Happy Days match play: it's over!

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.

September match play results, four month summary

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.

First Card Ace

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.)

Match play done for July; outlook uncertain

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.

Bonus hunting slots? Lucky Dog.

I poked my head into the Lucky Dog casino on the way back from a food run to Shelton (we've sequestered ourselves at our Hood Canal place to marathon read Deathly Hallows), to look at their poker room, and found that they've got a daily promotion where you get a $5 match play coupon for table games, and they'll load $30 on your slot card for $25.

I'm not sure if there's anything stopping someone from immediately cashing out their card and collecting the extra $5, but in the interest of fairness, I burned through $18 worth of $1.50 spins (Meltdown's got a tiny top prize, meaning more then usual smaller payouts), ending with $51 on the card. I stopped at the $3 blackjack table, pocketed one chip for my collection, won the match play, won one more hand, toked the dealer a buck, and ended up ahead another $9.

Up $34. Not bad for a 10 minute stop. I also got a $2 food coupon that I should have used, but didn't.

Oh, and their poker room is -- to put it nicely -- quaint. The size of a normal house's kitchen, it's got only two 10-seat tables. It doesn't open until 5 p.m. (although I was there at 5 and it was empty) and closes at 2 (midnight on weeknights). No idea what they spread, but with only two tables, you know it's probably $3/$6 and one higher limit game.

Pai gow primer

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.

Yippy skippy, July's got a coupon, too

I grabbed a July issue of the Western Gambling Journal from Happy Days this evening. It's got $10 match play coupons again. Sweet. Let the bonus hunting continue.

(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?

Earl, My Name Is Earl, "Born a Gamblin Man"

Back in black

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.

Bonus hunting, fish in the Palace, and a B&M SNG

On Tuesday, I blogged about Happy Days' match play coupons. I only had one to use on Tuesday night, but then used two each on Wednesday, Thursday, and at lunch today. The results so far are as expected:

Seven games. Four losses (-$40). Three wins (+$60). Net +$20.

That's the beauty of the match play bonus. More losses than wins, and I'm still ahead. The only somewhat-tough part is tracking down the coupons. Palace has plenty, but I don't think I'll get away with taking 40 copies of the Western Gambling Journal at once. I grabbed five from there on my way home Wednesday, and six more last night. I also took all five that Bowlero had next to their pull tab machines yesterday.

Yes, Bowlero has a poker room. It's a ratty, cramped room, with nobody playing in it. There was one Omaha game on when I showed up last night for the 8:00 tournament ($25 buy-in, $100 added to the prize pool by the casino). Eleven players total, top two positions pay ($210 and $100, I think). Online, that's called a "Sit-n-go" (SNG) tournament, because it starts any time a table full of people is available. In brick-and-mortar casinos, SNG's almost never happen except in Vegas, because you'll never get 10 people spontaneously wanting to start a tourney. But that's essentially what it was last night. The blinds jumped up incredibly fast: blinds double every 12 minutes, starting at 25/50, so 48 minutes in, the blinds are at $400/$800. That's insane if you're a tight player (like me) who still has somewhere around the starting stack of $2500. I blinded out and placed 4th; the top three players chopped the prize pool equally three ways.

I was unimpressed; I don't think I'll be back there. The best feature that the place has going for it is an Addams Family pinball machine in the bowling alley arcade, and even that has a busted "Thing Flips" flipper. Yes, Don: I was devastated. Thing will flip ("Well played, Thing" You suck, Thing), but you can't flip it yourself, which is key to keeping the ball from falling down the left outhole most of the time. The table was also off level, tilted to the right, but I didn't figure that out until my third game.

I left and went to Palace and played $3/$6 for a few hours. The symbolism was unintentional, but I ordered fish and chips with my meal comp. I feasted on the fish, and ended up with plenty of chips left over.

I now love playing at tables with guys who play any two cards. Sure, they'll suck out (e.g., his two pair against my AK, with a board of QA3/K/7), but more often then not, they'll go to the river with bottom pair -- or worse.

Last night, one of the worst players I've ever had the pleasure of encountering sat down two seats to my right. In his two hours, he was never sure how much he could bet ($3? $6? Can I raise to $8?), and I think he folded after the flop twice; otherwise he saw the river every time. The other players at the table did their part, too, telling him what a good play it was when he runner-runnered two pair with his 74o against another player's top-pair-top-kicker, and sympathizing with him when, on the button, he lost to 98s with his 54o, with a board of something like 9K6/T/6.

