That Was Almost Exciting!

This is part 2, the final part. Part 1 can be found here. And also, you can find Vlogger Will’s vlog of this session here. Check it out.  I believe you can see my hands quite a bit.

While we were on the subject of my name, Emily mentioned she lived in or near Nottingham.  Of course, I made a Robin Hood reference and she decided she might start calling me Robin, because it was close to “Rob.”  Then she said that Lightning could be “LittleJohn.”  Lightning said his wife would dispute that.  Emily thoroughly enjoyed that and said, “Yes, of course, of course.  We’ll call you “BigJohn.”

Since Emily was immediately to my right, it was inevitable that we would eventually come to a blind vs. blind situation.  Now, new to the MGM since the last time I played there, they no longer allow chopping the blinds.  So we had to play it out. She hadn’t looked at her hand but I had, it was Ace-Queen, a monster two-handed.  She just completed without looking and made a point of saying she hadn’t looked, she would only look if I bet.  Well, it was a friendly game and we were unlikely to win or lose much anyway so I checked behind.  We checked it all the way through, and thus she never looked at her hand.  Nothing hit my hand and at showdown she flipped over Ace-Jack, which she was seeing for the first time. There was no Jack on the board either so I won.  But she noted that we both had big hands for heads up play. “Oh wow, if I had looked, that could have been something, that could have been a heckuva hand.  That was almost exciting.”

I responded, “Yeah, I hear that from women all the time.”  That got a few laughs.

Emily got involved in a hand with Will and Seat 9.  Will raised; the other two called.  On the flop Will led out for $25 and Emily shoved for $55.  Seat 9 called Emily’s raise.  Will shoved and succeeded in getting Seat 9 to fold.  Emily was unhappy, she had obviously hoped her raise would steal the pot.  She nervously watched the turn card and got super excited when it was a 6, immediately showing her pocket 6’s which was now a set.  She was very happy, even more so when the river was another 6!  She was delighted but couldn’t believe it.  I mean she really couldn’t believe it.  Will showed his unimproved pocket Aces.

Emily was saying, “That’s not possible.  I can’t believe it.  Count the deck, count the deck!”  She was laughing but honestly, she was almost “complaining” about getting so lucky.  She spent a few minutes talking about how crazy that was and almost suggested someone was cheating for her.  But she gladly accepted the pot and then the $150 bonus they gave her for the quads. By the way, if you watch Will’s video, this is the last hand on it and he does his less than perfect vocal impression of Emily.  But his take on the hand is funny.

There was a hand with Lightning vs. Emily, and he got Emily to fold with a big bet.  She showed her hand and Lightning said it was a good fold.  That didn’t satisfy Emily, but he didn’t show his hand. “I think you’re lying, you were bluffing, weren’t you?”  Now I’ve seen Lightning do this before, but never quite like this.  He started acting totally indignant that Emily was accusing him of lying.  He got super serious and appeared angry. “You’re accusing me of lying at the poker table?”  He gave her the silent treatment and Emily actually got concerned that she had pissed him off.  She asked me if he was really mad at her.  I insisted that he was just having fun with her.

But man, Lightning kept up the act.  I had never seen him give this good a performance.  Eventually I actually started to believe he was pissed at her and asked him about it.  But he wouldn’t break character.  Was this the Lightning I had known all these years?  Finally, he did relent and cracked a smile and told Emily he was just having fun with her.  She was relieved. But that was some performance he gave.  He missed his calling. He should have been an actor.

As we were chatting, Emily asked what I did for a living.  I told her I worked for PokerAtlas. Well, never had I gotten such a positive response when I’ve told someone that.  She started raving about how much she loved PokerAtlas and how much she uses it every time she comes to Vegas. “We always think it won’t be accurate, but you know, it’s always right. Always.  It’s just great.”  I said, “Will you tell my boss that?”  She said sure, give me the number, I’ll call right now.  I told her, “You know all the gazillion tournaments that are running right now in Vegas? (This was in the middle of the WSOP).  I entered every single one of them into our database.”  She was impressed. (So am I, truth be told).

By the way, I had lunch at the office the next day and told them this story, they loved it.

Then there was Lightning's big hand.  He’s already blogged about it (here) and it is featured prominently in Will’s video I linked to above.  Will was one of Lightning’s victims.  It is the second to last hand he covers, and you can see my hand pounding the table when the winner is revealed. It was a rather benign hand until the river when there was now 4 to a straight on board.  Any one with a Jack had a straight, but if one fortunate soul had King-Jack that would be the stone cold nuts. 

First to act led out for $100.  Will tanked.  I heard him muttering something about pot odds to chop.  Finally he called.  Then it was on Lightning, who really Hollywooded it up.  He talked and talked and worried and fretted and put on a show.  Remember how I told you how good an actor he was when he convinced Emily he was mad at her?  Well, he wasn’t quite as good an actor this time.  I thought he went overboard. But the thing was, he only had $141 left.  So it didn’t make much sense for him to just call.  He was trying to convince the other players that he really wanted to fold, but not sure he sold that.  Anyway, he finally shoved.  The guy on Will’s right instantly called but Will went into the tank again.  I was pretty sure he just had the Jack, and even though he had to believe at least one of the others had King-Jack, it was just not enough of a bet to get him to fold.  Not for $41.  I was sure Will would call and eventually he did.  Of course, Lightning was the only one with King-Jack and made a really nice profit for the session with that one hand.  

