How to Lose $80 Without Really Trying

This is from a session I had in the early part of my Vegas trip last month. It took place at Planet Hollywood.  We were starting a new table and while the dealer was selling chips, I was looking at my phone and a guy came over to me and said, "Are you checking PokerAtlas?"  I looked up and he sort of looked vaguely familiar.  Then he gave me his name and mentioned where I knew him from.  It turned out he had been my contact (for PokerAtlas) for a now defunct poker room, and before that, I knew him as a dealer in another room where he had dealt to me a lot.  He had left the poker room before it closed down and I hadn't heard from him since.  We caught up and it seems he moved to another state, still works in a casino.  He ended up joining our game—he took seat 9, and I was in seat 1.  This is likely the only time I'll ever talk about him so let's make it simple and refer to him as "M."

This table was not filled with the usual aggros and maniacs you often see at PH.  In fact, the closest thing to an aggro was M.  But he wasn't really aggro by PH standards. However, I definitely took note of the first time he three-bet.  He three-bet the original raiser, the original raiser called and it was heads up to the flop (I was not involved).  On a rather routine flop, M made a c-bet and the other guy folded.  But M flipped over his cards.  Pretty sure this was the first and only time all evening he showed his hand when he didn't have to.  What did he show?  Deuce-four of diamonds.  And of course, he had caught nothing on the flop.

I wanted to say, "Hey, do you know that's the Grump?" but I didn't.  I said nothing.  My assumption at the time was that he just wanted to advertise that he was three-betting light so that he could get paid off on his value bets down the road.  Did I say "three-betting light"?  Of course we all know that deuce-four is the most powerful hand in poker, but could I expect M to know that?  Most people don't.  But afterwards, I wondered if he showed his deuce-four for my benefit.  Was it possible that M knew all about the deuce-four from my blog and wanted to show off for me?  Sure, it was possible.  I'm often surprised to find that many of the people I am in contact with professionally know about and read my blog (my PokerAtlas name, which is also "robvegaspoker", is on my auto-signature of all my business emails).  Just because he never mentioned it doesn't mean he's never seen my blog.

Furthermore, I realized that at the room where I first encountered M, one of his colleagues had a very popular poker blog himself (now-defunct) which had made multiple references to Poker Grump.  So it was very possible he was familiar with the legend that is deuce-four.

Anyway, I opened to $8 with Ace-Queen and had four callers.  The flop was Queen-Queen-5.  I bet $20 and M was the only caller.  The turn was a 10 and this time M donked out $30.  Hmm....I didn't know what to make of that so I just called.  The river was a Jack and he donked out $35.  Again, I just called.  He had King-Queen and I took the pot.

The very next hand I opened to $8 with King-Jack of clubs.  A guy raised it to $20 and it folded back to me.  I called and we were heads up.  The flop was King-high and had a single club on it.  I called $15.  He checked the turn, which was a Jack.  I bet $20 and he called.  The river was a blank, he checked.  I bet $35 and he folded two Queens face up.

Since those hands happened back-to-back I hadn't stacked up my chips up properly for the second hand.  I just had two really high stacks of chips.  It was later (after I had made notes and perhaps played a few other hands) that I finally got to stack my chips correctly (I thought) into stacks of 20. 

M opened to $6 on the button and I called from the small blind with Queen-Jack of hearts, it was heads up.  The flop was 9-8-x, two diamonds.  We both checked.  The turn was a 10, giving me the straight.  I bet $10 and he called.  The river was the King of diamonds, a card I didn't want to see inasmuch as it completed the flush.  After I checked, he bet $20 and I played it safe by just calling.  He had Ace-Jack (not diamonds) and I took the pot.

With pocket Queens in the big blind, I made it $16 after a bunch of limpers.  It was four-way.  The flop came King-10-x, two hearts.  My Queens were both black.  I checked but no one bet.  The turn was the five of clubs, this time I bet $25 and didn't get a call.  I was surprised no one had a King.

Now I had only been playing for two hours, but I had worked all day and from the moment I'd started playing I realized I was really tired.  I had been having trouble concentrating on the game.  I looked down at my chips, which by now I had sorted properly.  There were four full stacks, plus five additional redbirds on top of the four stacks.  I also had a bunch of dollar chips.  I thought a $230 or so profit—a double-up and then some— for the session sounded pretty good. 

So I grabbed a rack and started putting my chips into it.  When I put the first $100 stack in, I got a huge shock—it didn't fill up the slot.  It was way short.  So were the other three stacks.  When I filled up the slots, it turned out I had totally miscounted my stacks and that each one was only $80, not $100.  Four stacks that were each short $20—or at least twenty bucks shorter than I had thought.  So without losing a hand, I had somehow managed to "lose" $80!  Damn.

