And then there were two

Sahara's poker room, pre-2011 closure

Another sign that the poker boom is over: with today's announcement of the closure of the El Cortez poker room, there's only two places left on Fremont Street to play live poker: Golden Nugget and Binion's (the Plaza has electronic poker).

On the strip, the poker "room" at Riviera closed earlier this year.

Poker rooms closed in the South Sound

Because I'm not that observant and because I haven't played poker in a Washington casino in a couple of years, I hadn't noticed until today that Federal Way's PJ Pockets Casino closed more than a year ago, on January 31. My lack of observation extends to the fact that Fife's Freddie's Club closed on June 17.

Also closed since I last updated the blog: Bowlero Lanes (September 19, 2011)

According to the state gambling commission, there are currently 59 house banked cardrooms in the state. A little over three years ago, there were 73.

New old poker room in Lakewood

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

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

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.)

Dave and Busters in Seattle?

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.

One less poker room in Lakewood

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.

What a trip - Vegas and the Inland Empire

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.

WSGC: All in for $500? Oops.

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.

Bad poker night

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.

Electronic poker tables in Washington?

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.

Phil Gordon Freakonomics interview

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."

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

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.

An 827% player edge at the office Christmas party

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

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!).

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.

A $100 lesson: the idiot at the table

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.

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

With a little help from my friends

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.

I suck at this poker thing

For all the reading, for all the talking, for the little blogging I do, you'd think I'd know how to play this game. You'd think I'd be ahead. Heck, with all the spending I've done with my winnings (Disney World, a moped, charity), you'd think I'd be way ahead.

Not according to Excel. I've finally gotten around to plotting my overall poker profit, online plus brick and mortar plus home games. Since January 1, 2006, I hit a high of +$292.83 just before Thanksgiving 2006, and bottomed out two months ago at -$483.18. I'm now at about -$24. It was my bonus hunting and other gambling wins that have paid for all the perks. Who knew?

Looking at the chart (right), what seems immediately obvious is the effect of individual brick and mortar sessions compared to individual online sessions, where the big B&M losses (-$237 in early May) and wins (+$210 and +$200 in June) incredibly overshadow the big online losses (-$58, -$52) and wins (two at +$36). A few bad B&M nights have to be made up with a few good B&M nights. A run of good online nights won't even come close.

If I could get back to playing $5/$10 online like I did back in the wild heyday of 2004, the difference would be a lot less. I'd also be losing my money a lot faster, because online play has improved immensely, and the weakest fish are now extinct.

Yeah, those were the days.

(Aside: Happy Days pai gow bonus hunting is going well. I'm 11-7 in July, +$150.)

Is that my hole?

I spent a good chunk of the Memorial Day weekend re-reading a book I'd read a long time ago, Gary Carson's Complete Book of Hold Em Poker, and may have discovered something I'd forgotten. Carson says that in really loose limit games, with five or more players seeing the flop, it's more likely that the best draw will beat the best hand, in part because there are so many draws out there against few made hands.

I also read an article in this week's Card Player that talks about tracking pre flop play, and STRONGLY recommends that one's pre-flop raise percentage should be about 75% of the his VP$IP% (voluntarily put money in pot). In other words, 3/4 of the time, when you put money in the pot, you should be raising. My percentages were 9/21; less than 50%. I'm seeing the right pots, but not building them when I need to.

Combining these two concepts, I played online last night with my last $3.66 at a .05/.10 table,, and in 30 minutes had about $5.50. I went to Palace after work today (family was at other separate events), and turned $100 into $170.

Granted, two sessions aren't enough to call a trend, but percentage-wise, these are two of the biggest sessions I've had in quite a while. This may be the hole that's developed in my game the last several months.

Could be all the ELO songs I downloaded last night, too. You can't beat a bit of ELO. (Edit: getting the quote right, and linking it)