I'm Not a Bad Enough Player to Beat This Game

Car saga is finally over!  You mean I have to get back to talking about poker again?  Let's see if I can still do this.

This is a recent session out in Ventura.  Remember the game is 1/2 with a $50-$100 buy-in.  I always buy-in for the max of course. 

This game was an action table, a lot more so than the 1/2 usually is here.  And there were plenty of big stacks.  I saw a few of those big stacks get made, but a lot of them were there when I arrived.

I had dropped close to $60 without winning a pot.  I topped off my stack to get right back around $100.  I guess I had close to that when this hand happened.  I called $5 with pocket 5's.  As I've mentioned before, a raise to $4 or $5 is pretty common in this game.  Then a guy made it $15.  He was a fairly active player and rather aggro.  Then the guy who initially made it $5, an older gentleman with a big stack, made it $45. Well, of course I'm not gonna call off half my stack with just a lousy pair of fives preflop.  So I folded.  The guy who made it $15 called.

The flop was Jack-5-3.  Damn.  That sure was annoying.  I don't remember the exact action but they got it all-in on that flop.  The aggro had a stack similar to mine, maybe a little bigger, and the older guy had him easily covered.  The aggro flipped over his hand.  It was pocket Jacks. 

Suddenly I felt a whole better.  I had just dodged a bullet, right?  Set-over-set is pretty awful when you're on the wrong side of it, as I would have been.  I was silently thanking the guy who made it $45 for saving my stack.

But then the dealer put out the turn card.  It was the case 5.  I had basically thrown away quads.  I throw up in my mouth a little.  The river was meaningless and the older guy did show his hand, Ace-King suited.  He had a flush draw on the flop.  I don't recall if he hit his flush because he was drawing dead to a boat on the turn.  Of course, all I could think about was, he should have been drawing dead to my quad 5's.

Ugh.  That would have been the first time I'd made a hand too.  For a second I thought that we had missed out on the bad beat jackpot.  But no, I reminded myself that Jack's full losing to quad 5's wouldn't have qualified.  The minimum losing hand is Ace's full of Jacks.  So at least there was that.

My stack was dwindling and then I got pocket 3's. A new guy to the table made it $23.  He had less than $80 to start.  So it certainly was not worth calling.  Somebody else did.  Of course there was a 3 on the flop.  Jeez.  I don't remember the details but I would have won that pot and it would have been more nearly a triple up for me (based on the fact that it was all-in again and neither player could have beaten a set).

I actually managed to win a couple of hands, both when I had Ace-10 and a 10 hit the board.  So I built my stack up to over $120.

Then I got pocket 6's.  I was in middle position and no one had bet.  I knew if I just limped, it was possible nobody else would come in and we'd end up chopping the blinds.  Yeah, it's weird if you're used to Vegas rules, but if only one player has entered a pot, and it was only a limp, that player and the blinds can agree to chop and everyone takes their money back.  I guess that's because in this game, if it is just three-way to flop, and both blinds are in, the entire pot goes to rake and the jackpot drop.  So why bother?

Therefore, I made it $4.  Sometimes that actually gets you the blinds, but if someone calls at least they'll be a few bucks in the pot to play for. A player called.  Remember the guy with the set of Jacks before?  Well as I said, he was aggro and he had managed to piss away most of the chips he'd won.  This time, he raised to $49.  It was an odd bet to say the least.  He had a few more chips behind him, looked like $8 or $9.  A different older guy, who had been hit with the deck like you wouldn't believe, called the $49. He had tons of chips. It folded back to me.  Sure I remembered the pocket 5's that turned into quads and the pocket 3's that flopped a set.  But, there was just no way it made any sense at all to call a $49 bet with pocket 6's.  So I folded.

The caller hadn't realized that the first guy hadn't shoved.  But then he saw those 8 or 9 chips and said something, "Why did you leave those behind?"  And the dealer said, "That's to bluff with."  I thought that was really funny.  Although you could argue that the dealer shouldn't be making comments (suggestions?) like that.  I think because it was such a small amount, it was ok.

