The oddity of casino laws: La Center poker

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.)

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

Something's wrong with my game, again

Here's my brick and mortar poker winnings and losses, since May:

5/11/2007	49
5/12/2007	-237
5/24/2007	16
5/29/2007	70
6/1/2007	-15
6/2/2007	210
6/7/2007	103
6/15/2007	-8
6/23/2007	200
7/2/2007	-125
7/10/2007	0
7/14/2007	-200
7/28/2007	-197

I haven't had a winning session in the last four. The big wins in June came when I felt on top of my game, the cards were running good, and I followed the strategy to raise with a good drawing hand in late position.

I hadn't changed that strategy, but in my July 14 session, I only won five hands, and my thought was that I was overplaying over cards. I vowed not to do that again.

Tonight, with a solid player to my right and an agressive raiser to my left, I was in a prime spot to raise with good drawing hands preflop (AQ? TT? K8s in late position?).

Bah.

I played two hours, dropped almost $200, and didn't win a single hand. Three times I was dealt AQ; three times the flop missed me entirely, and the betting (and the ending) showed that it had hit someone else. Once I got dealt TT, and the flop came AQ3. And once I got 66, and the board came 758/4/7, and I lost to a guy on the button playing 74s.

I'm lost. Over the last few years, I've read every poker book I can get my hands on, I understand the concepts of pot odds, the importance of position, and that tournament play and cash play are different. I know and believe Sklansky's fundamental theory: the money we make comes from opponents' mistakes, and the money we lose comes from our mistakes; a mistake is when we play our hand differently than we would if we knew the opponents' cards. I know that the most costly mistake isn't calling with a losing hand on the river, but instead is folding a winning hand on the river. But being down $573 for poker in 2007 (but down only $45.91 overall for the year -- thank goodness for all the money I've won with the match play coupons)... I'm clearly still doing something significantly wrong, and I'm not seeing what it is.

I thought perhaps it was that I tend to make continuation bets against opponents who won't fold -- betting in late position when I'm the first into the pot, even when I don't have a hand. An article in Card Player last month reminded me that the reason to make a continuation bet is to get opponents to fold, which few will do for only $3. But that's not the case -- I never even had a situation tonight where I was in late position and the pot hadn't been bet at yet.

I play tight. I'm easily the tightest at the table. When six or seven players see the flop, I'm rarely one of them. However, my tight play doesn't scare most players out of the pots when I go aggressive and raise, though, which is to be expected at the $3/$6 level. I raise on the button with K♠6♠, miss the flop, get out, and that's another $6 gone. Or I hit a spade draw, and call to the river, where I fold when I miss it.

I hate to say that it's just bad cards for the last four sessions; it feels like a cop out. It really feels like it tonight, though, when I never had top pair on the river (the two times I got that far), never hit big cards on the flop when I had them, and never completed a flopped flush draw.

Should I be getting into more pots? Should I be seeing the flop under the gun with QTo? Should I call with 75o in middle position? My leak seems large, but I'm obviously blind to it.

They know me, they know me not

The bonus hunt continues, and some unusual things have happened in the last week or so. The strangest? After being recognized as a quasi-regular for a couple of weeks, I got carded at the door yesterday afternoon. I haven't been carded in years.

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.

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 correction

I made a mistake a couple of weeks ago when I said that no-commission pai gow was a game with no house edge. No, the edge doesn't come, as a clueless Happy Days dealer said last week, that the players don't see the dealer's hand when they set their hands (W.T.F.)

No, the edge comes from the fact that ties aren't pushes (as I said earlier), but they are treated as wins for the dealer.

Once I get back to a real net connection, I'll find out what the edge really is. Playing as dealer makes a lot more sense if there's an edge.

(Edit March 15, 2008: Mooski, a local poker room manager, tells me that the house edge is 1.5%, and implied that playing as dealer at no-commission is a 1.5% edge for the player. That sounds about right.)

