The Final Straw

Well, it turns out my last post was too short.  Don't laugh, but I left out vital information about my one session at MGM from July.  I also may have screwed up the hand history that was the main topic of the post.  So this post is my attempt to remedy all that.

First things first, I have a critical update on the straw situation at MGM.  Readers will recall that over a year ago I learned that MGM had a new policy.  They were no longer provided drinking straws in beverages.  I wrote about it here.

Well, when I went into MGM that Friday night, I had forgotten about that—until I received the diet Coke I ordered and it came without a straw.  Damn. They still have this stupid no straw policy?  Oh well.

But a few minutes later, I noticed a few drinks around the table with straws in them.  And when the waitress came back around, I saw that she had a container of straws on her tray.  So I asked her if I could have a straw, and she said sure and handed me one.  Apparently, they have straws but you have to ask for them, they don't just automatically put one in for you.

Well, that's good enough, I thought.

But then I noticed the straw she handed me was one of those god-awful paper straws, which are almost totally worthless.

So….you have to ask for straws and they're paper???  Yeesh.  As long as they are going to give out those damn paper straws, can't they at least make it automatic so you don't have to remember to ask?  It's the worst of both worlds.

I know getting accurate, current information on the straw situation in Vegas is more important to my readers than any discussion of poker I could come up with, so I had to make sure I related this to you.  It should have been in my previous post, but I messed up.

Anyway, for those of you who do come here more for poker than straws (there must be some of you out there), I need to correct my last post anyway.  You probably should reread before continuing, it's here.

My good buddy "Zourah" left a comment for me on Twitter.  Actually he tried to leave a blog comment but it didn't go through.  So let's see what Zourah wanted to comment:

"But pocket 8s do make a straight there don’t they?

I really don’t have a problem with calling the turn given your position but you’ve underrepresented your hand to the point it’s worth raising the river."

Well that had me perplexed for sure.  But first, to get to Zourah's point on my play, I think he's right and I already admitted that I misplayed the hand.  I should have raised on the river.  I have no argument with Zourah's recommendation.

But had I butchered something in the relating of the hand history?  Did I describe the guy as having a straight?  Well, I reread my post and sure enough, the way I told the story, he would have had a straight.  How did I miss that?

I had to reconstruct my thoughts.  I recalled that when I was reviewing my voice notes and the contemporaneous notes I made at the table, there was a bit of a discrepancy.  My written notes said the turn card was a 9.  But I remembered somewhat disputing that when I listened to myself relate the hand on the recorder.

Sure enough, I just played back the voice note and I was debating what the turn card was.  I can hear myself saying, "I don't remember what the turn card was.  I wrote here 9, but it might have been a 7.  I don't remember.  I know it wasn't a really low card and it wasn't an over card."

This happens all the time when I do voice notes.  I know I tap those notes into my phone really fast and frequently screw up.  But if my finger slipped trying to type a "7" I most likely would have typed a "6" or an "8", not a "9".  But clearly the next morning when I voice-recorded it, I was not sold on that card being a 9. 

Since my voice note wasn't sure though, and I had written 9 at the time, I went ahead and called it a 9 in the the post without realizing the implications of that.

So I suppose I should just say it was a 7 and move on.  That way he didn't have a straight.  In the long run we're all dead it doesn't matter if he had a straight or just two pair because he was always losing to my full house. 

But it reminded me of just unclear it all was to me at the time of showdown.

Here's what I remember.  I called and waited for the lady to show her hand, which she did promptly.  I only could see one card, the Jack.  But the dealer declared her hand to be trip Jacks, not a full house.  At that point, the other player was unhappy, he turned over his hand and I thought it was a pair of 8's.  But before I could be sure, he flipped them back over face down and mucked them.  Meanwhile, I was in the process of showing my hand, which I did fairly promptly, but not before he had already conceded the pot by mucking his hand, after the brief display.

In other words, he thought he was beaten by the lady's trip Jacks.  He definitely conceded the pot to her before he even saw my hand.

Which he wouldn't have done if he had a straight, of course.  He would have known his straight was no worse than the second best hand and could still have conceivably been the best hand.

