

I played for a few hours, was up $65 or so, then dropped down to -$10. I jumped over to a $40 buy-in $1/$2 no limit game. This was also a first, because the only no limit games I've played have been online or in someone's house. I was down $11 when they announced a $3/$6 limit game was opening, so I jumped to that table -- as did only two other players. The game never started, I grabbed some lunch, and with about an hour to go before I needed to roll to the airport, I jumped back into the no limit game, leaving up $32 this time, or up $11 for the visit.

The flight home was mediocre. The TSA security theater at LAX pulled my bag full of electronics aside for hand inspection, even though it had gone through SEA and LAS with nor problems. The hand inspection set off the chemical detector. A Michael Moore look-alike gave me a TSA courtesy rub-down. I don't feel any safer; I now know what parts of my body can hide contraband. The plane was delayed at both LAX (missing crew) and SFO (no plane).

It was a very profitable trip. Must do again some time. But it's also good to be back in the rain.

Happy Days: here again?

2009-02-17T13:32:00.000-08:00

From Lakewood City Councilman Walter Neary's blog, Neary-Sighted:

Tonight's Meeting: The Lakewood City Council will hear comment tonight [February 17] about a moratorium about mini-casinos. This is a big subject that defies the simplicity of one blog posting, but I mention the meeting at 7 p.m. tonight in case anyone wants to listen. What should be interesting tonight is that we will likely hear from the folks who operated Happy Days on Bridgeport. They want to reopen. I look forward to hearing from all sides on this one.

I wish them lots of luck. When they closed 13 months ago, they still owed taxes to the city and fines to the state gambling commission. But their liberal match play policy was a big part of my 2007 gambling winnings, so I'm hoping they can persuade the council to let them get back in business.

No Vacancy

2009-02-09T09:33:00.000-08:00

The Suburban Times reports this morning that last week the City of Lakewood:

Issued a Notice and Order revoking the business license for the Vagabond Motel, 10005 South Tacoma Way. This action was sought because of increasing levels of criminal activity occurring at the motel. The revocation has been appealed and will be before the City's Hearing Examiner later this month.
Issued a Notice and Order revoking the business license for the Budget Inn, 9915 South Tacoma Way. The motel had high numbers of serious calls for police service. The owner did not appeal the revocation and as of this date, the motel remains closed.

I'd previously noted that in August 2007, the health department closed down the Vagabond and shortly thereafter closed Budget (and Fort Clarke, and Rose Garden). To quote Firefly, "come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all." Good thing, too.

Avoid ProMax Supply (a.k.a. Crazy Dave's Toolshed)

2009-01-20T11:17:00.000-08:00

On December 15, I ordered a birdhouse from Crazy Dave's Toolshed ("CrazyDavesToolShed"), via Amazon merchants. The delivery estimate was Dec 19-24.

They shipped via FedEx ground on Dec 22 with delivery expected December 31. Due to snow, it arrived on Jan 3. The four day weather delay is excusable. The 7-day delay in shipping it is not.

I e-mailed them in late December, asking for reimbursement of shipping costs. I never heard back.

January 5, I left them a 1-star review on Amazon: "Ordered December 15, delivery estimate was Dec 19-24. They shipped ground on Dec 22 with delivery on Jan 3. How can they expect to deliver to the opposite coast within deadline when they wait a week to ship? E-mailed them asking for shipping reimbursement. Never heard back from them. AVOID!"

Today, January 20, I received a phone call from them. They walked me through the process of getting the credit, up to the point where she said "next to your feedback, click the word 'remove'."

Um, no.

"Then we can't give you the credit."

Never mind then.

Their feedback rating for the last 30 days is 86% positive, 9% negative. Looks like many others have had similar problems. Just speculating, but the company name now shows as "ProMax Supply", so maybe they changed their name or ownership to distance themselves.

I'm now going through Amazon directly to ask for the shipping credit. We'll see where that leads.

Followup 1/29/09: Amazon reimbursed me the shipping costs. Yay.

Search engine seeds: CrazyDavesToolShed, Crazy Dave's Tool Shed, ProMax Supply, CrazyDavesToolShed, Crazy Dave's Tool Shed, ProMax Supply, CrazyDavesToolShed, Crazy Dave's Tool Shed, ProMax Supply)

Casino changes, new WSGC newsletter

2009-01-13T09:22:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned a few months ago, baccarat has come to state minicasinos. I've not visited one in a few months, but the billboard near the Puyallup River advertises that Chips Lakewood has baccarat available. It's the table game with the lowest house edge, so if any match plays come open, that's the table to use them at.

The latest Washington State Gambling Commission Focus On Gambling newsletter is out. It looks like electronic poker tables are still being discussed by the vendor and the WSGC. "At the November 2008 meeting, the petitioner requested the Commission hold over the petition to allow the Commission’s lab time to test the device and re-analyze the system for changes made after the lab’s initial review in November." They're discussing it again next month.

The Five Hundy By Midnight podcast has mentioned -- and a good friend of mine has confirmed -- that the electronic tables are already in use at the Excalibur poker room in Las Vegas. The more and more I hear about them, the more I'm liking the idea: faster play, no mistakes or rules arguments, no tipping, and, perhaps, lower limits and rakes.

The WSGC has approved the change to allow 9 players (instead of max 7) at table games. I think I've only once ever seen a full seven player table, so I don't think this will affect me, unless this prompts a casino to close down one of its extra blackjack tables and replace it with a poker table. That'd be nice.

There's one significant new proposal in the newsletter. Last year, the state casino industry asked to increase the single-bet limit in poker from $40 to $500. The WSGC asked for an alternative, so that $500 could only be used as a max all-in Hold 'Em bet. The industry countered with a proposal of a $300 max poker bet. The WSGC is discussing it.

Something I may not have mentioned before, and which is some of the most interesting reading in the newsletter, are the list of administrative cases. Usually, that's when a casino does something bad -- like failing to submit a report on time -- or when an employee does something bad. Like this one from page 13:

[T.L.O.] (formerly employed by Chips Casino) Lakewood

Admitted turning off the closed circuit television system on several occasions while working as the Director of Security and Surveillance.
Allegedly removed money from the house-banked card room’s count room.

The licensee waived his right to a hearing. A Default Order revoking his license was entered.

Most of them aren't nearly as egregious. The most frequent seem to be applicants for dealers' licenses who don't fully disclose their criminal history, dealers who fail to properly collect a bet, dealers allowing a minor to play, or casino employees who find money on the ground and pocket it instead of turning it in. Seems like a tough job, and it's one that can be ended by a single mistake.

Whidbey Island Cache Machine

2008-11-26T10:05:00.000-08:00

I posted the first draft (.PDF) for the Whidbey Island Cache Machine last Friday. The event's coming up on January 3, and will involve considerably more hiking than previous cache machine events. The views will be well worth it.

Bad poker night

2008-11-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

Sitting down at Palace's $3/$6 table last night, I had high hopes. The guy to my right, who had claimed to have turned $60 into the $600 in front of him, was playing the sheriff, paying to see people's cards at the end, because he had the money to burn. Two seats to my left, Sam was having an amazing run of luck, playing any two cards from any position, frequently raising pre-flop with small off-suit non-connectors, and rivering frequently enough to be ahead.

It didn't work out too well. I as down my first $100 in the first 90 minutes, mostly because two hands in a row, I lost to Sam's J5. One hand I had KQ, the board was K55/9/3; the next I had AJ and the board was J93/6/5.

I bought in for another $100, and after whittling away about $30 of it in blinds and limps, finally hit my first win with AA, then my very next hand with KK. The pots were decent sized, and I didn't have to show my hand to win, which surprised me, since most pots were going to the river with three players. Clearly, I had a tight image, they knew when I raised on the turn and river that I wasn't bluffing. About half an hour later I tried to do the same with middle pair/weak kicker, and this time, two people called me down. Bah.

Around 12:30 a.m., I won a good sized pot with trip kings, bringing my stack to $145 (down $55), but over the next hour, that stack got whittled down to $20. The coup de grace was a four-way pot, where I held 6♦ 6♠, and the board was 4♣ 5♣ 7♦ / K♥ / 6♣. Pot odds wouldn't let me get away, raising went crazy, and the winning hand was K♣ 3♣. Sam, incidentally, had queen high. Down $180 for the night. Bah.

Lakewood casinos open for business

2008-11-05T15:52:00.000-08:00

As of 12:23 p.m., the county elections department reports that the voting was 3,259 (38.6%) yes, 5,191 (61.4%) no. The News Tribune called it "rejected" earlier this morning:

Voters widely rejecting proposal to ban casinos in Lakewood

Published: November 5th, 2008 12:30 AM
A proposal to ban minicasinos in Lakewood was failing Tuesday night. Initial counts from the Pierce County Auditor’s Office showed Proposition 1, the city’s first citizen-led initiative, going down by a wide margin.

Gambling Commission rules changes,

2008-11-03T13:11:00.000-08:00

There's some big Washington State Gambling Commission rules changes in this quarter's Focus on Gambling newsletter. The big ones:

Effective January 1, bet limits on table games are $300 instead of $200.
Effective January 1, mini-baccarat is legal. This game has the smallest house edge in the casino. The only better game out there is a limited number of video poker machines, which aren't legal in Washington.

Still on the table for November's Commission meeting:

Electronic poker tables
Raise the limit on a poker wager from $40 to $500
Increase the number of players at a table game, other than poker, from seven to nine
A casino that only is running poker tables, and has wager limits at $40 or less, doesn't have to staff a surveillance room.

On a different topic, I'm really curious to see how Lakewood's proposition 1 ends up. I have no sense of which way the populace is leaning. It could easily go 65%/35% either way, and it's such a micro-issue, there's no polls to go by. Best case: it's defeated, which entices a new casino to fill in the hole left by Happy Days, increasing competition and benefiting edge players (me!). Worst case: I have to drive to Lacey to play poker.

Electronic poker tables in Washington?

2008-08-05T09:05:00.000-07:00

The Cardroom Connection newsletter for the first half of 2008 was just published by the Washington State Gambling Commission, and mostly it repeated the changes I listed a few weeks ago. However, a new item appears on page 5:

Petition for Rule Change – Electronic Poker Tables
PokerTek, Inc. has submitted a petition for rule change requesting that entirely electronic poker gambling tables be authorized for use in card rooms. The electronic poker table, PokerPro, provides an opportunity to play poker without a center dealer and uses electronic facsimiles of both gambling chips and cards. No physical gambling chips, cards, or a live dealer are used.

I'd heard about these tables a year or so ago, but for some reason never figured I'd see them in Washington. My gut immediately told me, "this would suck," because part of the fun of playing poker in a card room is the feel of the cards and the playing with the chips. However, after a good five minutes of contemplation, I changed my mind. For a slightly-good super-tight player such as myself, the advantage of having more hands per hour, lower rake, and no tipping the dealer makes for a greater player edge. I'll give up playing with bacteria infested chips to get an extra few bucks each trip.

Casino law changes, statewide and local

2008-07-24T13:39:00.001-07:00

The May-July "Focus On Gambling" newsletter came out today (.pdf), and it's got news of a big law change, and a few other smaller bits. The big news (and I've already heard radio ads mentioning it) is that casinos can now be open 24 hours five days a week, and for 20 hours the other two days. I'd called this a "good change" in my post about upcoming regulations last April.

The other good proposed change -- the addition of baccarat to the list of permitted casino games -- will be discussed in August.