Overcards are my bane

I played $3/$6 at Palace last night, and it was four hours of a very slow leak. I think I won a total of five hands, none of which were hands I'd made on the flop. I played overcards to the flop every time I had them, and they never hit. Pocket tens saw a flop of AKQ, it was checked me me in late position, I bet, and everybody called. I was committed at that point, and in spite of not hitting a jack, I couldn't let it go. My one hand of pocket aces lost to two pair. I flopped top/bottom pair and lost to top two pair. My agressive raises in late position with Kxs or Qxs only paid off once, with QsJs, againt an all-in player with 8s2s who started the hand with only $10. AQo hit an ace on the flop, losing to AK. After the first two hours, down to $10, I bought in for another $100. I made it up to $140, then it slowly trickled away like the first $90 did. Like is often the case with me, I need to work on folding big cards after the flop if I don't have top pair, a flush draw, or an open ended straight draw. It's incredibly tough for me to throw away AJo when the flop comes something like T62 rainbow. At least I won all four Happy Days pai gow hands I played yesterday. Nice money, but skill-free winning isn't nearly as satisfying.

It's one long game

When it comes to gambling and probabilities, we often talk about "the long run." In the short run, just about anything can happen. You could roll snake eyes three times in a row. You could hit runner-runner to suck out with a winning flush, two hands in a row. Or, like I did in my June bonus hunt, you could go 31-41 in a game with a 51% house edge.

But in the long run, it's just one long game. After my last stop at Happy Days, my July totals are 18-10, +$240. Combine that with June, and I'm 49-51, exactly where probabilities say I should be. Have I reached that mythical "long run"? No. 100 hands does not a long run make. But it's an interesting checkpoint along the way.

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.)

Nothing much new

Not a lot new. A couple July pai gow games - up $20. PokerStars has been down a bit; I'm back to the problem of not being able to fold after I see the flop. A minor correction to my pai gow posting of last week: some Washington casinos take a 5% commission on wins. Look for "no-commission pai gow" instead.

Law change: $25 is now $40

Yeah, I'm a few months behind on this one. In the Washington State Gambling Commission's March Focus on Gambling newsletter (.pdf), they announced a rule change that became effective April 9: poker wagering limits, which had been a maximum of $25, have been bumped up to $40. That explains why I'm seeing $8/$16 and $10/$20 tables now, when I never remembered seeing them before.

The newsletters are a fun read -- you get to see what happens to dealers who are caught stealing, who deal drunk, who rig raffles, and who give out money to players who don't win. There's also lists of casinos who allow minors to play and who don't file their paperwork on time.

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 not better after all

On Tuesday, the dealer told me that the bonus coupons were limited to two per day instead of three; the pit boss confirmed. My guess is that the poker room match play coupons are allowed three per day (one of each color), but that the newspaper coupons I have are limited to two per day. Whether "day" means calendar day (midnight to midnight) or business day (11 AM to 7 AM), I'm not sure, and I've doubled up a few days, thinking I might find out.

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've got a tell

Cool. Last Friday I played at the Palace $3/$6 game and ended up down $4 after about three hours. There weren't any really exiting players, no drunks or anything, and the play was fairly tight.

One of the poker tips I read several months ago has to do with the flop. You've got AK, you've made your bet, it's been called, and here comes the flop. What is the first thing you're looking for? (Hint: It's not an ace or a king.)

You should be looking at the person who called you, to see if the flop helped or hurt them. You should be looking for their reaction. You can look at the flop itself in a few seconds. That first instant the cards come down though, you should be looking at another player. Same with the turn and the river.

I've tried to do this, but get distracted and maybe only really do it about a third of the time. On Friday, I've got AK, and the flop comes with three little cards. It's checked to me, and I bet. I get one caller.

The turn is a king. I'm looking at the cards, not the player, and he checks. I bet. He thinks for a minute, then says "I think you've got it. When that king came down, you smiled." He folds.

I need to watch other players more. And smile more.

Bad variance, no biscuit

I've lost 5 of the last 6 bonus hunting hands, bringing my win/loss record to 11-18, net +$35. Bah.

The bonus gets better

At tonight's game, the dealer told me that management has changed the terms on the coupons. They will now accept three per day instead of two. Sweet.

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.

Bonus coupons secure, sir

Happy Days had a big stack of Gambling Journals in their entryway yesterday. I've got enough to almost last me until the coupons expire, and plan on picking up the remainder this evening. Through yesterday, I've won 10 and lost 13 so far, and I'm up +$55. Expected result after 11 sessions would be somewhere around $105, but the $55 is within expected variance.

