Fish in Vegas and L.A.

C'mon get in the pot, fish Work sent me on a trip to Las Vegas and Los Angeles to do some data collection. Vegas was Tuesday, L.A. was Wednesday. Wrapped around this was a vacation day Monday and a buffer day yesterday, which gave me quite a bit of time to splash around the poker tables.

End result: up $123 in Vegas, and up $86 in L.A., for a net of +$209.

Before I left, I took a look at the reviews of the Vegas poker rooms at AllVegasPoker.com, and after sorting them by the weakness of the competition, made myself a to-do list: hit the soft poker rooms at MGM , Venetian , Bally's , Fitzgerald's , Bill's , O'Sheas , and Sahara .

I also planned to play 25¢ roulette at the Gold Spike, play video poker at The Palms , play Sigma Derby at MGM , visit the Pinball museum , and see Watchmen .

I got less than half this list done.

My plane got in two hours late on Sunday, at about 10:00 p.m. My luggage didn't arrive until the next day -- it took a detour to Washington, DC.

I took a shuttle to the Sahara, and tried the $20 trick at the front desk. For my $20, I was able to upgrade from their el cheapo $20 room to their top of the line ($39) premium room for 3 nights. The clerk also gave me a $10 off café coupon. Cha ching! I dropped my bags off in the room, then headed down to the poker room.

The Sahara's an old hotel -- according to their stationery, they're 55 years old -- and the place really oozes the retro mafia vibe. That's not a bad thing. The poker room is a good-sized 16 table affair, with some ugly fluorescent lighting and tournaments going on around the clock. I sat down at one of the only two non-tournament tables going, a $2/$4 limit hold 'em game. Strangely, there was only a single $2 blind. Players were as weak as promised. A couple hours later, tired, I headed back to the room $96 richer.

The next day, Monday, was my vacation day. I slept in until about 8:30, had a leisurely breakfast at the counter of the Poodle Dog-like Caravan Café, then hopped the monorail to pick up my rental car from Wynn. Sad thing is, the monorail doesn't get close to Wynn, so it was a long (but enjoyable) meandering stroll back up from Harrah's. I hopped in the car and drove downtown.

The Gold Spike, where I'd wanted to play 25¢ roulette, was further out of downtown and dingier than I expected. Parking was inconvenient, so I never made it there. Instead, I wandered into the Fitzgeralds poker room, but they didn't expect a game to get started until noon. I donated $20 to their slot machines, then wandered down Fremont Street to El Cortez, and when I saw that they also had roulette for a quarter, I was in. Yes, that game has lousy odds -- it's my weakness. I justify it by telling myself that it's a slow moving game, so the loss per hour is way less than most other games in the casino. I played 20 spins (about an hour), leaving $5 poorer than when I came in. Next stop: MGM.

Sigma Derby is the most-loved game of the listeners to the Five Hundy By Midnight podcast, and consists of five mechanical horses racing around a cheesy plastic track every 90 seconds or so. It's one of the only coin-op games I saw the whole week, and at 25¢ a wager, it's worth every cent. The Low Roller in Sin City blog has some more good photos and YouTube video. The only remaining Sigma Derby machine is at the MGM, and I pumped $10 into it. Good times.

I then went to the MGM poker room and played a $2/$4 limit game, with blinds of $1 and $2, as it should be. The poker tables at the MGM are, physically, the nicest tables I've ever played at. Better than the Bellagio. Better than Wynn. Yeah, they're that good. The padded rail of the table has cup holders built in. There is a three-inch wide ring of marble around inside of the the rail, which smooth, cool, and super-flat -- a great place to stack chips. Some players complain it makes their chips slide around, but I didn't experience that. The raised, padded felt has a thick, bright yellow commitment line. In addition to the standard auto-shuffler, each table has a networked computerized display that allows the dealer to let the brush know when a seat is open, to call the floorman, or to call for drinks. The same system is also used for their player's club members to check in and out of a table. The only problem is the players are a little better than I expected; I left ahead only $5 after two hours of play.