Also in August, they'll discuss increasing the maximum number of poker players at a table from 10 to 12 (boo!), increasing the tournament fee limit (boo!), and increasing the table game limits from $200 to $500 (meh.)

The Recreational Gaming Association requested that the proposal to increase poker limits from $40 to $500 be put on hold (yay for the delay!). They also

withdrew their request to increase the player-supported jackpot admin fee from 10% to 35%. (yay!)
withdrew their request to drop the requirement that table games be dealt from a shoe. (bizarre)
withdrew their request to eliminate the 5% commission limit for games like Pai Gow and Baccarat. (yay, I guess.)

Locally, the Pierce County Auditor told the SaveLakewood.com folks that they were about 1000 signatures short on their initiative to ban casinos in Lakewood. David Anderson, who's spearheading the campaign, wrote in an e-mail to supporters,

By 12 noon on Friday, August 1, we will need another 1,000 signatures to enable the Initiative to ban casino gambling in Lakewood to make it to the ballot in November. The Pierce County Auditor reviewed the 4,939 signatures we previously submitted and determined there are 2,947 valid signatures. 1,992 signatures were challenged.
We will be meeting with the Auditor on Wednesday, July 23, to determine why over 30 percent of our signatures have been rejected in the hope that we can save some.

I suspect a lot of people who signed the petitions weren't Lakewood residents, or weren't registered voters. They've also had trouble raising funds. The image at right shows the group's donations.

Not even a nice place to visit

2008-07-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

Last August, I wrote ("No notels soon?") about the motels in the Ponders/Pac Highway area getting closed down: Rose Garden, Fort Clark, and Vagabond are closed, and Colonial is re-opened and looking much cleaner. At the time, I wrote, "The Biltmor's still open. And the Fort Lewis is in business (and I've noticed it has had a lot less garbage overflowing their dumpster lately). The Western up on 112th is open (which used to be the Quality Inn). Is that it now?"

That list of 3 is now down to 2½. The News Tribune reports today, "The Department of Health announced today that the Biltmore [sic] Motel, at 12701 Pacific Highway Southwest, must vacate 12 units by midnight Friday. It has 28 units overall. The May 27 inspection revealed concerns including the danger of a roof collapse, mold, broken smoke detectors, exposed wiring, unsanitary floors, walls and fixtures, and 'other filthy conditions'" (their bad use of commas, not mine).

Which one's gonna be next? My money's on the Fort Lewis, former home of overflowing dumpsters, tuberculosis carriers, and rapists.

Party's over at PlayersOnly

2008-06-18T00:21:00.000-07:00

I hadn't checked since May, but the $200 per month promo at PlayersOnly is done. "This promotion has now been discontinued. We’ll be running every week a new Casino promotion, so please keep checking our Casino promotions page for the updates." Wonder where I'll find my next one?

Long ways to go to make $15

2008-05-27T21:07:00.000-07:00

PlayersOnly still has their monthly $200 deposit bonus: deposit $200, get $200 free, play through $8200, and withdraw whatever you have left. Blackjack's the best game available to do this with, but the variance the last two months has been brutal, and my impatience hasn't helped.

In March, playing a flat $5 per hand, I ended up ahead $389. In April, wanting to do just as well, I increased my bets when I fell behind, which made me end up even further behind, and eventually -- several hands short of meeting the wagering requirements, I ended up at $0.

This weekend, learning from my April mistake, I went too far the other direction and played a flat $2 per hand, grinding through 4100 hands. With a standard deviation of 1.2 and a variance of 1.44, then 66% of the time, I'd end up between +$101 and +305. And 90% of the time, I'll end up between -$150 and +$457. I was in the latter variance this time, ending up -$90.

After weighing the hassle of requesting a $110 check, waiting for it to clear, depositing it, and having it as a reminder of my lost $90, I tilted a bit, decided to take it to the baccarat table and place a bet with the absolute lowest house edge in the casino. $110 on the banker. Fortunately, I won, and withdrew $215.

That site's gonna give me an ulcer if June ends up just as icky.

In my fort

2008-05-13T17:22:00.000-07:00

I had to stay home from work today to take care of a sick kid, so I grabbed the hardware I needed from the office and set it up at home. I've got three laptops on three sides of a square table, with the power cords trailing off the fourth edge to a power strip. There's also a couple external hard drives and mice in the mix. This worked fine all day, until about 4:30, when my cat slowly saunters across all three keyboards, and noses my hand. I pull him into my lap, but as soon as I stop paying attention to him, he's back on the table. Finally, he lies down to rest.
I hope he's not contaminating the chain of custody form he's lying on.

Poker tournament: no skill required

2008-05-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

Tulalip's 10:30 a.m. tournament structure is the worst I've yet to come across. You start with only 1000 chips, and the rounds are 15 minutes long. Blinds start at 25/50 and go up 25 and 50 each round. That's bad enough, but here's the weak kicker: only four rounds, and then two hands, then the four largest chip stacks are paid.

Moreso than any other tournament, in this one it's critical to build your stack fast. I did a mediocre job of this, and am still questioning if I should have called a caller and the blinds with 33 in middle position. I didn't; it would've incresed my stack by about 20%.

After the four rounds, I was in the final 12 (out of 45), and when I proposed a 10-way split, the regulars shrugged me off as if I was a loony. I got dealt K5 under the gun, and folded it. Three players got knocked out, the final 9 went to the final hand, the three biggest stacks folded, and everyone else went all in. The winner of the all-in fest (not me) cashed 4th.

This tournament requires very little skill. Push high pairs. Call with two paint cards. Get a lucky flop. That's about it.

How to lose a lot of money in little time

2008-04-27T02:01:00.000-07:00

I played my first cash game at Hawks Prairie tonight, and it's a $4/$8 full kill, a little higher than the $3/$6 I'm used to, but I was there, so figured I'd play anyway. The only other table playing was a $4-$40 spread game, way beyond my comfort range.

I bought in for $100 played for about two hours, getting up to $140, then dropping down to about $50 where I sat for a long time. Pocket jacks won, pocket queens lost, and when, on a whim, I played 5♦ 3♦ under the gun, I split a pot against A5 when the board came A24/3/7.

A bit later, I get dealt T♥ T♠ in mid-late position. Three other players are in, I call, the button calls, the small blind folds, and the big blind checks. Six of us to the flop, $26 in the pot.

T♣ 9♦ 8♣

The big blind checks, the next player bets, the next player calls, and the player to my right raises. I've gotta get the betting big enough to make flush draws and straight draws a mistake, so I re-raise to $12. Button folds, big blind folds, and the last three players call. $62 in the pot.

I'm hoping for the board to pair to give me a boat (or quads, if it's the ten). Instead, the turn is J♣.

Clearly, someone's hit their flush draw, and someone's hit their straight draw. The first player bets $8, the next player calls, and the guy to my right calls. There's $86 in the pot, so I'm getting better than 10:1 to call. I assume I've got 10 outs (eights, nines, tens, jacks), so it's an easy call. Even reducing it a bit, I only need to have 5 outs to make this a profitable call, and if I hit one of them, I'm gonna be making a lot with my boat.

The river is a beautiful J♥

The first two players check, and the guy to my right bets $8. I raise to $16. The other players call. The guy to my right raises another $8. I put my last $8 in the pot. The other players call. The pot is $182. I show my full house, tens full of jacks.

The first player hit the flush, losing. The second player had a queen, for the straight. The guy to my right held J♦ 9♣, for a full house, jacks full of nines. I go home now.

Still, I feel good about my play. I may be playing a little too tight, which is costing me some hands, but I'm still convinced that tight play is the best play.

Washington State Gambling Commission announces changes

2008-04-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

The quarterly Focus on Gambling (.pdf) newsletter has some interesting bits for Q1.

A good change: Today, card room operations are limited to 20 hours a day, seven days a week. Effective July 1, a card room may request permission to be open 24/7 five days a week, and 20 hours for the other two days a week.

Good proposed changes: The WSGC is considering allowing baccarat. Betting on the banker in baccarat is one of the smallest house edges in all casino games.

Bad proposed changes:

Increase the number of players allowed at a poker table from 10 to 12. As if it wasn't crowded enough in some card rooms already. I have a vague recollection of sitting at an 11-player table once (illegal?), and it was almost too tight to reach your cards.
Increase poker bet limits from $40 to $500. In essence, this pretty much means allowing no-limit hold 'em. I generally suck at NLHE, so this would draw players away from my table. They did this in Florida last year, and the podcasters at Ante Up have talked about what a wild game $2/$5 NLHE is, and implied that it becomes a game of playing all-in or fold when you arrive any time after a game opens.
Increase the player-supported jackpot admin fee from 10% to 35%. I hate these jackpots anyway, and now they are considering taking another 25% off the top?
Remove the dollar limit on card tournament fees. I don't know what the limit is, but if this passes, it wouldn't surprise me if tournament fees went up across the board. I like my el cheapo tourneys, thankyouverymuch.

"Meh" proposed changes:

Increase table game limits from $200 to $500. That would match the Indian casinos, and would likely reduce the number of low-limit tables out there.
Drop the requirement that table games be dealt from a shoe. Huh? I don't know why any casino would want this.
Eliminate the 5% commission limit for games like Pai Gow and Baccarat. I don't know that any player would stand for a higher commission, so I don't see anyone trying this. Then again, there's some dumb players out there.

I think they have a list of proposed changes every quarter. Usually only a couple of these changes pass. Here's hoping for lots of match play baccarat this fall.

Phil Gordon Freakonomics interview

2008-04-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

Phil Gordon was the subject of a long interview for the Freakonomics blog. My favorite bits:

On randomness: "I have a simple theory: change 10 river cards in any poker player’s tournament career and I would bet that they would be a losing tournament player for their career."

On avoiding games with a house edge: "I’m not a “gambler” by nature — I consider myself a “strategic investor.” In fact, what we do at the poker table isn’t very different than what investment professionals do — we just get our results every two minutes instead of every few months or years."

On sunglasses: "I don’t believe in the “dilated pupil tell” and other such nonsense. ... I’ve never worn sunglasses at the table and I think it looks completely stupid and is unnecessary."

On quick Lakewood-style tournaments: "The quicker the blinds escalate, the more chances you should be willing to take. Your stack will be at risk quickly, so you might as well push any marginal edge you have when you have it. If the blinds are escalating slowly, you can afford to give up small positive expectation plays."

On Omaha: "I think that it has a chance of surpassing Holdem as the most popular form of the game in five to eight years. As people become “bored” with Holdem, they’ll naturally progress to P.L.O."

On Rock-Paper-Scissors: "Never go rock on the first throw."

Biggest Cache Machine ever; lucky; Spooky

2008-03-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

The Yakima Cache Machine II was a blast. It's impossible to get solid numbers, but I'm almost certain that this was the biggest cache machine ever. I'm calling it 120 people, since the reservations we made at Old Country Buffet were for 70, they turned everyone else away, and someone told me that as a result, there were 50 more cachers eating dinner next door. Wow.

On top of that, I think my experiment in separating out the stupid micro-caches from the route worked well. As someone pointed out last night, anyone who wanted to get the micros that were near the route certainly wasn't prevented from doing so, and even in my car, we attempted a couple of them that were painfully close to where we were, because they still showed up on the map and on some of the higher end GPSRs.

