Geocaches save lives

Two happy ending stories:

A pair of experienced climber on Mount Hood got caught by a storm, so aborted their attempt to summit the mountain, and then missed their turn on the way down. They built a snow cave overnight, and when they woke up, they spotted a piece of flagging tape in a tree, connected to a water bottle with this cache inside -- with its own coordinates. When they warmed up their cell phones and got a call from the sheriff, they were able to tell exactly where they were. (CNN video, NW Cable News.) KOMO, as usual, botched the story and instead says they found a GPS hanging from a tree.

A woman and her dog are in an off-leash park in High Bridge, New Jersey. The dog falls through the icy lake, and the woman goes in after him. She gives up and runs to the empty parking lot looking for help. Just arriving: a cacher looking for this cache. While the woman goes in after her dog again, he calls the park police, who save the dog and the woman.

Fourth best night ever

Back in the summer of 2006, the heyday of bonus hunting, before the UIGEA scared off all the online casinos from taking US players, I had some good winning days:

• $900 from Vegas Strip Casino (it took 15 days after wagering was complete to get the money in Neteller)
• $790 from Prism (which took five weeks to extract from their accounting department, and they've spammed me incessantly ever since)
• $610 from Silver Sands Casino (which showed up a couple days later)

But since the UIGEA, it's been slim pickings out there. This week, though, I played the Wednesday bonus at PlayersOnly, and netted +$504. This is better than the $400 I made from the same casino last November.

Now that's a good start for the year. They limit me to one withdrawal a month, and I did one January 2, so I'll need to wait a couple of weeks before I get cash in hand. I hope they stay in business that long.

Cache Machine roundup

My daughter and I got 47 caches in Vancouver this weekend, starting in a group of about 30 people at 7:15 a.m. on Saturday, then in and between groups for the next seven hours. We took a brief rest at the hotel, then hit the road again to get three more before dinner at 5:15. We had about 60 people at dinner, and I got several e-mails and talked to a few people who wouldn't be making it to dinner. I'm guessing roughly 75 people attended.

I haven't decided whether I like lamp post micro-caches less or just slightly more than micros in the woods, which I hate. This cache machine had a lot of them. Unfortunately, when my goal is to get to as many neat places in a day as possible, if a microcache is there, I want to go there, too. And it's tough to tell what spot might be neat (e.g., a 180-degree view of the Columbia River and the Portland Airport, but the cache is a film canister under a trash can) and what spot might not be (e.g., a Humane Society office with the non-stop whining and barking of several soon-to-be doomed dogs, but the cache is a large ammo can next to a tree.)

More importantly, I spent a very nice weekend with my daughter, just her and me, exploring, laughing, picking on each other, and enjoying each others' company. I'll remember this weekend for a long time because of that.

The event got mentioned in another cacher's log, Rose Red.

Happy Days are gone again

On Wednesday, I wrote, "Happy Days is back to their ask-at-the-cage 2x$10 match plays for January. Apparently, I will be, too." Wednesday evening, I went 0-2 in blackjack match plays, down $20.

On Thursday, I showed up to a sign on the locked door with three words: "Casino is closed."

Today, the News Tribune reports:

Employees stunned by casino's abrupt closing
...
A minicasino in Lakewood, Wash. suddenly closed its doors Thursday after a vendor reclaimed equipment and some unpaid employees angrily confronted the owner, who later locked them out of the building.

Owner Jerry Bolser said he lost $3 million to $4 million and won't reopen because it would be "throwing good money after bad.

"Am I disappointed?" he said. "You bet."

Some employees, who hadn't been paid in weeks, had words with Bolser on Thursday just before a planned 11 a.m. opening. One manager, Jeff Young, said he shouted at Bolser, demanding that his employees get paid before they did any more work.

He said Bolser walked into his office and shut the door. Bolser said he needed to talk to his lawyer on the phone.
...
The minicasino had paid $167,000 in back gambling tax payments in November, but still owed the city more than $29,000 in interest and late payment penalties. Lakewood officials moved to revoke the minicasino's's business license, but it remained open while owners appealed to a hearings examiner.