Back to the hotel room, and my luggage arrived. A quick shower, and I headed out again, first grabbing dinner at Chipotlé (thanks, Cha Cha), then on to the Bally's $3/$6 limit game. The poker room there is right on the casino floor, next to the craps and roulette tables, so it gets a lot of players who think, "hey, I've seen this game on TV, I should give it a try." I like this a lot. The room felt a bit disorganized -- the brush added me to the wait list, told me it'd be about 30 minutes, then called me back about 45 seconds later to point me to my seat. The players are wild. The noise from the band makes it hard to hear the dealer. Bit I played a couple hours and left $54 richer, so no complaints, really.

I wandered over to the Bellagio fountains and watched them twice -- one Rachmaninov piece, and one Elton John song (which I mis-Twittered as Manilow). Then to the Mirage volcano, which was down for repair. Next stop: the Venetian. I looked in on the poker room, and saw that there was an extensive wait list for their low limit hold 'em games. I dropped $1 on their slots, wandered back to the poker room, and decided that since it was after midnight, I should probably head to bed.

I woke up early Tuesday morning, and drove to the location for my 10:00 meeting south of town, arriving at about 8:15. Having almost two hours to waste, I grabbed my first breakfast ever at Sonic (quite good), then drove to the nearby Green Valley Ranch casino, and on their Star Trek slots, won back the $1 I'd lost at Venetian.

After the long day working, I dropped off my gear in my room, then headed to Treasure Island. I'd read a discussion on AllVegasPoker.com that they tend to have a low limit game running after 6:00 every day, and had a new bonus-spin wheel when you get a specific hand. I signed up on TI's list, but after two hours of waiting (and losing $20 in their slots), no game had started, so I headed back to the Sahara and played until 10:30, winning $23. A quick dinner at the Caravan Café, then off to bed.

Wednesday morning came early. 2:45, to be exact. I have a 6:00 a.m. flight to catch to L.A. The flight, the drive, and the arrival was uneventful, except that I was an hour early for my 10:00 a.m. meeting. Another long day working, finally getting out of there at about 6:30 p.m.

I checked into the Holiday Inn (under heavy construction), and then drove over to the nearby Hollywood Park casino. Worst. Casino. Ever. Imagine a high-ceilinged airport waiting area. Not a nice airport, though; think of LAX before they did any remodels. Add the scent of hundreds of humid people. Add the blinking lights and arcade machines of Chuck E. Cheeses. Toss in a loud guy on a microphone who never stops. Sprinkle heavily with the air of degenerate desperation. Their $1/$2 game has the bizzare structure of a $2 big blind, $1 small blind, and a $1 button payment that plays. Rake is $1 + 10% up to $5 total. I don't know what number was higher:

• the average number of players to the flop,
• the number of missing fingers at the table,
• the number of missing front teeth at the table,
• the number of games that didn't result in a showdown at the river, or
• the number of games a really clueless newbie saw before losing his $40 buy-in

I suspect it's the missing fingers, but I'm not sure of that. After 90 minutes, I got out of there with $75 more in my pocket and a bad taste in my mouth. I got rid of the bad taste with dinner from Panda on a Stick and an episode of Dollhouse on Hulu.

Thursday morning, my plane wasn't scheduled to leave until 5:00, so I slept in until 8:30, then drove to the Bicycle Casino, where I last played two years ago. At the time, I described the rake as "insanely huge" at $2.50 for any pot above $5. They've since raised it to $4+$1. I literally saw a guy win a $7 pot which was checked to the river, but he only got $2 of it, because the casino took the rest. I played $3/$6 Omaha 8 for the first time ever, other than online. The guys at the Ante Up podcast say that the split games like Omaha 8 really bring out the argumentative players, and from what I saw, I can't disagree. Apparently, he was upset that the dealer was trying to split money he hadn't put in the pot. Whatever.

