In case the graph didn’t make it clear, I’ve made it through to the second round of the WSOP satellite. I play again at midday (8pm UK time).
Not sure if I’ll bother with a chip graph this time, it was pretty intense trying to keep up with meaningful updates and the whole thing was over in exactly one hour. It’s only because I got lucky that the graph had more than 3 points on it.
We started with 1500 chips and doubling the blinds just wasn’t fast enough. It went up every fifteen minutes: 25/50, 50/100, 100/200 then 200/500.
Two players progressed from each table of eight, and I assume it will be the same format today to reduce the field to just one table of ten to play for the cash and the Main Event seat. At that final table, about 40 hands will determine who wins bottom place money ($500) and who wins the top prize ($10,000). Just like on TV, I suppose.
To say it’s all a bit random would be an understatement.
But, on the other hand, the quality of the opposition is terrible. This game had everything you could ever dream of. Players who have no idea of the value of their cards, or their chips. Even though the chips have numbers on them, in case you forget.
It was just like the scene in Ocean’s Eleven where Brad Pitt is teaching a bunch of movie stars to play poker, except nobody was famous and the dealer already knew to deal to the left.
Given more chips and enough time, I am absolutely positive I could have pissed all over my table yesterday. As it was, I was forced to get lucky in a 3-way race holding KJ against A6 and 23. Making the overcall there with the nut low wasn’t even the worst play I saw.
These players mostly weren’t here for poker, they were here in spite of it. The tournament took place in the promotions area where slot tournaments are held (the machines were all around the edge of the room) and I’m sure that really that’s what everyone else wanted to be doing. It’s much more fun to slap a button and not have to think; to have a machine tell you whether you won rather than have to try to work it out for yourself.
One player tabled QJ on the river twice, making a hesitant call each time. The first time the board showed two queens, a jack and two little cards with four hearts and his full house beat a king-high flush. (In the WSOP, that same call with the absolute nuts would get you a one round penalty for soft-playing). The next time he called on the river holding QJ on a board of 67TA2 with 3 spades. A busted gutshot straight draw has rather less showdown value.
He wasn’t alone in being married to a drawing hand with zero cards to come. When one player bet the river holding 23 and having paired the 3, she got paid off by JT because there was a king and queen on the flop.
A pre-flop raise was usually a minimum raise, although any raise was rare. A flop bet, was usually a minimum bet – usually following the question "how much can I bet".
The betting patterns were so peculiar I don’t think there was any chance of trying to play this any other way that staying out of trouble, picking a couple of spots and getting lucky when it mattered.
In fact, I even laid down AQ pre-flop when we were five handed. The first player to act moved all in and I looked round the table to see what was going on. It was the first time anyone had taken more than 5 seconds to make a decision and suddenly I’d drawn attention to myself.
The big blind, who had us both covered, had already counted out the call and was holding the chips over the line ready to release. Unable to put either of them on a geniune hand, I didn’t want to take a likely 40% shot at survival so I let them fight it out and the big blind’s K9 knocked out KQ with a straight.
It was satisfying to qualify and I’m sure it would have been frustrating to miss out. I did see one dude in a Bodog top walking out of the room on his cellphone, presumably complaining about losing a 60/40 against a hand that should have never been in the pot. At least he didn’t have sunglasses on.
I’m under absolutely no illusions that it’s an automatic win. Clearly I do have an edge over the field, but there’s really not enough time to let it have much of an effect. I like my spot, but the poker gods have to like me too.
Still, I only have to get lucky twice more to win a ten grand seat now.
EDIT: 2nd in the "semi-final". Only one player from each table advanced though so I’m done. There’s a cash drawing at 5pm for a last chance of some winning.
Harrah’s Laughlin is sold out. You wouldn’t really know to look at it, but apparently it’s a 1600-room hotel. Tiny by Las Vegas standards but pretty big for Laughlin. And it’s sold out.
I know this because they told me when I checked in last night, and they told the couple next to me too. Then a random guy in the elevator told me the same thing.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in Laughlin on a weekend before so I don’t know if it’s normal, but it sounds like it’s pretty big news.
I was too late to register for my tournament last night so I still have no idea how it is going to work, when it will start or how many runners are in it. The hotel being full is not a good sign, as they originally told me that 400 rooms were reserved for this promotion.
I can still register at 11am, apparently. I have a suspicion that it might be a shootout format but I’ve put up a blank graph anyway in case there’s something worth reporting on. Click the graph to see the chipgraph.com page with comments, there might be something interesting to tell – you never know!
EDIT: I’m registered to play at 4pm. At 10am there was a group about to start and my choice was 2pm or 4pm. There’s about a dozen tables in the room, so 400 runners is a definite possibility! The structure will be kinda fast too…
I’d decided that I’d try out a few different at-table dining services at various poker rooms on this trip, to compare and contrast. However, after eating during the tournament at Caesars, I’ve changed my mind.
I know I caught them on a bad day – there were 605 runners, the most so far in this series and so many that they had to turn players away from the 3pm tournament because there were no more tables – but the service was terrible. Either the room was understaffed or the staff were overwhelmed.
