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."

Playing Roulette as a Business

(In which I drop the phrase "WTF?" several times)

OK, keep laughing. Yes, Playing Roulette as a Business is the actual title of a book out there. I discovered it at the library a few weeks ago, and it's so chock full of misconseptions that I think I was irritating other library patrons with my laughter.

The system? Bet two units on one block of six numbers, bet two units on another block of six numbers, and bet one unit on the five number block of 0, 00, 1, 2, 3. If you know anything about roulette, you're already saying "WTF?!", but if not, let me explain why this is so dumb.

There's 38 slots on a roulette wheel. If you bet $1 on a single number, beat the 38:1 odds, and win, you get $35, plus keep your original $1. The difference between the $36 you get and the $38 you should is the house edge. The edge, on a percentage basis, is the $2 difference divided by the $38 you should get, which is 5.26%. That's a huge house edge -- don't play this game if you are in it to make money -- "as a business". Heh.

If you bet $1 on a six-number block and win, you'll get $5 plus your $1 back. Figuring out the payoff for almost any $1 bet is easy: it's 36 divided by the number of numbers covered. Betting on black, which covers 18 numbers? That's 36/18, so you'll get $2 ($1 won, plus your original $1).

However, the five number block of 0, 00, 1, 2, 3 only pays back $6 plus the original $1, although it should be paying $7.20 plus $1. That's the worst bet in roulette, with a 7.89% house edge.

The author says that the 6/6/5 blocks of numbers he recommends work because they're spread out around the wheel, making it more likely that they'll hit. Again, WTF? Whether the 17 numbers are scattered around the wheel or whether they're one big wedge of 17 numbers, the odds of hitting any of them are the same: 17 in 38.

He correctly disparages the Martingale system, which has you double your bets after every loss. Your bets would be 1-2-4-8-16-32-64-128 and so on. The obvious problem with the system is that when you hit a losing streak, you're betting $64 or $128 after eight or nine losses in order to win $1.

The author's solution? Use a 1-1-1-2-4-8-16-32-64-128 progression. WTF? That's just the Martingale with two extra losing sessions tacked onto the beginning. When you're in the middle of a losing "streak", the wheel doesn't know that you've lost or won the previous spin.

The most amusing part of the book came at the very, very end. On the back cover of the book is the following:

R. J. Smart is the pseudonym of a Nevada roulette croupier. He prefers to remain anonymous and hopes to earn enough royalties from sales of this book to permit expansion of his roulette activities to casinos other than the one in which he works.

WTF? The author of Playing Roulette as a Business is apparently unable to play roulette as a business, and his system apparently doesn't even give him enough bankroll to play somewhere else (WTF does that mean?).

So in conclusion, to play roulette as a business, you've got to:
1) Make the worst possible bet on the wheel
2) Follow a system that the author says not to follow
3) Trust a guy who admits that he's funding his roulette play from roulette book royalties.

WTF?

Spread, slots, spins, and slowness

A recap of my gamblin' activities in Spokane follows.

Friday: After the pre-event dessert, I returned briefly to my hotel, then moseyed over to the bowling alley across the street. The table games were jumping, but when I poked my head into the poker room, it was like entering a cone of silence. Four empty tables, and a lonely looking security guard talking to the cashier. They said that once the 6:30 tournament had finished, everyone bailed out. They did, however, refer me to "Ringo's" casino just a few blocks down the road.

Ringo's offered $5/$10 and $2-$6 spread. I'd encountered spread once before (at the now-bankrupt Northstar Casino, where I watched a few games of $1-$8 spread), but I'd never played. I like it a lot -- the blinds are lower than $3/$6 (being $1 and $2 instead of $1 and $3), and a too-tight player like me will still get action from a few players when I raise to $4 or $6 or $8 pre-flop. I was up for a while, down for a while, and ended +$13 after two hours of play. It was time to go to bed -- the cache machine was starting early on Saturday.

Saturday: After the cache machine dinner, I considered going to Northern Quest, the big indian casino near Spokane. I knew that their only tournaments were 10:30 a.m. daily, so it'd be cash games only. I wasn't dressed for it, though, and as exhausting as the day was, once I made it back to the hotel to change, I decided to go to sleep instead. That was probably for the best -- I play crappy poker when I'm tired.