Happy Days also violated a settlement agreement with the state Gambling Commission by failing to make a payment Thursday. The minicasino owed the state agency more than $24,000 for failing to disclose financial statements.

The business signed a settlement agreement Dec. 17 and paid about half of the amount then, said commission spokeswoman Susan Arland. The second payment of $12,082 was due Thursday and wasn't made, she said.

Happy Days workers last week filed 38 complaints with the state Department of Labor and Industries about not receiving paychecks.

I've got $35 in chips. I've e-mailed the state gambling commission to see what the chips are good for, other than selling to collectors on Ebay. I'm also really curious about their $50,000 player-banked poker jackpot. That's supposed to be distributed somehow.

My guess is that the big money will be donated: WAC 230-15-415, Removing a player-supported jackpot from play says, "(2) If licensees stop operating card games or fail to maintain a valid card game license, they must immediately distribute all PSJ funds to the Washington State Council on Problem Gambling."

(Hey, it's not like I didn't have an inkling of this risk last June.)

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

It's been a couple of weeks. Time for a few bullet points to catch up:

• Sober players make bad opponents: I played at Palace again just before Christmas; several of the players were home on Christmas break from college or wherever, they brought their A game, and they weren't drinking. I was up about $70 after two hours, then the deck ran cold, I ran into a set, and walked away from the table down $100. Bah.
• Cache machine is Saturday: I've got the plans and route finalized for the Vancouver (WA) Cache Machine event, and this one feels like it's gonna be one of the better ones of the 14 I've organized. I got a call from the Vancouver PD today in response to a couple of questions I had about parking locations, and they were happy to be aware that we were coming to town. The route seems like it's pretty solid, the caches seem doable, and it's a good mix of micros, pocket parks, and quarter mile trail jaunts, with some history lessons tossed in. Should be fun.
• Bad bell curve. No biscuit: I played through my December $200 bonus at PlayersOnly last night -- and lost $250. I don't have my spreadsheet with me right now, but that's close to being 2 standard deviations off of the expected result. I'm OK with that, because even when you're gambling with a positive expectation wager, you're still gambling. Sometimes, rarely, the coin will come up heads 10 times in a row.
• Back to Happy: This month's Gambling Journal says that Happy Days is back to their ask-at-the-cage 2x$10 match plays for January. Apparently, I will be, too.
• ...and taxes: I closed down my 2007 spreadsheet last night with a third year of profitability. If you add the the PlayersOnly bonuses and the Happy Days match play bonuses together, that's pretty much my profit for the year. Everything else seems to be a wash: poker wins, poker losses, $30 on the ponies, a few bucks at charity bingo. Not as good as 2006 or (/me gets a dreamy look) the pre-UIGEA 2005 year, but still, it's in the low positive 4-figures for the year. It'll pay for a family vacation. Taxes take a small chunk of it, but tax on fun money hurts less than tax on money I really worked for.

The best opponent

I played $3/$6 at Palace last Saturday night, and doubled my $100 buy-in in three hours. A large chunk of this change came from a guy in seat 2, two seats to my right. The first thing I noticed about him was that he was confused about what drink the waitress had brought him, up until the point where the waitress realized how inebriated he was, and politely declined to serve him.

He left the table for a few minutes, and when he returned he staggered over one of the low rolling tables, splashing seat 1's drink. Ten minutes later, I hit an ace-high flush on the turn, raised and capped the pot against him, and he doesn't slow down on the river; I extract another $24 from him. He's frustrated after I show the nuts to his ten-high flush, and I conciliatorily tell him, "that's tough; there no way you could have laid that down." I didn't mention to him that it should have been easy to stop raising, though.

He plays several more hands, including several against one of the best players in the room, someone who is always here, and loses almost every time. The drunk offhandedly calls him "Mr. Lucky", and the rest of the table chuckles. We rib Mr. Lucky for the next 30 minutes, until he leaves to go get some dinner. A few minutes later, I'm dealt J9 on the button. I check, and the flop is J♦T♦6♥. I bet to see who else has a jack, and nobody raises me. The turn is a 9♥, I bet again, and everyone folds, except for Mr. Tipsy, who raises me. I put him on a 1-in-5 flush draw, so re-raise him. He stares at me, I joke about Mr. Lucky leaving the table, and tell him that I'm trying to make myself the new lucky guy. He re-raises, capping it, and I call.