It's been more than 15 years since I was a passenger on the ride through the Yakima River canyon. I've never ridden through there when there was snow on the hills. I stand by my claim that it's the most beautiful drive in the state.

I expected a few of the caches to have some relatively steep hill climbing, but I didn't expect there to be as many (7+). My legs and feet are still aching 24 hours later.

Was it the best CM ever? I think it might be. YCM I was my all time favorite, but this time there wasn't a really bad one on the route.

Oh, and on the poker side, I played again last night at Casino Caribbean, won $100 in a raffle, and another $63 at the table. When I won the raffle, I had the same dealer at the table who dealt me the quad aces the night before. He was as shocked at my luck as I was.

The drive home... well... When I left, Snoqualmie had traction tires required, and White pass had traction tires advised. The ol' Saturn doesn't take chains (not enough wheel-well clearance), so I'm heading home via The Dalles, Oregon. It's about an extra hour of driving compared to White Pass, which is the way I came over on Friday. No biggie. I got to eat a good pizza burger from Spooky's restaurant in The Dalles, which has free wi-fi, which is allowing me to post this blog entry.

Jackpot

2008-03-28T23:22:00.000-07:00

Well, this trip has paid for itself.

I've been playing poker in casinos for something like five years now, and in that time, I've played in casinos at least 73 times (my recordkeeping starts in October 2005).

Every casino I've played in pays out a bonus for hitting four of a kind. Every casino, that is, except the classic Vegas ones (Bellagio and Binions) and the Tampa Hard Rock. And the last time I hit quads? May of 2005 at the Tampa Hard Rock (quad queens).

Tonight I'm at a table in Yakima, at the Caribbean Casino, and I'm down about $60 after losing a pot holding QJ when the board comes 2QJ/Q/K. The other guy had pocket kings, and my full house loses to his full house. I've been doing better at avoiding tilt, though, and soon I get two black aces.

I flop an ace, raise, get some callers, and turn the final ace. I check through the river, because if I don't make it to a showdown, no jackpot.

I got $116 for the quad aces, and another $25 for the high hand of the hour. And then I hit another two full houses over the next 30 minutes, leaving +$247.

Yeah, this trip paid for itself nicely.

Yakima Cache Machine II is Saturday

2008-03-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

I'm looking forward to the Yakima Cache Machine II event more than any cache machine in a long time. Maybe it's because the first YCM five years ago was my favorite of the 15 I've organized. Maybe it's because the drive through the Yakima River canyon is, IMHO, the most fun drive in the state -- even better than 101 along Hood Canal, or the Olympic Peninsula loop. Maybe it's because I'm the navigator for a carload of cachers (dsvaughn, GeekGirl, and hydnsek) who are gonna be a barrel of fun. We're even gonna meet up on Friday before the event for a 3-mile, 12-cache hike through Cowiche Canyon.

I'm giddy.

(And yes, Yakima has poker rooms. Maybe it'll cover my hotel room costs.)

Still four players

2008-03-18T21:58:00.000-07:00

I played for about 4½ hours at Palace on Monday morning, taking a nice spring vacation day. I played well in the tournament, but when the blinds were getting high and my stack was getting low, I got knocked out before the money when I called an all in bet with AKo against QQ.

I then went to the $3/$6 game, and played some of the best poker I've played in months. A big part of it, I think, was I was in a seat that didn't have a good view of a TV screen. I hate those things; they're so distracting.

I held my own for a while. Up $20, down $20, then hit a couple of big pots (like AJ on JAJ flop) to bring me up +$116. A few blinds and a badly played pair of pocket fives brought me back down to +$96, and I left when my brain felt exhausted.

The best hand of the day, though, didn't earn me a big stack. Nope. Here's the situation. I'm in the small blind, and I'm dealt A♦K♥. The big blind to my left only has $2 after he posts his $3 blind. The under the gun player, who seems to be a good player but plays his draws too long, calls the $3. A few callers, and it folds around to the button, who raises to $6. The button's a crazy old Asian guy who has built a pretty good stack by paying whatever it takes to see the flop, and then getting out quickly if the flop misses him, but winning big pots with hands of two random cards.

I re-raise it to $9, the big blind is now all in, the under the gun player calls, and it folds around to the crazy button caps it to $12. I call, the UTG calls, there's $41 in the pots already. Main pot is $20, side pot is $28. Four players.

The flop is K♦T♥J♠ I've got top pair top kicker, and I really only fear AQ. I bet $3, UTG calls, and the button raises. This tells me that he's got a hand, and that UTG probably has a face card. I like my hand though, so I re-raise. UTG calls again, and the button caps it. I call and UTG calls. $85 in the pots. Still four players.

The turn is a Q♣

I'm gleeful, thinking one of the players hit two pair, and the other may have three of a kind, losing to my straight. There's probably another ace out there though, so we'll be splitting the pot. That's OK. If we can keep the third player in, we'll split his money. I bet $6. UTG laughs "I'm good," implying that he's got the ace. He raises. The big blind, who has been sitting back wishing he had more money in the pot, says "I'm good, too." The crazy button laughs and calls. I raise, UTG raises, we all call, and I say "I'm good, too." No way that the four of us have all four aces. $156 in the pot. Still four players.

The river's a rag. We're all laughing now. I bet, UTG raises, button calls, I re-raise, UTG caps it, we all call, and the grand reveal:

It's a four way chop. We each get our money back. The money from the people who limped then folded pre-flop paid for the rake and the tip. I thought this kind of crazy hand only happened online.

(And I'm still not sure why the crazy Asian was calling instead of re-raising. The rake had already maxed out when the pot hit $30.)

Happy dance

2008-03-14T00:55:00.000-07:00

I entered a $1 + $0.10 9-player sit n go tonight, and got knocked out in 6th place. I then signed up for a similar 45-player tourney, and ended up with this:

PokerStars Tournament #80831143, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.20
45 players
Total Prize Pool: $45.00
Tournament started - 2008/03/14 - 01:42:34 (ET)
Dear LauricT,
You finished the tournament in 2nd place.
A $10.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
You earned 52.03 tournament leader points in this tournament. For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/
Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.

Solid play, aggressive with the big stack, picking my battles with the small stack -- I think that's my highest money win in a tourney ever. At one point early in the tournament, I'm dealt QQ under the gun, two middle position players and the button go all in. I consider going all in; I'm getting 4-to-1 on my money, because I've got the biggest stack, but if I lose, I'll be crippled. With three other players in... I fold. The players show 99, JJ, and AA. There's a J on the flop, and no aces or nines show (and no queens, if you're wondering), and I pat myself on the back for a good fold.

Five, but not six

2008-03-12T00:07:00.000-07:00

My tournament streak ended in my sixth game, where I lost a third of my stack chasing an open end straight draw when I was dealt 85s in the small blind, and got a flop of 7-6-J. The 4 or 9 never came. After folding for most of 19 hands, I'm slowly getting blinded away, and with less than 18 big blinds left, I'm dealt JTs. I push all in, and get called by two players. No luck, I'm out, down $1.20 for the tournament, but only down $0.80 for the day, having placed third (+$0.40) in another $1.20 tourney earlier. Still feeling good.

Make that four

2008-03-08T16:41:00.000-08:00

Hmm... something's going on. In addition to the two back-to-back tournaments where I ended up in the money, I also cashed in the next two I entered, on Wednesday and this afternoon. Sure, they're only micro-limit buy-in tourneys, but placing 18th out of 167, 1st of 9, 2nd of 9, and 1st of 9 ... it's a bit of an ego boost. Certainly, a big part of it has been luck, such as when my K♦Q♠ knocked out A♠ T♠when a four-diamond board hit.

A bigger part, by far, however, has been playing to get to such a position, and that's mostly because I've been following the small-stack fast tournament strategy that Tom Snyder wrote about in The Poker Tournament Formula, a book I picked up last year* after someone on the defunct Seattle Poker Forum recommended it. To over-simplify, if you've got less than 20 big blinds left, and you're not in the blinds, either fold or go all in. With 21-50 big blinds left, you're a little safer, so there's a few more calling options. With more than 50, you've got breathing room, so play really tight and let the other players knock each other out.

I'd be surprised if the streak lasts much longer, and based on in La Center last September, I'm hoping that I'm able to alternate between tight tournament play and looser cash game play.

But I can enjoy it while it lasts.

* I just re-read a post from last March where I mention this same book. I'd bought it with a gift card that TMIB and Pony had gotten me. I guess that's how I get all my poker books ;-)

** Oh, and I also got my $35 check as reimbursement for my $35 in Happy Days chips. Interesting that it's from the owner's personal account. I suspect I should probably cash it real quick.

That's two

2008-03-01T16:09:00.000-08:00

After a long, long drought, I finally placed in the money in two micro-limit tournaments today and last night. At PlayersOnly, I played in a $0.25 rebuy and add-on tourney, adding on $0.50 during the match. Top 30 positions of about 170 paid, and I ended in 18th place, ending up +$1.20 or so.

This afternoon, I took the $5.11 remaining in my PokerStars account, played a few hands of razz to double it, then played in a 9 player sit-n-go, $1+$0.20. The result:

PokerStars Tournament #79311255, No Limit Hold'em Buy-In: $1.00/$0.20 9 players Total Prize Pool: $9.00 Tournament started - 2008/03/01 - 18:07:39 (ET) Dear LauricT, You finished the tournament in 1st place. A $4.50 award has been credited to your Real Money account. Congratulations! Thank you for participating.

Very nice. I suspect that part of it was that I've been catching up on all the AnteUp podcasts I've missed since last summer, and have been re-reading Lee Jones' Winning Low Limit Hold 'Em, which TMIB nicely bought me for my birthday (well, that's what I used the gift card for). It's the gift that keeps giving :-)

(Screen shot from my bonus hunt last month. Deuces never loses, especially when my 8th card was a 7)

Smattering of stuff

2008-02-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

After my $504 online bonus hunt win in January (yay, PlayersOnly.com), I lost $200 of it at Palace playing $3/$6. Bah.
The odds caught up a little bit for the February bonus hunt. +$104 instead. The EV is +$186, I think.
The Yakima Cache Machine II is scheduled for March 29.
Shortly after Happy Days' closure, I contacted the state gaming commission to see what I should do with my $35 in chips. After a few missteps, they had the owner of the casino give me a call, and I'll be exchanging them for cash sometime soon.
Back on December 4, I was one of only two people who spoke in favor of Lakewood casinos at a gambling forum. This didn't surprise me, because most of the invitations went out to church groups, and it was hosted by the Tillicum/Woodbrook Neighborhood Association, whose leader is on the record of opposing gambling. The other person who spoke was the casino manager at Lakewood's Macau Casino. From what I understand, the city of Lakewood takes a B&O tax of 11% of gross receipts, meaning that when you play a $10 hand of blackjack, although the casino has a 1.5% edge over you (your expected return is $9.85), the city has an 11% edge over the casino (the casino's expected return is $8.90, plus 15¢ from the player). To be profitable they've got to count on the player cycling through their money eight times before cashing out (8 * 15¢ = $1.20, which earns them 10¢ after paying the state $1.10).
Apparently, dozens of casino employees attended a hearing on the future of casinos in Lakewood on February 6. I'd hoped to attend, but couldn't make it. The advisory board who heard their statements agrees with them, and on Wednesday, recommended to the city council that the moratorium on new casinos in Lakewood be lifted. It's up to the city council now, who can do whatever they want, in spite of the advisory board's advice.