Do I have to tell you that there was a 6 on the flop?  The aggro put his remaining 8 or 9 chips in the pot and the other player called (the dealer actually almost jumped the gun on the turn card, because he just assumed the guy wasn't folding—no matter what he had—for such a relatively small bet).

Here's the really sick part.  The guy with the $49 bet turned over Queen-4!  The guy who called had Ace-rag.  I guess his excuse was that this might have been the first flop in 20-minutes that hadn't hit him.  His call was perhaps a heat-check.  And his Ace-high would have won except the first idiot caught a 4 on the river.

So in other words, that set I would have hit if I'd have kept my cards wouldn't even have been necessary!  An unimproved pair of 6's would have been good enough to take down that three-way pot.

Regardless, that was the third set of the session I had missed out on.  What a day.

But I I know I played those hands right, didn't I?  I recall when I first starting reading about no-limit poker, they used to say that for small pocket pairs, you needed to have the potential to win 10-12 times the size of the bet you were calling preflop for calling to be the correct move.  But more recently, I've seen the books saying that it should be closer to 20-25x the bet.  That's because, I think, that players have gotten better and they are much less likely to stack off with top pair than they were in the good old days.

Regardless, I didn't have the potential to win 10x what I would have called in any of those hands, let alone 20-25x.

Now I'm far from a great poker player, but I'm just not bad enough to have called those raises.  So you see, I would have had to have been a much worse player than I am to have made money on this particular day.

I ended up with a $30 loss for the day.  But it's hard not to think about all that money that I would have made if only I had been bad enough to make those horrible calls.

There's No Place Like Home, There's No Place Like Home

The Nightmare Before—And After—Christmas

Chapter 12

Good news folks!  This is the 12th and final chapter in my car woes saga. That's right, this is the end of this seemingly endless chronicle. The previous chapter can be found here.  And you can find all the posts in this epic tale using the label "Stranded in Vegas."

And speaking of the previous chapter, I need to return to an incident I described last time as I apparently misreported it (and also, didn't quite understand what was happening).  My good friend LM left a comment on that post, pointing something out to me, which I subsequently discussed with her personally.  And I tend to agree with her interpretation.

I'm referring to the incident I discussed about the young lady I passed after the new year had been rung in, who was sitting down near Hakkasan. She was sitting with her legs apart and in the brief moment before I could look away—I am, of course, a gentleman—it did appear to me that she was, as they say, commando.  I also realized that, when I noticed her, she was looking directly at me.  And as I looked away out of respect, I did notice that she looked down. But more importantly, I noticed that she made no effort whatsoever to conceal herself.  She could have easily moved her legs together.  She did not—even though she had definitely seen me briefly looking in her direction. I kept moving, turning my eyes straight ahead, no longer looking in her direction, until she was totally out of my sight line.

Well, LM's reaction surprised me.  She said, "Rob, she flashed you."  I asked, incredulously, "You mean on purpose?"  And she replied, emphatically, "Yes!"   "Seriously?"  "Absolutely."  She insisted there was no way the girl was wearing flesh-colored panties.  She was showing off the goods.  And here I was thinking that the poor girl should have joined me a few days earlier when I was in the Primm Outlet Mall buying underwear. 

Now since LM is a woman, I have to take her reaction quite seriously.  It is LM's opinion that this young lady, perhaps feeling no pain from celebrating the ringing in of the New Year, purposely exposed herself to me.

I have to admit I am naïve.  A woman would really do that to a perfect stranger?  I mean, if the roles were reversed, and it was guy flashing a woman, he would have been subject to arrest.

It's 2019, and we no longer accept double standards.  Should I have reported this young lady to security?  I can't imagine a guy doing that.  But we are in a new era.  Guys can be victims of Indecent exposure, same as women.

Of course I didn't report it (except on the blog).  But I suppose I should have.

Now I feel so used. I was a victim!