I played for a few hours, was up $65 or so, then dropped down to -$10. I jumped over to a $40 buy-in $1/$2 no limit game. This was also a first, because the only no limit games I've played have been online or in someone's house. I was down $11 when they announced a $3/$6 limit game was opening, so I jumped to that table -- as did only two other players. The game never started, I grabbed some lunch, and with about an hour to go before I needed to roll to the airport, I jumped back into the no limit game, leaving up $32 this time, or up $11 for the visit.

The flight home was mediocre. The TSA security theater at LAX pulled my bag full of electronics aside for hand inspection, even though it had gone through SEA and LAS with nor problems. The hand inspection set off the chemical detector. A Michael Moore look-alike gave me a TSA courtesy rub-down. I don't feel any safer; I now know what parts of my body can hide contraband. The plane was delayed at both LAX (missing crew) and SFO (no plane).

It was a very profitable trip. Must do again some time. But it's also good to be back in the rain.

Happy Days: here again?

From Lakewood City Councilman Walter Neary's blog, Neary-Sighted:

Tonight's Meeting: The Lakewood City Council will hear comment tonight [February 17] about a moratorium about mini-casinos. This is a big subject that defies the simplicity of one blog posting, but I mention the meeting at 7 p.m. tonight in case anyone wants to listen. What should be interesting tonight is that we will likely hear from the folks who operated Happy Days on Bridgeport. They want to reopen. I look forward to hearing from all sides on this one.

I wish them lots of luck. When they closed 13 months ago, they still owed taxes to the city and fines to the state gambling commission. But their liberal match play policy was a big part of my 2007 gambling winnings, so I'm hoping they can persuade the council to let them get back in business.

No Vacancy

The Suburban Times reports this morning that last week the City of Lakewood:

• Issued a Notice and Order revoking the business license for the Vagabond Motel, 10005 South Tacoma Way. This action was sought because of increasing levels of criminal activity occurring at the motel. The revocation has been appealed and will be before the City's Hearing Examiner later this month.
• Issued a Notice and Order revoking the business license for the Budget Inn, 9915 South Tacoma Way. The motel had high numbers of serious calls for police service. The owner did not appeal the revocation and as of this date, the motel remains closed.

I'd previously noted that in August 2007, the health department closed down the Vagabond and shortly thereafter closed Budget (and Fort Clarke, and Rose Garden). To quote Firefly, "come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all." Good thing, too.

Avoid ProMax Supply (a.k.a. Crazy Dave's Toolshed)

On December 15, I ordered a birdhouse from Crazy Dave's Toolshed ("CrazyDavesToolShed"), via Amazon merchants. The delivery estimate was Dec 19-24.

They shipped via FedEx ground on Dec 22 with delivery expected December 31. Due to snow, it arrived on Jan 3. The four day weather delay is excusable. The 7-day delay in shipping it is not.

I e-mailed them in late December, asking for reimbursement of shipping costs. I never heard back.

January 5, I left them a 1-star review on Amazon: "Ordered December 15, delivery estimate was Dec 19-24. They shipped ground on Dec 22 with delivery on Jan 3. How can they expect to deliver to the opposite coast within deadline when they wait a week to ship? E-mailed them asking for shipping reimbursement. Never heard back from them. AVOID!"

Today, January 20, I received a phone call from them. They walked me through the process of getting the credit, up to the point where she said "next to your feedback, click the word 'remove'."

Um, no.

"Then we can't give you the credit."

Never mind then.

Their feedback rating for the last 30 days is 86% positive, 9% negative. Looks like many others have had similar problems. Just speculating, but the company name now shows as "ProMax Supply", so maybe they changed their name or ownership to distance themselves.

I'm now going through Amazon directly to ask for the shipping credit. We'll see where that leads.

Followup 1/29/09: Amazon reimbursed me the shipping costs. Yay.

