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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also yesterday, I sit down at an empty pai gow table with my two match plays, and the pit boss tosses me a third one. She also handing them out to the other tables, and I ask my dealer if this gets around the two-a-day limit. The pit boss recognizes me, and says it's OK. I win all three.
Last week, I stop in on my way home, at about 6:00 p.m. Later that night, at somewhere close to 12:01 a.m., I return to make my next day's play. It's the same dealer. Two days ago, the same dealer correctly pointed out that I wasn't in the night before.
Earlier last week, I stop in before work, and only the Spanish 21 table is running. I sit down, and a the dealer, different than the one who would later recognize me, asks me "no pai gow today?". I point out that the pai gow table's closed.
And two weeks ago, when I stopped in before work, again with only Spanish 21 running, as I placed my second match play bet, the pit boss announced that it was the final bet for the table; they were closing down.
I'm generally using four match plays per 24 hour period: one pair during their 11:00 a.m. to midnight "day", and one pair during their midnight to 7:00 a.m. "day". They've not clarified what they mean a day to be, and I'm not going to ask. Knowing that I'm being recognized now, I'm thinking that the "two per day" rule is there to keep someone from sitting down with a big wad of match plays at once. I've been doing this for 50 days now, and they've not asked me to stop.
Three times I've used three in one sitting with the permission of the dealer. Two days ago, I saw another player use three in a row without asking (I've seen more people using them lately). Earlier this year, different dealers told different people the same thing about the poker match plays -- two per day per table: take your extras to the next table over; the pit boss won't complain.
I think it also helps that there's been a couple of times that I've stuck around for a few hands after losing match plays, chasing my losses (for shame... don't do that, but the result? broke even) and the relatively large bets got the pit boss' attention.
Six days left, unless the coupons start showing up in the August Gambling Journal. I haven't updated my spreadsheet lately, but I think I'm up about $250 for July.
I'll be focusing on pai gow instead of blackjack during my July bonus hunting. It's got a lower house edge than blackjack (zero instead of around 1%), and much less variance. So that you'll know what I'm talking about, here's how pai gow is played.In Washington casinos, they offer "no commission Fortune Pai Gow Poker", which, if I understand correctly, differs from Vegas pai gow in that Vegas casinos take a 5% commission on your wins. In Washington, there is no commission.
At the pai gow table, there are six positions for players and one for the house. It's statistically irrelevant, but some players think it's very important that Player 1 be determined randomly. Most Washington casinos assign the seven seats sequential numbers 1-18, giving the house seats 7 and 14, so that all players have a 31/216 chance of being player 1, and the house a 30/216 chance of being player 1. Like I said, it's statistically irrelevant, so don't worry about it. Play the hand you're dealt.
Using a 53-card deck (one joker), a hand of seven cards is dealt to each of the seven positions. The remaining four cards are discarded. Empty positions have their hands discarded.
From those seven cards, you must create a two-card poker hand and a five-card poker hand. Your two-card hand must be lower than your five-card hand. The joker can only be used in straights or flushes, or as an ace. "Pai gow", as best as I can tell, is Chinese for "crappy hand", because players were rooting for the dealer to have a pai gow, which is a hand that had no pairs, straights, or flushes.
If your two-card hand is higher than the dealer's two-card hand, and if your five-card hand is higher than the dealer's five-card hand, you win 1:1. If both hands are lower, you lose. If one is higher and the other is lower, you push. If one hand ties, the winner of the other hand wins. If both hands tie... I don't know. I expect it's a push. If it is a push instead of a house win, this is truly a zero house edge game if you play the same published strategy that the house uses. In theory, there's slightly better strategies out there (WizardOfOdds.com has them explained), but the difference is so minimal that it's maybe one out of 1000 hands.
There's a crappy "fortune" side bet that everyone always takes, and if you don't take the bet, the other players and the house will look at you funny, but don't do it.
One thing I've heard about, but had never seen until last night, is the option for a player to be the dealer. As the dealer, that player pays out wins and collects losses from the other players (and the house, which will be the same amount that the dealer bet last time). You can't be the dealer in consecutive hands. Washington has a $200 per hand bet limit; I don't know what happens if the amount that other players bet totals more than $200.
As I said, the player-as-dealer is very unusual in Washington, although I hear it's much more common in Vegas (perhaps the dealer keeps the commission?). Last night at Happy Days was the first time I saw it, and it got very confusing with two of the players using match plays. Heck, it was confusing for the house even without the match plays, because it got her out of her rhythm of comparing players cards to hers.
The player in the far right seat wanted to be banker for a hand, and after everyone's hands were set, the house turned over its cards and incorrectly tried to compare them to another player's hand. The dealer/player stopped her, called the pit boss over, and they slowly went step-by-step to make sure they did it right. The house compared its cards to the dealer/player. The house lost. The house gave the dealer/player $15. The house mucked its losing cards.
The player in the far left seat mucked his cards, and the dealer took them, his money, and his match play. As the player walked away from the table, the pit boss decided that match play coupons can't be used with a player as dealer, so he called out to the guy to come back. The guy didn't, and the pit boss eventually threw the match play ticket in the trash. I knew my hand had lost, but I didn't muck my cards, and the pit boss collected my $10 but gave me my match play coupon back. They resolved the remaining three positions, the player/banker came out well ahead, and we moved onto the next hand.
I won the next two, with match plays, for +$40.
If I were properly capitalized, and didn't feel queasy at the thought of the possibility of losing $200 a hand, there might be an advantage to play as dealer as often as possible. Although the house shouldn't play less than perfectly, other players are much more likely to do so.