Anatomy of a monster pot

It's a 10-player 5¢/10¢ limit table at PokerStars. I'm in middle position, and am dealt 3♣ 3♥. Four players and I call, another player raises, and we get seven players to the flop:

5♥ 7♥ 3♦

The first three players check to me. I've hit my set of threes, but there's a flush draw out there, and if some crazies are at this table, an inside straight draw. It's too early to assume that I'm behind, and if I'm not behind, the proper move here is to bet. I'm in for a nickel. Two players call, and the original raiser raises again. It's unlikely to me that he raised preflop on a flush draw; I put him on a high pocket pair or two high cards, none of which matched the board. I'm still ahead. The cutoff player, the button, and the small blind fold, but the big blind calls. It's time to raise to build the pot, because even if the two players between me and the raiser fold, the three players to my right are sure to at least call. Everyone calls, including the original raiser. Nobody's got a made hand yet, I'm sure.

The turn makes the board 5♥ 7♥ 3♦ / 8♥.

A straight might have hit; a flush might have hit. I'm sure I'm behind now, but the first two players check, so I bet 10¢ to find out where I am. Two callers again, and then the original raiser raises. I'm putting him on a couple of high hearts, maybe KJ. He's hit the flush, and I'm behind. With everyone else calling, though, I do to. I need a 5, 7, 3, or 8 to hit the board to make me a full boat to win. That's 10 cards, and the pot odds are certainly better than 4.5:1 here. Heck, even a raise might have been a good choice, but I just call. Six players to the river:

The river card is a nice looking one, making the board 5♥ 7♥ 3♦ / 8♥ / 7♠

I've hit my full house. The only hands that I can reasonably expect that someone has to beat me are pocket 5's, 7's, or 8's. Any of those hands would have raised more aggressively on the flop, I think. I'm nearly certain I'm winning, and I think someone else has their flush and are incorrectly sure they're ahead.

It's checked to me, and I bet. To my surprise, a guy to my left (KarizZma2k) raises. I think he's got a seven and he doesn't think we have flushes. Good news for us. The original raiser just calls (does he know his flush is no good?), I raise, and the guy with the sevens caps it. Five of us go to the showdown.

The late raiser, shows 7♣ 6♦ for three of a kind, Sevens. Just what I expected. He was on a straight draw, and backed into trips.

The big raiser, as I almost predicted, shows Q♥ K♥ for a King high flush.

Another player mucks his T♠ 8♠ (I've no idea why he stuck around after the flop). The fourth player mucks his pocket deuces (how can he stay in with a board like that?) My full house, threes over sevens, wins. I take down a $4.72 pot, netting $3.30. In the chat box, I express my amazement.

LauricT: wow
KarizZma2k: 3 3 vs 3 7 ???
KarizZma2k: you win???
LauricT: 333-77 versus 777-85
KarizZma2k: oh okay didnt see :-D
KarizZma2k: full house
KarizZma2k: :-D

B&M bonus hunting: that's more like it

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.)

The Happy Days bonus hunt continues

In the Happy Days bonus hunt, I'm up to 13 games. It's a statistically unlikely* 4 wins and 8 losses, plus I split aces once for another +$20 win and a loss. At 5-9, I'm up $10.

Palace was out of Gambling Journal's today. As I feared, as the month progresses, the coupons will be harder to find. I've got three coupons left. Maybe Freddy's in Fife has some.

Surprisingly, in my seven brief bonus hunting visits, six of the dealers had never seen these coupons before. The seventh didn't act like they were anything strange.

The pit boss today says that they've brought back match play coupons for poker tournament play. However, instead of two match play coupons, they only give out one per game. Before they cracked down in April, they were giving out two match play coupons for the $25 tournaments, and with three tournaments a day, players were either using six coupons a day, or were following the restrictions on the coupons and giving away their extra four. Now, they can use all three coupons each day.

---

* My calculated guess is that there's a 15% chance of running this poorly after 14 hands, based on the Excel function =NORMDIST(5,7,1.87,TRUE), which the Wizard of Odds' June 27, 2003 column implied was the right calculation to use here.

/Oh, and that's my actual chip in the photo, not random clip art like I usually grab. I've never actually held on to a $100 chip for more than a trip from the roulette table to the cashier's cage before. I feel special.

Hot dog!

Nice. I've driven past the Lucky Dog casino near Hoodsport several times, stopping in briefly twice in the last few years -- and leaving just as fast. Blackjack, PaiGow, a couple other non-indian table games, and lots and lost of slots. No poker... until now?

Their one-page web site says they've got a new poker room. I wonder if they have any poker players in that room?

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.

SciFi museum misses the obvious

I went to the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle on Sunday (after a disappointing visit to the Experience Music Project), and was surprised by what they had, but even moreso by what they didn't have.

