Trip Reports « The Lucky Donut

Day 7: Limit folly

I don’t want this to sound like a bad beat story, because I played it bad and put just as much money in the pot when I was behind as when I was ahead, and should have lost less. But this is what went wrong in the limit tournament, and why it just felt like I played a slot machine for six hours.

For the first three hours, you spin the reels and win or lose a small amount of chips. If you run hotter than the Human Torch then you might be able to double up by the end of level 3. Likewise, if you’re incredibly unlucky or repeatedly try to force moves that are doomed to fail in a limit game, or call down with crappy middle pairs, you might be broke sometime before the start of the fourth hour.

I never thought I’d criticise a tournament structure for being too slow, or starting with too many chips, but this one was. You wait around five hours, your good hand doesn’t hold up, you’re dead. Could have done without all that waiting around and passing 2% of my stack back and forth, really.

For most players, the game actually starts round about level 5, where you can start to dent another player’s stack and improve your own significantly enough to make a difference. At this point, you’re betting your tournament life on a couple of spins of the reels.

My first moment of significance – and my moment of doom – came in level 6. Blinds were 200/400, and I raised to 800. The player to my left called, and the next player in turn raised to 1200. It’s four bets from me. Piggy in the middle called, and the other raiser did his best to cap it (it’s a five bet cap) but only had 150 more. We saw a three-way flop with 3750 (about 16 small bets) in the pot.

With one player all in, I checked in the dark expecting to see no further action for the rest of the hand.

Flop: 9 T Q

The cold-calling suckout monkey bet. I realise now that I should just call down here, but instead I decided to unleash a mighty check-raise. What purpose does that serve? None, really. He is folding nothing for 19-1 pot odds, and the last thing I need to do is cripple my stack. Yet that’s what I did.

After he called, I then spitefully bet out on the small turn card. Why didn’t I pay attention to the fact he was betting a dry side pot in the first place, and consider that just perhaps I was already beaten? Why not take into account that being able to play another hand if I’m not going to win this one is more important than pushing a tiny edge that I might not even have?

Only after he raised did I realise that pocket kings were no good. But with 12-1 pot odds to draw to the gutshot, and possibly two more outs to catch a set I had to call.

There’s no getting away after that. Just in case he overplayed top pair, I check/call the river. His set of nines is good enough to beat me, but not the set of tens from the all-in player.

So I lost 1.5BB more than I should have on the hand. It doesn’t sound that significant, but it was. With only a thousand and change left, I was committed to whatever hand I decided to play next. The best sniff of anything I got the next two orbits was A7o, and I barely lasted long enough to pick up the dinner buffet coupon (although I do have a 100% record of surviving long enough to collect this extra food comp) before busting out.

I finished about 60th out of 90 players. A big disappointment considering this was the extra tournament I wanted to play that made me decide to look for backers to cover the additional cost.

However, I can now say with some certainty that I’m not going to go out of my way to play a limit tournament again!

Live updates: Orleans Open $540 Fixed Limit Hold’em

Click on the graph to enlarge.

Tournament begins at 12 noon (8pm UK time)

Day 6: Comp and circumstance

I already wrote about how badly Terrible’s breakfast buffet sucked, but with a ton of points to spend we’ve already been back twice for free lunches.

Here’s the deal with Terrible’s, and the reason we can’t stay away. Every day apart from Thursday and Sunday (which are double point days) you can get a $5 gift card to spend at their gas stations (in fact it looks like they will work at any Chevron pump) with every 1000 points earned – PLUS you get to keep the points.

One point is awarded for every $1 pumped through a machine. They have 9/6 jacks-or-better video poker, which is a 99.5% payback and so with every $1000 played, your expected loss is $5 and the gas card freebie makes it a break-even game. We’ll use a lot of gas this trip so it’s just as good as money.

The Jeep may have to be swapped before we go anywhere outside the valley, as there’s a very peculiar leak that seems to be coming from the air conditioner. It gets wet under the passenger side mat as well as dripping onto the ground after stopping – quite a worry for a vehicle that’s only 500 miles old.

After the free gas, you still get to spend your points. That same 1000 points is worth just over $3 at the cafe or $5 in the gift shop. I already blew some on a shirt, a bottle of Jim Beam and some tickets to see George Wallace. The buffet though is the best value by miles. Breakfast is just 250 points, lunch 350 and dinner 500. We could already eat there for the next three weeks for free – if we wanted to.

A $14 bottle of my mate Jim – yes, that’s about 7 quid – was 2800 points. A bargain if we paid for it and even better for free, but the same points would be worth five dinner buffets – if we could ever possibly eat that many! George Wallace was 2000 points for 2 tickets, worth (apparently) $87 each. I don’t expect anyone ever pays full price, but it’s still a pretty sweet deal.

