Whaddup? Poker With The Trooper!

On my first full day in Vegas last month, I met The Trooper.

If you don’t know who The Trooper is, you’ve been missing out.

The Trooper does a great Vlog that you can find on YouTube right here.  But if you haven’t heard of him, don’t click that link just yet.  If you do, you’ll start watching all his videos and you’ll forget to come back here to read the rest of this post.  You’ll be laughing too hard.

Do I have to explain what a Vlog is?  Hopefully not, but if so, it’s just a blog that is done in video format instead of the written format, like this one.

Anyway, he’s been doing his Vlog for awhile now, and I only recently discovered it.  Now, I wouldn’t miss an episode.  The Trooper lives in Vegas and chronicles his efforts to grind his way through the Vegas poker world.  He records his videos while driving to his destination, or walking through a casino to get to the poker room, or walking the streets of Vegas (the Strip and downtown).  So you get a lot of flavor of Vegas along with his monologues.  In addition to poker, he talks and sometimes rants about other things going on in his life, like his love of Starbucks, his plans to work out more, and his plans to eat less junk food. The videos have terrific production values—carefully selected music, great editing, etc. 

But the reason to watch them is The Trooper himself.  His enthusiasm, his attitude, his way with words (mostly the “f” one) are infectious.  I dare you to watch one and not laugh.  The Trooper has a great on-screen personality that comes through in all his work.

So, sometime before my last visit to Vegas, I discovered his videos and eventually started interacting with The Trooper on Twitter.  One night, I noticed that he was tweeting about playing at the MGM, and he mentioned that some of the ladies passing by were a bit of a distraction.  Who knew?

Actually, this was in the early evening, so I took the liberty of tweeting to him that he needed to wait for it to get closer to club-opening time and then he would really be distracted.  In that context, I tweeted him the link to my infamous Slut Parade post (here), which he retweeted. A couple of tweeters who follow both of us chimed in, at least one suggesting he try to do a video with the Slut Parade in the background.

Then, a few days before my most recent trip, I saw on twitter, and later in his blog (here), that Nick met Trooper and even played poker with him.  I figured if Trooper was willing to meet Nick, he’d surely be willing to meet me.

So when I saw him tweet out that he was eating and about to start a session, I asked him where he was playing.  Planet Hollywood, he said, and I had a good excuse to stop working and head over there. 

I figured I’d have no trouble recognizing Trooper from his videos, as long as he was wearing his baseball cap (which, I should point out, he always wears the proper way).  When I got to the room, it didn’t take me long to identify him.  I gave him a quick once over but didn’t say hello.  I figured I would just try to get to his table and then introduce myself.  But I thought I saw him noticing me looking around.  I noted what number his table was, so I could ask for a transfer to it as soon as possible.

They sent me to a different table but within a few minutes I was called to Trooper’s table.  Unfortunately, we were on opposite sides of the table, about as far away from each other as we could be.  Trooper was definitely eyeing me as I took seat 8.  I didn’t want to shout over the table, and honestly, I didn’t want to identify either one of us publically.  So I tweeted to him that it  was me who had just taken seat 8.

I hadn’t noticed that there was already a tweet waiting for me from him.  It said, “I dunno why I notice things all around the poker room. But, never seeing you before, are you in seat 8?”

So when he saw my tweet, he tweeted back to look at the tweet he had just sent.  He had identified me just from the way I was acting when I got to the poker room.  I guess that’s a “tell.”

I tweeted back how impressive that was, and that his powers of observation are no doubt a key to his poker success.

So I was getting settled into my seat and putting my phone away now that we had established who and where we were.  I happened to glance around, and I noticed a young woman at the table across from mine. She reminded me of some pictures I had seen from a woman I knew only from Twitter.  If I was right, her name was Amanda and she had recently moved to Vegas from L.A. and had bounced around the country before that.  I recall tweeting back and forth with her quite a bit when she made her first visit to Vegas a year earlier.  I also recalled that she had tweeted comments back to me about some of my blog posts, so she was familiar with the blog. And thus, obviously, she was a woman of impeccable taste.