I waited 50 minutes for my $16 burger, which would have been nothing special even if it was hot. It was luke warm by the time it arrived but I was so hungry by then I didn’t want to wait the best part of another hour to get it fixed.
Cocktail waitresses were also an endangered species. From the moment I ordered my food, realising that I was going to need a drink, until I’d finished eating I didn’t see a single one. Not what I’ve come to expect from Caesars at all.
Not to mention that it was only once I’d ordered my food that I began the downhill slide towards destruction. Eating at the table is clearly just bad luck.
In fact, nothing particularly interesting happened – I just couldn’t win the pots that mattered.
In the end, I pushed in early position with AQ and got an instant call from 88. He only just covered me, but this was more than likely a spite call from a gobshite who had tried desperately to get me to tell him what I had in an earlier hand that he bet me off and I couldn’t think of a convincing lie so I basically told him to fuck off. "Sorry, I can’t remember". Sounds much better what Matt Damon says it…
Before that I’d lost a chunk with AK vs AQ. Not all-in pre-flop this time, I’d raised one early limper and got an immediate call from the player to my left. Flop: 678 and we both checked. I only had a little more than the pot left, and I wasn’t feeling suicidal. When the turn brought a ten, I thought I could take a small stab (1200 into a 3000 pot) but he called it, spiked a queen on the river and then checked for value. Brilliant.
In the break I decided to find out just how long it takes to walk from Caesars to Bellagio. It’s right next door and there’s a walkway over the road, but getting there and back and finding what you want in 20 minutes is a stretch. I thought it would be.
This isn’t as random as it sounds. I wanted to put a bet on the basketball game but apparently Harrah’s chairman Gary Loveman now has an ownership interest in the Boston Celtics so none of their casinos can take bets on Celtics games. That’s pretty big news for every other sportsbook in town when the they make the NBA finals.
However, here’s the difference between the world’s largest gaming company and a smaller off-strip operator. Since this acquisition, Harrah’s properties can’t take any bets on any Celtics game. However the Palms and the the Silverton – whose owners have stakes in the San Antonio Spurs and the LA Lakers respectively – can’t take bets on any basketball game. Something’s not right there.
Anyway, I wish I hadn’t bothered. I fell asleep during the game, missed the end and the Lakers apparently lost.
As I walked through the Rio, after finally working out where to park without having to walk three miles back to my hotel elevators, I stumbled on the rehearsals for the all new Show in the Sky.
The quality the video is terrible, so I’ve kept it short.
The show was pulled a couple of months ago, revamped and recently re-opened. You can see the full show here.
The version I saw was just the same, except without the floats in the sky (except for the child-scarer, which was hanging motionless in the air), the costumes, stage lighting or much of an audience.
Then at the end, the "Rio advanced warning system" alarm went off.
At first it looked like the siren was part of the show, and I might have thought it was if it wasn’t for the fact the same thing went off in my room at 5am! I’ve never been so glad to be jet-lagged.
About half an hour later it sounded again to say that the first one had been a false alarm.
My first ever comped suite, at the Rio. 33rd floor of the Masquerade Tower.
The small brown door on the right is actually for a refridgerator, and there’s a coffee maker too.
The Strip view is somewhat obscured by the big-ass television.
The view is best at night when everything is lit up, but it was pretty spectacular at sunrise (and a bit easier to take pictures of through a dirty window too). I have a panoramic view of the mountains, and can see the Strip from half of Caesars to Stratosphere as well as Downtown in the distance.
In Philadelphia airport, in a fast food joint I’d never heard of before, which had an impossibly small menu, I was given a choice that I’d never been offered before.
At Chick-Fil-A (I’m still saying it out loud even now, the name bothers me so much) I had the number two combo, which in retrospect I wish I’d ordered by name. It’s a chargrilled chicken sandwich.
The other choices were a not-so-chargrilled chicken sandwich, or chicken nuggets (which I have to assume is the meat from a sandwich chopped into small pieces). That’s it.
When I ordered iced tea for my drink, the lady asked me: "Sweet or unsweet".
I thought my American vocab was getting pretty strong, but is "unsweet" really a word? Unsweetened, sure, but can you just throw "un" in front of any adjective like that and hope it works? I guess they can’t call it "sour" or "bitter" or nobody would drink it, and a burger bar calling a soft drink "dry" would be a little too pretentious. What the hell. I unsweeted right back at her to confirm my choice.
So not only had I never heard that word before, I’ve also never even thought of this before. I don’t know whether iced tea is normally sweetened. I guess it quite possibly is as this one was pretty, err, dry. I’ve definitely never had to make that decision before though.
I watched Supersize Me recently in an attempt to scare me off the diet of fast food that’s going to be all too easy to succumb to when I’m in Vegas by myself for a week.
The film pointed out just how many spoonfuls of sugar there are in every extra large soda, it was like 50 or something stupid, nearly a full bag probably. I’m not a fan of sugary drinks anyway, usually choosing Diet Coke whether or not I care about what I consume on any given day, but I did think that iced tea was another sugar-free option. Now I really don’t know.