(For the record, I'm 28-39 and +$165 with match plays for June.)
And here's something random I heard on the Five Hundy By Midnight podcast:
I don't have a gambling problem, I'm winning, and winning is not a problem. That's like saying Michael Jordan has a basketball problem, or Def Leppard has an awesomeness problem. So why don't y'all pour some sugar on that?
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I keep a fairly detailed history of my gambling wins and losses, mostly so I don't lie to myself and think I'm a better poker player than I am, but also for tax purposes. For 2007, my total wins have been in the red after losing $52.80 on PokerStars on February 16.Until last night.
I swung by Happy Days to use my match plays at about 10:15 p.m., winning both hands of blackjack (+$40). I then went to Palace and played poker for about three hours. It was a quiet table -- which usually means a tight table -- and with a husband/wife pair in seats 1 and 5, I figured there might be some unintentional soft play between them. She won a straight flush jackpot and a quad kings jackpot, which was great, because she saw almost every flop and then folded the majority of the turns. He earned the nickname "The Fisherman" for his ability to fish for a card on the river and catch it (busted my jacks with a rivered 9 for a set; rivered a flush on me twice; did it a lot more with several other people).
I got to the point that whenever he was in going to the river with two of a suit showing, we'd all ask The Fisherman what bait he was using, whether he was going to catch anything, and so on. "A real big lure!" he beamed, and the majority of the time, he'd hit a card that helped.
Contrary to how I might have felt in the past, I really like players who draw to the river to try and beat me. He had a 1-in-22 chance to get his nine (1-in-45 really, since his wife mucked the last nine), and the pot wasn't $132 going to the river. Late in the session, a pair of ladies moved over from another table, one with a poker t-shirt "I can't believe you played that crap" and one with a denim jacket from The Riviera hotel in Vegas. They played tight, but I took my final monster pot from Riv holding KJo on the button, with a board of T3J/K/J, when she held JT.
Raising drawing hands in late position: that's where the hole in my game was. I wasn't doing it nearly enough. I've been doing it for more than a month now, and the change is dramatic. +$200 at Palace last night.
Then, at 1:30 a.m., I returned to Happy Days to use the match plays. Blackjack was full, so I played Pai Gow, winning one and losing one (+$10). I'm +$165 in match play, 22-28. I grabbed another four Gambling Journals from Palace, and was going to grab the last two from Happy Days, but the guy to my right at the Pai Gow table asked about the coupons, so I showed him where to get them.
For the night, +$250. This brings my 2007 gambling winnings back above zero, to $74.32. Excluding bonuses and other games, my poker winnings for 2007 are just below zero, at -$5.47. I'm a happy person.
Seeing that there's nobody there at 6:30 a.m. who was there at 5:00 p.m. the previous calendar day, and that nobody who was there at 5:00 p.m. was there at 6:30 a.m. the previous business day, I was able to play four coupons per day. With the previous two-per-day poker match play coupons, a pit boss has told me in the past "you can only use two at this table, but you can move to another table to use your other two." I don't know if I'm acting unethically or not. I'm thinking I might be, and in spite of the fact that I'm getting an advantage against the EvilCasinoIndustry, I'm not comfortable continuing to do that if I conclude that it is unethical.
In my Happy Days bonus hunt, I'm 17-23, +$115.
(Aside: A couple of times this week, the blackjack tables have been pretty full, so I've used my match play on pai gow instead. Washington is fairly unique in that pai gow is commission-free. In Vegas, for example, the house takes a percentage of all your winnings. That makes it very close to a game with no house edge. If played the house way, the only advantage the casino has is if the rank of all seven of the dealer's cards match the rank of all seven of the player's cards, unless there's a flush in one of the hands. In the event of a seven card tie, the house wins.
The reason it's offered is that there's a "fortune" side bet, that pays off three-of-a-kinds or better. The house edge on that side bet is something like 5%.)
I ended up +$10 tonight. The first two coupons were losses (-$20), but the third coupon was dealt A5 versus the dealer's 4. I doubled down, got a scary A58, but the dealer busts, I get +$30.
It's back to trying to hunt down copies of the Western Gambling Journal this week. I'm suddenly about 33% short.
With only three Happy Days match play coupons left, I was on the hunt for more Gambling Journals. I happened to be in Auburn this afternoon, and stopped in at the Iron Horse casino. Nothing there, although I did learn that they host a HORSE tournament on Sundays and Tuesdays at 6:00 p.m.I'd checked PJ Pockets (in Federal Way) a few days ago with no luck. Pretty much out of options, I called a number I found on the intertubes for the Gambling Journal office and asked if they knew where I could pick up about 30 copies (2 coupons per day for the rest of the month). They suggested Freddie's Club in Fife.
The friendly security guard seemed willing to let me take "about 20 copies", but at the last second, he figured he'd better check with the manager. That gave me a few minutes to look at their "new" poker room, which they've moved out of their enclosed room and next to the other gaming tables. There's about six tables, and they have a $30 buy-in tournament at 11:30 a.m. daily.
The manager said that 20 copies was OK, so security counted out 20 copies for me. I'll just swing by there some time later this month and pick up the rest, unless they run out or if Palace or Happy Days ends up "finding" more copies in their back rooms.
So... at Happy Days this evening, I played two hands. The first one won when the dealer busted. The second one hit a blackjack. +$45 for two hands. I'm 8-9 and ahead $55 in this bonus hunt.
(I also cashed in my $100 chip today. I don't want to be holding it if they decide to go out of business without notice.)