Search engine seeds: CrazyDavesToolShed, Crazy Dave's Tool Shed, ProMax Supply, CrazyDavesToolShed, Crazy Dave's Tool Shed, ProMax Supply, CrazyDavesToolShed, Crazy Dave's Tool Shed, ProMax Supply)

Casino changes, new WSGC newsletter

As I mentioned a few months ago, baccarat has come to state minicasinos. I've not visited one in a few months, but the billboard near the Puyallup River advertises that Chips Lakewood has baccarat available. It's the table game with the lowest house edge, so if any match plays come open, that's the table to use them at.

The latest Washington State Gambling Commission Focus On Gambling newsletter is out. It looks like electronic poker tables are still being discussed by the vendor and the WSGC. "At the November 2008 meeting, the petitioner requested the Commission hold over the petition to allow the Commission’s lab time to test the device and re-analyze the system for changes made after the lab’s initial review in November." They're discussing it again next month.

The Five Hundy By Midnight podcast has mentioned -- and a good friend of mine has confirmed -- that the electronic tables are already in use at the Excalibur poker room in Las Vegas. The more and more I hear about them, the more I'm liking the idea: faster play, no mistakes or rules arguments, no tipping, and, perhaps, lower limits and rakes.

The WSGC has approved the change to allow 9 players (instead of max 7) at table games. I think I've only once ever seen a full seven player table, so I don't think this will affect me, unless this prompts a casino to close down one of its extra blackjack tables and replace it with a poker table. That'd be nice.

There's one significant new proposal in the newsletter. Last year, the state casino industry asked to increase the single-bet limit in poker from $40 to $500. The WSGC asked for an alternative, so that $500 could only be used as a max all-in Hold 'Em bet. The industry countered with a proposal of a $300 max poker bet. The WSGC is discussing it.

Something I may not have mentioned before, and which is some of the most interesting reading in the newsletter, are the list of administrative cases. Usually, that's when a casino does something bad -- like failing to submit a report on time -- or when an employee does something bad. Like this one from page 13:

[T.L.O.] (formerly employed by Chips Casino) Lakewood

Admitted turning off the closed circuit television system on several occasions while working as the Director of Security and Surveillance. Allegedly removed money from the house-banked card room’s count room.

The licensee waived his right to a hearing. A Default Order revoking his license was entered.

Most of them aren't nearly as egregious. The most frequent seem to be applicants for dealers' licenses who don't fully disclose their criminal history, dealers who fail to properly collect a bet, dealers allowing a minor to play, or casino employees who find money on the ground and pocket it instead of turning it in. Seems like a tough job, and it's one that can be ended by a single mistake.

Whidbey Island Cache Machine

I posted the first draft (.PDF) for the Whidbey Island Cache Machine last Friday. The event's coming up on January 3, and will involve considerably more hiking than previous cache machine events. The views will be well worth it.

Bad poker night

Sitting down at Palace's $3/$6 table last night, I had high hopes. The guy to my right, who had claimed to have turned $60 into the $600 in front of him, was playing the sheriff, paying to see people's cards at the end, because he had the money to burn. Two seats to my left, Sam was having an amazing run of luck, playing any two cards from any position, frequently raising pre-flop with small off-suit non-connectors, and rivering frequently enough to be ahead.

It didn't work out too well. I as down my first $100 in the first 90 minutes, mostly because two hands in a row, I lost to Sam's J5. One hand I had KQ, the board was K55/9/3; the next I had AJ and the board was J93/6/5.

I bought in for another $100, and after whittling away about $30 of it in blinds and limps, finally hit my first win with AA, then my very next hand with KK. The pots were decent sized, and I didn't have to show my hand to win, which surprised me, since most pots were going to the river with three players. Clearly, I had a tight image, they knew when I raised on the turn and river that I wasn't bluffing. About half an hour later I tried to do the same with middle pair/weak kicker, and this time, two people called me down. Bah.