But as I said in the previous post, it's hard for me to believe he called with just an unimproved pair of 8's.  He wasn't that bad a player.  Maybe he was a bad enough player (or just having a brain freeze) to think his straight was losing to trips?  Or perhaps he somehow thought the lady had a full house?  I couldn't see her other card (she was on the far side of the table from me) but the dealer told me (and everyone else) she just had the three Jacks.

Another thing I failed to put in my previous post:  When he turned over his hand, he muttered something about, "I knew I should have been wary of the paired board."  Well, that's something you're more likely to say when you have a straight than just a pocket pair, isn't it?

So I can't be sure what happened there.  Why was I confused about what the turn card really was?  And did the guy concede the pot even though he had the best exposed hand at that point?

I'm actually thinking he may have had the straight there.  And somehow thought the lady had turned over a boat.

Of course if the lady had turned over a boat, she would have won the pot, as her boat would have been better than mine.  I'm assuming if the dealer had misread her hand she would have said something.

Although maybe she missed it too, maybe she trusted the dealer.  I have to assume that there is a greater than zero pct chance I was awarded the pot in error.

That would be unfortunate for the lady, but ultimately that's on her for not speaking up.  She was a solid player but you know we all make mistakes.

And of course, there still exists the very real possibility that the guy just screwed up by mucking too soon.

It's also possible that the turn card was a 7 and not a 9.  I thought it might have been a 7 the next day. That would explain everything but the guy's bad play.

Anyway, thanks for Zourah for pointing this out (no one else did) and giving me all these possible scenarios to consider.

"Get Up! You're in my Seat!"

This happened my last night in town, New Year's Day.  Because I had been up pretty late New Year's Eve, I got a late start and didn't get out of my room until like 5:30 to play poker for the last time in Vegas.  And because I got up so late, I hadn't eaten dinner yet.  I figured I'd have a relatively short session, grab a late dinner and get some rest to be ready for the long drive home.

By the time I made it over to Planet Hollywood it was close 6 pm.  My idea of a late afternoon session had turned into an early evening session.  Lucky me, I got there a few minutes after they filled up the last table and was first on the list.  I didn't expect a long wait—that's usually the time poker rooms start emptying out as people head off to dinner.  I wandered over to an empty table to sit down while waiting.

It wasn't completely empty.  There was a guy sitting there, head buried in his phone.  Since I was first on the list I knew he wasn't waiting to get into a game.  In fact, a few minutes after I sat down, a woman came over from a nearby table to talk to him for a bit.  So it was kind of the opposite of what you usually see—it was a guy hanging out while his lady to was playing instead of a woman hanging out while her guy was playing.

I was there for awhile and they didn't call me.  I think they had four tables of 1/2 going so I was surprised there hadn't been an opening already.  I went back to the podium to see what was going on.  Well, I was still first on the list, but now there were about 4-5 names under mine.  The one directly under mine caught my attention.  It was "RBI."  I wondered if that was a nickname for perhaps a huge baseball fan or if those were really somebody's initials.

Well, as I was hanging around at the podium, I saw a guy go up to the person at the podium and show him his player's card.  I heard the podium person say, "Oh, you should show us your diamond card right away, as soon as you give us your name."  He did something on the computer in front of him and---voila—RBI was now #1 on the list and I was second.

This is a policy that all CET rooms have and I don't like it.  If you have Diamond card status—which means you spend big bucks at Caesars' properties and piss away a small fortune gambling in them—you get priority in getting a seat in the poker room.  It seems like a non-sequitur to me.  You can't get Diamond status just by playing poker....if you have that status, you are playing slots and/or table games, but not poker.  In other words, you're a major gambling degenerate.  I guess some of those folks play poker too, but they're not really poker players.  They're degens who dabble in poker.  Why should they get preferential treatment in the poker room?  That's for poker players.  If you have Diamond status you have your own lounge at CET properties and all sorts of other benefits.  The poker room should be an egalitarian place, right?  No other poker room or chain I know of does this, certainly not their biggest competitor, MLife (MGM).  Only CET treats the average poker player like this.

But it's not Planet Hollywood's fault, it's the corporate policy of CET.  Furthermore, they didn't ask my opinion before doing this.  They can do whatever the hell they want.  And so they do.