Anyway, I’ve made a fairly healthy start to the trip (if you discount the picture above, which was very nice) – I’ve already bought a bunch of bananas for breakfasts!
So I moaned a bit before about not having any good offers since I got Diamond, and they said it was because I hadn’t actually played on any of the shitty games they had in Las Vegas.
Fine, I thought, let’s give them some action and see what happens.
Claire and I spent not much more than an hour pumping money through the best video poker games we could find at Harrah’s Las Vegas. Tucked away in a bank of multi-line games there was one multi-line machine with 5c 10-play 9/5 Jacks or Better (98.5%) and the next best was 7/5 Bonus Poker (98.0%) at 25c. Definitely not great, but the best of a bad bunch.
Between us, we racked up 355 base reward credits on my card which means we must have played $3550 in total. If you reckon on a 2% house edge on those games, the overall expected loss is $71. In fact we won a bit on the day because Claire of course hit about 25 royal flushes.
That expected loss number is not quite as bad as it sounds. We also got a combined 606 bonus reward credits (how these are calculated at any given time is an official secret) taking the total for the day to 961, worth a whopping $9.61 in instant food comp almost anywhere at any of Harrah’s casinos.
Except at Mon Ami Gabi. I found this out the hard way. You can’t swipe your card there because it’s not operated by the casino, although I asked at the players club about this later and apparently you can get a comp slip before you go to dinner if you care to guess roughly how much it’s going to be. However, our fake French waiter (who actually sounded Italian) didn’t think to even tell us this, he just shook his head at my Total Rewards card and we had to pay using real money.
I’d be annoyed about this if it didn’t mean I still had enough comp on the card to have to go back there again in the summer and do it right. It was a fantastic steak with a fantastic view. I’m kicking myself for only taking a picture of the latter.
Anyway, it seems that $3550 of action in Las Vegas was enough to get me on the radar for room offers worth way more than $71.
Finally, the Imperial Palace is free! As well as a "Deluxe Room", sometimes their web site gives me the option to book a "Luv Tub" room (putting a Roman bath in the rooms in an Asian-themed hotel is obvious, no) completely free of charge, and for up to five nights!
That’s pretty cool. The reservations site says "sold out" for every date I’ve tried if I’m not logged in so I don’t know what they usually go for (they might even be restricted to players club bookings) but on the dates I can’t get a comp the Luv Tub rates are about $60 more than a Deluxe room.
We don’t need any hotel accomodation for the summer, but I might just book it anyway and take the little bottles of shampoo. Or if anyone out there is looking for a good deal and the dates are right, buy me a drink and I’ll think about checking you in 😉
There’s also quite a few comps showing for me at Bally’s, Flamingo and Harrah’s and the odd night elsewhere, as well as reduced rates for all the other hotels.
The best bargain I found has to be four nights at the Rio at Christmas (the flights are already booked, need you ask) totally free. In fact, it was only $50 to add a 5th night so I splashed out and went for that too. If enough offers come along later to cover the rest of the trip, I expect I can always cancel that night anyway!
The best part is because every room in the Rio is a suite, I can finally boast about getting comped a suite in Vegas!
I used a few coupons at Circus Circus last month – a couple of table game match plays, $10 free slot play and a "get $15 in chips for $10" offer. All this combined with a free monster hot dog at Slots-a-Fun almost makes a trip down there worthwhile. Almost.
Circus Circus has a lot of haters, and after going back for the first time in a good few years I have to agree it absolutely deserves it. Something about the place just started to drain my life force the moment I walked through the door.
And that was well before I had to negotiate any over-excited families of nine, kids eating candyfloss, adults chewing toothpicks, on their way to the RV park. I can’t explain exactly what the "vibe" was, but it definitely wasn’t like you get at them regular casinos.
Maybe it was the promotional table game chips – you know it’s a cheap-ass casino when they only have them in $1s. This deal was meant to come with a pack of win cards, but they’d run out (long ago, I imagine, judging by the 30-or-so years of grime on the chips themselves).
Or perhaps the blackjack table I sat at had something to do with it. It took the combined brain power of a dealer and a pit boss (and what was left of their life force) about ten minutes to figure out whether a coupon from their own "fun" book which said "good for any $1 side bet" could be used at their game.
The table had a side bet that cost $1. So, yes. It really wasn’t worth holding the game up for.
Then one player asked the dealer, "do I hit that?" when he had a 16 and the dealer showed a ten. "Oh that’s a tough one, it’s really up to you". Great, it was well worth asking. Do you not know, or have you been told to help the player make mistakes?
I’m guessing she wasn’t aware of all the hard work that lasvegasdealertips.com has been trying to do for dealerkind. "Your dealer will help you out because they like getting money" is the pretty much the message of that web site. In fact, Circus Circus dealers get the worst tips on the Strip, and it’s not close.
Anyway, even with this $10 free slot play still to claim, I’m still not sure I’ll be back in a hurry.
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