Around 12:30 a.m., I won a good sized pot with trip kings, bringing my stack to $145 (down $55), but over the next hour, that stack got whittled down to $20. The coup de grace was a four-way pot, where I held 6♦ 6♠, and the board was 4♣ 5♣ 7♦ / K♥ / 6♣. Pot odds wouldn't let me get away, raising went crazy, and the winning hand was K♣ 3♣. Sam, incidentally, had queen high. Down $180 for the night. Bah.

Lakewood casinos open for business

As of 12:23 p.m., the county elections department reports that the voting was 3,259 (38.6%) yes, 5,191 (61.4%) no. The News Tribune called it "rejected" earlier this morning:

Voters widely rejecting proposal to ban casinos in Lakewood

Published: November 5th, 2008 12:30 AM

A proposal to ban minicasinos in Lakewood was failing Tuesday night. Initial counts from the Pierce County Auditor’s Office showed Proposition 1, the city’s first citizen-led initiative, going down by a wide margin.

Gambling Commission rules changes,

There's some big Washington State Gambling Commission rules changes in this quarter's Focus on Gambling newsletter. The big ones:

• Effective January 1, bet limits on table games are $300 instead of $200.
• Effective January 1, mini-baccarat is legal. This game has the smallest house edge in the casino. The only better game out there is a limited number of video poker machines, which aren't legal in Washington.

Still on the table for November's Commission meeting:

• Electronic poker tables
• Raise the limit on a poker wager from $40 to $500
• Increase the number of players at a table game, other than poker, from seven to nine
• A casino that only is running poker tables, and has wager limits at $40 or less, doesn't have to staff a surveillance room.

On a different topic, I'm really curious to see how Lakewood's proposition 1 ends up. I have no sense of which way the populace is leaning. It could easily go 65%/35% either way, and it's such a micro-issue, there's no polls to go by. Best case: it's defeated, which entices a new casino to fill in the hole left by Happy Days, increasing competition and benefiting edge players (me!). Worst case: I have to drive to Lacey to play poker.

Electronic poker tables in Washington?

The Cardroom Connection newsletter for the first half of 2008 was just published by the Washington State Gambling Commission, and mostly it repeated the changes I listed a few weeks ago. However, a new item appears on page 5:

Petition for Rule Change – Electronic Poker Tables

PokerTek, Inc. has submitted a petition for rule change requesting that entirely electronic poker gambling tables be authorized for use in card rooms. The electronic poker table, PokerPro, provides an opportunity to play poker without a center dealer and uses electronic facsimiles of both gambling chips and cards. No physical gambling chips, cards, or a live dealer are used.

I'd heard about these tables a year or so ago, but for some reason never figured I'd see them in Washington. My gut immediately told me, "this would suck," because part of the fun of playing poker in a card room is the feel of the cards and the playing with the chips. However, after a good five minutes of contemplation, I changed my mind. For a slightly-good super-tight player such as myself, the advantage of having more hands per hour, lower rake, and no tipping the dealer makes for a greater player edge. I'll give up playing with bacteria infested chips to get an extra few bucks each trip.

Casino law changes, statewide and local

The May-July "Focus On Gambling" newsletter came out today (.pdf), and it's got news of a big law change, and a few other smaller bits. The big news (and I've already heard radio ads mentioning it) is that casinos can now be open 24 hours five days a week, and for 20 hours the other two days. I'd called this a "good change" in my post about upcoming regulations last April.

The other good proposed change -- the addition of baccarat to the list of permitted casino games -- will be discussed in August.

Also in August, they'll discuss increasing the maximum number of poker players at a table from 10 to 12 (boo!), increasing the tournament fee limit (boo!), and increasing the table game limits from $200 to $500 (meh.)

The Recreational Gaming Association requested that the proposal to increase poker limits from $40 to $500 be put on hold (yay for the delay!). They also

• withdrew their request to increase the player-supported jackpot admin fee from 10% to 35%. (yay!)
• withdrew their request to drop the requirement that table games be dealt from a shoe. (bizarre)
• withdrew their request to eliminate the 5% commission limit for games like Pai Gow and Baccarat. (yay, I guess.)