As I said, she had posted a bunch of pictures of herself on Twitter (and Instagram too) and I thought it might be her.  I was far from certain though.  With Trooper it was easy because not only had I seen him a lot on his videos, but I knew in advance that he was going to be at Planet Hollywood. I didn’t know that she was going to be there, all I knew was that she was now living in Vegas.  I checked her Twitter feed to see if she might have tweeted a clue to her whereabouts but there was nothing there.  So I decided to be discreet and send her a direct message on Twitter, asking her if she was playing at PH and facing Earl of Sandwich. 

I kept looking over at her and eventually I saw her look at her phone and then she looked around, and DM’d me back to confirm that she was indeed there and asked me where I was.  No doubt she was a little freaked out, and might have thought that she had a stalker. Then, I tweeted back some bad info.  I said I was across from her and in seat 8, but failed to tell her it was the table across from her.  She looked over at the woman in seat 8 at her game and looked confused.  So rather than tweet back, I waited until I was out of a hand and went over to introduce myself.  It was only then that I realized she was playing in a tournament, not a cash game, so I could neither invite her to join Trooper and me or stay and chat much with her other than to just say hello.  It was a very brief visit but I’m sure I’ll run into her again, and am looking forward to that. You can find Amanda on Twitter here.

There were really only two hands worth talking about, one occurred early, the other one late.  Down a few chips from original $200 buy-in, I looked down at the dreaded pocket Kings.  It was just my second session of this trip, and the first time I’d seen them since setting foot back in Nevada.  I raised to $12 and had two callers.  The flop was 6-6-3, rainbow.  I bet $30.  One player folded and the other one took his sweet time.  I read his hesitancy as trying to decide between calling and folding, but of course, I’ve sometimes misread that and only later learn out the decision was between calling and raising.  After quite a while, he called.

I really liked the turn, which was a King.  I put out $45 and this time my opponent snap called.  It was odd how fast he called after hesitating on the flop.  Did he like the King that much?  Really?  Did he have Ace-King or King-Queen?  Would he have really called the flop with that?

I don’t remember the river, it didn’t seem important.  I probably would have shoved the river no matter what, based on my remaining stack and the size of the pot, but the way he snap called the turn convinced me he was going to call any river bet I could make.  My shove was around $105-$115 and he had me covered.  He tanked for a while and then disappointingly folded.

I sort of just ran in place with my winnings for awhile.  I basically got nothing to play.  The table started thinning out.  And then, I called a raise to $10 with Ace-6 of hearts (note: I’m pretty much always calling a “reasonable”, single raise with any hand I would raise with myself, and A-6 sooooted is such a hand).  It was three or four handed.  The flop had two hearts, so I called the preflop raiser’s $20 bet and it was heads up.  The turn was a blank and I called a $30 bet.  The river was a 4 of hearts, giving me the nut flush but pairing the board. 

The guy led out for $60.  I guess I got a little spooked by the board being paired, as I decided to just play it safe and just call.  Note:  There were some hands towards the end of my previous trip—some I’ve yet to discuss—where I got burned value betting the river. I think I haven’t gotten some of those nightmares out of my mind.  He said he had nothing, and flipped over King-Queen. He really did have nothing, there wasn’t even a good draw for him.  He triple barreled with air.  Obviously I took down the pot, and obviously if I had raised his river bet he wouldn’t have called.  But yes, I know that’s not the way to look at it, and I probably should have raised.

With that, I had slightly over $200 profit in front of me.  And the seat to my left opened up and Trooper moved over to it.  We started what was a nearly 90-minute conversation.  However, there was almost no more poker played there.  A bunch of other players got up, and we were down to four-handed.  We could have gone to another game, but we both kind of felt like moving on.  I cashed out up $205 for 90-minutes of poker.

Trooper was unsure where he wanted to play, and I figured I had to take a food break pretty soon.  His original tweet was about his pre-poker meal so I knew he wouldn’t be interested in eating.