The river is a Q♠, making a possible straight if he has an 8 or a king. I slyly check, and he asks me if I'm going to check raise him if he bets. I'm non-committal, and he bets. "I call. Two pair." I show my jacks and sixes. He shows me his A6, for a pair of sixes. Awesome.

(Oh, and my four-figure check from PlayersOnly arrived this week. Awesome^2.)

An 827% player edge at the office Christmas party

The theme of the office Christmas party was "Vegas, Baby," and I looked forward to some fun times at the poker table. Everyone got somewhere around $200 in play money to start, and after folding pre-wager on a hand of indian poker, I got dealt K♥J♥ in Texas hold 'em, in the small blind. It was $20 to me, and I raised to $40. Six callers, and the flop comes QT3, with one heart. I bet $40 again, and get two callers. The turn is a second heart, so I've got 23 outs on the river. I bet another $40 and get called. The river's a brick, I check and fold. Dang.

The next game is five card draw, and after my draw, I push all in with a set of tens. I'm beat by a set of kings, and leave the table after only three hands.

Ryan tells me that the roulette wheel's got crazy-wrong odds, and gives me $100 to play it. "Bet red and black and you'll come out way ahead," he tells me.

The payout for any bet is 20-for-1, except that individual numbers pay 30-for-1. Betting $20 each on even, odd, black, red, high, low, and the 0/00 split is an average payout of $1157, and is typically $1200. The table ran slowly, particularly because they quickly were running out of $100 bills, but after four spins, I ended up with $4820. I "tipped" the croupier a fake $20, gave the fake $100 back to Ryan, and won first place in the office Vegas pool, bringing home a basket of fancy chocolates, candies, and ... pickled asparagus? Good times.

(Yes, it's sad that I'm calculating the edge for games at the office Christmas party. I'm quite the geek, I'm afraid.)

Matching Wednesday scaled way back

In my mailbox from PlayersOnly.com this morning:

Starting in December the Match200 bonus will not be awarded every Wednesday of the calendar month. Instead, you’ll be able to register for this promotion and receive 1 bonus per month per account or household.

I figured that Matching Wednesdays was too good to last for long (deposit $200, get $200 more, playthrough $4200, profit!). In the four Wednesdays I played, I was +$100, +$400, +$100, and +$22. Not bad for a few hours work. It's still a good deal at once a month, and it'll help my cash flow to be able to get the payout check before I have to make another deposit. My gambling funds envelope is looking awfully thin with four $200 payments removed.

On top of that, I've started playing in their poker room. They're either really bad players, or my loosening up of starting hands is paying off. I'm inclined to think it's bad play, though, because the first time I did really well at online poker, it was at another casino that had a poker table "on the side." Kind of like my adventure at the bowling alley in Wenatchee a couple of years ago. Or, as my cousin used to tell it, like Tower Lanes in Tacoma (amazing -- link still works!).

Vancouver (WA) Cache Machine

The planning for the Vancouver Cache Machine is underway. January 5... yay!

Lakewood gambling forum: a stacked deck

The president of the Tillicum/Woodbrook neighborhood association is on the record in favor of closing all six of Lakewood's casinos. So why, on December 4, are they hosting a forum on gambling at the Clover Park High School PAC? Well, they've invited the six casino managers, and 50 churches. Panelists will include one casino manager (who appears to only have tentatively accepted), the director of the Evergreen Council on Problem Gambling, and a professor from Whatcom county whose organization has recently sued the Nooksack tribe's casino (and lost).

I may show up to bring a little dissonance to their echo chamber. Their announcement is pasted below.

Following are the final confirmed panelists for the Lakewood citywide forum on gambling to be held Tuesday, December 4, 6:30-8:30 PM at the Performing Arts Center of Clover Park High School located at 11023 Gravelly Lake Drive, SW.

Moderator: Peter Callaghan, columnist and reporter with The (Tacoma) News Tribune.