Locally, the Pierce County Auditor told the SaveLakewood.com folks that they were about 1000 signatures short on their initiative to ban casinos in Lakewood. David Anderson, who's spearheading the campaign, wrote in an e-mail to supporters,

By 12 noon on Friday, August 1, we will need another 1,000 signatures to enable the Initiative to ban casino gambling in Lakewood to make it to the ballot in November. The Pierce County Auditor reviewed the 4,939 signatures we previously submitted and determined there are 2,947 valid signatures. 1,992 signatures were challenged.

We will be meeting with the Auditor on Wednesday, July 23, to determine why over 30 percent of our signatures have been rejected in the hope that we can save some.

I suspect a lot of people who signed the petitions weren't Lakewood residents, or weren't registered voters. They've also had trouble raising funds. The image at right shows the group's donations.

Not even a nice place to visit

Last August, I wrote ("No notels soon?") about the motels in the Ponders/Pac Highway area getting closed down: Rose Garden, Fort Clark, and Vagabond are closed, and Colonial is re-opened and looking much cleaner. At the time, I wrote, "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?"

That list of 3 is now down to 2½. The News Tribune reports today, "The Department of Health announced today that the Biltmore [sic] Motel, at 12701 Pacific Highway Southwest, must vacate 12 units by midnight Friday. It has 28 units overall. The May 27 inspection revealed concerns including the danger of a roof collapse, mold, broken smoke detectors, exposed wiring, unsanitary floors, walls and fixtures, and 'other filthy conditions'" (their bad use of commas, not mine).

Which one's gonna be next? My money's on the Fort Lewis, former home of overflowing dumpsters, tuberculosis carriers, and rapists.

Party's over at PlayersOnly

I hadn't checked since May, but the $200 per month promo at PlayersOnly is done. "This promotion has now been discontinued. We’ll be running every week a new Casino promotion, so please keep checking our Casino promotions page for the updates." Wonder where I'll find my next one?

Long ways to go to make $15

PlayersOnly still has their monthly $200 deposit bonus: deposit $200, get $200 free, play through $8200, and withdraw whatever you have left. Blackjack's the best game available to do this with, but the variance the last two months has been brutal, and my impatience hasn't helped.

In March, playing a flat $5 per hand, I ended up ahead $389. In April, wanting to do just as well, I increased my bets when I fell behind, which made me end up even further behind, and eventually -- several hands short of meeting the wagering requirements, I ended up at $0.

This weekend, learning from my April mistake, I went too far the other direction and played a flat $2 per hand, grinding through 4100 hands. With a standard deviation of 1.2 and a variance of 1.44, then 66% of the time, I'd end up between +$101 and +305. And 90% of the time, I'll end up between -$150 and +$457. I was in the latter variance this time, ending up -$90.

After weighing the hassle of requesting a $110 check, waiting for it to clear, depositing it, and having it as a reminder of my lost $90, I tilted a bit, decided to take it to the baccarat table and place a bet with the absolute lowest house edge in the casino. $110 on the banker. Fortunately, I won, and withdrew $215.

That site's gonna give me an ulcer if June ends up just as icky.

In my fort

I had to stay home from work today to take care of a sick kid, so I grabbed the hardware I needed from the office and set it up at home. I've got three laptops on three sides of a square table, with the power cords trailing off the fourth edge to a power strip. There's also a couple external hard drives and mice in the mix. This worked fine all day, until about 4:30, when my cat slowly saunters across all three keyboards, and noses my hand. I pull him into my lap, but as soon as I stop paying attention to him, he's back on the table. Finally, he lies down to rest.
I hope he's not contaminating the chain of custody form he's lying on.