Sunday: I woke up earlier than I expected, and figured I'd hit Northern Quest on the way home. I wanted to be home by 6:00 p.m., because that's when the rest of the family would be back from visting the in-laws, and my mapping software showed that it would be a 5½ hour drive from the casino to my front door. To play it safe, I'd have to be out of there by noon. No tournament for me this morning.

I arrived at about 9:15 and signed up on the $3/$6 list. Their poker room is one of the nicest ones I've seen in the state. Ten tables, new looking felt, fairly comfy chairs, lots of room. They gave me a pager, and I went and signed up for the players club. I got a free wooden pen set and deck of cards. Yay. I played on the slots (-$20) and roulette (-$24) for a while. The slots were disappointing, because I thought I'd read that this was the one casino in the state with slots that actually take coins instead of tickets or cards; it doesn't. Roulette was fun, because I tried out a new system instead of betting on my standard numbers. Yes, I know it's a dumb unwinnable game, and no systems work -- see my next posting for my amusing take on this.

I returned to the poker room at about 10:00 and waited, read a couple poker magazines, waited, read news on my blackberry, and waited some more. At 10:30, the $3/$6 game broke, and the tournament started with 60 players at six tables, plus 20 alternates. During the first 15 minute level, nobody busted out. The empty four tables weren't being used, because even though there were 15 people on the list (with my name at the top), they didn't have enough dealers.

At 11:00 I bailed, hit the road, and drove west. Almost two hours, no poker seat open. It's a nice looking poker room, but I question how well it's managed.

I stopped in Ellensburg for lunch at about 2:15, and discovered the Wild Goose Casino. I poked my head in, but a tournament had just started at 1:30, and with a 2-3 hour drive ahead of me, I couldn't afford to wait. I had lunch at Perkins instead, and was back on the road at 3:00, arriving home at 5:00.

Net for the weekend, -$31. That's still cheap entertainment.

Reflections on the Spokane Cache Machine

(Composed entirely on blackberry; typos are my own fat fingers)

On the way to Spokane, I hit eight geocaches. I really got tired of pointless microcaches a year or so ago, and pretty much stopped caching locally, as I'd either already been to the neat spots in the area, or the new caches were hidden in parking lot culverts (really!) or stuck to random suburban electrical boxes (two come to mind immediately).

When I plotted my route to Spokane, I limited myself to normal sized, traditional caches within 0.5 miles of my route. This led me to a bushwhacking-to-a-creek cache near Maple Valley, and to a cache near a nice sized waterfall in the former Twin Falls State Park. Good ones. I also made it to the I-90 Wild Stallions cache that I mentioned in my previous post, and to the Petrified Forest State Park, somewhere I've wanted to visit since seeing it in the cheezy Washington geography films in fourth grade.

However, it also took me to an old mill in Thorpe, which would have been fine, but I'd forgotten that I'd found another cache at the same location two years ago. I also hit two rest area caches, which are kind of lame. I can say that -- I own the Federal Way rest area cache.

The number of micros and small caches in Spokane was surprising. I think of the 81 caches we got on Saturday, maybe 5 of them were ammo cans. A lot of them were magnetic hide-a-key containers. One particular run through Airway. Heights had eight consecutive caches that were either attached to lamp posts in restaurant parking lots or under a roadside water meter lid.

It was still a lot of fun. Spokane's got a great riverfront with a massive waterfall, and several of the caches showcased architecture, artwork, or history of the area. One creative cache had us standing in the middle of a desert-like pasture trying to figure out how a wooden box, bungee-corded cordless phone, and gold-painted nail were supposed to work together. But several parks had multiple unremarkable caches when one would do, and for every great cache, there were several "what were they thinking" caches.

Sunday, on the way home, I hit one cache, only because I had to stop and use the rest area, and it wasn't a micro.