Geocaches save lives

2008-01-20T17:05:00.000-08:00

Two happy ending stories:

A pair of experienced climber on Mount Hood got caught by a storm, so aborted their attempt to summit the mountain, and then missed their turn on the way down. They built a snow cave overnight, and when they woke up, they spotted a piece of flagging tape in a tree, connected to a water bottle with this cache inside -- with its own coordinates. When they warmed up their cell phones and got a call from the sheriff, they were able to tell exactly where they were. (CNN video, NW Cable News.) KOMO, as usual, botched the story and instead says they found a GPS hanging from a tree.

A woman and her dog are in an off-leash park in High Bridge, New Jersey. The dog falls through the icy lake, and the woman goes in after him. She gives up and runs to the empty parking lot looking for help. Just arriving: a cacher looking for this cache. While the woman goes in after her dog again, he calls the park police, who save the dog and the woman.

Fourth best night ever

2008-01-18T23:09:00.000-08:00

Back in the summer of 2006, the heyday of bonus hunting, before the UIGEA scared off all the online casinos from taking US players, I had some good winning days:

$900 from Vegas Strip Casino (it took 15 days after wagering was complete to get the money in Neteller)
$790 from Prism (which took five weeks to extract from their accounting department, and they've spammed me incessantly ever since)
$610 from Silver Sands Casino (which showed up a couple days later)

But since the UIGEA, it's been slim pickings out there. This week, though, I played the Wednesday bonus at PlayersOnly, and netted +$504. This is better than the $400 I made from the same casino last November.

Now that's a good start for the year. They limit me to one withdrawal a month, and I did one January 2, so I'll need to wait a couple of weeks before I get cash in hand. I hope they stay in business that long.

Cache Machine roundup

2008-01-06T15:36:00.000-08:00

My daughter and I got 47 caches in Vancouver this weekend, starting in a group of about 30 people at 7:15 a.m. on Saturday, then in and between groups for the next seven hours. We took a brief rest at the hotel, then hit the road again to get three more before dinner at 5:15. We had about 60 people at dinner, and I got several e-mails and talked to a few people who wouldn't be making it to dinner. I'm guessing roughly 75 people attended.

I haven't decided whether I like lamp post micro-caches less or just slightly more than micros in the woods, which I hate. This cache machine had a lot of them. Unfortunately, when my goal is to get to as many neat places in a day as possible, if a microcache is there, I want to go there, too. And it's tough to tell what spot might be neat (e.g., a 180-degree view of the Columbia River and the Portland Airport, but the cache is a film canister under a trash can) and what spot might not be (e.g., a Humane Society office with the non-stop whining and barking of several soon-to-be doomed dogs, but the cache is a large ammo can next to a tree.)

More importantly, I spent a very nice weekend with my daughter, just her and me, exploring, laughing, picking on each other, and enjoying each others' company. I'll remember this weekend for a long time because of that.

The event got mentioned in another cacher's log, Rose Red.

Happy Days are gone again

2008-01-04T11:18:00.001-08:00

On Wednesday, I wrote, "Happy Days is back to their ask-at-the-cage 2x$10 match plays for January. Apparently, I will be, too." Wednesday evening, I went 0-2 in blackjack match plays, down $20.

On Thursday, I showed up to a sign on the locked door with three words: "Casino is closed."

Today, the News Tribune reports:

Employees stunned by casino's abrupt closing
...
A minicasino in Lakewood, Wash. suddenly closed its doors Thursday after a vendor reclaimed equipment and some unpaid employees angrily confronted the owner, who later locked them out of the building.
Owner Jerry Bolser said he lost $3 million to $4 million and won't reopen because it would be "throwing good money after bad.
"Am I disappointed?" he said. "You bet."
Some employees, who hadn't been paid in weeks, had words with Bolser on Thursday just before a planned 11 a.m. opening. One manager, Jeff Young, said he shouted at Bolser, demanding that his employees get paid before they did any more work.
He said Bolser walked into his office and shut the door. Bolser said he needed to talk to his lawyer on the phone.
...
The minicasino had paid $167,000 in back gambling tax payments in November, but still owed the city more than $29,000 in interest and late payment penalties. Lakewood officials moved to revoke the minicasino's's business license, but it remained open while owners appealed to a hearings examiner.
Happy Days also violated a settlement agreement with the state Gambling Commission by failing to make a payment Thursday. The minicasino owed the state agency more than $24,000 for failing to disclose financial statements.
The business signed a settlement agreement Dec. 17 and paid about half of the amount then, said commission spokeswoman Susan Arland. The second payment of $12,082 was due Thursday and wasn't made, she said.
Happy Days workers last week filed 38 complaints with the state Department of Labor and Industries about not receiving paychecks.

I've got $35 in chips. I've e-mailed the state gambling commission to see what the chips are good for, other than selling to collectors on Ebay. I'm also really curious about their $50,000 player-banked poker jackpot. That's supposed to be distributed somehow.

My guess is that the big money will be donated: WAC 230-15-415, Removing a player-supported jackpot from play says, "(2) If licensees stop operating card games or fail to maintain a valid card game license, they must immediately distribute all PSJ funds to the Washington State Council on Problem Gambling."

(Hey, it's not like I didn't have an inkling of this risk last June.)

Grab bag: sober poker, cache machine, and the wrong side of SD

2008-01-02T15:17:00.000-08:00

It's been a couple of weeks. Time for a few bullet points to catch up:

Sober players make bad opponents: I played at Palace again just before Christmas; several of the players were home on Christmas break from college or wherever, they brought their A game, and they weren't drinking. I was up about $70 after two hours, then the deck ran cold, I ran into a set, and walked away from the table down $100. Bah.
Cache machine is Saturday: I've got the plans and route finalized for the Vancouver (WA) Cache Machine event, and this one feels like it's gonna be one of the better ones of the 14 I've organized. I got a call from the Vancouver PD today in response to a couple of questions I had about parking locations, and they were happy to be aware that we were coming to town. The route seems like it's pretty solid, the caches seem doable, and it's a good mix of micros, pocket parks, and quarter mile trail jaunts, with some history lessons tossed in. Should be fun.
Bad bell curve. No biscuit: I played through my December $200 bonus at PlayersOnly last night -- and lost $250. I don't have my spreadsheet with me right now, but that's close to being 2 standard deviations off of the expected result. I'm OK with that, because even when you're gambling with a positive expectation wager, you're still gambling. Sometimes, rarely, the coin will come up heads 10 times in a row.
Back to Happy: This month's Gambling Journal says that Happy Days is back to their ask-at-the-cage 2x$10 match plays for January. Apparently, I will be, too.
...and taxes: I closed down my 2007 spreadsheet last night with a third year of profitability. If you add the the PlayersOnly bonuses and the Happy Days match play bonuses together, that's pretty much my profit for the year. Everything else seems to be a wash: poker wins, poker losses, $30 on the ponies, a few bucks at charity bingo. Not as good as 2006 or (/me gets a dreamy look) the pre-UIGEA 2005 year, but still, it's in the low positive 4-figures for the year. It'll pay for a family vacation. Taxes take a small chunk of it, but tax on fun money hurts less than tax on money I really worked for.

The best opponent

2007-12-14T19:46:00.000-08:00

I played $3/$6 at Palace last Saturday night, and doubled my $100 buy-in in three hours. A large chunk of this change came from a guy in seat 2, two seats to my right. The first thing I noticed about him was that he was confused about what drink the waitress had brought him, up until the point where the waitress realized how inebriated he was, and politely declined to serve him.

He left the table for a few minutes, and when he returned he staggered over one of the low rolling tables, splashing seat 1's drink. Ten minutes later, I hit an ace-high flush on the turn, raised and capped the pot against him, and he doesn't slow down on the river; I extract another $24 from him. He's frustrated after I show the nuts to his ten-high flush, and I conciliatorily tell him, "that's tough; there no way you could have laid that down." I didn't mention to him that it should have been easy to stop raising, though.

He plays several more hands, including several against one of the best players in the room, someone who is always here, and loses almost every time. The drunk offhandedly calls him "Mr. Lucky", and the rest of the table chuckles. We rib Mr. Lucky for the next 30 minutes, until he leaves to go get some dinner. A few minutes later, I'm dealt J9 on the button. I check, and the flop is J♦T♦6♥. I bet to see who else has a jack, and nobody raises me. The turn is a 9♥, I bet again, and everyone folds, except for Mr. Tipsy, who raises me. I put him on a 1-in-5 flush draw, so re-raise him. He stares at me, I joke about Mr. Lucky leaving the table, and tell him that I'm trying to make myself the new lucky guy. He re-raises, capping it, and I call.

The river is a Q♠, making a possible straight if he has an 8 or a king. I slyly check, and he asks me if I'm going to check raise him if he bets. I'm non-committal, and he bets. "I call. Two pair." I show my jacks and sixes. He shows me his A6, for a pair of sixes. Awesome.

(Oh, and my four-figure check from PlayersOnly arrived this week. Awesome^2.)

An 827% player edge at the office Christmas party

2007-12-14T17:38:00.000-08:00

The theme of the office Christmas party was "Vegas, Baby," and I looked forward to some fun times at the poker table. Everyone got somewhere around $200 in play money to start, and after folding pre-wager on a hand of indian poker, I got dealt K♥J♥ in Texas hold 'em, in the small blind. It was $20 to me, and I raised to $40. Six callers, and the flop comes QT3, with one heart. I bet $40 again, and get two callers. The turn is a second heart, so I've got 23 outs on the river. I bet another $40 and get called. The river's a brick, I check and fold. Dang.

The next game is five card draw, and after my draw, I push all in with a set of tens. I'm beat by a set of kings, and leave the table after only three hands.

Ryan tells me that the roulette wheel's got crazy-wrong odds, and gives me $100 to play it. "Bet red and black and you'll come out way ahead," he tells me.

The payout for any bet is 20-for-1, except that individual numbers pay 30-for-1. Betting $20 each on even, odd, black, red, high, low, and the 0/00 split is an average payout of $1157, and is typically $1200. The table ran slowly, particularly because they quickly were running out of $100 bills, but after four spins, I ended up with $4820. I "tipped" the croupier a fake $20, gave the fake $100 back to Ryan, and won first place in the office Vegas pool, bringing home a basket of fancy chocolates, candies, and ... pickled asparagus? Good times.

(Yes, it's sad that I'm calculating the edge for games at the office Christmas party. I'm quite the geek, I'm afraid.)

Matching Wednesday scaled way back

2007-11-30T15:37:00.000-08:00

In my mailbox from PlayersOnly.com this morning:

Starting in December the Match200 bonus will not be awarded every Wednesday of the calendar month. Instead, you’ll be able to register for this promotion and receive 1 bonus per month per account or household.

I figured that Matching Wednesdays was too good to last for long (deposit $200, get $200 more, playthrough $4200, profit!). In the four Wednesdays I played, I was +$100, +$400, +$100, and +$22. Not bad for a few hours work. It's still a good deal at once a month, and it'll help my cash flow to be able to get the payout check before I have to make another deposit. My gambling funds envelope is looking awfully thin with four $200 payments removed.

On top of that, I've started playing in their poker room. They're either really bad players, or my loosening up of starting hands is paying off. I'm inclined to think it's bad play, though, because the first time I did really well at online poker, it was at another casino that had a poker table "on the side." Kind of like my adventure at the bowling alley in Wenatchee a couple of years ago. Or, as my cousin used to tell it, like Tower Lanes in Tacoma (amazing -- link still works!).