Emily had been telling all of us about the differences in poker etiquette in England vs. the U.S.  But somehow she wanted to bring up a difference between the two countries that had nothing to do with poker.  She suddenly turned to me and said, “I just found out that people are allowed to have guns here.”  That took me by surprise.  I said, “Yes, we have the second amendment.  The right to bear arms is constitutionally protected.”

She told me no one has guns in the U.K.  She went on and on about how different that was and she had a hard time grasping it.  She said, “Everyone here at this table could have a gun right now?”  I said, “Different states have different rules.  In some states it’s very restricted and you can’t conceal carry.  But in other states, it’s more lax.  I mean, in Texas you are required by law to have a gun on you at all times.”  

I think she almost believed me when Seat 9 piped up.  “That’s the way it should be.”  She and seat 9 got into a bit of a discussion about it with Seat 9 very much in favor of easy gun access.  She never did seem to understand it.  So finally I said to her, “You know why we have the second amendment, why we are all allowed to own guns?”  She said no.

“Well,” I said, “Hundreds of years ago, America was ruled by an evil country, led by an evil tyrant, who wanted to control everything about the way we lived.  And that country was called ‘England’.”  “No, no, I never heard of it, never heard of it…”  she was laughing as she said this.  “Yeah, you heard of it.  When we threw that country out of here, we put in the second amendment so we’d be armed in case any other country ever tried to control us again.”  Emily was still pretending she never heard of England, “No, no, I know nothing of this, I had nothing to do with it (she was laughing the whole time).”

“King George?  You never heard of King George?  Or George Washington?”  She laughingly denied every hearing of those two Georges.

Eventually we had to leave, albeit reluctantly. I told Emily I was definitely going to blog about her, and when I do, I wanted her to leave a comment. She said, “Oh, I hope you won’t be too mean to me, this crazy English girl you met.  I’m really pretty wonderful.”

I said to her, “Emily, are a total delight.  I had so much fun tonight.  You’re fantastic.”  She seemed touched. 

I left up over $400 but you couldn’t put a price tag on the fun I had.

Quad Aces for the Re-suck!

(This is part 1 of 2 parts)

As you know from my last two entries here, I was in Vegas recently.  And I had a poker session that was so much fun that I just have to blog about it.  So at least for the time being, my blog is back.

I was in Vegas for 12 days, and for much of the first week, my blogging pal Lightning was in town with me. In fact, he has already blogged about this night, which you can see here.  But now, for the first time, you will tell the true version of this night.

Back in the day, I played a lot of poker at MGM, but not so much recently. It’s not that I no longer like the room (although I must admit, I’m not a fan of uncapped 1/2 games like they have now). It’s mostly that over the recent years, all my dealer buddies have left the room. I go there now and I don’t recognize anyone.  It’s just another poker room, nobody knows me there. In the old days, it was like Norm walking into Cheers whenever I showed up there.

On this night, Lightning suggested that we hit up MGM for our evening session and it seemed like a good idea.  Because parking is always an issue at MGM properties, he picked me up at my hotel and we made our way to the poker room.

I got seated first and almost immediately picked up a fun vibe from this table.  I was in seat 5, directly across from the dealer, and the young lady on my right in seat 4 was obviously having a great time. When I first got there, she was mostly conversing with the young fellow in seat 2, who I noticed would occasionally take a camera out and appeared to be recording some hands. Two things became immediately obvious to me.  One, the young fellow was a vlogger (a blogger like me, except with video instead of text) And two, the young lady was British.

Emily (her real name) appeared fascinated by the concept of a vlog. And she was peppering Will (the vlogger, also his real name) with questions about vlogging.  I stayed quiet for a while, and noticed that Emily seemed excited that she might appear in a future vlog, especially after Will asked her name and wrote it down. She enthusiastically gave him her permission to use her likeness and her name should she be involved in a vlog-worthy hand.

Emily was chatting with everyone at the table, talking about the hands and about poker and about differences between poker in Vegas and England.  She was just one of those people who, while playing poker, engaged in just the right amount of conversation.  She talked a lot, but not so much that she ever got annoying (though she seemed to worry about that).  And almost everything she said was interesting and usually amusing.  She was just a really fun person to be sitting at a poker table with.  The most apt word I can think of to describe her is “delightful.”  Sadly, I don’t think I can sufficiently convey with just words just how truly delightful she was.

I asked Will what his YouTube channel was and looked it up on my phone.  It’s 4 Bet Blind.  He explained that he had come down from Portland for the WSOP where he hoped to find lots of material for his vlog.  He had played the Gladiators event at the WSOP the day before and gave us a few details about that.  Emily too had played the Gladiators.  She cashed but busted before Day 1 ended and we heard about that.

My session was up and down to start.  I won a small pot flopping a set of Jacks.  For this trip, the single hand I was dealt most often was pocket Jacks.  You’ll be surprised to hear that I only lost one time this entire trip with the dreaded pocket Kings.  That one time I ended folding to a bet (it may have been a bad fold, I’ll never know). 