I briefly considered sticking around since I no longer had the double up I had been counting on!  How could I have made such a mistake?  One thing is for sure, if I was playing online, at a site such as 888poker, that could never have happened, the computer would have accurately reported my stack.

With less than the double up I thought I had, I briefly considered unracking my chips and playing a little longer.  But then I recalled how tired I was.  I decided a $155 profit for two hours play was good enough.  The "double-up" was only an arbitrary marker anyway, right?  I was so tired I figured I had an excellent chance of losing my profit by continuing. In fact, I guess I can blame my tiredness on the counting error, so that was more proof that it was time to call it a night.

I cashed out $355 and felt like I lost $80 on the last hand, even though I didn't play it—and I didn't lose that $80 to anyone!

"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. 

Movie Review: Molly's Game

Well, I'm back home after another successful Vegas trip.  And by "successful" I mean I made it back alive.  I did get some new material for the blog, and I still have stuff from the previous trip to relate, so I should be able to keep the blog going for awhile.

Before leaving Vegas, I had a chance to see the new poker movie that just came out, Molly's Game.  I figured, what better locale than Vegas to see a movie that focuses on high stakes poker?  Even better, I actually saw the movie in a Vegas casino that has a rather large poker room—The South Point. 

I'm sure most of you are at least minimally familiar with the story.  Molly Bloom, a former Olympic skier, finds herself working for a guy who runs a weekly poker game for the rich and famous.  She gets to be so good at working the game that she takes it over and starts making huge money for running the game.  She started out in L.A. and eventually left to start an even bigger game in New York.  Of course, along the way she ran afoul of the feds and thus we have our story.  The film is not fiction, there really is a Molly Bloom and everything depicted in the film really happened (more-or-less).

It's not really accurate to call Molly's Game a "poker movie."  Although it revolves around the poker games Molly ran, there's not a lot of poker strategy or insight in it.  In other words, if you're expecting another Rounders, you'll be disappointed.  That said, there is some poker in it to be sure.  Molly starts off knowing nothing about poker, and she really learns the game. She imparts the poker wisdom she's absorbed on the audience.  In the middle of the movie, there are definitely a few really good poker scenes—even some hand histories—that will appeal to the poker player in you.

But that's not the main thrust of the film.  The major focus is Molly herself, how this totally fascinating woman got caught up in all this, and despite her considerable intelligence and talent, let herself get in over her head. 

In that regard, the absolute best thing in the movie is the relationship between Molly and her reluctant lawyer.  Jessica Chastain plays Molly and Idris Elba plays her attorney.  Not only do they both give Oscar-worthy performances, but the dynamic and chemistry between them is incredible.  You could watch these two people sit and talk for hours on end, they are that good.

One of the reasons the dialog is so good is that it is written by Aaron Sorkin, who also directed (first time directing). Sorkin created The West Wing for TV and wrote the screenplays for A Few Good Men and The Social Network among others.  He is famous for his rapid fire, intelligent, witty dialog and he doesn't disappoint here.

The secondary relationship depicted is between Molly and her hard-driving father, played by Kevin Costner. Chastain and Costner also have great chemistry and there is a scene of the two of them near the end of the film that is ridiculously good and extremely moving. 

As you can tell, I really liked the movie.  In fact, it would be fair to say I loved it.  That said, the movie is not perfect.  The movie is narrated by Chastain, and I generally would prefer less narration in a film.  Show us, don't tell us!  Also, the story is not told in a linear fashion—it jumps around in time.  Although this was presumably done to make the story easier to follow, I think it actually makes things a little more confusing than necessary.  An important plot point hinges on a minor character's deposition.  They keep referring to it but it isn't until 3/4's of the way into the movie that they come to it in the story and basically explain what they've been talking about all this time.  I think that could have been handled better.

Still, I highly recommend Molly's Game.  And I think I would have liked it every bit as much if I had never played a single hand of poker in my life.

One somewhat tangential note.  Fans of the pics I usually display on this blog may be interested to know that the lovely Ms. Chastain displays ample cleavage amply throughout the film.  Early on her boss tells her to display the "Cinemax version" of herself and she does just that, wearing one low-cut top after another.  It was almost distracting.  Notice I said "almost."

There's no truth to the rumor that I was the fashion advisor to this film.

If you see Molly's Game, let me know what you think!

EDITED TO ADD:  For some great background on the movie and an interview with the poker consultant to the film, be sure to check out Robbie's blog post here.