Panelists:

• John Arbeeny, Lakewood City Councilman
• Pad Finnigan, Lakewood City Councilman
• Mike McKenzie, Lakewood Assistant Attorney
• Craig Mayberry, Lynden, WA - Professor at Whatcom Community College and at Western Washington University. Craig is spokesperson for the North County Alliance (NCCA) of Whatcom County that has a federal lawsuit against the recently opened Nooksack Tribe's casino. Craig believes "solutions to the social injustices (created by gambling) will only come through a grassroots effort by local communities to hold elected officials and government bureaucrats accountable to upholding the civil rights of all individuals, regardless of the amount of campaign contributions."
• Marueen Greeley, Executive Director of the Evergreen Council on Problem Gambling (formerly Washington Council on Problem Gambling).
• Gary Hess, Manager, Great American Casino (or possibly Greg Bakamis, former manager now in corporate office). One or the other is confirmed.

The format for the evening:

• 6:30-6:45 Doors open, seats taken and a presentation of the 2nd Annual Rudy 'Rebel' Baker Award for Outstanding Volunteer Community Service in the Tillicum/Woodbrook Neighborhood. As this forum is sponsored by the Tillicum/Woodbrook Neighborhood Association (TWNA); and as this forum replaces our regular monthly meeting for December, this is the one item of business we want to conduct the evening of the forum - Dec.4.
• 6:45-7:00 Introductions of Panelists by Peter Callaghan and two-minute statements by each panelist.
• 7:00-8:20 Interactions between panelists and audience, moderated by Peter Callaghan.
• 8:30 Adjourn

There is much at stake at this forum. Lakewood leads the state in card tables that, together with other gambling revenues, are slated to generate $2.36 million in taxes for the city next year. And a ban on gambling, supported by one of the largest churches in Lakewood, could mean the end of 800 jobs, "25 police officers, or requiring each city department to cut its budget by 10 percent" (TNT, 10/3/07).

General audience invitations have been sent to all six mini-casinos in Lakewood and to nearly 50 Lakewood churches. The PAC has a 600 seat capacity.

The Planning Advisory Board, that has been charged with the responsibility to study the impact of gambling in Lakewood with recommendations due in January, has also been invited as they have expressed the need for public input.

Thank you for your willingness to be a part of this citywide event, and for promoting it among those like-minded with your position.

Matching Wednesday

It's been a relatively gambling free few weeks, with one exception.

Three weeks ago a newsletter I subscribe to announced that PlayersOnly.com had a surprisingly good bonus offer. Deposit $200 on Wednesday, bet $200 on Wednesday, and you get a $200 bonus the next day. To collect the bonus, playthrough is 20x, or $4000.

So basically, deposit $200, get $200 more for free, and wager $4200. If you play blackjack, a 0.54% house edge game, you'll have an average loss to the house of $4200 x 0.0054, or $22.68, for an average net profit of $177.32. Even at $5 a hand, it goes fairly quickly.

The first week, I ended up $100; the second, $400 more.

PlayersOnly has the appearance of a fairly solid online casino. They've had glossy multi-page ads in Card Player and Poker News for several months now; they've gotten very little bad press on Casinomeister.com; and they have the recommendation of OBJ as one of the few sites that still take US players. I goofed on week 1 and deposited in their sister site, Sportsbook.com, and the withdrawal of a check for those funds arrived fairly quickly.

The only drawback -- any withdrawals after the first one each calendar month are assessed a $40 fee. Essentially, it's one withdrawal per month.

Happy Days match play: it's over!

It's a new month, and Happy Days changed their match play policy again. For November, you get a free match play when you bring in a toy for donation to a local charity. It's very altruistic on the casino's part, but the additional cost an effort of getting toys and bringing them in every day makes it hardly worth it. Essentially, the match play is over.

After going 38-39 in October (+$355), the grand total of my five months of match play: 184-194, +$1,825.

So... back to poker. I may have mentioned it before, but I've figured out what may have been the hole in my game. I've been playing ring games like tournament games, and playing too tight. I played for about an hour yesterday, and ended up $64, a lot of which was playing hands like A6 and then keeping with it after an ace flopped, or playing 32o from the small blind, getting in for cheap, and hitting two pair on the flop.