But I was a little miffed and frankly it was taking longer than I anticipated to get into a game.  The person at the podium asked if I was on the list and I said yes—and then said they might start a new game since there were almost enough people on the list to do so.

I wondered off but found myself back at the podium a few minutes later.  RBI was off the list, so apparently he had gotten into a game.  So I was first on the list, right?  Nope.  Now I was third.  Seriously?  Yes, apparently two people who had Diamond cards showed up and jumped ahead of me.  Yeesh.

Well, at that point I was thinking of telling them to take me off the list, I was going to have some dinner and maybe I'd be back.  But a dealer came over and said they were starting a new game.  OK, then.

The table they were opening was the one I had been sitting at earlier.  A few spots were already occupied (by people who had earlier gotten tipped off that they were gonna start a new game).  A woman was sitting in seat 9 and a guy was in seat 5, and another player in seat 6.  That guy who was hanging around while his girlfriend played was still in seat 1.  That was actually the seat I wanted but I didn't say anything.  I took seat 4 but the guy not playing started to notice people taking other seats at the table and realized we were about to start a game there and got up and moved to another empty table.  So I grabbed the seat he vacated—Seat 1.

By the time the dealer got the game going, the table was actually full, that was nice.  And so the dealer dealt a hand or two.  Suddenly, while I was out of the hand (couldn't have been more than the second or third hand that had been dealt), I felt someone grabbing me by the shoulders and I heard a very stern voice saying, "Hey buddy, you're in my seat.  Get up."  WTF?

I didn't recognize the voice but my first thought was that it was somebody I knew who saw me and was making a joke.  Just a week or so before I ran into an old acquaintance in this very poker room.  Well I looked up and saw a very tall, rather mean looking guy with his hands still firmly on my shoulders who I didn't know from Adam.  Perhaps he mistook me for someone else and thought I was a friend of his and this was still a prank?  I think I managed to mutter something like, "What?"  He was pretty damn serious.  "I'm not kidding buddy, you're in my seat, get up."

The other thing that raced through my mind was that, was there anyway this was the guy who had been sitting in that seat that was waiting for his girlfriend?  And that he had intended to play at that table and hadn't said anything when he left the seat, but just expected it be held for him? But I was close to 99% sure this wasn't that guy.

I could feel the guy squeezing my shoulders when the dealer spoke up.  "This is not your seat.  You're at the wrong table. You're at table 3."  And she pointed to a table one table up and over.  There was no one sitting at the seat 1 on at that table but you could see there were chips there—this guy's chips. Thank goodness this dealer had been at the table where this guy belonged earlier! The guy looked over and oh my what a change in attitude.  He turned into to the meekest, most apologetic guy I've ever seen in my life.

No kidding, he started apologizing profusely. "Oh, I'm sorry...I'm so sorry...I' m really sorry, buddy."  He kept at it.  In the meantime, he hadn't taken his hands off my shoulders—but instead of squeezing them, he was massaging them. It was a pretty good massage, too.  It was part of the apology.  He was massaging my shoulders the entire time he was apologizing.  And he was taking his time apologizing.

But he finally left and went over to the right table.  At that point, everyone at the table just started cracking up.  No one had seen anything quite like this.  They couldn't figure it out, either, though they all knew there was no chance I was sitting in this guy's seat.  I explained the various theories I had until the dealer came to my rescue.  One of the players suggest that, as a joke, if I noticed that guy getting up from his seat at his proper table, I should run over to it and sit in his seat as a gag.  You know, I didn't think that was a very good idea.

Well, after we'd all stopped laughing about it, the guy came back over to me and started apologizing all over again, just as profusely as the last time!  "Hey buddy, I'm really, truly sorry." He didn't grab my shoulders  this time but he did pat me on the arm a couple of times while he was getting his apologies out.  I told him to forget it, it was OK, but he remained sorry.  I almost said to him, "No need to apologize sir, you just gave me a blog post."