Lunch really isn’t too bad, if you don’t expect the same spread you’d get for $19.95 at the Bellagio. It’s pretty much canteen food, functional and nothing special. There’s a taco station, some kind of pasta or spaghetti, some kind of stewed meat and a salad bar. If there were pizza slices it would be perfect, but it’s still absolutely fine to keep you going through to dinner! Remember, we’re here for four weeks – it doesn’t have to be prime rib and shrimp every day!

So am I winning so far? Nope. But Claire is more than making up for it. "Can I have a jack of hearts please", she turned to me and asked. "OK", I said, pretending to do a jedi mind trick to the machine.

And there it was.

Day 5: Profiteroles

Congratulations to my backers – you’re sort of in profit!

I made 18th place in tonights (by which of course I actually mean last night’s – Thursday 26th – because of the time difference) $540 tournament in the Orleans Open, scooping a whopping $945 prize. After a $25 tip (a little tight, but with 4% already withheld from the prize pool for dealers, I wasn’t going to go overboard) that’s $9.20 coming back to you for each 1% share.

Plus, as I’ve only paid $870 in buy-ins so far, that’s an overall profit from the two events I’ve played so far. $50 in total, so fifty cents for each share! Ship it!

It could have been so much sweeter had just one of three potentially huge hands won for me. After a massive pot just before the dinner break I was up to over $27k in chips, with the average at about $12k. I then lost 3 big pots; with a nut flush and gutshot straight draw that didn’t get there against two players all-in, and with AK losing twice against shorter stacks all in pre-flop – AQ and T3 if you must know. Any one of those pots would have put me in much better shape than the $6k I ended up when we were 3 off the money.

I don’t really know how, but I pulled off a survival miracle with blinds at $600/$1200 with a $200 ante, after deciding that it was probably better to try to creep into money (as 10th to 18th place all paid the same) than gamble it up and go broke on or near the bubble. After nobody was eliminated for what seemed like a week, I would have been all in on the big blind the very next hand when two players went broke at the same time – including one from my table. I thank them very much for paying no attention whatsoever to my stack size.

So it’s not a spectacular result, but it’s a start. Bring on the limit tournament!

Live updates: Orleans Open $540 No-Limit Hold’em

Click on the graph to enlarge.

Tournament begins at 12 noon (8pm UK time)

Day 4: This is an ex-casino

I took the opportunity to have a posthumous snoop around the New Frontier. The doors were open to allow viewing for the auction of the entire contents that takes place today.

I’m not really interested in three dozen trash cans, or the contents of 920 guest bedrooms (sold as one lot), so I won’t be rushing to go back and bid for anything. I just wanted to have a look inside a closed casino. It was very eerie indeed.

This hotel has passed on.

The casino bar is no more.

It has ceased to be.

This coffee shop has expired and gone to meet its maker.

The pool area bar is a stiff. Bereft of life.

The sports book rests in peace.

[Message reads: Sports book closes 6pm. Mail those winning tickets in to the address on the back of your winning ticket!]

If you hadn’t nailed the mechanical bull to the perch it’d be pushing up the daisies!

[Sign in window: Mud wrestling cancelled]

The casino has kicked the bucket.

This guest suite has shuffled off its mortal coil.

It’s run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!!

THIS IS AN EX-CASINO!

Day 3: Lucky 13

So I have no chance now. Thirteenth player to enter. Not sure whether to expect an early exit, or a long hard slog followed by a cruel elimination on the bubble. Out of my hands really.

Live updates will appear here:

EDIT: The bust out was in 45th place, 27 were getting paid.

Day 2: But it should be a dry heat..

Shouldn’t we have left the rain behind? It’s cleared up a bit now, but it was a very wet morning – for the desert, at least. It’s probably gorgeous back in England, but if it is, please don’t hurry to tell me.

It gets real slippy here when it rains. When the temperature has been in three figures for the past couple of months, there’s a fair amount of rubber residue on pretty much every road. As well as having the "mid-size" 3.7L Jeep we rented slide around a bit – in addition to the "increased risk of tipping" that it helpfully advises on the sun visor – we already saw a nasty accident on Flamingo first thing this morning, which was backing up traffic past the Palms. Well, that was first thing for anyone who isn’t jet-lagged. By then we’d already earned enough comp points at Terrible’s for four free breakfast buffets, and redeemed two of them.

It only took about 40 minutes of video poker to earn these (and two more in the bank) so how bad does a free buffet have to be before you ask for your money back? This one certainly came close, and that’s saying something because I’m really not fussy about quality. If it’s edible and there’s plenty of it, I’m usually satisfied – especially when I’m not paying for it.

While I still managed to fuel up on enough pastries to make it worth the $4.99 advertised value (which nobody will actually pay) what I want to know is how come all the hot food was cold already, when we were there when it opened at 7am on the dot?