Meanwhile Lightning was having a miserable time at his table, lost a buy-in and took a break.  I told him I didn’t know if my table was going to be profitable but that it sure was fun, and I wasn't about to leave it any time soon.  He got back in a game at a different table and put his name on the list for a table change to my game.  I was thinking it’s a shame that he was missing out on this fun.

Eventually the seat directly to my left opened up.  Lightning’s table was near mine so rather than text him I tried shouting his name.  The room was packed and he didn’t hear me.  Emily asked me if I was calling my friend and I said yes so she joined in yelling “John, John!”  He didn’t hear my voice but somehow he heard Emily’s!  I guess he’s been married so long, his ear is more attuned to hearing a female voice yelling at for him.

Lightning settled into seat 6 and I’m sure he immediately picked up on the fun vibe of the table.  Then a familiar face came in to deal.  It was my old pal “Joyce,” who’s been dealing to me at MGM probably since I started playing poker in Vegas. In researching her blog name, I discovered that despite dealing to me probably thousands of times, I had only mentioned her on the blog once.  But it was a fun post because, of course, it was the time we discussed her bra size.  But on this night we discussed what happened to all my old pals from MGM instead.  

Joyce turned out to be the only familiar face among the dealers that I saw in the room that night.  She greeted me warmly as I did her, and I asked about all my old pals.  She told me that there were just a few left…..but they were either floor people or shift managers.  The other dealers had all moved on.  I did know that a number of them were now working at South Point. 

We had just about finished going down memory lane when Joyce dealt me pocket Aces.  Nice.  I didn’t write down the details like I would have in the old days so I might not have this exactly right, but I believe I was one of the blinds and the relatively quiet fellow in seat 3 (so maybe the button?) raised to $8.  I made it $25 I think.  He called and it was heads up.  The flop was really nice. As5d8h.  Always nice to flop a set of Aces.  I didn’t expect to get any action but since I was the preflop aggressor I dutifully put out a bet and he called. The turn was 7d.  So a straight was possible if he had 6-4.  Since he had initially raised and then called my pre-flop three-bet, what were the chances of that?  Still there were now two diamonds on the board in addition to the straight.  I believe I bet again and he called.

I wasn’t too worried, but better safe than sorry, I remember thinking it would be nice to see the board pair just in case.  The river did indeed pair the board.  With an Ace!  A set of Aces is nice. Quad Aces is damn near perfect.

I assumed there was no way Seat 3 would call anything with two Aces on the board, so I put out a really small bet.  To my astonishment, he shoved!  Of course, I snap called and turned over my hand, saying “I think I got this!”  Seat 3 was surprised and somewhat argumentative.  He showed his hand, which was indeed 6-4, both diamonds and pointed out that if the 8 of hearts had been the 8 of diamonds, he’d have beaten my quads with a straight flush!  Except that it was the 8 of hearts, and he only picked up that straight flush draw on the turn, when he made his straight.

Wow, what a hand. It was the old “suck/re-suck.”  He sucked out on me on the turn, and I re-sucked out on him on the river.  Phew.  BTW, MGM does not have a bad beat jackpot, so if it had been quads vs. straight flush, I would have just had one horrendous bad beat story to tell, and not the prize of winning a bad beat jackpot.  Anyway, imagine winning with quad Aces which I actually needed them to beat his damn straight.  Set of Aces no good there.

Well there was quite a bit of excitement to say the least.  For one thing, the room has high-hand bonuses.  They are progressive, and it would be at least $100.  As it turned out, it was good for $150.  This was actually the second time since I’d been there that someone had quads. I think it was quad deuces and I also think they were hit by the very fellow in Seat 3! They also have a High Hand of the Hour that I might have qualified for in addition to the $150, but it happened after 9PM and the last high hand period ended at 9PM. Oh well.

There was also the pot.  I had Seat 3 covered but not by much. It was a healthy pot.  Damn, I didn’t write down how much it was, but I was sure that after it was over, I had more than a double up of my $200 buy-in, not counting the $150 bonus, which I pocketed when I received it some time later (I had plenty of chips to play without with the pretty green ones).

And you know who was almost as excited as I was over this hand?  Emily, of course.  She loved it. She insisted I hurry up and take a picture of the hand, then grabbed the phone out of my hand and took the pic for me because she had a better angle. But what happened was the guy in seat 9 was expressing his disapproval of Seat 3’s play.  How could he call my three-bet preflop with 6-4???  Even it if was sooooted???  He wasn’t involved in this hand at all but somehow the play of Seat 3 offended him!  Hours later, when seat 9 left, Emily commented to me about the guy being so upset with the way the hand was played, she was still wondering why it bothered that guy so much.  And Seat 3 seemed to be defending his play because he almost had a straight flush.  Or maybe because he had sucked out on me on the turn, and what were the chances of a re-suck?

Emily asked me if I was worried about the straight (before the river).  I said I saw it but it was so unlikely.  Emily agreed.  She said something to the effect of, “How could you imagine anyone playing like that?  I mean, he’d have to be a complete idiot to have 6-4 there!”  That’s just a weak paraphrase, I wish I had written it down at the time.  But I do know she referred to Seat 3 as an idiot over the way he played this hand any number of times.  And she was actually arguing with Seat 9 about it, even though they were both questioning Seat 3’s play.