The event was considerably more organized than the one's I'd created in the past. This has its good points -- it's great that someone thought to alert the police that a group of 125 people would be lurking the side streets and abusing parking lot lampposts -- and bad points -- should the event really be a fundraiser for the local chapter? In all, I think it was a good event. It's not done how I would have; I think it was an improvement. I've had more practice doing cache machine routing (which is why my three vehicle sub-group followed my vehicle on a route I created), but there's no way I'd have organized such a good social part of the event.

I think I'll go to the next one. I saw some neat new spots, and I had fun, and that's what really mattered.

Spokane Cache Machine coming up

I'll be heading to Spokane next weekend for the Spokane Cache Machine event, and I'll probably play some poker there as well. I did well at the local bowling alley at the Wenatchee Cache Machine, so I'm thinking I'll try the bowling alley/casino in Spokane, instead of going to play at the Northern Quest. If I have time, I'll do both, 'cause I'd love to take a look at what they've got -- Spokane's not a poker wasteland, being the home of Bryant King, who placed 21st in the 2005 WSOP ($304,000), second in a 2006 WSOP circuit event ($416,000), and has almost $900K in lifetime winnings.

It's a longer drive than most of the other CM's I've gone to (except maybe Victoria, but that was at the end of an around-the-Olympic-Peninsula vacation), but there's several caches I plan to hit along the way to break up the drive. The one I'm looking forward to the most is I-90, Wild Stallions Ride Again (pictured), which you've probably seen if you've driven I-90 eastbound across the Columbia.

I'll be heading out early Friday. My preliminary route plan shows me leaving at 6:30 a.m. and arriving at 5:00 p.m. (planning for 10 minutes per cache), but that's pretty flexible, particularly since I don't plan on leaving until 8:30 or so.

Saturday will be a sun-up to sun-down mass mob cache hunt. I'm meeting up with a couple cachers and will be their navigator. I've got the official Spokane Cache Machine route ready to print, but I like Microsoft MapPoint a lot more, so I'll be spending time this week copying the waypoints over and re-creating the route.

Sunday will be breakfast in Coeur D'Alene, then a leisurely drive back, hitting caches that I skipped on my eastbound route.

This is the first cache machine event I've attended that I didn't organize. I planned one in Spokane before, back in September 2003, but didn't attend due to a house fire. I'm looking forward to this a lot.

Vacation Mondays are over

On March 19, I finished in fifth place in the Palace tourney.

On April 9, I finished in fifth place in the Palace tourney.

Guess how I did on April 16? If you guessed fifth, you'd be right.

Last Monday was my last vacation Monday; my vacation calendar's been reset, and I've got another 15 days to use within the next 12 months. It was a good finale, too. I ended up net +$25 in the Palace tournament, and played the $3/$6 ring game for three hours, with my $100 buy in varying from $45 to $215, ending at $105 (+$5).

In the tournament, solid, tight play (I folded AJo UTG with less than three orbits in chips left) and a good bit of luck (I rivered two poor souls twice) got me that far, but I'm thinking that I need to stay tight once I'm in the top five. My pocket fives were a racing hand, and I could have sat around a few more rounds before the blinds would have knocked me out.

In the cash game, a co-worker of mine was to my right. His style of play was a lot looser than mine, but he was also better at getting away from hands. I got burned a few times when I couldn't let go of overcards soon enough, but made a huge stack of chips with pocket tens and a board of JJT-x-x, when the button held another J.

I also made the same mistake two hands in a row. I was dealt pocket eights (yes, two hands in a row), and the quads jackpot for eights was an unusually high $800. After missing the flop, I figured I had the right odds to call a raise to see the turn. That's wrong. With a 2/47 chance of hitting another 8, there would have to be $141 in the pot to justify a $6 call (based on thinking a set of 8s would win), but the odds of hitting the jackpot -- getting runner/runner eights -- is 1/1081, meaning the jackpot would need to be $13K to justify $9 in bets. Of course, when I didn't hit an 8 on the turn, I got out, but that was money I didn't need to throw away.

Fifth place again

Tight play and a little luck got me to the top five at Palace again. Losing an all-in race (my AQs, his 66) knocked me out. Yup, a bad day for me and pocket sixes.

No more match play at Happy Days

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

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