Vancouver (WA) Cache Machine

2007-11-27T19:18:00.000-08:00

The planning for the Vancouver Cache Machine is underway. January 5... yay!

Lakewood gambling forum: a stacked deck

2007-11-27T07:11:00.000-08:00

The president of the Tillicum/Woodbrook neighborhood association is on the record in favor of closing all six of Lakewood's casinos. So why, on December 4, are they hosting a forum on gambling at the Clover Park High School PAC? Well, they've invited the six casino managers, and 50 churches. Panelists will include one casino manager (who appears to only have tentatively accepted), the director of the Evergreen Council on Problem Gambling, and a professor from Whatcom county whose organization has recently sued the Nooksack tribe's casino (and lost).

I may show up to bring a little dissonance to their echo chamber. Their announcement is pasted below.

Following are the final confirmed panelists for the Lakewood citywide forum on gambling to be held Tuesday, December 4, 6:30-8:30 PM at the Performing Arts Center of Clover Park High School located at 11023 Gravelly Lake Drive, SW.
Moderator: Peter Callaghan, columnist and reporter with The (Tacoma) News Tribune.
Panelists:

John Arbeeny, Lakewood City Councilman

Pad Finnigan, Lakewood City Councilman

Mike McKenzie, Lakewood Assistant Attorney

Craig Mayberry, Lynden, WA - Professor at Whatcom Community College and at Western Washington University. Craig is spokesperson for the North County Alliance (NCCA) of Whatcom County that has a federal lawsuit against the recently opened Nooksack Tribe's casino. Craig believes "solutions to the social injustices (created by gambling) will only come through a grassroots effort by local communities to hold elected officials and government bureaucrats accountable to upholding the civil rights of all individuals, regardless of the amount of campaign contributions."

Marueen Greeley, Executive Director of the Evergreen Council on Problem Gambling (formerly Washington Council on Problem Gambling).

Gary Hess, Manager, Great American Casino (or possibly Greg Bakamis, former manager now in corporate office). One or the other is confirmed.

The format for the evening:

6:30-6:45 Doors open, seats taken and a presentation of the 2nd Annual Rudy 'Rebel' Baker Award for Outstanding Volunteer Community Service in the Tillicum/Woodbrook Neighborhood. As this forum is sponsored by the Tillicum/Woodbrook Neighborhood Association (TWNA); and as this forum replaces our regular monthly meeting for December, this is the one item of business we want to conduct the evening of the forum - Dec.4.

6:45-7:00 Introductions of Panelists by Peter Callaghan and two-minute statements by each panelist.

7:00-8:20 Interactions between panelists and audience, moderated by Peter Callaghan.

8:30 Adjourn

There is much at stake at this forum. Lakewood leads the state in card tables that, together with other gambling revenues, are slated to generate $2.36 million in taxes for the city next year. And a ban on gambling, supported by one of the largest churches in Lakewood, could mean the end of 800 jobs, "25 police officers, or requiring each city department to cut its budget by 10 percent" (TNT, 10/3/07).
General audience invitations have been sent to all six mini-casinos in Lakewood and to nearly 50 Lakewood churches. The PAC has a 600 seat capacity.
The Planning Advisory Board, that has been charged with the responsibility to study the impact of gambling in Lakewood with recommendations due in January, has also been invited as they have expressed the need for public input.
Thank you for your willingness to be a part of this citywide event, and for promoting it among those like-minded with your position.

Matching Wednesday

2007-11-21T21:47:00.000-08:00

It's been a relatively gambling free few weeks, with one exception.

Three weeks ago a newsletter I subscribe to announced that PlayersOnly.com had a surprisingly good bonus offer. Deposit $200 on Wednesday, bet $200 on Wednesday, and you get a $200 bonus the next day. To collect the bonus, playthrough is 20x, or $4000.

So basically, deposit $200, get $200 more for free, and wager $4200. If you play blackjack, a 0.54% house edge game, you'll have an average loss to the house of $4200 x 0.0054, or $22.68, for an average net profit of $177.32. Even at $5 a hand, it goes fairly quickly.

The first week, I ended up $100; the second, $400 more.

PlayersOnly has the appearance of a fairly solid online casino. They've had glossy multi-page ads in Card Player and Poker News for several months now; they've gotten very little bad press on Casinomeister.com; and they have the recommendation of OBJ as one of the few sites that still take US players. I goofed on week 1 and deposited in their sister site, Sportsbook.com, and the withdrawal of a check for those funds arrived fairly quickly.

The only drawback -- any withdrawals after the first one each calendar month are assessed a $40 fee. Essentially, it's one withdrawal per month.

Happy Days match play: it's over!

2007-11-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

It's a new month, and Happy Days changed their match play policy again. For November, you get a free match play when you bring in a toy for donation to a local charity. It's very altruistic on the casino's part, but the additional cost an effort of getting toys and bringing them in every day makes it hardly worth it. Essentially, the match play is over.

After going 38-39 in October (+$355), the grand total of my five months of match play: 184-194, +$1,825.

So... back to poker. I may have mentioned it before, but I've figured out what may have been the hole in my game. I've been playing ring games like tournament games, and playing too tight. I played for about an hour yesterday, and ended up $64, a lot of which was playing hands like A6 and then keeping with it after an ace flopped, or playing 32o from the small blind, getting in for cheap, and hitting two pair on the flop.

A lot of the hands I won were when my lone opponent folded on the river. They're on a lot more busted flush draws than I expected.

Beating the long timers

2007-10-27T22:29:00.000-07:00

I went to Happy Days on Friday night to play the midnight tournament... except it turns out that there's no midnight tournaments on Friday nights. I sat down at a $3/$6 table instead, and was dealt QQ to start, netting $26 on my first hand. The guy to my left was a non-stop talker (the way I like it; it keeps the table happy and spending money).

Happy Days has a monthly freeroll where the players who have put in the most hours at the tables get to play. The chatterbox let me know that the guy two seats to my right was the current time leader, that the woman to his right was high on the list, and that chatterbox himself was also in the top 40.

In other words, he told me I was outmatched. In spite of that I played for 45 minutes, then got out when I was ahead $46. The most amusing hand was when I was dealt 87o, and the board came 4T9/7/9. I mistakenly thought the 7 was a 6, and played as if I had a straight on the turn. Oops. I continued the agressive play on the river, and the other players folded.

My final hand was TT, in middle position, and I raised pre-flop, of course. Chatterbox re-raised to $9, the two blinds called, I capped it at $12, and the other three players called me. The flop came 6QJ. It was checked to me, and I went in for $3. If they had a Q or J, I think they would have bet. Chatterbox called, making me think he might have a J. The turn was a 9, it was checked to me, I bet, chatterbox called, and the blinds folded. The river was nothing, and I bet. Chatterbox inexplicably called and showed a 7♠8♠. My tens won, I bailed out.

All politics are roadkill

2007-10-24T17:26:00.000-07:00

I'm driving my daughter and her friend home from school, and in the lane to my right is an SUV with signs on it advocating Lisa Ikeda for city council, and also advertising Lisa's "Ponders Landmark Cafe." I smile a bit, because as I told my daughter, she's the candidate I voted for, in spite of her casino opposition, mainly because she makes a good french dip sandwich.

"That's her?" my daughter asked, excited.

I speed up a bit to get a better look.

"Yep. That's her." "Hit her!" comes the yell from the back seat.

"What?"

"Extra points!"

The Orion Experience

2007-10-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

I'm at the Starbucks at 1600 Olive in Seattle, and The Orion Experience just finished their show. They're kind of a cross between Save Ferris and the latest Duran Duran album, and their ska-pop sound and high energy made for a great time. They're on the way back to NYC, but I hope they continue to do well and return to the area again.

I bought their album, Cosmicandy, and will be listening to it in the car on the way home.

Boom in the Valley

2007-10-06T18:22:00.000-07:00

I've posted this to a friends-only mailing list, to the Tacoma LiveJournal community, and to the News Tribune's Lights & Sirens blog. Might as well finish up by posting the same thing here.

I was at the Target on Union, and left about 3:00. I saw the black clouds of smoke pouring into the sky. I got onto eastbound SR16, and traffic was slow, because the flames were very visible and shooting into the sky; the fire department obviously didn't have control over it yet. People were parked on the Sprague overpass watching it, and as I approached the Valley overpass, some people had pulled off to the side. The flames were shooting up well above the north side of the overpass, not gently licking the sky, but jetting up as if they were being accelerated out.

Halfway across the overpass, I turned off the radio and opened the window, because I wanted to see if I could hear the fire. As I rolled down the window, the whole north valley burst into an explosive fireball. It was bigger than most Hollywood type explosions, rocking the car. Maybe the equivalent of four simultaneous gas station explosions, if they were done in a movie.

My first thought was that I was glad the window was down, so that the pressure inside and outside the car was equalized, preventing the window from shattering. My next thought, as the wave of heat swept over, was that I needed to roll up the window to shield myself from the heat. That was a bit too late -- the left side of my face is still a little pinker than my right, and it still stings a tad.

My next thought was, "gee, I'd better swerve left a little bit to avoid that falling, flaming piece of scaffolding.". I did, but it clipped the car in the lane to my right. KING 5 news interviewed someone else who saw flying metal, too.

I kept driving off the viaduct, adrenaline coursing through me. It had gotten warm enough that I wanted to check my car's paint to see if it had gotten damaged.

KOMO radio reports that the explosion was felt a few miles away. I believe it. I'd be surprised if the Java Jive, south of the overpass, is still in one piece.

Awesome.

[Update: The News Tribune just posted some good video of the explosion. I think that was my car that crossed the SR-16 supports about three seconds pre-boom. Toasty.]

[Update 2: YouTube videos here and here.]

September match play results, four month summary

2007-10-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

I went 23-34 (40%/60%) with Happy Days match play in September, netting +$135. The First Card Ace promo at Chips/Palace added another $75. Other lucky side bets came up with another 157.50. However, with my lousy poker play and unlucky craps and roulette play in Vegas, I ended up down $88.20 for the month.

Overall, June-September, match play has put me up +$1470, at 146-155. Good thing, because I gave back $678 of it, and $400 of that was at the poker tables. I guess I'm still trying to find the slow leak in my game.

Do you know where you are, sir?

2007-09-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

Quick wrapup. Friday night at the Imperial Palace poker table, I dropped another $87. Saturday morning I stopped back in to the conference and the four people there plus the podcaster were obviusly very bored; one person left during the hour I was there; I got the impression that several of us were flitting in and out.

As my last poker game, I headed over to the $4/$8 game at the Bellagio. I knew I was overclassed, and was pleased to only drop $35. The best quote at the table, though, was when a new player sat down to the dealer's right, the table welcomed him by taking his first bets from him, and he asked "Is there a bad beat jackpot?" The dealer looked down and shook his head, and the guy to my right, a relative loud mouth, looked at him and jokingly said in a snooty voice, "Do you know where you are, sir? This is the Bellahh-gio." Heh.

I think I saw a recognizeable poker pro in the high limit room, but I can't place his name. It might have been Johnny Chan, but I don't think so. I'll look thru some back issues of Card Player and see if I can figure it out.