I was a bit surprised that Emily was so critical of Seat 3.  I mean calling him an idiot seemed out of line, to say the least.  But they had been friendly and I had already picked up that Seat 3 was a Brit like her.  I had assumed they met at the table and bonded over their mutual heritage.  Boy was I was wrong.  Before the evening was over I figured out, and then confirmed, that Seat 3’s name was Matt and he was indeed Emily’s husband!  This made it even more fun for me that Emily seemed to be so happy about my quad Aces.  And I guess it somehow made it ok that she called him a complete idiot.  Likely not for the first time!

And let me defend Matt’s play there.  By this time he obviously knew I was a tight player and when I three-bet there he can put me on a very narrow range that includes Aces, Kings and maybe Ace-King.  Maybe.  Probably not even Queens.  So maybe if he hits something unexpected, I will get sticky with it and put all my chips in play against a hand I couldn’t possibly expect a decent player to have there. Which in fact is exactly what happened.  Except I pulled off the re-suck. Trouble is, if that was what he was thinking, he has to know it is almost more likely than not that I do have quad Aces on the river. I mean I wouldn’t play Kings like that with all the Aces on board.  And would I have played just top pair that strong with the straight out there (however unlikely)?

Emily confessed that they never play at the same table usually but because it was so busy there they had no choice.  So they ended up sitting right next to each other.  I wonder if that hand came up in their subsequent conversations during their trip?

I’m not sure about this but I think Emily asked Will if he caught any of that hand for his vlog, and I think he said he might have. But since he wasn’t involved in the hand I rather doubt he recorded any of it.  But Emily was excited about the possibility of it appearing in Will’s vlog.  It was probably at this point that I did something I rarely do.  I came out of the closet.

Yes, I admitted to being the world famous poker blogger Robvegaspoker. While Emily was still quizzing Will about his vlog, and kept asking, “are you gonna put this in the vlog?” I spoke up.  “You know, I’m internet famous, too.”  She asked who I was and I told her.  And I said, “I used to have a pretty popular blog.  A written blog, low-tech, not video like Will.”  She went searching the web for it immediately and found it.  I said, “I’ve only done one blog post this year but I have to blog about the quad Aces for sure.”  She took a screenshot of the blog and promised to look for the blog post. I told her Lightning also had a blog (or maybe he told her himself) and she took a screenshot of his blog too.

So she asked me if I was “Rob” or “Robert” and I said “Yes.”  She must have thought I was being a smart ass so explained, “My legal name is Robert but I go by Rob.” Then she went on about how Robert is a great name, explaining that in England there are some strong names and Robert is one of them.  She also liked the name John.

I took issue with that a bit. “Are there any Roberts in England?  I’ve never heard of an English Robert.  There’s never been a King Robert, has there?”  But she insisted it was a good English name and then told me it was the name of her dear father who had passed away a few years ago.  I don’t recall if she said I reminded her of him or if she could see me as her father substitute, something like that.  She asked me what year I was born.  I was taken aback by that but I finally told her and she expressed a bit of surprise, which I took to mean she thought I was younger than I am but I could just be flattering myself.  She told me her dad was born a few years after I was.  

Yours truly with the delightful Emily

And that’s where I’m going to leave this part 1.  I haven’t written up the rest, so it may take some time to get more posted, but please check back.  In future installments we discuss Robin Hood, the player who actually complained about hitting quad 6’s, Emily’s favorite poker app (PokerAtlas, of course), Lightning’s Academy Award winning performance, the American Revolution and of course, the 2nd Amendment (really)!  Check back early and often!

NOTE:  PART 2 IS NOW LIVE, FIND IT HERE.

Back to the Bike....Sort of

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably saw that I retweeted announcements from The Bike and Commerce (and other L.A. area-rooms) that they were re-opening at long last—for outdoor gaming.  The state of CA still won't allow indoor casinos open, but they are ok with gambling if you want to play outside.  But it took awhile, because in addition to the Governor, there was another group of dictators standing in the way.  The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.  So while in San Diego and parts of northern California, outdoor casinos were approved, L.A. said no to even outdoor gaming.

This all changed on October 5 when the Supervisors deigned to allow the local casinos to reopen as long as the games were outside.  That's when the Bike and Commerce reopened their poker "rooms" and their other games of chance.  In California still, only Indian casinos (as I explained here) can deal games inside a building.

Outdoor poker, on its face, sounds rather ridiculous to me.  I mean, there's such a thing as weather.  My first thought was, "What if it's windy?"  Here comes the flop…..and there goes the flop!  Gone with the wind.  And even though there is no better place weather wise to try to play outdoors than Southern California, we do get occasional rain, extreme heat, extreme cold, in addition to the wind.  OK, the extreme cold part may be a stretch, but when you have lived in Southern CA most of your life, you think anything under 70 degrees is extreme cold.

But I had to check it out.  It was still hot when the rooms opened, as we are known for hot early autumns.  I figured if I was going to check it out, I'd best get down there before the weather changed.

