Vegas Football Promos -- October Ante Up Column

Here's my latest column for Ante Up, which features the Vegas football promos.  As side note, each year I do this it seems like fewer and fewer rooms are doing football promos.  For whatever that's worth.  The link to find my column on the Ante Up site is here.  Remember I only write the Vegas portion of that post.

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The NFL season is under way and many of the poker rooms around town have promos to encourage poker players to watch the games in their rooms. Here’s what is available.

ORLEANS: For Sunday morning and evening NFL games, seat drawings are held after every score. Field goals and two-point conversions are worth $25, touchdowns by the offense are worth $50 and TDs by the defense or special teams pay $75. Safeties are $75. There will also be a $25 splash pot after any score.

For the Monday and Thursday night games, the promo is Escalating High Hands of the Quarter. The best three hands of each quarter are awarded prizes: $100 for first, $50 for second and $25 for third.

An additional $25 is added to each prize for every field goal, TD or safety scored during the quarter. There are separate jackpots for hold’em and Omaha, same prize amounts for each game.

WESTGATE: Football squares run for three games Sunday as well as the Monday and Thursday night games. Players need a flush or better to earn a square and the payout is $50 for each quarter. There’s a high hand of the quarter worth $50.

SAM’S TOWN:  There are football squares for the Sunday morning game, as well as the Sunday, Monday and Thursday night games. The payout is $50 for each quarter. A flush or better is needed for a square.

STRATOSPHERE: For three games Sunday, and the Monday and Thursday night games, the high hand of each quarter wins $50.

MGM: The promo revolves around high hands and leads to a $25K invitational in January. On gamedays, the best hand of each 15-minute period will receive a cash prize, the size of which depends on how many cash games the room has going at the time.

If it’s seven or fewer, it’s $50; if it’s eight of more, the prize is $100. The best hand of each gameday earns an entry into the Invitational. The promo runs Mondays and Thursdays 4-midnight and Sundays 9-9 p.m. The promo will run during the playoffs, times to be determined.

The Invitational will be Jan. 26. Every qualifying player who registers for it will receive $200 and the winner of the tournament, which will be using a shootout format, gets $5K.

MANDALAY BAY: During the Sunday, Monday and Thursday night games, between 5-9, high hands hit are worth an extra $100. High hands start at jacks full or better. The regular payouts for high hands are $500 for royals, $300 for straight flushes, $100 for quads and $50 for jacks full or better, so the $100 bonus is on top of that.

SOUTH POINT: During NFL games, a random player in a cash game will be selected for a cash prize after every score. It’s $50 for a field goal, $100 for a TD and $200 for a safety. 

The promo runs during the Sunday morning, afternoon and evening games, as well as the Monday and Thursday night games.

Additionally, for the Sunday, Monday and Thursday night games, a player will be selected at the beginning and the end of each game and will choose a prize. 

These winners will receive a football square for the Super Bowl, where the payout will be $2,500 for each quarter and $5K for the final score.

MIRAGE: High hand of the quarter is paid for three Sunday games as well as the Monday and Thursday night games. The first quarter pays $75, second quarter is $125, third quarter is $150, fourth quarter is $200 and overtime is $100.

When the Raiders are playing, there will be splash pots every time they score: $50 for a TD, $25 for a field goal and $100 for a safety.

PLANET HOLLYWOOD: The new promotion is super jackpots. Every day, for a different eight-hour period, high hands get the super-jackpot payout. Royal flushes pay $5K between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m.

Straight flushes pay $2K between noon and 8 p.m. Quads pay $500 between 4 a.m. and noon. The rest of the day, royals are worth $500, straight flushes are $200 and quads pay $100.

Additionally, there’s a royal-flush room-share bonus, which runs 24-7.

Any time a player gets a royal, every active player in a live game receives a payout, the amount depends on how long it’s been since a royal was last dealt in the room. It’s a sliding scale that starts at $25 and increases a maximum of $500 if it’s been at least 15 days since the room has seen a royal.