So now it is a new day….a new year, actually. New Year's Day was pretty uneventful, car wise.  But I did get a lovely early wake-up call courtesy of the good folks at the Gold Coast.  Having gotten to sleep sometime after 4am after a fine time on NY's Eve, it was no fun to be awakened from a sound sleep by hearing an announcement blasting into my room. "Attention:  We are investigating the source of the alarm you just heard, and will advise you when we find out it's cause."  This was approximately 8:30am.  Of course, I hadn't heard any alarm.  Just the announcement of it.  I had fallen soundly back asleep when, 15 minutes later, I heard another announcement.  "Attention:  We have determined the alarm you heard was a false alarm.  Sorry for the inconvenience."  Good to know.

Since I slept a good part of the day away, I didn't leave the room until it was time to head out for dinner and poker.  The car, thankfully, had no visible leaks.  This was, in theory, my last night in town. I had booked three nights through Agoda when I was at Buffalo Bill's as you will recall.  But my pals LM and Woody expressed concern that driving home on the first day after the New Year's holiday was a bad idea. Traffic figured to be a nightmare that day, and with a car that I still wasn't sure was 100% fixed, it seemed too high a risk. Getting into a huge traffic jam just seemed like asking the car to overheat again.  So sometime during my initial three-day stay, I had gone to the front desk and asked about staying another night.  It was fine, and this time the rate was only $34 (plus $22 resort fee).  A vast improvement over the $150 plus I had paid for the first three nites there!

I ended up playing at the Venetian, mostly because it was the only place I had enough comps at to get a nice, free dinner.  A sit-down dinner at Café Lux sure sounded good after some of the meals I had been eating.  I even got a salad!  BTW, of all the "coffee shop" style restaurants in the Strip casinos, Café Lux at the V is probably the best.  It is amazingly reasonably priced for a place as fancy as the Venetian and the quality is quite good.  I think the meal I got was about 2/3's the price of what I would have paid at the sports bar next to the MGM poker room.

The poker that night was not worth talking about.  Just a totally meh session.

So we move to Wednesday, the 2nd, and I was supposed to leave the next day.  But when I went down to check on the car, I spotted a leak.  Seriously?  Yeah, seriously.  There was nothing to do but pay a visit to TC.  Sigh. 

He said something about it "leaking from the top" and started working on it.  I spent most of the time in the office, wondering if I was ever going to get home.  I started getting a little desperate.  No matter what happened that day, I was never gonna feel good about driving the 280 mile distance home in the car.

I started Googling to see if I could find a service to actually transport the car all the way from Vegas to my house.  My thought was, I knew such services existed, and if I could have them take the car with all my stuff inside, I could just hop on a plane to L.A. (I saw flights as cheap ast $57 one way) and get my car in a day or two, unpack all my stuff, and take it down to the Wiz and get it fixed properly.  I actually found a place that would give me quote over the interent.  It was $440 to transport my car to L.A.  I was considering it.

This happened when I was ready to go to lunch so fortunately I had a couple of Kind bars on me that I ate so I could take my meds.  After about three hours of me just waiting there, TC finally said it was ready.  I had him talk to Woody.  I'm sure Woody said something about pressurizing the cooling system.  When he was done with Woody, TC said to me, "Give me another half hour."

About thirty minutes later, he came back to me and said it was ready.  And he proudly said, "I blew air in it.  No leaks."

OK then.  Obviously my next move was to stress the car.  I headed over to Red Rock but ended up across the street at Costco for a late lunch/early dinner.  And added more coolant when I was done.  Then I stopped by a CVS to get some much needed supplies, including my breakfast protein drink that I had run out of.  I also picked up a couple of bottles of water and soda.

That's important because when I got to Gold Coast and grabbed the bag with the soda in it, the cheap plastic bag broke and one of the bottles rolled under the car.  I didn't want to move the car to retrieve it, as I worried about running over the bottle.  So I got down on my hands and knees and was just able to retrieve it.  But in standing up after, I lost my balance and fell on my ass, and alkso banged up my knee. And I came thisclose to smacking my head into the pavement.  When you're running bad, you're running bad.