So the first Saturday I could (Oct. 10), I planned on seeing what it was all about and if nothing else, get a blog post out of it.  If you are wondering about my little Ventura room, well Ventura is in a different county and they were not opening.  I subsequently saw on their website they planned to re-open on a limited basis beginning Oct. 13.  But later I learned that they only opened for table games, and are not currently spreading poker.  Also, believe it or not, the other L.A. county "poker rooms" that opened, Hollywood Park Casino, Hawaiian Gardens, etc, only opened for table games.  I believe this has to do with the insane rules the state and the county put in place for offering games even outdoors.

Anyway, lucky for me, the Bike uses PokerAtlas's Table Captain software instead of Bravo (As you know, I work for PokerAtlas).  Not only could I see how busy the newly re-opened Bike was (answer: very) but I could add my name to the waiting list for the game(s) I wanted long before I arrived at the Bike.  I mean through the software, through the PokerAtlas app.  I had noticed that the lists for the 2/3 game I played had been ridiculously long since opening.  Of course one of the reasons is that they could not have nearly as many games outside as they could in the casino, where they have close to 200 poker tables.  What was weird, though, was that they had five 2/3 games running and there were still like 40-60 plus names waiting. 

That was strange because back when I was a playing at the Bike fairly regularly on Saturday afternoons, there were never more than three 2/3 games running and never more than 10 players waiting to get in.  My only guess was that they were running fewer bigger games or mixed games, and therefore the players who would normally be playing bigger or mixed games were stuck playing down to 2/3.  Or that there was just such a pent up demand for live poker that everyone was coming out of the woodwork to play.

I checked with a PokerAtlas colleague about how getting on the waitlist from the app worked. The ability to add your name to a list from the app is only an option, some rooms use the software and don't allow players to do that.  Turns out Bike only allows it for the "Plaza Games"—which are the so-called bigger games.  The 2/3 I play is the smallest game they consider a Plaza game so I could add my name to the list long before I got there.

Before I left my house Saturday morning, I checked Google Maps and got a break when it told me it would only take 39 minutes to get there.  That meant that there was clear traffic, no real delays.  I guess that is one of the pluses of the state being in lockdown.  On the average October Saturday, in order to get to the Bike I would frequently run into traffic from a UCLA or USC home football game (or both), and/or a Dodgers playoff/World Series game.  Nothing like that on this Saturday.  And still, no one was driving to a restaurant to eat!

So before pulling out of my garage, I registered for the 2/3 game.  There were five games running (this was before noon) and I was around 46th on the list!  Yikes.  Pretty sure I could get there before hitting the top of the list.  Only issue was that they would only keep me on that list for one-hour. If I didn't show up within an hour, I'd be taken off the list and have to start fresh at the bottom when I arrived.  I knew if that happened, I'd never get into a game this day.

The app has a neat timer that appears right on your phone so you can see how much time you have to report in before you will be zapped from the wait list.  Traffic was a bit worse than Google anticipated, so by the time I hit the Bike parking lot I only had 7 minutes to report in to stay on the list.  By now I had moved up only to #34 on the list.  Ugh.  OTOH…..there were now over 70 names total on that list.

My guess had been that the outdoor gaming would be in the parking lot.  But that was incorrect. I didn't see any poker tables in the lot.  I did see a few temporary signs with arrows pointing to the "casino."  It turned out that I had parked a long ways away from the actual tables.  I didn't have time to repark, I needed to get to the casino post haste to check in (or so I thought).  So I walked with great alacrity to try to find the casino.

Whew.  It was a long walk.  Turned out that the gaming area was in the very front of the casino/hotel (the parking lot is in the back), basically where the valet parking / front entrance to the hotel is.  By the time I got to the casino area, I had walked so far and so fast I was sweating profusely.  This, despite the fact that the weather had changed.  This was the first cool day in L.A. in many months.  It was actually pleasant, not hot.  Cool, but not cold.  It was actually perfect weather for being outside. 

But at the pace I was walking to get there "in time," I was soaked with sweat from that walk.  Wearing the mask that is of course required didn't help. Nothing worse than a sweaty mask.

I had to get thru the temperature check and get a wrist band that would allow me to travel thru the various gaming areas.  Then I tried to find someone to check in with.  But I looked at the app again—I was only at #34 on the waitlist—and it had a button to press to check in.  So I could check in on the phone. I didn't know that.  I didn't have to rush.  I hit the button and explored the layout.

Where the poker area was looked to be at the very front, where the valet driveway would have been.  The cement was covered with some kind of astroturf.  There was some kind of temporary covering overhead, not a tent, but something a bit more solid I guess.  There was an electronic waitlist board.  And poker tables.

One of the rules was that there was no eating or drinking at the table.  There were a few dining tables up against the building, but how you got served I never learned.  There was also a coffee place near there, but they had no soft drinks and no real food (maybe some pastries?).  Eventually I asked if they even had bottled water but they did not, but they did give me a cup of ice water.

There were some banquet chairs in a couple of spots outside of the poker tables for waiting.  There were also a few tables a bit away that you could eat or drink at if you somehow had something to eat.  I eventually sat over there so I could pull my sweaty mask down and drink the water but that area allowed smoking so that was annoying.

I asked where the restrooms were and got a real shock.  They pointed over there….outside.  The only available restrooms were porta-potties!  In L.A., they are referred to as "Andy Gumps."  Ugh.  Seriously?  The hotel is open, there are nice restrooms inside and we have to use damn porta-potties?