For example, Neal Stephenson's handwritten manuscript for The Baroque Cycle is a four-foot-tall stack of fountain pens and paper (I still haven't gotten into book three yet). That was surprising. There were several replicas of Star Wars and Star Trek props and characters, with a few real props mixed in. This was a bit disappointing, because what's the point of having a resin replica of Yoda? It's kind of neat on its own, but replicating the late 90's experience of going to a WOTC store wasn't what I was expecting.

The biggest oversight, IMHO: There's the Jetsons. There's Galaxy Quest. There's X-Files. But there's no Doctor Who.*

Granted, I know that most of their collection is based on loans from private collections, and perhaps there's only one collector of Doctor Who stuff out there, and he won't be around for another five years.

* OK, there's one 3"x4" black and white photo of four daleks and Tom Baker, buried in a timeline on a 30-foot-long wall.

Author of MS Word banned from WSOP

Update 6/12/07: They let him back in, calling it a mistake. Rich, but not smooth.

Wikipedia says:

Richard "Quiet Lion" Brodie is the original author of Microsoft Word, was employee #77 at Microsoft and is now a professional poker player. During the World Series of Poker of 2006, he mentioned the red squiggly underline marking misspelled words in Microsoft Word was his idea.

On Brodie's blog he writes:

On May 10, Harrah’s sent certified letters to several high rollers informing them that their business was no longer wanted at Caesars Palace or any of the other Harrah’s properties in Nevada, California, and Arizona. I was one of them. ... I was being 86ed because they couldn't figure out how to make a profit off me.

Now understand, the only games I play are poker and video poker. In poker, the house makes a 100% guaranteed profit straight off the top. One reason I like video poker is because you can get lucky and win. You hit a royal flush every 40,000 hands or so. If you’re lucky enough to hit two, you’re ahead! If you hit three, you’re ahead for a long time!

Boy, have I been lucky at Harrah’s.

I hit four huge royal flushes in the last year at three of the Las Vegas Harrah’s properties. Not surprisingly, I’m ahead, although I’ve put 80% of it back.

Dumb move, Harrah's. I expect to hear a lot more about this dumb move the next few weeks.

(Nod to Patrissimo)

The eggman, the walrus, and the lizard king

Saturday night was the best night I've had in a brick-and-mortar casino, almost making up for the $237 loss I had a few weeks ago. First, let's back up to Friday night.

I arrive at Palace around 10:15 p.m., and get on the long list for $3/$6. I play PaiGow for about 30 minutes, breaking even, until a seat becomes available. The table is quiet, slow, and tight. Three of the people at the table are buddies, ribbing each other a bit, but from their talk, they know a bit about pot odds and basic poker strategy. I could tell this would be a tough night.

In spite of that, after almost three hours of play, I ended up down only $15. At a looser table, I'm sure I'd have been ahead. I had the chance to prove this on Saturday.

I arrived at about 10:30, and got a seat immediately. The 60ish woman to my left immediately introduced herself and several others at the table, including Eric, who talked a mile a minute, frequently making sure we all knew, "I am the walrus, I am the eggman," and that whoever had just scooped a big pot was "the Lizard King. You can do anything (koo koo ka choo)." He frequently raised UTG without looking at his cards, and nicknamed me "Talky McTalk Talk" for my relative silence at the table.

An hour later, with my stack $120 larger, he went into his wallet for another $100. He ordered a drink, but when the waitress came back, with the poker room manager, they'd cut him off. Too bad, but he still lost his next hundred over the next hour.

The lady to my left didn't do badly at all -- she seemed to be getting all the money I wasn't. Although she saw almost every flop, she folded quickly if she hadn't hit it, and if she did hit it, the table was always willing to call her raise.

I was up about $190 when the normal murmur of the poker room was interrupted by a loud clattering of falling chips, then very loud and angry female screams. At the $8/$16 table, a petite young far-eastern looking lady was being put in a half nelson by security, while she tightly gripped the collar of a 40ish short stout Filipino guy, cutting off his breathing, hauling him over the dealer, and not letting him go, screaming at him in Korean or Vietnamese or some other Asian language. Security finally broke her hold on him, and carried her out.