A lot of the hands I won were when my lone opponent folded on the river. They're on a lot more busted flush draws than I expected.

Beating the long timers

I went to Happy Days on Friday night to play the midnight tournament... except it turns out that there's no midnight tournaments on Friday nights. I sat down at a $3/$6 table instead, and was dealt QQ to start, netting $26 on my first hand. The guy to my left was a non-stop talker (the way I like it; it keeps the table happy and spending money).

Happy Days has a monthly freeroll where the players who have put in the most hours at the tables get to play. The chatterbox let me know that the guy two seats to my right was the current time leader, that the woman to his right was high on the list, and that chatterbox himself was also in the top 40.

In other words, he told me I was outmatched. In spite of that I played for 45 minutes, then got out when I was ahead $46. The most amusing hand was when I was dealt 87o, and the board came 4T9/7/9. I mistakenly thought the 7 was a 6, and played as if I had a straight on the turn. Oops. I continued the agressive play on the river, and the other players folded.

My final hand was TT, in middle position, and I raised pre-flop, of course. Chatterbox re-raised to $9, the two blinds called, I capped it at $12, and the other three players called me. The flop came 6QJ. It was checked to me, and I went in for $3. If they had a Q or J, I think they would have bet. Chatterbox called, making me think he might have a J. The turn was a 9, it was checked to me, I bet, chatterbox called, and the blinds folded. The river was nothing, and I bet. Chatterbox inexplicably called and showed a 7♠8♠. My tens won, I bailed out.

All politics are roadkill

I'm driving my daughter and her friend home from school, and in the lane to my right is an SUV with signs on it advocating Lisa Ikeda for city council, and also advertising Lisa's "Ponders Landmark Cafe." I smile a bit, because as I told my daughter, she's the candidate I voted for, in spite of her casino opposition, mainly because she makes a good french dip sandwich.

"That's her?" my daughter asked, excited.

I speed up a bit to get a better look.

"Yep. That's her." "Hit her!" comes the yell from the back seat.

"What?"

"Extra points!"

The Orion Experience

I'm at the Starbucks at 1600 Olive in Seattle, and The Orion Experience just finished their show. They're kind of a cross between Save Ferris and the latest Duran Duran album, and their ska-pop sound and high energy made for a great time. They're on the way back to NYC, but I hope they continue to do well and return to the area again.

I bought their album, Cosmicandy, and will be listening to it in the car on the way home.

Boom in the Valley

I've posted this to a friends-only mailing list, to the Tacoma LiveJournal community, and to the News Tribune's Lights & Sirens blog. Might as well finish up by posting the same thing here.

I was at the Target on Union, and left about 3:00. I saw the black clouds of smoke pouring into the sky. I got onto eastbound SR16, and traffic was slow, because the flames were very visible and shooting into the sky; the fire department obviously didn't have control over it yet. People were parked on the Sprague overpass watching it, and as I approached the Valley overpass, some people had pulled off to the side. The flames were shooting up well above the north side of the overpass, not gently licking the sky, but jetting up as if they were being accelerated out.

Halfway across the overpass, I turned off the radio and opened the window, because I wanted to see if I could hear the fire. As I rolled down the window, the whole north valley burst into an explosive fireball. It was bigger than most Hollywood type explosions, rocking the car. Maybe the equivalent of four simultaneous gas station explosions, if they were done in a movie.

My first thought was that I was glad the window was down, so that the pressure inside and outside the car was equalized, preventing the window from shattering. My next thought, as the wave of heat swept over, was that I needed to roll up the window to shield myself from the heat. That was a bit too late -- the left side of my face is still a little pinker than my right, and it still stings a tad.

My next thought was, "gee, I'd better swerve left a little bit to avoid that falling, flaming piece of scaffolding.". I did, but it clipped the car in the lane to my right. KING 5 news interviewed someone else who saw flying metal, too.

I kept driving off the viaduct, adrenaline coursing through me. It had gotten warm enough that I wanted to check my car's paint to see if it had gotten damaged.