OK, it’s not the Wynn, but it’s also not $17.95 each. I can’t expect many different types of egg (in fact, I heard that at the Wynn there are two different types of Eggs Benedict alone; Terribles choice was scrambled, or nothing) but I don’t think it’s too much to expect the eggs – or the bacon, sausage, potato or pancakes – to be warm.

It got lighter this morning earlier than I expected and by 6am it was no longer dark enough to take the night shots of Vegas that I wanted, so I only got one session from the top of the MGM parking structure. It’s a pretty good view of the MGM itself and Hooters, with Mandalay Bay and Luxor visible from a distance.

Although I’m still getting used to my new camera, this photo has made me feel a bit better about splurging nearly £300 for a super wide angle lens.

Day 1: The little kings’ room

Landed. Unpacked. Slept. Woke up early, as usual. OK, so there’s a bit more to it than that, but nothing really interesting enough to report. Except that I was very pleased to see that the New Frontier neon sign is still flashing away.

3.10am and wide awake. Nevermind, it’s a perfect time to try to get some good night photos I guess.

Meantime, this is the only thing I’ve snapped so far. The entrance to the loos at the car rental place. It’s Elvis for the gents, and a showgirl for the ladies – I just didn’t have the bottle to take a picture of the ladies.

The new airport consolidated car rental facility is a great idea, but still has horribly long lines. Although they weren’t as long as the line for immigration was yesterday. We landed just after the MyTravel flight from Manchester got in, and at the same time as another plane full of Germans. Stuck at the back of the plane, we were some of the last to get through.

BMI called me a few weeks ago to say that the flight times had been changed, from a 10am departure to 9.50am. Hardly worth the call, but I thought maybe that extra ten minutes would make sure we were at the head of the queue. No such luck. However the change to the flight did mean that the seat reservations we made more than 9 months ago had been cleared. No mention of that at all.

EDIT: Claire took this for me the next time 🙂

May not contain nuts

Seeing as it looks like FX isn’t going to show Poker Dome again for another month, and I have no idea when my heat is going to be on TV, I’m just going to go ahead and do this from memory. Without the aid of any screencaps of me sweating lots and looking like a nervous buffoon.

*** Spoiler alert *** If for some reason you do actually want to watch the show with some degree of suspense, do not read on.

*** Length alert *** Sorry, longest blog post ever. Promise it won’t happen again. For busy people: I was 4th.

For what is probably the most high-tech show on TV, the seat draw was decidedly low-tech. At the Friday night players’ dinner at The Palm, after enjoying a delicious Filet Mignon (I couldn’t help checking the menu: it’s a $38 steak, and we had a private room and three other courses) I got to pick first from six books of matches, each with a number one to six written under the flap.

Seating:
1. Steve Day
2. Carl Olsen
3. Chad Padgett
4. Hello, it’s me
5. Trey Aitken
6. Tom Bashioum

(I don’t know whether to be pleased with my Google skillz that I managed to find the obscure link to Tom, or upset that I couldn’t find anything at all for Chad).

The limo bus dropped us downtown at just about the only unit still in use at Neonopolis at just before 1pm. The show started at 6pm but in the meantime we had to go through "poker school", where we were taught how to play speed poker. It’s not just a little bit faster – you also have to announce every move you make, always stack your chips neatly (splashing is strictly forbidden), and learn to never, ever block the little camera.

Then we had a bit of a rehearsal where I managed to stack Steve after calling a raise with 24o and flopping 2 pair. For what it’s worth. He was playing his hand blind and got his chips back anyway. We all got to press the time extension button and make the lights go mental for thirty seconds. I’m still a bit disappointed that I never did this during the show itself, but there was never a decision that I really needed that long to make, or a situation where I had to convince someone my decision was harder than it actually was. The latter is how I’d hoped I’d be using it.

The set really is very cool, and the music is not as annoying as you’d think really. With all the commercial breaks there’s plenty of silence to break it up. The droning music helps hide for the fact the dome is not perfectly soundproof; you can’t hear much without it but you can’t hear anything when it’s going. I did expect the audience to be completely blocked from view when the lights were down – in fact you can see the outline of the first few rows. It would actually be possible to signal to a player if you really wanted to, but it would be very obvious, and probably followed by a swift ejection for all concerned.

We filmed some headshots in the dome (this will be what they use to project my face onto a casino in the opening sequence) and some extremely tacky thumbs-up shots. The film you see of the players getting fitted with heart monitors and being scanned for cellphones is bullshit though. Sorry, I mean that’s the magic of television. It’s recorded separately; I got scanned by a wand that wasn’t turned on on camera, but we did actually all get searched properly before going onto the set, and dark glasses were given particular scrutiny.