Later in the night, after Eric the Walrus shared urinal talk with someone at the table, and the dealer from that table rotated to ours, we got the story. It was a domestic squabble. She'd called him five times on his cell, and he didn't answer. When she came to the casino and saw that he was gambling, again, she went batty. The sound of falling chips was her reaching onto the table and mixing players' stacks. What a mess for security to sort out. I'm really surprised that they didn't call the police -- maybe they want to keep things like this off the public record.

Unfortunately, PsychoWoman's tirade and The Walrus' trip to the ATM really slowed down the table's talk and speed, and my final hour was full of hands won on the flop instead of three players showing down on the river.

Over the night, few hands stick out as memorable, just a general impression that mediocre cards raised on the button to build the pot paid off several times. For example, Q♠ 8♠ rivered a flush. J♦ 3♦ hit top pair on the flop and held up through the river, forcing the other player to fold.

The most unusual hand was my busted flush draw on a board of something like 2♠ 5♦ 4♠ 8♥ 6♦ when I held K♠ 8♠. I'm on the button, and the guy two seats to my right, who has been a pretty tight player all night, and who's been checking and calling me on this hand, bets $6. I go for a semi-bluff -- he might be trying to buy it for cheap, and my top pair may be good enough. I say "raise" and make it $6 more. He tosses his a pair of threes face up into the middle of the table (a 6-hi straight), and says "Do you have the seven?" (for the 8-hi straight). I hold my cards, face down, just above the table, over the line. The dealer takes his threes, mucks them, and pushes me the pot. I then drop my (losing!) cards face down on the table and start stacking up the chips. "What?" questions the tight player, "I had a straight!"

"He raised you," pointed out the dealer. "I should have asked if you were folding. Sorry."

I toss the dealer a slightly larger than usual tip.

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)

Well I'll be... I'm a loser!

For tournament play, see SharkScope's review of my play: 109 tournaments entered, $84 lost (Pokerstars and FullTilt)

For overall online play, I just created a chart (at right) showing online poker play exclusively (no blackjack, roulette, bonuses... nothing more than pure ring and tournament play), and it looks like I just dropped below zero in mid-March. Surprising to me is the fact that I've never been more than $300 ahead (maxing at $299.80 in November), and I'm at -$47 today.

My live ring game numbers are even more interesting, although there's a lot less information, since I play live games a lot less. Since I started keeping track in January 2006, I've had eight ring game sessions where I've lost $50 or more, and a grand total of one session where I've won more (+$120 at 4:30 a.m. in a short handed Renton Silver Dollar game).

The bright spot? In live tournament play, I'm up $216. And (not surprising) I won a lot more ($3K+) in my bonus hunting phase last summer.

The fact that I sucketh at live ring games shouldn't be a surprise to me. Last October, I wrote:

I'm trying to figure out why I do so badly at live tables with really bad players. ... When I have the best hand, I know I've got it, and I raise the pot. This generally has the intended effect -- scaring all but one or two other players out. With few exceptions, though, they limp along, and hit their winning card on the river.

I'd hate to play so tight that all I do is play sets, flush draws, and open ended straight draws after the flop. Folding TPTK makes no sense, but when six players see the flop with six really random hands, I think I might always be behind two pair every time.

But after reading a few articles (Google search: winning ring games against maniac), I'm more convinced that's exactly how I need to play. I may give it a try tonight.

(PS: Someone else thinks I'm a loser too. To quote them exactly, "fucktard ... know nothing, Dumb Ass... clueless". I haven't been flamed like that since college. Should I be proud to have been flamed on a WalMart discussion blog? Yeah, that's cool.)

Overheard at the table last night

"How did you know I'd hit the straight? You must have ESPN."

Unbelievable

I played $3/$6 at Palace again tonight. Results: Not good at all.

Time played: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Number of dealers cycled through: 5

Number of hands won: 0

Rebuys: 2

Money lost; $237.00, the most I've ever lost in a brick and mortar casino.

Pocket kings? Lost to T8o which rivered a straight.

Pocket queens? Rivered by J2s which hit trip 2's.

Pocket queens again? Hit a queen on the flop, lost to a runner-runner flush.

Pocket jacks? Folded to a bet and a raise on a KQx flop.

Pocket nines? Got them twice. Folded once to three flopped overcards, lost the second time to a K on the flop.

Pocket sixes? Bet aggressively with a flop of AA4. Turned out he had A5, and to make it worse, rivered a 5.

Pocket threes? Missed the flop.

AJ? Three times, missed the flop every time.

KQ? Flopped a K, and lost to JQ with a rivered straight.