The poker this night was nothing memorable.  I was having a card-dead, losing kind of night when things somewhat turned around with of all hands, the dreaded pocket Kings.  I guess I had a bit more than $100 left of my $200 buy-in when I got them.  There were a couple of limpers so I made it $12.  Two players called and the flop was Jack-high and rather non-threatening.  But the gal in seat 1, who hadn't been heard from much all night, donked out $31.  She didn't have that much left.  I shrugged and called, the other player folded.  She put the rest of her chips in on a blank turn—it was $35-$40.  I didn't ask for a count, with no Ace on the board I was going to call.  The river blanked and he she had Jack-x—and the "x" didn't help her.  I got back most of what I'd been losing to that point.

Soon thereafter I called it a night, taking a $10 loss for my last session in Vegas. 

Dear Rob: About that Guarantee

This is going to be somewhat of a different type of post.  I found an email in my inbox the other day from Charles Hall regarding a bad experience he had playing in a tournament during the big summer series they had at Planet Hollywood.  At first, I assumed he was one of my blog readers and that’s why he was telling me his story.  But then I noticed the email came to my work email, and I realized he was writing to me as the columnist for Ante Up magazine, not as the blogger.  I’m going to reprint his original letter and then post a few of Charles’s comments that came in follow up emails.  I knew that his report would not be appropriate for Ante Up, so I asked him if I could run his email and my response in my personal blog, which he agreed to.

Rob?     I would like to tell you a story if I may.  Well, I was in Vegas where I go every year (June). I was playing the tourney at Planet Hollywood, the Quantum $300,000 guarantee. Bought in the first day and lost so I came back for the second day and bought in again, and I did ask if I was buying into the Quantum $300,000 guarantee. He said yes.  So I paid my money and sat down and played one hand! And the guy next to me just then told me they cancelled the guarantee.

I got up and went over and asked the man in charge and he said they did (cancel the guarantee) so I asked for my money back. They said no, because I played one hand. Now what I would like to ask you (after I was there 15 more days and played downtown and Aria after that)—can you write something in you mag. on this for what they did because I believe they should have told people they cancelled the guarantee.  I was late to sign up and they still didn't have (a sign about the cancelled guarantee) up.     

Thank you, Charles Hall.

Now because of my assignments for both Ante Up and PokerAtlas, I know a little bit about this. Some of what Charles said made perfect sense to me, and some of it was a bit odd.  But I think I have an explanation for all of it, and it is really most unfortunate.  I guess I should add that what Charles is telling me is just his word, and thus not verified.  But I do tend to believe that most, if not all, of what Charles is saying is very likely accurate.

It is important to note that in a subsequent email, Charles said he called PH a week or so before tournament and asked about the starting chip stack and also asked if the guarantee was still on and was told that it was.  In another email, Charles said that when he arrived late for the second day to buy in again, “the guy didn't say anything when I said that only about 40 people signed up for this big of a guarantee—he just looked at me and didn't say (anything) and I was the only one there in line.”

When I read his first email, I was feeling a little guilty, and thinking perhaps Charles was blaming me for this mix-up.  You see in my Ante Up column about the series (see here), I did talk about both Quantum tournaments (one in early May, at the very beginning of the series, the other in mid-June) having guaranteed prize pools.  The Quantum type tournaments—a staple at the Bike here in the L.A. area—were coming to Vegas for the first time, that was one of the most noteworthy things about the Goliath series PH was running. The original schedule that was distributed—back in March, I believe—showed the guarantees that I referenced in my column.  .

However, by the time the Goliath series started, the guarantees for those events had been removed, and I knew that.  Well, there’s always a potential problem when you are writing something that will be printed and not distributed for about a month.  It happens all the time.  Events in a big series get changed, starting times, chip counts, the events themselves.  An Omaha tournament can become a NLH tournament.  It happens with room updates too.  I talk about a room offering a special cash game or a unique tournament or an interesting promo and by the time the magazine hits poker rooms, it’s completely different.  Can’t be helped.  Although Ante Up has a great website, it is still basically a printed magazine made for distribution in poker rooms. 

When I got the final schedule and structures for Goliath, long after my column with the out-dated info was in poker rooms, I noticed the guarantee was no longer there, and some details about the tournaments themselves had been changed. The guarantees that had appeared on the original schedule had been replaced with “estimated prize pools” (and with smaller amounts).  It was too late to do anything about the Ante Up column.  But for PokerAtlas, I had time to correct the info I had originally entered for the Quantum tournaments based on the original info I had received weeks earlier.   So if you looked at the series on PokerAtlas before the Goliath series started, you would have seen that neither of the Quantum events had guarantees.