Well, I had no choice.  Gulp. Well, ok, it wasn't my worst nightmare but come on, who wants to use one of those things?  There was no running water either.  There were some kind of portable hand-washing stations outside the potties.  The was a sign on them that said "Please don't drink this water."  Hmm….I mean if the water is unsafe to drink, what is it doing to my hands?  And remember, in the Covid age, hand washing is most important.  There was also of course a lot of hand sanitizer available.

It occurred to me that the diseases one could contract from one of those porta-potties are likely much more deadly than Covid. Yikes.

What I found out about this was that the first day they opened, they were allowing guests to go instead the hotel to use the facilities inside.  But the state (or maybe it was the county) told them no, they couldn't do that.  They were ordered to get the porta-potties. No one was allowed to use the inside facilities. So the government thinks it's fine if you get sick from dysentery as long as you don't get Covid.  Makes sense.

Anyway, hanging out outside with only a cup of ice water was pretty unpleasant.  I decide I would wait no more than 90-minutes, and if at that time, I wasn't real close to the top of the list I would just give up and call it a day.  I mean if I wanted to sit down, it was either in the poker area with my sweaty mask on or in the smoking area with smokers.  I figured 90-minutes was all I could take.  And I reasoned that I didn't want to stay long enough to have to use those Andy Gumps more than one more time.  Ugh.

So after about an hour, while I was sipping on my ice water with my mask pulled down in the smoking area, I checked the list on my phone and I was now #30.  I was pretty much writing off getting to play.  I figured I would stay with my original plan and go to 1-1/2 hours.  Maybe the list would start moving faster?  By the way, at one point when I was walking around I saw a sign saying they were not currently taking names for the waiting list, there was no available space on them!  This was for every poker game, not just my game!  Think about what kind of business the Bike could have been doing if only they were allowed to use that beautiful, newly remodeled casino they just spent millions sprucing up only a few years ago.

But a few seconds after I put my phone back in its holster, I heard a beep and looked at my phone again.  It was a text from PokerAtlas telling me my seat was ready!  I wasn't about to ask why it still showed me #30 on the waiting list.  I rushed my ass over there and tried to find a floor person to tell I was being paged to a game.

I found a guy and told him about the message.  I was prepared to pull out my phone and show him the text but he didn't question me at all.  He just asked me what game it was and took me over to the area where the 2/3 games were running.  It looked like they were about to find another player for an open seat they had when the guy I was talking to said I had gotten a text and the seat was mine.  As it turned out, this was all on the honor system!  I never proved that I had gotten the text and they never went over to their list or the board to clear my name.  They never asked my name!    But they let me have the seat.  If only I had known it was that easy, I could have cut in way ahead of everyone!  But I did nothing wrong.

I ran this by my boss a few days later and got her best guess as to what happened.  Either the folks at the Bike screwed up and paged me in error, or maybe since, as I witnessed, they weren't clearing names, I really was next up, and the list just wasn't being kept up.  Because for the entire time I was playing at the table, I kept checking and saw my name still on the list, slowing moving up, and after another hour and a quarter I finally heard them call my name for a seat!  So I dunno what happened but if I had waited to be actually called, I would have left before that and never played.

I waited for them to sanitize my seating area, which they promptly did whenever there was a new player or a seat change or a table change.  As I mentioned, you were not allowed to eat or drink at the table, so that for me, is a bit tough (I tend to have a dry mouth that I need to keep lubricated). But at least it had been so long that I had stopped sweating.  But the mask does also tend to make my face itch, so I had to leave the table periodically so I could step outside and pull down my mask (after using some hand sanitizer) to scratch my nose or mouth.  Fortunately my seat was near the area completely unprotected by a temporary ceiling so I could step "outside" and pull down the mask within a few seconds.

The table was 8-handed and there were plexiglass dividers.  There were no electronics connected, so it was manual shuffle and—there was no way to clock in for comps!  The Table Capt system is great for keeping track of player comps but it does require electricity.  It didn't bother me for this one time but if I was going to make a regular habit of this (I'm not), it would be a pisser.

Once I started playing, I was immediately reminded of why I stopped going down to the Bike.  The players drove me nuts.  Not by the way they played, but by the fact that they didn't play. They walked around.  A lot.  The guy next to me got up almost every third hand to go over to a blackjack table to check in on his friend.  Everybody was getting up every few hands to wander around, look for a better game or whatever.  Even I got up more than I usually would to go "outside" to scratch under my mask. Despite the huge waiting lists, seldom were all eight hands actually dealt.  I was instantly reminded of how annoying I always found that about the Bike.

But when they did play, it wasn't the same old loose-aggressive players that I remembered.  The action was fairly tame.  Surprisingly so. I saw almost no crazy moves the entire time I was playing.  It was strange.  I had gone in thinking that players used to bigger games were playing down to 2/3, but this did not appear to be the case at all.  Maybe it was just my table, or maybe people who haven't been playing lately just wanted to ease into it.

I bought in for the $300 max. Early on I was in the big blind with Queen-7 off. There was no raise so four of us saw a Queen-Queen-Jack flop.  I bet $10 and didn't get a call.