But we were having a nice conversation, and as we exited Planet Hollywood, we just stood there on the strip and chatted on and on.  It didn’t hurt that there were some good looking street performers right in front of us:  A couple of lady “cops” who were wearing shirts tied bellow the bust and hot pants.  They had rather large breasts which were generously displayed.  Coming in, we had both seen a couple of ladies dressed as showgirls whose tops consisted only of pasties (with tassels).  But they were presently nowhere to be found. 

We talked on and on, mostly about our respective blogs.  He really has grand plans to make his Vlog bigger and better and start making some serious money off of it.  We talked about poker comps and how CET does them so much better than MGM Resorts. We also talked a lot about people we both know and/or follow both of our blogs—and about our encounters with them in poker rooms.  One of my readers posted in the 2+2 forums asking him to video the Slut Parade.  He said he tried but it is really too difficult to do it without getting into trouble. 

Suddenly a guy on the sidewalk started playing his drums really, really loudly right next to us.  This may have been the reason the lady cops left.  And that may have been the reason the two of us finally started walking.  He said he was thinking about playing at Bally’s, and since that’s where I had parked my car (The Planet Hollywood parking lot is my second least favorite poker room parking lot in Vegas, for the record—Flamingo is #1), we walked together.  Along the way, Trooper pointed out a few landmarks (coffee places, food places, etc) that had been featured in his Vlogs. 

When we got to Bally’s poker room we hung out at the rail while they were starting their weekly freeroll.  He recognized a couple of players and I was surprised that no one was familiar to me. He told me a great story.  I dunno if he’s told this on his Vlog but I haven’t seen it, so without his permission, I’ll relay it here.  I hope he doesn’t mind.

Back about 7 years ago, playing at the now-defunct Sunset Station poker room, he hit the big bad beat jackpot that Stations was running.  He said he was down to his last $140 (I assume until his next payday) and flopped a set of 7’s.  He and his opponent got it all in as the other guy had a set of 9’s. Ouch. He was not a happy Trooper, to say the least. Both hands were now face up.

The turn was the case 7, and everyone, not just the Trooper, got excited.  He was happy he had hit his miracle one-outer of course, but everyone at the table was now aware that hitting the bad beat jackpot was an actual possibility.  The excitement woke up the dealer, who, according to Trooper, hadn’t really been paying attention until then. 

Trooper was on the dealer’s right, so he was last to see the river card.  He didn’t need to see it.  He heard the screams from the players on the other side of the table as they all saw that case 9 in the dealer’s hand before he put down on the board.  The whole poker room erupted. 

In fact, Trooper’s buddy was in the Men’s Room at the time, and he heard the commotion from there.  Trooper and his pal had an agreement that if either one of them hit it, they would give the other one some of the winnings, so Trooper paid his buddy.

Trooper got $45K for his losing hand, the winning hand was worth $30K and all the players at all Stations poker rooms got a table share, which turned out to be more than $1K.  Oddly enough, both Trooper and the winner got a table share too.

I finally said goodbye to Trooper after one of the most interesting conversations I can remember.   He really is a good guy, and I have to say in person he’s pretty much the same guy he is on his videos.  Except somewhat less hyper, I guess.  But he is quite the talker, I have to say.  Not a quiet person.  Except at the poker table that is.  Until he moved next to me, he didn’t seem to be talking at all.  We didn’t play long enough for me to get a good feel for his game, but the results he talks about on his videos are impressive.

OK, that’s my meeting with The Trooper.  No go click that link at the begging of this post and check out his videos.  You will laugh, I assure you.

Oh, and since this post is going up on Easter Sunday, I found a couple of pics of  Easter “bunnies” that I rather like.  I trust The Trooper will approve.  

Doors Lock at 11:30 PM

New Year's Eve, 2013 (Part 1)

In all the times I’ve been to Vegas, I’ve never been there for New Year’s Eve.  I’ve spent almost every Christmas there for a gazillion years, but always left town at least a day or two before the ball dropped in Times Square.