Read that closely again. He called a $6 bet on the button with two cards lower than the board. Heck, he called a $6 bet on the turn with no draws and four overcards on the board. "Money doesn't matter to me," he said. That's great news for us, because we're certainly happy to take yours. Munch munch munch. That's good fish. He won enough bizarre hands (like the aforementioned runner-runner 74o) that he had chips for about 75 minutes before he ran dry.

The guy directly to my right (who called me his "nemesis" for my propensity to raise his calls) had great difficulty containing his squeals of glee when the fish bought in for another $100 after his smoke break. Really. It was like sitting next to a little kid on Christmas morning. Fortunately, money flows clockwise: +$128 for the night ($+103 if you take out the $25 Bowlero buy-in; I do.)

Bonus hunting in meatspace: HD's match play is back

I was thumbing through the June Western Gambling Journal today, and guess what I discovered: a full page ad for Happy Days, aside an article trumpeting their new management and daily tournaments at noon, 7:00 p.m., and midnight. Most significantly, though, is a coupon in the ad for $10 match play. Yep. Match play is back (for at least the next 25 days).

"Limit 2 match play coupons per day per customer. Expires June 30, 2007." A $10 match play coupon is worth just a little under $5 (that's the odds of winning (47% or so) times $10), so with two per day, for the next 25 days... that's $250. We'll see how long it takes before they change their policy or make me persona non grata.

I need to start stockpiling Gambling Journals.

No more match play at Happy Days

It's been two weeks since I played the Happy Days tourney, and it looks like they've made a lot of changes, none of which are particularly good.

• No more 2x $10 match play coupons with the $25 buy-in. The dealer I talked to said that management finally did the math and realized what a good deal it was for the players. They figured players would have to play 30 hands for the casino to break even, and players generally weren't doing that. This change effectively increases the cost of the tourney by about $9.80.
• The $1 blackjack is gone. It's up to $3 minimum bets, which makes it just like everywhere else in town.
• In tournaments, when a waiting list player gets seated, they're required to post the missed blind. They've never done that before, and they don't seem too sure of how to do it now. The worst situation I saw was at the $400/$800 level; someone sat down UTG and had to post $900 of their $5000 starting chips. $500 was dead money; to play the hand they had to throw in another $400. That's a quarter of their stack committed, just for sitting down with a mediocre hand. That's dumb enough that I'm considering not playing there again; it'll bite me soon enough. I didn't stick around long enough to tell if it applies to players who channged tables. Logically, it should, but that's even more stupid. I pushed my 66 against a QQ and went home.
• Until yesterday, they still had the $120000 bad beat jackpot, but finally gave up, realizing that it'll be forever before someone wins quads-over-quads. The state requires the money to go back to the players, so they're awarding an hourly high hand prize of $100 for the next 1200 hours, starting this morning. The result, from the chatter around the tournament table, is players who will play any Axo or Kxo, hoping to get a high full house. KKK22 won the noon prize today.
• At least the coffee cups have gotten better. They're glass instead of styrofoam now.

Weekend of tournaments, Event 1: Happy Days 7 PM

(Edit: originally titled "Four for four: respect my authoritah!") After yesterday's rant about how I seem to suck at low limit brick and mortar ring games, I spent a few minutes talking to my wife about it. As I described it to her, I think I discovered what the problem is: I play very tight, and very aggressive, and in online play, and in tournaments, that aggression is rewarded -- I frequently take down pots unopposed. In low limit ring games, where true donkeys will call with almost anything, aggression is very rarely rewarded with an uncontested pot. Somebody's gonna go to the river, and somebody's gonna hit two pair.

The only solutions I see: tournament play only. I don't know that playing higher stakes would make a difference, and I really doubt that I could play as aggressively at the higher level; it's too intimidating.

So, with the wife and kid on a trip this weekend to Ocean Shores, I'm spending the weekend playing as many tournaments as possible. It's started out well -- at tonight's 7:00 Happy Days tournament, I placed third, netting $156 (plus $10 in blackjack match play, plus another $10 in non-match play BJ waiting for the tourney to start.) I've placed in the money every time in the last four Happy Days tournaments, and have won four of the seven brick and mortar tournaments I've entered this year.

I tried something new tonight, which allowed me to finish in third place instead of fifth, which is a big chunk of change: when it gets down to the final table, don't worry about getting blinded out. Almost everyone has a small stack compared to the blinds, and you're going to lose a couple of players every orbit. Let the other players knock each other out. Even if your on the big blind of 10000, and your stack has only 10000 left, there's no need to call with a less than premium hand. You've got another orbit left in you -- let some other people get knocked out, and you'll end up in the bigger money.

Net: +$176