Then of course, of course, I got the dreaded pocket Kings.  I opened to $15 and only got one call, the lone female at the table.  The fact that I only got one call shows you that this was not a typical Bike game. The flop was Jack-8-x and I bet $25; she called.  Another Jack on the flop.  Hmm….I figured she probably had a Jack.  I checked, she bet $50.  Oh well, I figured there was no way I could get felted with pocket Kings if I didn't call, so I called.  The river was a blank, I checked but so did she.  I showed my hand and she just mucked.  Winning with pocket Kings!  If that is the new normal, I'm on board.

I got pocket Aces and opened to $15.  No one called.  Again, proof that this isn't the old Bike!  I won a whopping $4 because they take a buck for the jackpot drop.

I got King-Queen of diamonds utg+1.  I opened to $15 and got one call.  The flop was Jack-high, two diamonds, I bet $20, he made it $55.  I called.  The turn was a King and I checked, he checked back.  There was a Queen on the river, I bet $50 but didn't get a call.

I had pocket deuces on the button and called $10.  This time it was five-way.  The flop was Jack-high and it checked around.  The turn was a blank and it checked around again.  The river was another blank.  This time, the guy first to act put out $17 and it folded to me.  I figured if the guy had a Jack he would have bet the flop.  So I smelled a bluff, though of course if he paired anything on the board or had a low pocket pair he had me beat.  I shrugged and called.  He just mucked without showing.  I guess I still have a little card sense.

Futzing with that damn mask was really getting to me.  Why do we need a mask if we are outside again?  I had played enough, and was up a nice $140, so I decided to call it a day.

It was nice playing poker again.  Am I going to go back to play at the Bike in this outdoor set up?  Not very likely.  Not as long as the only restrooms are those damn porta-potties.  No thanks.  It's too bad, because otherwise it's not bad (assuming nice weather).

Sadly, the young lady above was not at the Bike on this day.  This a pic of a woman who won a tournament at the South Point (in Vegas) recently.  This was posted on their Twitter account.  I dunno who the young lady is, but it would be great if I ran into her at the Bike one day, wouldn't you agree?  She sure knows how to dress for poker. By that I mean, notice how she is wearing her mask.

"I Don't Even Play Kings"

Well last Saturday, March 7, I played at PC Ventura.  At the time, I didn't realize it would be the last time I played live poker for awhile.  All the local and semi-local casinos are closed now, and who knows when they will reopen.  My blog output will likely get a lot lighter than it has been, and of course it has already been fairly light.  We live in interesting times.

Nevertheless, I can still talk about that "last" session, and so I will. There was one good hand to report. I also have some news and a couple of interesting stories.  Well, they're interesting to me, hopefully they will be to you.

First the news.  When I went over to the podium to add my name to the waitlist, I told him I wanted 2/3.  The (relatively new) guy working the podium asked, "Just 2/3 or 2/3/5?"  Huh?  That was a new one.  Without asking details, I reflexively replied, "Just 2/3."  Then I went over to look at the board more carefully.  I had already noted that there were four 2/3 games going when I walked in.  Now I noticed that there was also a column indicating that they were spreading a 2/3/5 game.  And they in fact had two tables of it, and at least 4-5 names of players waiting for it.   There were many more names waiting for the regular 2/3 game, and I was thus hopeful that they would start another table soon.

I was pretty sure I had never seen them spread a 2/3/5 game before.  I do remember that in the past, the sometimes spread a 3/5/10 game, but I hadn't recalled seeing that in awhile. 

While I was waiting I asked the guy what the buy-in was for the new game.  Not that I ever intended to play it.  I mean, you guys know me.  Can you imagine me playing a game where there is, essentially, a forced $5 UTG straddle every hand?  Not bloody likely.  Anyway, the min/max is $300-$600.  The buy-in for the 2/3 is $100-$300 and I always buy in for the max.

When I finally got into a game, I overheard some talk and it appears that they just started offering this game at the beginning of the week, and it seems to be fairly popular.  I just hope it doesn't displace the 2/3 game, as I have no interest in the bigger game.  Even if started getting more tables than the regular 2/3, it would be bad—it might make it harder and harder to find a good 2/3 game.  I hope the 2/3 game remains dominant.  Note: this was written before all the closures.  Who knows what will happen now when they reopen?

Well, I finally got into a game, right before they called down the list for a new game.  I was assigned a corner seat at the existing game, which had bad lighting.  Also the chair was broken so I couldn't adjust it.  And I have problems seeing the board from the corner.  So after a few hands, when the guy to my immediate left got called to that 2/3/5 game. I grabbed his seat.

I hadn't played a hand to that point, and as I moved over one seat, I looked down at a couple of Aces.  You might say "good seat change" but no one had yet taken my old seat so I would have gotten the same hand if I hadn't made the move.

On this hand, there had been a $6 straddle (UTG, the only spot they allow it).  And the next player called the $6.  Then the guy right before me made it $40.  He had about $110 or so left after that bet.

Nice.  That was an overbet to be sure.  I didn't know how the table had been playing and I'd never seen this guy before.  I've seen people overbet like that with the dreaded hand, but it more often is pocket Jacks.  Truth be told, I've seen people with Aces bet like that, as in, "I hate getting my Aces cracked."