Until this year. Or last year, I guess.

I decided to be in Vegas when 2013 turned into 2014.

It never made any sense to do so before.  NY’s Eve is a busy time in Vegas, and a busy time means an expensive time.  The room rates go way up for the couple of days leading up to New Years Day.  It would have pretty much blown my yearly Vegas budget to go there for New Years.  Instead, I could make multiple visits there throughout the year.  One of the reasons I always went during Christmas time was that it was pretty much the cheapest time to go.  It’s slow there leading up to Christmas and therefore cheap.

Back in the day, when I was going to Vegas every Christmas with my pal Norm, I was playing table games, not poker.  That was another reason to avoid Vegas on New Years.  For busy weekends, and holiday weekends, they always jack up the minimum bets on the table games.  I started souring on Vegas when they stopped offering $2 blackjack and $2 craps.  Norm and I weren’t willing to play for a $5 minimum bet, and for New Years Eve we were told we’d be lucky to find a $25 minimum table.  Way too rich for our blood.

That’s one of the nice things about poker.  They don’t change the minimum bets on weekends and holidays.  In fact, now that I’m playing poker, I prefer to be in Vegas on busy weekends and holidays—the busier the better.  The stakes are the same and the action is better.

But this year I decided to extend my Christmas visit through New Years.  I figured I had to experience it at least one time, why not now?

I did research and planned my day carefully.  I knew that not only would the Strip be closed to traffic at around 6:30 PM on NYE, but that all streets leading to the Strip (Tropicana, Flamingo, Spring Mountain, etc.) would be closed too.  In a perfect world, I’d have a room at MGM so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting there.  But your humble scribe is not a wealthy man, and the $500 or so a night that would have cost me was way out of my league.  I found accommodations that were considerably cheaper than that, you can be sure.  But this meant I had to drive to and from the MGM if I wanted to celebrate the new year with my friends there. 

I decided to get there early, real early.  At least three hours before they started closing the streets.  So much for doing any work that day!  And I knew I’d be more or less forced to stay there long past midnight.  Yes, there were back ways to escape before they reopened the streets (estimated time of re-opening: between 2-3AM) but if I didn’t want get stuck in major traffic it behooved me to stay there until past 2 AM.

That’s a long day of poker.  I wasn’t sure I really wanted to play poker for 12 hours.  My bankroll might not be able to handle that if I was running bad.

So when I headed towards the MGM, I decided to take my laptop with me. I figured I could maybe do some work there before I started playing.  My first thought was that I could set up my laptop right in the poker room and use the WiFi there.  I thought I could use an empty poker table as a desk. 

But that didn’t work out.  When I got there around 3PM, there was not a single empty table (they only have 11 these days).  I looked at the waiting list and there were only a few names on it, so I didn’t both to put my name in yet.

I went over to the Starbucks (one of three they have there—thank goodness they don’t just two).  I knew Starbucks always offers free WiFi, right?  More importantly, I needed access to a wall outlet as I had conveniently forgotten to take the laptop’s battery.

I have to admit that I don’t have a lot of experience with Starbucks.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve never bought anything at one.  You see, I don’t drink coffee or lattes or whatever else they make billions of dollars a year selling.  I assumed that in order to take advantage of their free WiFi, one had to be a paying customer.  And even if it wasn’t actually required that you buy something, it struck me as being rather rude and not at all nice to just take up a seat, a table and their electricity without buying something. So, innocently, I went to the counter and, after not seeing anything like this on the menu, I asked, “Do you have a diet coke or something like that?”

I think they wanted to call the police.  No, no, they told me, they don’t sell any soda.  “We’re coffee snobs, don’t you get it?  It’s Starbucks.  We only sell over-priced coffee drinks. You’ll have to go elsewhere for an overpriced soda.”

No, they didn’t say that.  They just told me they didn’t sell any soda and that if I wanted a diet coke, I could go next door to the Stage Deli.