I do know that when the original schedule was announced, PH distributed printed schedules that showed those tournaments with guarantees.  I also know that when they changed the schedule, they distributed new schedules, without the guarantees.  I should note that there the removal of the guarantees from the Quantum events was not the only change from the original schedule.  There were quite a few tournaments that were changed or replaced with different events.  This is not all that unusual.  Tournaments in a series often get changed before and even during a series.  This series had a few more changes than most, but it also had the most events of any summer series (outside of the WSOP itself) so it is somewhat understandable.  Also, some of the events were changed, cancelled or moved just a day or two before they were to occur, mostly due to how popular some of the other tournaments were.  They actually cancelled an entire tournament the day before it was to take place because the tournament they were running the day before had such a great turnout they didn’t have room (or dealers) for the next day’s event.

I know when I finally personally visited PH, a few days after the second Quantum tournament was completed, I saw that they were distributing the correct printed schedule in the room.  But exactly when they started distributing the revised version, I can’t say.  It’s possible that the old version was distributed longer than it should have been.  And if you picked up a schedule in March when it was originally released and never went back to the room—or if you did, never thought to pick up another schedule—you would have the outdated info.

Also, when it was announced, PH posted the original schedule and tweeted out links to it.  They subsequently tweeted out links to the revised schedule. I noticed at least once they tweeted out either a link or an image of an incorrect schedule and brought it to their attention.  But the inaccuracies I noted were different tournaments, I didn’t notice if the guarantees for the Quantum events were still there or not.  I do know that after I pointed it out to them, they did tweet out only the current schedule, with all the revisions.

Now if a room takes away a guarantee at sort of the last minute, they are obligated to let players know before they buy-in.  A sign at the registration area saying, “The guarantee for today’s tournament has been cancelled.”   Or the cashier saying, “You know, there is no guarantee for that event,” when they buy the entry.  But I am thinking that PH didn’t feel the need to do that because they had removed the guarantee sometime back and had been distributing the updated information for quite some time. I can tell you that I knew about the guarantee being dropped at least a week before the Goliath series started, so that was almost a month before the event Charles played in took place.

During the second Quantum event, the one Charles played in, I do recall seeing tweets from other players expressing surprise that there was no guarantee, after they had bought in. So it wasn’t just Charles who was affected.

Sigh.  The problem is that a lot of third-party sources of poker information (like Ante Up magazine, for example) had the original info out there and probably never corrected it.  There are all kinds of places to find info on Vegas summer tournaments during this time, and it may very well be that the only sources that had the correct info were PH’s corrected links and PokerAtlas.  And Planet Hollywood is not responsible for incorrect info on third-party sites.

What about the phone call Charles made a week before asking about the guarantee?  Or the cashier apparently ignoring his mentioning the guarantee when he bought in?  Well, if it happened the way Charles said it did (and I am not questioning him, just trying to be fair to PH), I would have to say I’m not surprised. 

Rooms that run big tournament series have to bring in a lot of temporary dealers, floor people, cashiers, etc.  It is real easy for me to believe that inexperienced help didn’t have the right information—or the ability to process it—right at their finger tips.  Maybe the guy at the window when Charles bought in didn’t hear him say “guarantee.”  Maybe the guy on the phone confused the tournament with another one that had a guarantee.  Or maybe he didn’t even know what a guarantee was.

I can tell you, I call poker rooms all around the country (not just Vegas) for PokerAtlas and am amazed at what some poker room employees don’t know.  Seriously, I ask “how long are the levels?” and some go, “what?” (they might be used to calling them “rounds”). I recently tweeted about calling a room—definitely not in Vegas—to ask about new Omaha tournament they had started.  I couldn’t tell if it was a limit tournament, a pot limit tournament, or possibly a No Limit tournament.  Yes, I’ve heard of No Limit Omaha tournaments—usually run by rooms that never have spread the game and don’t realize it “should” be pot limit.  Anyway, the woman answering the phone didn’t understand my question!  I asked if she had a structure sheet she could look at. I was going to have her read it to me, until I could determine whether it was limit or what.  Fortunately, a fellow employee overheard her repeating my question and told her it was limit. 