KOMO radio reports that the explosion was felt a few miles away. I believe it. I'd be surprised if the Java Jive, south of the overpass, is still in one piece.

Awesome.

[Update: The News Tribune just posted some good video of the explosion. I think that was my car that crossed the SR-16 supports about three seconds pre-boom. Toasty.]

[Update 2: YouTube videos here and here.]

September match play results, four month summary

I went 23-34 (40%/60%) with Happy Days match play in September, netting +$135. The First Card Ace promo at Chips/Palace added another $75. Other lucky side bets came up with another 157.50. However, with my lousy poker play and unlucky craps and roulette play in Vegas, I ended up down $88.20 for the month.

Overall, June-September, match play has put me up +$1470, at 146-155. Good thing, because I gave back $678 of it, and $400 of that was at the poker tables. I guess I'm still trying to find the slow leak in my game.

Do you know where you are, sir?

Quick wrapup. Friday night at the Imperial Palace poker table, I dropped another $87. Saturday morning I stopped back in to the conference and the four people there plus the podcaster were obviusly very bored; one person left during the hour I was there; I got the impression that several of us were flitting in and out.

As my last poker game, I headed over to the $4/$8 game at the Bellagio. I knew I was overclassed, and was pleased to only drop $35. The best quote at the table, though, was when a new player sat down to the dealer's right, the table welcomed him by taking his first bets from him, and he asked "Is there a bad beat jackpot?" The dealer looked down and shook his head, and the guy to my right, a relative loud mouth, looked at him and jokingly said in a snooty voice, "Do you know where you are, sir? This is the Bellahh-gio." Heh.

I think I saw a recognizeable poker pro in the high limit room, but I can't place his name. It might have been Johnny Chan, but I don't think so. I'll look thru some back issues of Card Player and see if I can figure it out.

My poker money, on its way to Detroit

After extensive research and a bit of shoe leather, I found a 5 cent video poker machine with a theoretical 0.07% player edge. Problem is, the variance is about 70, so until you hit the $200 royal flush, you're gonna be very slowly losing money. I played the machine (at Hooters) for a little more than an hour, before boredom over took me, and I bailed out down $30.

I then went to Imperial Palace and played poker for another 90 minutes against a crew of six former college roommates from Detroit. It was a lot of fun, and I stayed even until the table started shrinking. I suck at short-handed play though, because I view it through the inaccurate perspective that fewer players increase the value of each hand (this is wrong) instead of the correct perspective to treat empty seats as folding players. I dropped $65 in about four orbitz before the four of us at the table broke it up.

I then went a little tilty, and tried to win some of it back at roulette, but dropped a Benjamin there.

I hit the craps table at Bill's Gambling House at lunch (I had a match play), and extrordinary bad luck dropped me down another $62.

I've read that the poker tables at Paris are very fishy, primarily because it's in the middle of the casino, which pulls in the gambling types. I'll hit that after the final session at the conference tonight. I'n going to bail out early. It's a live-fire network defense exercise, and when it started, I was one of about 60 observers. After they all discovered how exciting it is to watch people through CCTV as they maintain a network -- with no screenshots -- I'm one of the last six.

The PaulDotCom Security Podcast is recording, but that can only do so much to keep the interest up. I'm outta here.

Binion's

It's the birthplace of the WSOP, the largest poker room downtown, and it's... well, it's a bit of a dive.

It's got the wall of photos of champions, but it's not really a structural wall -- it's a half wall in the middle of the room, as you might find in a museum, for displaying artwork. The dealers are old and crusty, and all of them talk with various accents: Russian, southern, Spanish. The other players are either really good or first time players, there's no in-between, except me.

Three hours of play, and I bailed out as I fell back down to breaking even.

The most amusing thing to me is that I've got a WSOP game for the PC that came out in the early 90's, and this place feels like it was last modernized at about the same time. Sadly, I think only six of the three do2n tables were in use, and when I sat down at the table, I was the 4th player. Eventually, it filled up, but I suck in short handed games.

Still, it was cool to look down at T2o, think "the Doyle", and realize this was where it happened so many years ago.

I folded.