Yeah, right.  I think they charge about four bucks for a diet coke at the Stage Deli and I didn’t really want a diet coke.  I just thought it would be polite to actually give them some business if I was gonna take up their space.  I would have paid $4 (or more) for a diet coke at Starbucks because I would have felt like I was paying for the use of their facilities in addition to the refreshment.  But it didn’t make any sense to go to the deli to get an overpriced drink I didn’t really want and bring it back to Starbucks!

Well, I had tried.  I found a table near an outlet and set up my PC.  I was curious to see if they would say anything to me about using their facilities without being a customer.  The place wasn’t especially crowded, there were empty seats, but it wasn’t dead either.  And after I got set up, they started rearranging furniture, replace tables and chairs with barstools and whatever it is you call a table that you need a barstool to sit at.  But at no time did they question my presence there.  If they had said to me that what I was doing was for customers only, I would have told them I tried to buy something but they didn’t sell soda.  But they never said anything to me.

It turned out they didn’t really have free WiFi.  I mean, not their own WiFi.  The only WiFi was the MGM’s own WiFi, which you can access anywhere on the property.  It’s free but slow speed.  Now, if I had been able to set up in the poker room, I could have accessed the VIP WiFi they have, but as soon as you leave the poker room, you’re out of their range.  The VIP WiFi is fast, but the regular WiFi is basic and really only good for getting email.

So, I logged into the MGM WiFi.  At that speed, I felt I really couldn’t do any actual work, so instead, I typed up a blog post (which I didn’t really need WiFi for at all, since I wasn’t planning on posting it yet).  So now it can be revealed, the blog post here was written on New Year’s Eve at a Starbucks in MGM.  I wrote that particular post because I knew I could write it quickly and without referring to my voice notes (hard to do at a Starbucks) since the story was still very fresh in my mind.

Despite the fact that no one was hassling me, all the rearranging of the furniture was making me uncomfortable.  I finished up the blog post and packed up my computer.  Now it was a bit after 4PM and I didn’t want to be lugging around my laptop all evening.  So I schlepped all the way back to the parking structure and put it in the trunk of my car.  That’s only about a 3 mile round trip walk (just a slight exaggeration).  I walked past the poker room on the way to my car and saw that there was now an unused poker table (too late) but there were still only a couple of names on the list.  Again, knowing I was in for a long night of poker, I opted not to put my name on the list just then.  Big mistake.

It couldn’t have been that long by the time I got back to the poker room from the parking, but  things had changed a bit in that time.  There was still an open poker table (maybe two) but there were now rather long waiting lists for the games.  There were about 4-5 names on the 1/2 NL list, and about half a dozen on the 2/6 spread limit game list.  And that was the game I wanted.

I’ve described that game in the post here.  Since that time, I’ve played the 2/6 a few more times but haven’t enjoyed it at all.  Unless you have an entertaining group of players, or at least one fun person like the lady I described in that post, it’s just too boring for me now that I’m used to NL.  However, knowing I was going to be playing poker all night and into the morning, I figured it would be “safer” to start out playing the 2/6 game for a couple of hours before moving over to the 1/2 game.  Safer for my bankroll, that is.  I didn’t want to lose a couple of buy-ins before it even got close to midnight. 

But as I said, in the time it had taken me to drop my laptop off, the waitlist for the 2/6 game had grown from one to six.  Still, I decided to get on that list only.  I figured I was in no rush.  I could just sit in the poker room and wait it out.  I had a nice time talking to various dealers and floor people who knew me (even though I don’t often play there during this particular shift). 

After about an hour though, I was still stuck on that list.  I was the first name, and any minute now I’d get called.  But since there was only one 2/6 game going, the list hadn’t moved very fast and there was no telling when the next person would leave.

Meanwhile, the list for the 1/2 game was empty, they had open seats.  Finally, finally, I just gave up and said the hell with it, I’d killed enough time, it was time to play some poker.  So I told them I’d take one of the empty 1/2 seats. 