My poker money, on its way to Detroit

2007-09-28T20:14:00.000-07:00

After extensive research and a bit of shoe leather, I found a 5 cent video poker machine with a theoretical 0.07% player edge. Problem is, the variance is about 70, so until you hit the $200 royal flush, you're gonna be very slowly losing money. I played the machine (at Hooters) for a little more than an hour, before boredom over took me, and I bailed out down $30.

I then went to Imperial Palace and played poker for another 90 minutes against a crew of six former college roommates from Detroit. It was a lot of fun, and I stayed even until the table started shrinking. I suck at short-handed play though, because I view it through the inaccurate perspective that fewer players increase the value of each hand (this is wrong) instead of the correct perspective to treat empty seats as folding players. I dropped $65 in about four orbitz before the four of us at the table broke it up.

I then went a little tilty, and tried to win some of it back at roulette, but dropped a Benjamin there.

I hit the craps table at Bill's Gambling House at lunch (I had a match play), and extrordinary bad luck dropped me down another $62.

I've read that the poker tables at Paris are very fishy, primarily because it's in the middle of the casino, which pulls in the gambling types. I'll hit that after the final session at the conference tonight. I'n going to bail out early. It's a live-fire network defense exercise, and when it started, I was one of about 60 observers. After they all discovered how exciting it is to watch people through CCTV as they maintain a network -- with no screenshots -- I'm one of the last six.

The PaulDotCom Security Podcast is recording, but that can only do so much to keep the interest up. I'm outta here.

Binion's

2007-09-27T00:52:00.000-07:00

It's the birthplace of the WSOP, the largest poker room downtown, and it's... well, it's a bit of a dive.

It's got the wall of photos of champions, but it's not really a structural wall -- it's a half wall in the middle of the room, as you might find in a museum, for displaying artwork. The dealers are old and crusty, and all of them talk with various accents: Russian, southern, Spanish. The other players are either really good or first time players, there's no in-between, except me.

Three hours of play, and I bailed out as I fell back down to breaking even.

The most amusing thing to me is that I've got a WSOP game for the PC that came out in the early 90's, and this place feels like it was last modernized at about the same time. Sadly, I think only six of the three do2n tables were in use, and when I sat down at the table, I was the 4th player. Eventually, it filled up, but I suck in short handed games.

Still, it was cool to look down at T2o, think "the Doyle", and realize this was where it happened so many years ago.

I folded.

Ye Olde Poker Roome

2007-09-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

I played $2/$4 limit at the Excalibur last night. Cheey, but not scary chezy like Circus Circus. Players were a little better than the Imperial Palace, but not great. It not only seemed like I was playing with the typical crowd from the Palace casino in Lakewood, but the guy two seats to my right was from Olympia, works as a car dealer in Shelton, and we chewed the fat about the poker rooms at Little Creek, Hawks Prairie, and Red Wind.

He says Red Wind is closing their poker room; I'm not surprised. The one time I tried to play there, they canceled their tourney due to lack of players.

I was down $50 in the first 90 minutes, but realized I was playing like I'd done a few months ago, loosened up a little, didn't bet suited aces as strongly, and ended up ahead $16 on the night.

Tonight, I'm bonus hunting my way to Binions. My table game luck has been mediocre, and I'm a few bucks down in spite of the bonuses. Hopefully, that'll turn around downtown.

Losing, Wynning

2007-09-25T01:29:00.000-07:00

Emboldened by my $70 win at IP last night, I jumped in feet-first to the $4/$8 table at the Wynn poker room. It's by far the most elegant poker room I've ever been in. Cushy chairs, rich wood paneling and cabinetry, a hushed reverence among the players, and no posters for $1 Corona on the walls... Snazzy. The player to my left quietly muttered a f-bomb once when his flush got out flushed, and the dealer seemed seconds away from calling security before the guy apologized.

The woman to my right, although smokin' hot and posessing an equally hot James Bondian eastern European accent, got highly offended (in the way that high-maintenance people do, like Lovie on Gilligan's Island) when she called a bet on the river. The player who she called won, and when he remarked that he feared she'd had an ace, the dealer (correctly) pointed out that if she'd had an ace in this situation, she'd have raised him instead of calling. She didn't like this commentary on her game, "right in front of me, like I'm not here." The dealer apologized, although I think they were both out of line.

Oh, yeah. I dropped $100 over about 90 minutes. The players at this table were the best I've ever been up against (sorry, home game compatriots), and although I started playing premium hands only, then mixed it up when I thrice got my raises folded to (tiny pots, grrr), I frequently missed the flop; the cards weren't coming.

Finally, with only $18 left, I make a pure bluff stab at the pot pre-flop with a late position raise to $8 with 5h3c. Two other players call. The flop comes 2h4h6d. The big blind bets, I raise, he puts me all in, I call. The 7h and Th fall, and my flopped straight loses to his J high flush.

I think I'll head back to ghetto poker tomorrow. The elegance was nice, but its obviously better on the bankroll to play with folks who hope their pocket deuces will hold up.

Poker in Vegas: Imperial Palace

2007-09-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

After class and they keynote last night, I went a-wandering. I intend to play poker at the two nicest rooms in Vegas (Bellagio and Wynn) and at the fishiest* (Excalibur and Imperial Palace).

I wandered past the Bellagio poker room (surprisingly small, about the same size as Muckleshoot), but I wanted to prove to myself that I could win in the fish rooms first. On the way to IP, I stopped at Treasure Island for a $5 bonus (lost net $10), then at the ghetto-on-the-strip Casino Royale (free $50 in very limited slot pay, net $0, as expected).

At IP, I started a $2/$4 limit table, and we played six, seven, or eight-handed for a couple hours. One guy had never played poker before; straightforward play worked against him.. The guy to my left always failed to hide his cards when he peeked at them; heads up, I checked and folded AJ against his 76 on a flop of 669. A couple sat down, but as they approached, the dealer remarked that they had raised every hand pre-flop the night before. When I got into pots with them at the table, it was with made hands, raising to get heads-up. Most to the time, they folded on the river. Net +$71.25 (yes, they used quarters for their 10% rake).

I then headed back to the hotel, dropping $30 on the roulette wheel at O'Sheas, another fine ghetto property.

* According to allvegaspoker.com

Forensics quote of the day

2007-09-23T11:52:00.001-07:00

"A 9mm wouldn't work. You've gotta use a .357. Voice of experience." - Student in my forensics class, correcting the instructor's suggestion of the best, fastest way to destroy a hard drive.

Thank goodness for the $20 trick

2007-09-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

I arrived at the SANS conference at Caesars' Palace at about 1:00 a.m., and used the $20 trick when I checked in, hoping for an upgrade. They upgraded me to a 900 sq. ft. suite for the first night, but I have to change rooms today. But what a room it was. Bigger than my first apartment, marble everything, a walk-in closet big enough to do ironing in, three thermostats for three different rooms (yes, one of the two bathrooms had its own thermostat)... wow.

They assure me that my new room is almost as nice, but has more techy stuff. It's a bit of a hassle, but I overheard another hotel guest complaining about the alternative he got. Caesars' overbooked: he was told to check into the Flamingo last night instead.

Followup: based on the price on the back of the door of my new room ($700 is listed for a $180 room) the room I was In last night was a $6400 room ($25,000 listed on the door).

(Jaw drops)

I doubt I'll ever see the inside of a room like that again.

Federal Gambling Act fallout: Bodog loses domain

2007-09-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

A newsletter I received earlier this week, and an e-mail I received today, point out some collateral damage resulting from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

Bodog, which is the biggest name in North American non-poker internet gaming, was the defendant in a largely baseless patent infringement action. The lawsuit was filed in Vegas. Bodog representatives, fearing arrest if they set foot in the US, failed to appear. The plaintiff got a default judgement, forcing bodog to give up their flagship Bodog.com domain name. The Vancouver Sun writes:

The Las Vegas company obtained the judgment after the Bodog companies failed to answer allegations, filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada, that downloaded software used by Bodog customers to facilitate its gaming activities infringed upon 1st Technology's patents.
It is not clear why Bodog officials did not respond to the allegations. One possibility is they were scared away by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has declared war on Internet gambling.

Cache machine this weekend

2007-09-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

It's gonna be a busy couple of weeks. I'll be in Seattle for an all day CLE on Thursday. I have to be in Aberdeen by 7:00 on Friday night for the Grays Harbor Cache Machine pre-dinner. This is followed by a half day of caching on Saturday (Kim and Krys will be cache machining for the first time - yay!) before I have to make it to SeaTac for a 7:00 PM flight to a network security conference in Las Vegas. Yes, I'll be playing some poker (CheapoVegas says the Excalibur and Imperial Palace poker rooms are full of fish, and I've got to play at the Bellagio and Wynn at least once in my life), but I think my table time will be limited, as I do need to study for my GCFA certification test.

Mid month status, Macau bonus

2007-09-18T19:09:00.001-07:00

Pai gow hasn't been nearly as good this month. I'm 19-32, only +$75. The First Card Ace bonus at Palace/Chips has been OK; I'm at +$0 in spite of the single $75 loss I mentioned in an earlier posting.

But, hey, I got this $20 bonus in the mail today. See? I think everyone in the neighborhood got these; too bad they track the "one per player" with their player's card.

The oddity of casino laws: La Center poker

2007-09-14T22:02:00.001-07:00

I went to Portland for three days this week for a training class, which left me with evening free of family obligations. Time for poker. But where?

Other than some pointless strip club poker (free chips, free rebuy, skanky distractions), there's no legal poker in Portland. The nearest spot is 15 miles north, in La Center. Otherwise, it's 100 miles either way to Spirit Mountain (south) or Lucky Eagle (north).

They way the laws must be written, it sounds like Clark County has banned casinos, except they've left it up to municipalities to determine whether they want casinos within their boundaries. La Center is the only town that allows it, and it appears they've strictly zoned it. There's no casinos within 100 miles, but there's four of them here so close together, that with a baseball and good arm you could stand at any of them and hit any other.

Tuesday night, I played at Last Frontier, brought my super tight game, and ended up down $142. The game was $3/$6 full kill, which means that when a player wins two hands in a row, the bets jump up to $6/$12 for the next hand. My sets ran into straights, my flushes ran into boats, my AK and AQ never hit, and I mis-bet a $6/$12 hand, giving away weakness when I asked to pull back a $6 bet on a $12 round. Several hands were short-handed five or six player games, and my aggression only served to cost me money.

Frustrated, I wandered over to New Phoenix, which had two full tables, then to Palace, which doesn't have poker, then to Chips, where I got into a standard $3/$6 game, decided to play a little looser, and won $40. Still, being down $102 for the night was frustrating.

Wednesday night, after studying for my Thursday exam for a few hours, I tried to decide whether I was up to driving 15 miles to play again. The slightly looser play seemed to work the night before, so I decided that if I could double a $1 buyin at PokerStars' 2¢/4¢ limit tables, I'd be able to do well at the real thing. In 40 minutes of play, I was up $1.04, and hit the road.

Chips La Center had two full kill $3/$6 games going, and although I signed up, I really didn't want to play a full kill game, so I wandered around again, but didn't find anything better. All of the pai gow games charged 5% commission, so no go there.

I returned to Chips, and the waiting list had gotten long enough that they opened a third $3/$6 table, no kill. Nice. Two hours of play, and I was up $158, plus a comped dinner. Yeah, a comped dinner doesn't mean a lot when the office would otherwise pay for it, but still, that's cool. The change in my game? Looser, but not crazy loose. Luck helped a lot, too. I played A2o in late position, hit an ace on the flop, and won with it. An early position 98s hit two pair on the flop and won, as did Q8s on the button, which rivered a full house to beat a flush. Mid-position pocket fives hit a set, and beat a flush when the board paired on the river.