65s on the button? 98s in late position? Missed the flop. Missed the flop.

Unbelievable bad luck.

Folding a straight flush

I played the $3/$6 table at Palace tonight. The rake + jackpot rake is $1 less than Happy Days, and the atmosphere and clientele are a lot nicer.

I bought in for $100 and bounced between $81 and $125. The table was very loose, and when I sat down, Scott in the seat to my left cautioned me not to fear the $400 in chips that the nervous, A.D.D., obsessive compusive guy in seat 5 had -- he'd had a lot more than that when he hit a jackpot hand an hour earlier. Indeed, seat 5 was in for every flop, and it was the rare flop that was less than $6 to see.

About an hour in, I'm dealt J♣ T♣ in the small blind. By the time it gets back to me, five players are in and the betting has been capped at $12. I figure someone's got a high pair, so I fold. Five players see the flop: 9♣ 4♣ Q♣. I'd have had a good flush.

The betting slows, but four players pay $3 each to see a 3♦ come on the turn. It's checked around to the button, who puts in $6 and is called by the other three.

The river is the K♣. I'd have had a king- high straight flush, which would have paid a jackpot. Instead, two players go to showdown, and the button shows A♣ 4♥ -- she'd have bet to cap it on the river if I'd have stayed in.

Ah, well. That's poker. I continued to play super tight, until about two hours in, with an all-spade flop, I've got J6o (no spades) in the big blind and try to buy it. I scare five of the nine players away, and my pure bluff check-raise on the turn card (a fourth spade) scares away two more.

I pair my 6 on the river, and when the last remaining player checks to me, I bet. She calls, I sheepishly show my two pair, and she folds. The table goes nuts, as they'd pegged me as.a solid by-the-book rock.

As 1:00 a.m. approached, I decided to head home the next time I get the blinds. I fold every hand, go get a couple of racks when I fold UTG+1, and then discover AJo UTG. I could easily leave now, folding this hand, and be up $23 for the night. Instead, I choose to play it, with with TPTK, and go home +$49. Good times.

Poker bot vs. gold farmers: what's the difference?

There's a fascinating discussion thread on the 2+2 forums about some bot-like activity at FullTilt.com. The thread is currently at 166 pages long, and I've only made it about halfway through, but it looks like a poker player analyzed more than 300,000 hands and found four players who had statistics that were so similar that it was statistically unlikely (beyond three standard deviations) that they weren't being run by a bot. In addition, among the 300,000 hands at the same game ($1/$2 NLH), the four players had never played against each other. The poster reported his findings to FullTilt in February. The accounts were locked in April, then recently reactivated.

After about 40 pages of discussion -- which included IP tracking and net searches that revealed the alleged bot operator's name, home town, photo, and the fact that he played in the WSOP main event last year, the names of aliases that he uses on several other poker sites, and players razzing him from the rail while he continued to play -- a forum regular, Nation, disclosed that he was an acquaintance of the player in question (nlnuts), and had seen the player's setup: five players on five computers in a room outside of Pittsburgh, with a very specific script, all playing identically, providing each other with encouragement and advice, and sharing in the winnings. Some people on the thread refuse to believe that a team of players can be disciplined enough to follow a script and have results be so statistically similar. Others question whether it's ethical for players not in a hand to be giving advice to someone playing. Others seem to have no problem with it.

I do believe that they've basically got a team of five poker playing gold farmers. The question of ethics, interestingly enough, was brought up a few weeks ago in the Ante Up podcast, when professional player Paul Wasicka (2007 National Heads-Up champion, 2006 WSOP main event runner-up, cover boy on the May 15, 2007 issue of Card Player)...

got this all started with a recent article in Bluff Magazine where he outlined the advantages of joint sessions online (two players share a bankroll and decisions, but play only one hand). He called in to give us his views on it. He admits that he never considered the fact that anyone would consider it unethical when he wrote the article, but was forced to consider the notion based on feedback he got. In the end, though, he decided that it's alright because online poker is a different animal, and since everyone else can use joint sessions or tracking software or any number of other aids, you shouldn't deny yourself the same advantages. His final point: If you play online, you need to be aware of these issues.

The rule forever has been one player to a hand. Because it's not able to be enforced, that appears to no longer be the rule online.

FullTilt's response: "During the investigation we found the evidence to be inconclusive in supporting either determination (human or bot). After careful consideration, the evidence did not warrant the seizure of funds and permanent account closure."