I was given a choice of tables, and looking at the players, there didn’t seem to be much to choose from that way.  So I decided to take the seat that offered me the best view of the New Year’s Eve Slut Parade.  Having thoroughly enjoyed the Halloween Slut Parade and been totally denied any Christmas Slut Parade, you could be sure that I wanted to see what kind of crowd New Year’s Eve would attract.  I had a front row center seat to all the people that would walk by the poker room on this night.  Many of those people were heading to and from the nightclub for its New Year’s Eve party.  Some of those people were young, hot girls who were barely dressed. And some of those girls had apparently forgotten what I’m sure their mothers had told them years ago—“Always put on clean underwear when you go out, in case you get into an accident.”  Much later in the evening, I did notice a couple of young ladies who hadn’t remembered to put on clean underwear.  Or any other kind.  But more on that later.

I should describe what you can expect should you decide to spend a future New Year’s Eve on the Vegas Strip.  I already mentioned that they close the Strip to traffic.  At midnight, they have a huge fireworks show on the Strip.  You have to be outside, on the Strip, to see it.  I’ve seen my fair share of fireworks so I wasn’t all that interested, I didn’t feel the need to join the mob outside to witness it.  Especially when I saw the signs as I walked in the MGM this night.  See below.

Yes, they claimed that they would actually lock the doors of the hotel at 11:30 PM and keep you locked out until 12:30 AM.  Hours later, I mentioned this to my pal Abe, who didn’t see the sign and didn’t believe me. He actually mocked me for saying they would lock the doors.  Look, I don’t think they ended up doing that, but that’s what the sign said.  On my way out, I noticed the sign, over to the side and took the picture to show Abe.  But I forgot to show it to him before leaving town.  So here it is, Abe!  I wasn’t making it up.

Another sign I noticed starting a few days before the big night was that starting from 6PM on NYE until 6AM NY’s Day no beverage could be served in a glass container anywhere on the Strip.  They listed a Vegas city ordinance restricting this.  All the drinks—alcoholic or otherwise—served in all the casinos that night were served in plastic cups.  If you wanted a bottle of Corona with a lime, well, tough luck.  Even the sundries stores that normal sell bottles of beer, wine and the hard stuff couldn’t sell them during this period.

I knew the reason.  Years ago I heard from some people who were in Vegas for the celebration.  They told me that on both the Strip and on Fremont Street, at the crack of the New Year, people would toast and then smash their glasses into the street.  This was not only a mess to clean up but a safety hazard as well. One of my then co-workers reported getting cut on the foot by the broken glass.

So some time ago, they just banned glass from the area for the 12 hour period.  I assume it’s the same way on Fremont. 

I mentioned the Strip being closed to vehicular traffic.  It is opened—supposedly—to pedestrian traffic.  I say supposedly because at one point, taking a break from the poker, I went outside to check it out.  This was around 7PM or so when the Strip was completely closed.  I expected to see people walking in the middle of the Strip.  I expected to be one of those persons.  But at least at this hour, that wasn’t the case at all.  Getting off the sidewalk was a challenge (since its blocked off at the corner of Tropicana because they have overhead walkways) and when I did find a way to get on the Strip….well, it was only the right most two lanes that were available for walking.  In the middle of the Strip there were no pedestrians, just a bunch of police cars.  It appeared to be that way on the other side as well.  Furthermore, there didn’t appear to be a way to walk from, say, the MGM to the New York New York.  I suppose there must have been, but I didn’t see how.  I meant to have investigated further later but never got around to it.

Also, those overhead walkways were all closed during the celebration.  I assume the reason for that is two-fold.  One, it’s a great place for cops to be situated to see if anything nefarious is going on.  And two, they don’t want drunks either throwing things off the bridges—or worse, falling off—during the celebration.     

(OK, I'm gonna end part 1 there.  Part 2 heats up as we bring in the New Year and discuss everyone's favorite genres.  Are we discussing movies?  Hardly.  Will there be any discussion of poker?  Don't bet on it.  The next chapter is up and can be found here.)