I did take some shades, but you won’t see them. Probably nobody will ever see them. They were even worse than the tie I wore, which people kept telling me they liked. I always replied that I didn’t believe them. Why would they like it? It’s awful. Simply the fact that it had glitter on should have been a big enough clue that I wasn’t serious, surely?

Walking back from the fake security check we meet Michael Konik, who has amazingly managed to write two Vegas books that I don’t have. They actually might be the only two. Of course I didn’t mention this.

The button is in seat 1, making me first to act on the first hand. Matt Savage tells me that I have a very special role to play, giving the commentators enough time to explain how the timer works. I must not, under any circumstances, do anything in the first ten seconds. I have some kind of garbage, probably four-something as it felt like every hand I had for the first hour had a four in it, and I wait an age before making an easy fold. Has to be said, because I’ll look like a moron who’s just going for the screen time.

Matt Savage is very modest, by the way. He reminded us not to forget to go see Lucky You when it’s released in March. I already know the answer, but I asked anyway. "Are you in it?". "Yeah", he replied, "it stars Drew Barrymore, Matt Savage, Eric Bana and Robert Duvall". Second on the bill, apparently. See his illustrious movie career unfold here.

So anyway, onto the hands I did play. I can remember eight of note:

1. My first button. I have 22 and it’s folded to me. I raise the pot and Trey or Tom calls from one of the blinds. I don’t remember who, or what the flop was, but there was a bet and I had to let the hand go. I do remember the sudden tightening of the heart rate monitor as soon as he made the call, and the realisation that… bloody hell we only have 50 chips, I can only do that a couple more times.

2. I have pocket 8s and am first to act. I raise the pot. Only Chad calls from the big blind, and he donk-bets a KK9 flop. With deeper stacks (and less sweaty hands) I’m popping him back, but I don’t have enough chips to test him, nor the balls to make a big move with an underpair here this early in the game. There’s plenty of hands that he’s already beating me with here, and I’m only just better than 60% to make it to showdown if he only has overcards. Good bet, I fold.

3. I fold my third pocket pair, this time jacks and this time pre-flop. Trey raises and Tom immiediately re-raises. It’s folded to me in the big blind, and I can (a) commit my stack right now, (b) call and play a mediocre hand out of position (assuming Trey doesn’t re-raise) or (c) get out of the way. Plan C looks like the best option by a mile, but I can’t help wondering whether I just have to bite the bullet and go for it there. We’ve been going maybe twenty minutes now, so there’s not much time left. I made it known that I’d folded JJ and asked Tom if he had me beat. He wasn’t able to play it cool convincingly, so I was a little happier.

4. I have ace-something suited on the big blind. Blinds are 1k/2k and Steve raises to 7k from the cut-off. It was either ATs or A8s, I don’t remember for sure, because in my head it was much stronger than that. I reraise another 10k and Steve shows he has been paying attention by giving it up. This was just about the last chance I would have had to pull a re-steal without moving all-in, it seemed like a good spot and so I took it. I still don’t know what he had – I was probably ahead anyway, but if I did make him fold a better hand then I’ll be having a screencap for my windows wallpaper!

5. Tom is a min-raising scumbag on my big blind, and it’s not the first time he’s made that bet. I make an almost compulsory (read: spite) call for 4k more with 64s. I figure he doesn’t have any of my outs, at least. All kinds of uneventful things can happen, but the board brings a massive scare: AKJ. It’s my turn to lead the flop, and then beat myself up when he re-raises – the minimum again just to add insult to injury. I’m still not sure if this was a move I had to try, or whether I was just throwing good chips after bad. I can get him to fold TT or lower here and probably QQ, and QQ or TT alone is more likely than a set with that board, but what’s his range for the good old minimum raise? I don’t know yet.

6. Desparation sets in. Chad has been eliminated. Everyone folds to Carl on the button, who decides to let me fight it out with Trey. My Jd4d is irrelevant with 6k up for grabs and less than 20k left. I ignore the warnings in poker school about not moving all in when you have more than the pot and let the guys backstage figure out just how much I’m allowed to raise. I get 4k back, Trey calls, and my future looks somewhat gloomy. The flop brings a queen and two diamonds, and I then proceed to suck out on Trey’s Q9.

7. Trey is the desparate one now and moves all in (or close to it) first to act. I have QQ, he has AQ, my hand holds up and and for a brief moment I’m alive again whilst Trey gets escored from the stage on the arm of one of the "chip girls".

8. Of course, I bust myself even before Trey has left the set. We share an exit interview with Leeann Tweeden, who I later learn is actually a respected sports analyst and not just a pair of jugs to host the show. I have AQs on the small blind, Carl raises from the button and I get it all in against, of course, AK.

Carl goes on to win, showing almost no emotion in the process. He probably agrees with the 2+2 sycophants that there was never any contest.

The Lucky Donut

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