My normal three-bet is 3X plus any limpers.  In this case it would be plus the two straddlers.  Oh and by-the-way, would my raise technically be a four-bet since the straddle could be considered a raise?

But I decided that $120 was enough without adding anything for the straddlers.  I figured I was unlikely to get a call from any of the players left behind even at "only" $120.  I assumed there was a good chance though that the guy betting $40 would call, because he didn't have all that many chips left, and unless he was just trying to steal with nothing, he probably really liked his hand to make it $40.

So I put out $120 and it quickly folded to the guy who made it $40.  I thought he said all-in.  But when the dealer said, "Sure you can go all-in," I wondered if the guy had said, "Can I go all-in?" instead.  This was my first clue that maybe he was somewhat of a newbie.  Any experienced player wouldn't have to ask if he could go all-in.  I confirmed with the dealer that he had indeed gone all-in.  So of course I called.  Although it wasn't necessary to do it right away, the dealer counted his stack and told me I need to add $30 to make the call, which I did.

The guy didn't show, so neither did I. The flop was Jack-high and dry.  It remained dry except that by the river there were two 8's on it.  I think we flipped over our hands at the same time.  He had Ace-7 offsuit for….nothing.  My bullets were good.  And I was certainly grateful to the guy by playing so badly and getting me off to a really nice start. Also glad that he had Ace-7 and not A-8.

He left to get more cash.  That was more good news.  Seriously, what the hell was he doing playing Ace-7 like that?  Once I caught his steal attempt (if that's what it was) he should have folded like a cheap suit.

Now the guy did come back, but after another orbit or two he got called into the 1/2 game.  Based on how he played subsequent hands it was obvious he didn't really know how to play and he definitely made the right decision to switch to the smaller game. I dunno if he had ever played poker before but he definitely wasn't ready for 2/3.  I almost felt guilty for taking his money.

Almost.

I managed to win a whopping two more hands for the day.  About 45-minutes later, I looked down at two Jacks.  There was a straddle and a two callers so I made it $30.  Only one caller.  The flop was King-high and I c-bet $40.  He folded fast.

Near the end of my session, in my last big blind, I had Queen-Jack off.  No one raised and four of us saw I Queen-high flop.  I bet a whopping $5 (the pot was only $6 after the rake) and took it down.

Other than that, I was obscenely card-dead.  I think I only got one other pocket pair—8's that went nowhere.  No Ace-King or Ace-Queen.  Suited connectors?  One.  It was 9-8 and I was UTG so I just mucked them.  It was pretty pathetic.

As it happened, the guy who took my old seat a hand or two after I had those Aces noticed how few hands I'd been playing.  He had relocated to the other end of the table.  At one point he must have said something to the fellow next to him, because the fellow responded, "Yeah, he placed Aces once."  I looked over there and the first guy said to me, "No Aces or Kings, huh, sir?"  I just shrugged.

I didn't appreciate the comment.  He's giving free information to the other players—that I haven't played a lot of hands.  You say it should be obvious to anyone else at the table?  Well yeah, it should be.  But believe me I run into plenty of players at this room that aren't paying that kind of attention—why help them out?  It's one player to a hand, after all. 

There was a female player who did a couple of annoying and disgusting things. She apparently moved over from another table, with the waitress following her with her food order.  Apparently she ordered the Ahi tuna salad.  The waitress herself pointed out that the tuna seemed to be overcooked.  The player agreed and the waitress took it back to get it replaced.  Of course the women complained about being hungry the whole time waiting for her new meal.

Eventually the waitress brought her back a new meal.  The woman immediately picked up a leaf or two of lettuce off the plate—with her hands—to examine the Ahi, to see if it was cooked to her liking.  She said it was and then picked up a lemon wedge off the plate and squeezed lemon juice over her meal.  Again, she did this with her bare hands that had just been touching the cards and the chips. Has she not heard of the coronavirus? Even before the casino closed, it was in all the papers. It was never a good idea to touch food you are about to put in your mouth with your bare hands after touching casino poker chips.  But these days, it's a really, really bad idea.

Then after she finished eating, she made a call on her cel phone.  And she put it on speaker so the whole table could hear her call.  She was calling Netflix because she was having trouble changing her password.  Seriously?  She had to do this at the poker table?   First we heard the automated attendant thanking her for her call and telling her how important her call was to them.  Then we heard about 15 minutes of that horrific music they play when they put you on hold.  Then we heard her talking to someone from Netflix walking her through what she had to do to change her password.  Yes, we heard the Netflix person through her speakerphone. All this while she was playing poker!

It was annoying and rude.

Anyway, it came time for me to leave.  I had booked a $120 profit.  As he saw me racking up my chips, the guy who had commented earlier about my tight play said to me, "Leaving, sir?  No Aces or Kings?"  I ignored him.  But in order to get to the cage, I had to walk right by him.  So as I passed him, I said to him, "I don't even play Kings."

I had planned to add, "They're Ace magnets, haven't you heard?"  But I saw he had his face buried in his phone and didn't appear to have heard me.  So I didn't say it.

However, the guy who was next to him—the guy who pointed out that I played Aces once—laughed and nudged him and said to him, "Did you hear what he said?  He said he doesn't even play Kings!"

I was gone by the time the guy had a chance to answer, if he did.