I decided I needed another day in Vegas to make sure the car was ok, especially because I wanted to add coolant to it a few more times before making the trip.  I went to the front desk and extended my stay again.  This time it was $40 (plus the $22 resort fee).  A bargain.

I had a column for Ante Up due on Friday.  Which meant I had to spend Wednesday evening working on it.  So yet another evening paying for a room in Las Vegas and not even playing poker.  And as I've described, it was really uncomfortable trying to type up a column working with a very low chair and a very high desk.  It took longer because I had to keep getting up every few minutes to walk around.

Since I'd eaten at Costco so late, I didn't need a real dinner, so I got the brilliant idea of just getting a salad at the Subway.  It sounded like a good idea until they rung it up.  Somehow they charged me $8.25 (plus tax) for it.  WTF?  Pro tip: Don't ever get just a salad at Subway.

The next day I went down to my car and held my breath.  And saw some fresh liquid underneath it.  Damn it.  But when I moved my car I saw it wasn't green.  I sopped it up with a paper towel and took the paper towel back to TC.  He determined that it was transmission fluid.  TC said it would probably last 3-6 months before it was a problem because it was such a small leak. He had another conversation with Woody, who determined that it would likely be ok for the drive home.  But he said to play it safe, I should buy a bottle of transmission fluid and keep it with me just in case.

That didn't take long.  This time I decided to stress the car by going Teriyaki Madness for lunch, the same location that I hit on my first attempt to leave town the previous Saturday.  Everything was good and this time the restaurant even had salad.

On the way back I noticed there was an AutoZone right near there so I picked up the transmission fluid.  I managed to get a few hours of work in, had dinner once again at the Subway and finished up my column that evening.  So yet another evening of no poker even though I was paying for a room.

If you're keeping score, I stayed seven more nights in Vegas (or Primm) than I planned to, during one of the most expensive periods of the year.  Of those seven nights, I didn't even play poker for four of them.

When I woke up the next day, ready to pack up and go home (I hoped), I was nervous as hell.  And I was actually sick to my stomach.  It was nerves, but I was somewhat nauseated.

But I packed up.  I mentioned previously that I would have preferred to valet the car the night before leaving so I could use the bellman for my luggage.  But again, there was the nasty problem of the car seats not being adjustable.  So I spoke to the valet the day before, told him of this and he said, "Well, if I can't fit in the car, I can't park it."  I asked if there was an alternative, and he said it would be ok for me to park the car in the valet lane (briefly) so the bellman could load the car.

And that's how I handled it.  After checking for leaks—and there was just a little transmission fluid underneath, nothing else—I brought the car to the valet lane and had the bellman take my bags to it.  Saved my back, no doubt.

I wasn't hungry, so I ditched my original plan of eating one more meal at that Gold Coast Subway.  I packed Kind bars and that was my lunch while I was driving, once my stomach settled down.

With much trepidation, I took off and headed south on the 15, my eye glued to the temperature gage.  Fortunately there was very light traffic.  I made it to Primm without incident and headed up that long climb up the interstate at the beginning (or end) of California. That was really nerve-wracking, climbing that hill in a car that may have an overheating problem.  But there was no trouble. Once it made it through there without incident (and with the needle on the temp gauge not budging past where it was supposed to be), I was able to relax a little bit.

Initially Google forecasted an easy ride with no delays, but as I got a little past Barstow, I got a message saying that traffic ahead was getting bad and they had an alternative route that would save me 27 minutes due to increasing traffic on the 15.  I thought I knew the route—Pearblossom Highway, a route I'd taken numerous times. It is a two-lane highway and much less preferable than the freeway. Under normal traffic, it's slightly shorter distance-wise but longer in drive time. If it was a 5 or 10 minute saving I would have passed on it.  But  a half hour was a big deal, and I was just so eager to get home.  I took the alternate route.

It really was an alternate route.  Only part of the way was on Pearblossom, it had me cut over to some road I'd never been on before.  At first it was a brand new road and smooth as silk.  But eventually the road turned to total crap.  Ugh.