So it is possible Charles ran into a couple of novice poker room temps who didn’t really understand about the guarantee. 

Now, I can understand why PH would think they didn’t have to put up a sign about the guarantee being taken away—in their mind they had been (recently) promoting the event as having an “estimated prize pool,” not a guaranteed one.  But since they did originally distribute information that showed a guarantee, I think it would have been a good idea to have a sign right at the registration desk.

So, I feel real bad for Charles, and I apologize for any part I played in the misunderstanding.  I suggested to him that he email the manager of the Planet Hollywood poker room and explain what happened.  I’m not sure what, if anything, will come of that, it certainly couldn’t hurt.

I am curious to hear what you folks think about how this was handled. 

Apparently, I Was Wrong

My last post received some great reaction.  Virtually all of it telling me I was wrong!  I am tempted to tell you not to read it, and I'm tempted to actually take it down off the blog.

But I won't do that.  Oddly enough, my being so wrong may helped make it one of the most popular posts I've ever done!  Seriously.  It got more page views in a day than 95% of my posts do.  

Besides, I'm going to try to explain/apologize for it, so you need to read it if you haven't already done so.  You can find it here.  And be sure to read all the comments ripping me apart for it too.  That's the fun part.  

My friend Grange was the most prolific, giving an item-by-item destruction of my position.

What can I say?  I can't be right if everyone tells me I'm wrong, can I?  So yeah, the old guy who was too busy eating his food got what he deserved.  I apologize not only to my readers but to dealers everywhere who were tarred with my unfair title.  Apparently, there was not an irresponsible dealer to be found.

In my defense.  I don't think I made it clear enough how the dealer was, to my mind, denying info to the player.  I probably didn't use enough words.  I'm used to using more, that's for sure.

I won't defend my position again, I will just try to explain it a little better.  When the card flipped over, and the dealer grabbed it as soon as he could,  he made no effort to show anyone at the table the card, which I believe is standard practice.  He stuck that card on top of the deck as fast as he could. Other people could have missed it as well, I just know for sure that most of us saw it and a few commented on it.  

Now, he didn't have to say, "Hey (Seat 2), the Ace of spades is exposed," but he could have (should have?) said, loud enough for the old guy to hear it, "Exposed card," and if the guy didn't want to turn around to see, then for sure, tough on him.  But he seemed to want to keep it a secret.

My feeling at the time, based on body language, the look he gave me, even the way he held the deck before he put the card down as the burn card, was that he was making every effort possible to keep the guy from seeing exposed card.  Also, there was his comment, when someone asked about it, "Let it go."  I took that to mean in no uncertain circumstances was anyone to say anything about the exposed card.

It just felt to me that he was going out of his way to punish the guy.  I didn't make that clear, and I apologize for that, and even if I'm right (and it's just a feeling), I certainly understand the position you all have taken..."you snooze, you lose."  I did mention that myself in the original post.

Anyway, that's it.  I guess I'm saying that the previous post is void.  But I hope you enjoyed it and my humiliation anyway.

EDITED TO ADD....STOP THE PRESSES!!!  Apparently I was premature in throwing in the towel.  Almost immediately after posting this and tweeting out the link, I heard (via Twitter) from two damn good sources that I was right in the first place.

First, Sean McCormack, The Director of Poker Operations at the Aria, tweeted back to me,  "As an industry person that runs a room I will say-You were 100% correct in your OP. 'You snooze you lose' is invalid."

Then Chad Harberts, long time poker dealer, floor person, and blogger,  tweeted this to me:  ."you are not wrong in any way.  When I deal an exposed card I announce the card at the table and put it face up on deck."  I will point out though that the dealer did have the card face up on the deck, but based on positioning, I don't think the player had a reasonable chance to see it.

Thanks to both for chiming in.  I guess I just gave in too easily.  But I'm not going to say much more.....clearly this is open to interpretation and was also based on my open read on what the dealer was trying to do.

Final note:  The pic below is presented entirely for my own amusement.  It is such an inside joke that I am the only who gets it.  But I need to make myself laugh, so there you are.