VENETIAN: The $225K Lucky Shot series and drawing runs Oct. 21-27. It’s a combination of a tournament series and promotional drawing. Each tournament has a fixed prize pool, regardless of the number of entrants. On the last day of the series, a drawing will be pay cash. 

Players earn one drawing ticket for every $250 in tournament entries they make. On Oct. 27, the first 21 tickets drawn will pay $2K. The last ticket drawn will be the grand-prize winner and that player will receive $10K.

The main tournament is a $250 event with six starting flights beginning Oct. 21.

Players start with a 25K stack and play 30-minute levels on Day 1, 40-minute levels on Day 2. The prize pool will be $150K. A maximum of 81 places will be paid.

The evening events include two $125 superstack tournaments with a $4K fixed prize pool, a $200 bounty tournament with a $9K prize pool and a $125 bounty tournament with a $6K prize pool.

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.

I Finally Found a Hand to Play

This was my Friday night session in Vegas in July.  It was my first—and, as it turned out, my only—visit to the MGM this trip.  This session is basically all about one big hand that I didn't play well but, you know, luck is a good thing.

I was quite card dead for most of the session, and it was kind of a decent game.  After texting me to see where I was playing, my pal Don showed up, but we never played at the same table.  When he texted me he asked how the games were, and I said they were good but I couldn't find a hand to play.  By the time he showed up and was waiting for a seat, I showed him my stack and told him, "I finally found a hand to play."  He said, "I see that."  I added "But you won't like how I played it," I warned him.  "Probably not," was his reply.

I couldn't have had much less than my original $200 buy-in because of not playing anything.  Finally I got pocket 10's in early position and I limped in.  Don and I had discussed that hand just the night before.  Of course I should raise with it and he was reminding me of that very fact.  I explained that whenever I do, it seldom works out well for me.  So with the first pocket pair I'd had all night, I just limped in.  No one raised and five of us saw the flop.

And a fine flop it was.  Jack-Jack-10.  Always nice to flop a boat.  The lone woman at the table bet $10, a guy called, and I just called.  The others folded.  The turn card was a 9.  I checked, the lady bet $40, and the guy called.  When I checked, I was thinking I'd probably check-raise.  But when the guy called the $40, I started thinking I might get more money if just called and didn't chase anyone out.  So I just called.

I didn't like the river card, a Queen.  Players love to play Queen-Jack.  It struck me as plausible someone just hit a bigger boat than mine.  Hell, for all I knew, the lady had Jack-9 (another hand people love to play) and I was beaten on the turn. After my check, the lady bet $55 and the other guy called.  It struck me as very possible my hand was not the best.  I hated it, but I just called.

The lady turned over Jack-something.  The something wasn't matched with anything on the board.  The guy turned over pocket 8's.  At least that's what I think it was.  He only had it face up for a second. Maybe I missed something.  I mean, it's hard to believe he would have thought that was good against two other players. He couldn't have had a straight because he was obviously disappointed to see the lady's trips and he hadn't seen my hand yet. Whatever, my boat was good and it was a nice pot, but I know I cost myself some value there.

Not much happened after that either.  I had 5-3 in the big blind and no one raised.  The flop was 6-3-2 and no one bet.  The turn was a 5 but now I had to worry about a low straight.  I checked and called a bet of $10 from the aggro Euro at the table.  The river was an 9.  There was no flush possible and I checked.  This time the Euro put out $30. I just had a gut instinct that he was full of crap.  I shrugged and called.  All he had was a deuce for bottom pair.

And that was all that was worth reporting on.  I was able to cash out with a $110 profit.  During the game I had a good seat for the parade of scantily clad females attending the nightclub, and I was able to explore said parade more fully after I cashed out.  But I have to say, it was a disappointing show. For some reason there wasn't a big crowd for the club that night. But the extra money in my wallet was most welcome.