But I guess it did save me time and I did make it home, safe and sound.  I have to tell you….I was never so happy to be home from Vegas in my life.

Epilogue:  Early the next week, Woody agreed to meet me at The Wiz's shop.  Woody wanted to make sure he explained to the Wiz all his theories about what had gone wrong, and also wanted to make sure I got the best price for the work.  And besides, Woody just likes visiting these guys at the shops he does business with.  Any excuse to schmooze with the workers will get him down there.

But get this, when we got there, we found out that the Wiz wasn't in that day!  He was out of town.  Yikes.  Fortunately, his brother was there and helped us out. He checked things out and it turned out I needed a few parts to get rid of the check engine lights.  I could order those things (two knock sensors and a crankshaft position sensor) off of eBay and bring them back in for the final repair.

And I had him check out the seats.  He rather quickly determined, in contradiction of what TC told me, it was indeed the fuse (or fuses).  He downloaded a schematic from the internet and redid the fuses (not sure if he had to replace any or just moved them around, whatever) and suddenly both the passenger seat and the driver's side seat worked perfectly fine.  Apparently, in the process of repairing the driver's side window before leaving for Vegas, the fuses had been blown and replaced and then not reconnected properly.  So it was just a human error.

However, when I pulled out of his shop, I noticed a new problem….the windows no longer worked!  Seriously, that was the issue at the very beginning of this tale; we had now come full circle.  I had to go around the block, pull back in and tell the Wiz's brother about the window.  He got the schematic and realized his goof.  He played with the fuses for a few seconds and then everything was working, the seats, the windows, everything.  Phew!

And by the way, for the work he did that day, he charged me nothing.  I'm sure that wouldn't have been the case if Woody hadn't been there with me.

Anyway, the next week, after receiving the parts through eBay I went back to see the Wiz and had him install the new sensors. This time the Wiz was there, and guess what?  When he had been off the week before, he was in…Las Vegas.  How ironic. I didn't find out if he was there when I was, but I was thinking I could have had him fix the car up there. When LM heard this, she said it would have been funny if he had been driving back the same day I was, passed me, recognized the car and stopped and fixed it up right on the 15.  Ha.

So that's my 12-part story of why I spent a week I didn't want to in Vegas at the end of my last Vegas trip.  It was bad luck, bad timing and a bad repair job.  TC is a very honorable, dedicated man.  But he might not be the best auto mechanic in the world.

And now you know why it's no fun to be stuck in Vegas for an extra week.

Vegas Poker Scene—March 2019

Here's my latest column for Ante Up.  Well, it's the version I submitted for publication.  The actual print version is probably slightly different.  They are upgrading their website and don't want to post new columns as it will delay the upgrade.  Once the new website is online, all my columns and future columns will appear there.  

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The next DeepStack Showdown at the Venetian runs March 13 – 26 and is highlighted by the first WPT event to be held at this venue.  The $3,500 buy-in tournament has two starting flights beginning March 22. There are four days of play. It's a deep structure offering 60-minute levels until 24 players remain, then the levels go to 90-minutes.  At the final table of 6, the levels revert back to 60-minutes and go to 30-minutes when heads up.  Players start with 40K in chips and have through two levels of play on day 2 to enter.  Re-entry is unlimited.  The tournament has a $1M guaranteed prize pool.

There are $400 satellites into this tournament and also $60 satellites into the $400 satellite. 

The series features two $400 DoubleStack events. The starting dates are March 15 and 18.  These tournaments have two starting flights and players get a 25K stack.  The levels are 30-minutes on day 1 and 40-minutes on day 2.  The guarantee is $100K.  A $300 Ladies event with a $10K guarantee runs March 21.

The series guarantees more than $1.5M in total prize pools.

DeepStack Extravaganza returns to the Venetian April 1 – 21.  The highlight is a $600 MonsterStack event with three starting flights beginning April 11.  Players start with a 30K stack and play 30-minute levels to start and 40-minute levels beginning with level 27. The guarantee is $200K.