Is my game back? It's too early to say. I'm looking forward to Vegas later this month, though.

First card ace, second card ace, third card ace

2007-09-10T21:38:00.000-07:00

I played the First Card Ace coupon again today at Palace. I was dealt another ace, and split them against the dealer's 5.

My first hand became A5, and my second became AA. I split my second hand, so it became A8, and my third hand became A8.

So I've got A5, A8, and A8 against a dealer 5. Very nice. The dealer takes his first card -- OMFG, it's a 6. He takes the next card, and I breathe again: it's a 2. He takes a fourth card, snags an 8, hitting 21, and taking my $75.

Ouch.

First Card Ace

2007-09-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

The Palace and Chips casinos are handing out free "First Card Ace $25 max" coupons the first four hours they're open each day (except Thursdays). I've played them twice, hitting blackjack with the first one (+$37.50) and losing the second (-$25). I'm not sure what the actual value of them is -- my math skills have gotten too rusty -- but one quote of one source says that the first card ace coupon gives a 50.5% player edge. Compare this to the roughly 1% house edge in blackjack or no-commission pai gow. I think it's close in value, percentage-wise, to the match plays.

Speaking of match plays, September is running badly: I'm 10-17, so I'm "only" up $45. I'm going to be traveling several days this month, too (three days in Portland, seven days in Vegas), so I'm not going to match August's +$570, unless the First Card Aces take up the slack, or if Happy Days keeps running out of match plays. Details?

They've finally got their policy and routine down. I walk up to the cage. They recognize me, stamp two match play coupons with the date and time, and hand them over, unless they've run out for the day. Then they direct me to the pit boss, who twice has given me a single $25 match play (value: about $12.25) instead of two $10s (value: about $9.70).

My cousin also gave me a handful of $10 match plays that he'd picked up this week -- he's been eating at Happy Days, but not playing there -- so I'll need to figure out how to extract some value out of them, given the fact that they give them out for free at the cage, and they limit you to using two per day. Maybe I'll just carry an extra, and try and schmooze the dealer into letting me play a third one once in a while.

(Image is of a similar "first card ace" coupon that the Sahara put out a few years ago.)

Tour deGenerate

2007-09-04T17:56:00.000-07:00

Today was my daughter's first day of school, so I took it as a vacation day so I could drop her off and pick her up. In between? Poker.

The Palace tourney started too early, and the Happy Days tourney too late, so I looked for other tourneys and events.

First, I stopped by Palace and picked up a "first card ace" coupon, which when played with a $25 bet in blackjack, has a 50% player edge. In other words, unlike a $10 match play with an expected return of about $5, it has an expected return of about $37.50. I'm not certain of this, and am still researching the numbers.

Then I played $3/$6 for about an hour, ending up +$24. Then, off to Bowlero for their 11 a.m. tourney. No luck; the table games are all shut down, a note on the door says payroll checks will be distributed September 3 (yesterday). The lone table running was an Omaha Hi-Lo, but the tournaments are no more.

Next, I stopped by Macau to find out about their tourney. Noon start, $35. I made a quick jaunt to Happy Days to do today's match play (today's version: cage says talk to pit, pit gives one $25 match play, I lose), and return to Macau to play $3/$6 for half an hour, where two of my sets lose to full houses, as does my ace-high flush. Loss: $100.

In the tourney, I played really well, getting in with the best hand every time I should, but (sigh) went out on the bubble, getting my $35 buy-in back. Top four positions paid, and with 6 players left and less, under the gun, with exactly enough to pay the blinds, I pushed all in with AJo, hitting an ace, beating the guy to my left who pushed with his KT, but losing to a flush held by the big stack.

They don't know their own policy

2007-09-01T15:05:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, August 30, I showed the Gambling Journal ad to the cage, got two match play coupons, and played them.

On Friday, August 31, I showed the Gambling Journal ad to the cage, they told me to check with the pit boss, he said the ad wasn't good until September, but would give me a couple match plays after I played for a while.

Today, Saturday, September 1, just after openiing, I showed the Gambling Journal ad to the cage, they called the pit boss over, and the pit boss went to the back to talk to the casino manager. Eventually, they reached this conclusion: take the whole ad in exchange for two match plays.

Never mind the fact that the ad says "mention this ad". I suppose I'll have to collect a few for the times they decide to collect the ad. Silly, but easier than drawing unwanted attention.

August winnings, September simplicity

2007-08-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

Ignoring tomorrow, the August Happy Days bonus numbers are in. It was a little bit better than July. I went 45-41, +$570. I lost about $70 on tips and Fortune side bets (a positive edge when there's a full table, but huge variance -- you're waiting for someone to get quads or better) and lost about $105 on a night of poker.

Overall, the last three months I've gone 123-121, and am +$1335. A good chunk of that has gone away at the poker tables, but I'll still have a good bankroll to lose on my trip to Vegas at the end of September.

For September, Happy Days has made it even easier. For the last three months, I've spent many lunch hours searching for copies of the Gambling Journal so I could get enough coupons. How's it easier? Here's the coupon from the August ad:

And here's the same corner from the September ad:

Yep: no coupons, just show up and ask.

I was wondering... perhaps they'd be checking ID to prevent someone from using more than two per day? (I still haven't asked them how they define "day" yet.) But no, they just write the date on two match play coupons and hand them over. September's looking like it's going to be good, and I get my lunch hours back.

No notels soon?

2007-08-28T20:47:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, I blogged about the Rose Garden Motel being closed by the city, which comes on the heels of the Colonial (re-opened), Fort Clark, and Vagabond. What's next? It's gotten the eye of the Seattle PI:

LAKEWOOD -- Rundown motels are vanishing from this Tacoma suburb near Fort Lewis to make way for redevelopment along Pacific Highway South and Tacoma Way.
The 28-unit Rose Garden Motel and its 15-unit recreational vehicle park were closed last week. The Fort Clarke Motel and Budget Inn, with a total of 72 rooms, closed after state health inspectors reported serious problems, including uncollected garbage, unsafe electrical wiring, dirty rooms and other violations.
The owner of Victory Motel [near Schucks and the 7-11] decided to close voluntarily, and the buildings will be torn down within two months, city officials said.
The closures have reduced the number of rooms in Lakewood to 533, down from 648, records show. Operators of the Budget Inn say they are working on repairs and plan to reapply.

Somebody ditched a broken down camping trailer filled with trash in the alley behind our house last week. An unconfirmed neighborhood rumor is that it belonged to someone who used to live at the Rose Garden. My tax dollars worked: I called the cops on Thursday, and it was gone by Monday.

The Biltmor's still open. And the Fort Lewis is in business (and I've noticed it has had a lot less garbage overflowing their dumpster lately). The Western up on 112th is open (which used to be the Quality Inn). Is that it now?

Final PAX posting

2007-08-25T20:48:00.000-07:00

I'm back home, done with PAX for this year. It was a lot of fun, very high energy, with a lot of memorable moments. I got Wil Wheaton to autograph my copies of his three books, I'm still raving about his keynote (MP3 here), I played Gauntlet Legends for way too long, I played Ticket to Ride the fastest I'd ever played it with some guy from San Francisco I'd just met (it reminded me of the Boston University Games Club), and I feel like I kind of caught up to all the happenings in the world of video games, a world that I don't know nearly as much about as when I was younger, was the target of their marketing, and talked video games with my friends on a much more frequent basis.

I'll be back next year, definitely. Maybe only for one day, though, depending on the schedule. Good times.

To wrap up, I compiled a list of the best t-shirt sayings of the weekend:

Girls Gone WoW
Live in your world, get pwned in mine
It's not you, I needed gold pieces
I'm in ur [blank], [blank]ing ur [blank]
Sex, drugs, and D&D
I digg your mom
Real gamers shower
You had me at Halo
Will play for mushrooms
We prefer to be called buccaneer-americans

But my favorite:

Trade show schwag

2007-08-25T16:10:00.000-07:00

Time was, I used to collect every hoohaw and doodad that booth vendors gave out (aside: if this is the new E3, why doesn't it have all the booth babes like Comdex used to?). After losing most of the worthless schwag in a house fire a few years ago, and having a refreshing I'm-tired-of-geocaching-so-I'm-dumping-my-schwag-in-this-here-dumpster session, it's been pleasant to go without, to look at the pins and buttons and other stuff and realize that it won't make me feel better to have it.

That said, I did pick up a few LotR Online demo CD's (I'll play them or toss them within the month, I'm sure), a Big Buck Hunter coaster for the canal collection ("who would you pick for your hunting partner; Boba Fett, a ninja, or Dick Cheney?"), and.a couple of free t-shirts (pajamas for the kid). A couple more hours to go.

Notes from "Finding Time for Gaming"

2007-08-25T14:19:00.000-07:00

Notes from the old peoples' "Finding Time for Gaming" panel, some serious, most tongue-in-cheek:

Have your two year old farm for you in WoW.
Play more sports games, and games with frequent save points
Spend lots of time in character design, like costumes in the new Band game that I can't remember the name of), or car painting in racing games
Buy your wife a DS and PuzzleQuest and see her three months later
In order to improve your family and your relationship withthem, spend more wime with them, and improve another family by outsourcing your farming to a chinese family.

Lunch time at PAX

2007-08-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

It's been a slower morning than yesterday. Three friends and I drove over, parked in a $6 garage, and amused ourselves with a random door at the end of an open wall; the door opened to the other side of the wall, which could be walked around faster than opening the door.

We waited in the same long line as yesterday, which broke down as we approached the end. Bah.

In the expo hall, I got a free t-shirt and bough Unexploded Cow, a Cheapass Game. I'm thinking about getting my daughter a Halo 3 t-shirt, but it's $20.

We then headed over to the tabletop games area, and were amused that among the four of us, we owned almost every game the North Seattle Gaming Group had brought. We played Ticket to Ride; Steve kicked butt when Bill forgot to connect LA to SFO. Jeremy, a guy we met from SFO, was a good, capable player.

Good times so far.

I'm in Joystiq

2007-08-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

Someone took a photo of the line for the Wil Wheaton keynote. That's my back, on the left, with the messenger bag.

Heading back for day 2...

30000 geeks, at least two cachers

2007-08-24T19:35:00.000-07:00

Hey, I can tie this one into the theme of my blog.

Its been 20 minutes standing in line to get Wil Wheaton's autograph, and I'm halfway there. Who do I see but fellow geocacher Romulus cutting through the slow moving line to get to the convention hall.

He's one of those guys in my life that I know from seeing him a few times, but don't really know. We found a few caches together during some cache machine events, and we've found some of each others' caches, so we said hi, made small talk for a few minutes, and he went on his way. Cool.

Surprise: movies suck

2007-08-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

There was a surprise Q&A with director Uwe Boll, who has made some critically panned movies based on video games, such as Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, and Bloodrayne. He's got a dark comedy coming out, based on the mid 90's game Postal, which, from the trailer, looks neither comedic nor game-ish.

He got several boos, the hall pretty much cleared out, and got called "racist" and "idiotic.". I left early, too. Maybe he's right that nobody in the room understand satire.