Poker tournament: no skill required

Tulalip's 10:30 a.m. tournament structure is the worst I've yet to come across. You start with only 1000 chips, and the rounds are 15 minutes long. Blinds start at 25/50 and go up 25 and 50 each round. That's bad enough, but here's the weak kicker: only four rounds, and then two hands, then the four largest chip stacks are paid.

Moreso than any other tournament, in this one it's critical to build your stack fast. I did a mediocre job of this, and am still questioning if I should have called a caller and the blinds with 33 in middle position. I didn't; it would've incresed my stack by about 20%.

After the four rounds, I was in the final 12 (out of 45), and when I proposed a 10-way split, the regulars shrugged me off as if I was a loony. I got dealt K5 under the gun, and folded it. Three players got knocked out, the final 9 went to the final hand, the three biggest stacks folded, and everyone else went all in. The winner of the all-in fest (not me) cashed 4th.

This tournament requires very little skill. Push high pairs. Call with two paint cards. Get a lucky flop. That's about it.

How to lose a lot of money in little time

I played my first cash game at Hawks Prairie tonight, and it's a $4/$8 full kill, a little higher than the $3/$6 I'm used to, but I was there, so figured I'd play anyway. The only other table playing was a $4-$40 spread game, way beyond my comfort range.

I bought in for $100 played for about two hours, getting up to $140, then dropping down to about $50 where I sat for a long time. Pocket jacks won, pocket queens lost, and when, on a whim, I played 5♦ 3♦ under the gun, I split a pot against A5 when the board came A24/3/7.

A bit later, I get dealt T♥ T♠ in mid-late position. Three other players are in, I call, the button calls, the small blind folds, and the big blind checks. Six of us to the flop, $26 in the pot.

T♣ 9♦ 8♣

The big blind checks, the next player bets, the next player calls, and the player to my right raises. I've gotta get the betting big enough to make flush draws and straight draws a mistake, so I re-raise to $12. Button folds, big blind folds, and the last three players call. $62 in the pot.

I'm hoping for the board to pair to give me a boat (or quads, if it's the ten). Instead, the turn is J♣.

Clearly, someone's hit their flush draw, and someone's hit their straight draw. The first player bets $8, the next player calls, and the guy to my right calls. There's $86 in the pot, so I'm getting better than 10:1 to call. I assume I've got 10 outs (eights, nines, tens, jacks), so it's an easy call. Even reducing it a bit, I only need to have 5 outs to make this a profitable call, and if I hit one of them, I'm gonna be making a lot with my boat.

The river is a beautiful J♥

The first two players check, and the guy to my right bets $8. I raise to $16. The other players call. The guy to my right raises another $8. I put my last $8 in the pot. The other players call. The pot is $182. I show my full house, tens full of jacks.

The first player hit the flush, losing. The second player had a queen, for the straight. The guy to my right held J♦ 9♣, for a full house, jacks full of nines. I go home now.

Still, I feel good about my play. I may be playing a little too tight, which is costing me some hands, but I'm still convinced that tight play is the best play.

Washington State Gambling Commission announces changes

The quarterly Focus on Gambling (.pdf) newsletter has some interesting bits for Q1.

A good change: Today, card room operations are limited to 20 hours a day, seven days a week. Effective July 1, a card room may request permission to be open 24/7 five days a week, and 20 hours for the other two days a week.

Good proposed changes: The WSGC is considering allowing baccarat. Betting on the banker in baccarat is one of the smallest house edges in all casino games.

Bad proposed changes:

• Increase the number of players allowed at a poker table from 10 to 12. As if it wasn't crowded enough in some card rooms already. I have a vague recollection of sitting at an 11-player table once (illegal?), and it was almost too tight to reach your cards.
• Increase poker bet limits from $40 to $500. In essence, this pretty much means allowing no-limit hold 'em. I generally suck at NLHE, so this would draw players away from my table. They did this in Florida last year, and the podcasters at Ante Up have talked about what a wild game $2/$5 NLHE is, and implied that it becomes a game of playing all-in or fold when you arrive any time after a game opens.
• Increase the player-supported jackpot admin fee from 10% to 35%. I hate these jackpots anyway, and now they are considering taking another 25% off the top?
• Remove the dollar limit on card tournament fees. I don't know what the limit is, but if this passes, it wouldn't surprise me if tournament fees went up across the board. I like my el cheapo tourneys, thankyouverymuch.