There are a five starting flights for a $250 NLH event that begins April 16.  The starting stack is 15K and the levels are 30-minutes on day 1 and 40-minutes on day 2. Payouts begin on day 1, with the top 12% in the money.  The top 5% of each day 1 advance to day 2. The guaranteed prize pool is $200K. 

There are events for every budget, ranging from $600 down to $125.  Over $1M is guaranteed over the series.

In March, the cash game promo is a Random Table Sweetener.  Every half hour between 12:30 p.m. and midnight, a random table will be drawn and the house will add $25 to nine consecutive pots at the lucky table. Then from April 1 to May 19, there is a High Hand Giveaway.  Highest hand of the hour between 12 p.m. and 12 a.m. wins a minimum of $500.  However if the winner has logged more than four hours of live play that day, the prize becomes $1K.  And if the player has logged more than eight hours, the payout is $2K.

WYNN: The Wynn Classic runs through March 17.  The $1,600 championship event starts with the first of its three starting flights on the 14th. Players start with 30K chips and play 60-minute levels. The buy-in is $1,600 and the guarantee is $1M.

A two-day $3,200 NLH event starts March 13 with a $200K guarantee.

After a deal was agreed to, Joseph Beltran of Washington was declared the winner of  the $600 championship event of the Signature Series in January, taking home $46K.  Nicholas Blumenthal of Massachusetts claimed $45K for second and Stanley Buffett of California received $33K for third. The event drew 650 players, creating a $340K prize pool, easily surpassing the $250K guarantee.

BALLY'S: The WSOP circuit rolls through here March 21 – April 1.  The $1,700 main event has two starting flights beginning March 29.  One re-entry is allowed per starting flight. There is a $500K guarantee.

A $400 NLH tournament starts March 25 with all three of its starting flights on that day. This event has a $100K guarantee. 

There is a $400 PLO event on March 26 and a $250 Seniors event on March 28.  A $250 Tag-team tourney runs March 28 and a $2,200 High Roller event starts on March 31. A $600 Double Stack event starts March 24.

CAESARS: The tournament schedule has been revised.  At 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., a $100 NLH tourney is offered with a 12K starting stack, 20-minute levels and a $1,500 guarantee. At 2 p.m. and 9 p.m., it's a $150 buy-in with a 15K starting stack and a $2,500 guarantee.  A $100 tournament runs at midnight, with a 10K starting stack, 15-minute levels and a $1K guarantee.  All tournaments feature the big blind ante and offer unlimited re-entry through the first six levels. 

The main cash games are $1-$2 NLH (with a $100-$300 buy-in) and $2-$5 ($200-$1K buy-in).  Caesars is one of the few rooms in Vegas, along with Aria, Wynn and Bellagio, that has no promotions and therefore does not take a jackpot drop on its cash games.  Most rooms that take a jackpot drop are now taking $2 per pot. 

HARRAH'S: Tournaments run five times a day, at 9 a.m., 12 p.m., 3 p.m., 7 p.m., and 10 p.m.  The buy-in is $65 for 10K chips, with an optional $5 add-on for 5K more. There is a $500 guarantee.  On Fridays and Saturdays, a $100 bounty tournament runs instead, with $25 bounties and the same structure.  The guarantee is $1K.  The levels for all tournaments are 20-minutes. 

The promos include high hand bonuses.  A Royal Flush earns $500, plus $50 to the other players at the table dealt in that hand.  Straight flushes pay $250 and flopped quads are worth $100.  Quads on the turn or the river pay $50.

There is a $12K weekly Players Appreciation Tournament. Player must play a minimum of 15 hours live to qualify.  Twenty hours of play earns a 50% larger starting stack for the tournament.  A $2,750 weekly "Breakfast Bounty" tournament is offered for the top 20 players in terms of hours played between 6 a.m. and 1 p.m. The bounty is $25 for players eliminated 11th through 20th and a $50 for players eliminated 1st through 10th. There is a $10 entry fee for both of these tournaments.