Wave your gadgets in the air

2007-08-24T17:36:00.000-07:00

At a Q&A, prompted by an audience request, Jerry sang the complete My Belruell. About two verses in, the audience started waving their screens and lighters in the air. As you'd expect, there were a lot of gadgets.

Awesomest speech ever

2007-08-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

Wil's speech better make it on YouTube quickly. I've been to several keynote speeches in several venues, and this was easily the best speech ever.

He talked of Jack Tompson, and of strip Atari Combat; he spoke of Excitebike and ofthe fact that video games are social activities, not the antisocial pox that some politicians make them out to be. Video games like GTA 3 are interactive art, which give even more of a sense of loss at the end than a long novel (a few hours) or a movie trilogy (LoTR, not Star Wars), because of the time and effort involved.

Find it, watch it, enjoy it.

(Wil said there's 30,000 people at the conference. Wow.)

2007-08-24T14:35:00.001-07:00

Well, the line went out the door, past the escaltors, across the area in front of Subway, through a tunnel-like corridor, and across the Pike street skybridge.

The exhibit hall seems about as big as the bank of exhibit halls at the Puyallup Fair, but without the straw and food scraps on the floor (but, oddly, with a similar animal smell). Lots of console games, fewer tabletop games, although the maker of "Pirates of the Spanish Main" (Yarrrr!) has a new expansion set out. On a nearby table, there's another new constructable card game (not Racer Knights - carrrr!) based on Star Wars. Obviously, I'm christening this one as "Yarrr! Wars")

There's a surprising amount of very short pleated skirts. Mostly on women, but a few kilts, too.

I'm now in line for the keynote to open. Of the seven people closest to me in line, six of us are using our gadgets. Me on my blackberry, three on their Nintendo DSes, and two PSPs.

Looks like Wil will have a table out here on the skybridge for autographs and his new book once the keynote's over.

Lines and Bawls triangle

2007-08-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

I'm bad at coming up with estimates like this, buut assuminng we've got 15 rows of 125 people each in the line that snakes into the center, that's about 2000 people in these two rooms waiting to get in. The the line appears to go back outside, and perhaps up the escalators.

90 minutes to Wheaton.

They came back with more Bawls and are handing it out. About 400 people past the handout point -- drinking distance -- there's a growing well-packed triangle of the empty blue bottles on the floor. Some guy who set his empty Sprie bottle next to it got booed by the crowd.

The constant background sound seems to be the clanging of kicked Bawls bottles. I'm surprised there's none broken yet.

Sweet. I just spotted somebody older than me.

welcome to PAX

2007-08-24T14:10:00.000-07:00

Here we go... My first liveblogging experience.

I'm at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle for the next two days. At this moment, I'm in a liine of 1500 or so people waiting to get into the exhibition hall, which is the first step towards getting into the theater where Wil Wheaton is giving his keynote in two hours. I've given up trying to reach the first presentation (Speed Demo: Quake in 13 minutes)

Apparently, they were giving away free bottles of Bawls to some of the people waiting in line, but ran out before we reached the right spot.

Hello, Mr. Franklin

2007-08-20T09:01:00.000-07:00

At Happy Days last night, they were having some kind of player appreciation day (as indicated by the 100% I'd check at the door), and when I sat down at the empty high limit pai gow table with my two $10 match play coupons, they gave me two $25 match play coupons, and let me use all four.

Both $25 coupons won, for a juicy $100 payout. The $10 coupons went 1-1, for another $10. I tipped the dealer $5 for persuading the pit to let me use all four, and left quickly. Four hands, +$105. Nice to see you, Benjamin.

Caching at lunch

2007-08-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

For the first time in almost two years, I went geocaching at lunch. I searched for North Lake Woodland Walk. My log follows, Blackberry typos and all:

[found] August 17 by travisl (1165 found)

It's lunch time, and I'm faced with two options. I could go to the new Round Table Pizza for the third time this week, and have all I can eat yet again. The latitude of my pants have been strongly opposed to this idea, and if my bathroom scale were a GPS, it would be throwing longitude errors ("max value 180").. That idea's out. I could head over to PJ's and play poker for an hour. Nah. I've told myself that if I ever do that, it's proof that I am indeed the degenerate everyone suspects I am.

A third option comes to.mind: I could go geocaching. I haven't done that at lunchtime in ages. The weather's cool, and although I don't have my geopack, my GPS has been rattling around in the car since the Spokane Cache Machine.

This one fit the bill perfectly. It's close by, a short hike, just off the trail, it's not a bleepin' micro. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to lose a pound and not a dollar. TNLNSL.

(And this is the first cache I've ever posted a find to from a cache site. Technology's getting cooler every day.)

A $100 lesson: the idiot at the table

2007-08-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

When I asked my friends for advice on finding the hole in my poker game, they suggested I take notes at the table (or to play no-limit instead of limit). I did neither: I played $3/$6 limit at Palace on Saturday night, and lost $100 over the next two hours. I think, however, that I've clearly identified one big leak in my game, the same one I mentioned last week.

Most poker books advise,* as rule number 1, to start by picking a good table. The 10th best player in the world will suck at a table against the best 9. The 10th worst player in the room will bake big money against the worst 9. Pick a table with bad players. Avoid tables with thoughtful, smart players.

You can identify a good table easily: there's a lot of banter back and forth, a couple of friendly drunks, and frequent overly-dramatic congenial outbursts. The last two times I played at tables like this (against a drunk who told us that money didn't matter and against The Walrus), I did really well. The three games after that, the table was almost silent, contemplative, and I did poorly.

Problem is, with a small poker room (Washington state law limits to 15 tables total, including blackjack, etc.), you don't get much choice of which table to sit at.

The problem, therefore, isn't that I'm not following the books' advice -- that's tough to do in this state -- but rather that I'm not adjusting properly to the tighter, smarter tables. This is the exact same problem that I've faced this year in online play. When I have a decent hand (top pair top kicker), I take the perspective that unless someone else is raising, I've got a monster, and the other players in the pot are idiots. The problem with this? Most of the other players aren't idiots any more.

Two illustrative hands which cost me $27 each. I'm in late position raise pre-flop, and get heads up on the flop. Early position checks and calls my bets through the river. I lose:

Example 1: I've got AJ, and the board is AT3/T/8. I lose to TT which hit quads; he was check-calling so not to lose me and hit the $133 quads bonus.

Example 2: I've got A9o, and the board is 945/2/K. I lose to 54.

When my bet gets check-called on the turn, should I be checking the turn? I think so. I've got to stop and ask myself "why are they calling?" And "because they're an idiot" isn't a good answer any more.

A third example with different circumstances: I'm in early position with 33, heads up on the flop, and the board is 449/K/K. I bet the flop, get called, bet the turn, get called, and then without realizing that my hand's been forfeited by the two pair on the board, bet the river, and get beaten by A7o. I'm showing agression, and getting called on the flop, which means he either has a 9 (I'm dead), overcards (I'm about a 70% favorite), or a flush draw (I'm a 60% favorite). It's pretty close to even odds that I'm going down here, so I should slow down. I didn't.

(He won't have a 4 or an overpair, or else he'd have raised.)

Against better-than-mediocre players, I need to play smarter post-flop. If they're raising, they've got a reason. If they're calling, they've often got the right odds to do so.

It cost me $100 over two hours, which is twice as good as I did the last two times (where it cost me $200+ in the same time period). I did win a few hands, and won a partial pot with my ace-high flush against an all-in full house and a two pair). Although I didn't like my play in the examples above, it reinforced my learnings from the home game at OS17: if you play like everyone else at the table is an idiot, you'll learn that there's only one idiot at the table.

---
* Sklansky's and Carson's Low Limit Hold Em titles, for example.

What's a crackhead to do?

2007-08-13T07:49:00.000-07:00

Another Lakewood slum motel is closing its doors. The Suburban Times is reporting:

The City of Lakewood Community Development Department will proceed with the abatement of a public nuisance and dangerous buildings in addition to the revocation of the business license for the Rose Garden Motel located at 11701 Pacific Highway SW on August 14, 2007.
Existing unsanitary conditions and numerous building violations with existing structures identified by the Washington State Department of Public Health have prompted the City’s actions. All patrons and residents of all existing recreational vehicles have been required to leave the premises by 5 p.m. on August 13, 2007.

Man, first the Colonial Motel gets shut down and is reopened under new management. The cops cut off the back-door sales of bulk Sudafed from Joon's Variety Store (great URL!). The Fort Clark motel gets burned out. The Vagabond gets closed by the health department. And now this. What's a crackhead to do?

No problem. You can always turn to the nearby crackheads from downtown Tacoma, or the other Tacoma druggies who can roll you one at the South Hill Taco Del Mar.

(Other closures previously mentioned.)

Bingo bango bongo

2007-08-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

My brother's girlfriend's family has a place out on Fox Island, and they invited us out for hamwiches and the Fox Island Fair, and warned me that the main feature was 25 cent bingo, with prizes that aren't worth the money. However, they said that the fun part is hooting and hollering for the young kids who win, and second best is trying to pick the worst, dumbest, or most offensive prizes possible. Apparently last year, one of the cousins won Fixident and a ceramic doll, and used them together.

I played for about two hours, winning twice late. I ended up with a jumbo ballpoint pen (my wife said that it would be a much better prize if the long plastic cylinder took batteries) and a set of dollar store BBQ tongs. I also lost $15.50 playing, but it was a lot more fun -- because of the social aspect -- than the bingo game I'd played on my computer in December 2005, which I'd described as "a pointless, mindless game. How can the old folks find this stimulating?"

Ironically, my dad stopped by the bingo room partway through the fair, and although I offered to buy him a card, he replied "nah... I'm not old enough to play bingo yet.". Touché.

Grays Harbor Cache Machine

2007-08-09T23:53:00.000-07:00

After two years off, I'm hosting another cache machine event: the Grays Harbor Cache Machine on September 22. It's not likely that I'll actually make it to dinner that night, because I'll need to be in Vegas by 9:00 a.m. the next day (a six day computer forensics class), but for me, planning is just as fun as the event itself.

With a little help from my friends

2007-08-05T23:36:00.000-07:00

I went on my 17th annual camping trip with a group of friends this weekend, and they helped critique my poker game. One hole we identified is when I'm ahead on the flop, I don't admit to myself that I fell behind on the turn or river, even when it's obvious. It's something to work on.

(Also, there's the fact that I play limit poker, not no-limit, which gives the maniacs the right odds to call more often, but what can you do about that?)

For dinner, 15 of us stopped at the buffet at Little Creek. Yum. They also helped me pick up 49 match play coupons for Happy Days for August. Yep -- it's back, and I went 2-0 tonight.

Match play done for July; outlook uncertain

2007-07-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

July was a good month for match play. I went 47-39 (55%/45%), netting $560 for the month, which is more than twice the $205 I got in June. For the two months, I'm 78-80, nicely in line with the 49%/51% expectation.

(Funny, I don't think this is what the state -- or Congress -- had in mind when they tried to ban online gambling.)

This is offset, slightly, by $231.50 in non-match play losses for the two months, including a net of $89 in poker losses and a net of $142.50 in table game play. This chunk of change came as a surprise to me -- looks like I was feeling a little tilty there on a couple of 0-4 days. Good thing I'm keeping track; that's a dangerous something I really need to avoid.

The August Western Gambling Journal isn't out yet, so I don't know if Happy Days is doing this again. I hope so; I doubt it'll happen.