"Meh" proposed changes:

• Increase table game limits from $200 to $500. That would match the Indian casinos, and would likely reduce the number of low-limit tables out there.
• Drop the requirement that table games be dealt from a shoe. Huh? I don't know why any casino would want this.
• Eliminate the 5% commission limit for games like Pai Gow and Baccarat. I don't know that any player would stand for a higher commission, so I don't see anyone trying this. Then again, there's some dumb players out there.

I think they have a list of proposed changes every quarter. Usually only a couple of these changes pass. Here's hoping for lots of match play baccarat this fall.

Phil Gordon Freakonomics interview

Phil Gordon was the subject of a long interview for the Freakonomics blog. My favorite bits:

On randomness: "I have a simple theory: change 10 river cards in any poker player’s tournament career and I would bet that they would be a losing tournament player for their career."

On avoiding games with a house edge: "I’m not a “gambler” by nature — I consider myself a “strategic investor.” In fact, what we do at the poker table isn’t very different than what investment professionals do — we just get our results every two minutes instead of every few months or years."

On sunglasses: "I don’t believe in the “dilated pupil tell” and other such nonsense. ... I’ve never worn sunglasses at the table and I think it looks completely stupid and is unnecessary."

On quick Lakewood-style tournaments: "The quicker the blinds escalate, the more chances you should be willing to take. Your stack will be at risk quickly, so you might as well push any marginal edge you have when you have it. If the blinds are escalating slowly, you can afford to give up small positive expectation plays."

On Omaha: "I think that it has a chance of surpassing Holdem as the most popular form of the game in five to eight years. As people become “bored” with Holdem, they’ll naturally progress to P.L.O."

On Rock-Paper-Scissors: "Never go rock on the first throw."

Biggest Cache Machine ever; lucky; Spooky

The Yakima Cache Machine II was a blast. It's impossible to get solid numbers, but I'm almost certain that this was the biggest cache machine ever. I'm calling it 120 people, since the reservations we made at Old Country Buffet were for 70, they turned everyone else away, and someone told me that as a result, there were 50 more cachers eating dinner next door. Wow.

On top of that, I think my experiment in separating out the stupid micro-caches from the route worked well. As someone pointed out last night, anyone who wanted to get the micros that were near the route certainly wasn't prevented from doing so, and even in my car, we attempted a couple of them that were painfully close to where we were, because they still showed up on the map and on some of the higher end GPSRs.

It's been more than 15 years since I was a passenger on the ride through the Yakima River canyon. I've never ridden through there when there was snow on the hills. I stand by my claim that it's the most beautiful drive in the state.

I expected a few of the caches to have some relatively steep hill climbing, but I didn't expect there to be as many (7+). My legs and feet are still aching 24 hours later.

Was it the best CM ever? I think it might be. YCM I was my all time favorite, but this time there wasn't a really bad one on the route.

Oh, and on the poker side, I played again last night at Casino Caribbean, won $100 in a raffle, and another $63 at the table. When I won the raffle, I had the same dealer at the table who dealt me the quad aces the night before. He was as shocked at my luck as I was.

The drive home... well... When I left, Snoqualmie had traction tires required, and White pass had traction tires advised. The ol' Saturn doesn't take chains (not enough wheel-well clearance), so I'm heading home via The Dalles, Oregon. It's about an extra hour of driving compared to White Pass, which is the way I came over on Friday. No biggie. I got to eat a good pizza burger from Spooky's restaurant in The Dalles, which has free wi-fi, which is allowing me to post this blog entry.