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Can you believe someone is actually paying me to blog for a week? Not only that, but a good chunk of the time I’ll be required to pay very close attention to Vicky Coren’s stack. I’ve had worse jobs. I’ve joined the reporting team at PokerNews.com and will be posting hand-for-hand updates on the Party Poker Premier League from a cell block in East London.
Updates will appear here, starting soon: Turns out the rumours were true – Cher is on her way to Caesars Palace. It’s almost official! Word has already made it to the local Las Vegas news channels and you can expect the Harrah’s marketing machine to start bringing the hype pretty soon. Soon Cher’s face will be on the Caesars marquee sign, all over their casino chips and on her own tacky portrait over the casino entrance. Same surely goes for Bette Midler, who starts performing there later this month. Seems a safe bet to assume that Elton John will not be renewing his contract again when it expires later this year. But Cher and Bette can’t have it all just yet. You have to join the ranks of the Caesars alumni before some of the really great stuff is made in your honour. Just so you don’t go forgetting about Celine Dion just, there’s some fabulous souveniers up for grabs, including an actual piece of the stage from the Colosseum (Elton and Seinfeld obviously bring their own) for a how-can-you-refuse price of just $149.
Or what about this fabulous collectors’ piece? The price for two ticket stubs and six red chips is a mere $249. Calling it a scrapbook really is doing it a disservice – it’s a lovely frame, you have to admit.
What you really want though is a souvenier you can drink, and thankfully there’s someone waiting to cash in on that urge. In fact this is brand new this week, according to the spam I just got. You can finally spend $90 on a bottle of official "Celine Dion – A New Day" wine. Just two months after the 5-year show ended.
It’s such a shame none of these won’t ship internationally. Otherwise I’d need another excuse. EDIT: It’s official. It’s certainly not the first time that my cleaners have put things back in the wrong place. Often you can’t blame them for not knowing where a colander should live, or which cupboard the wok actually fits in. Perhaps I’m just too picky, but I thought this was spectacular:
I just got a response from Harrah’s Total Rewards in response to a question I asked about why I don’t yet have any good Las Vegas offers since I became Diamond. I can get a fully comped room at almost any other Harrah’s location for up to 3 nights. In Atlantic City, I can choose between Bally’s, Showboat and Caesars and not pay a penny. Harrah’s resort in Tahoe or Reno – also gratis. Anyone know where Tunica actually is? The Horseshoe (one that Harrah’s apparently wanted for more than just to chew up and spit out everything except the name of a poker tournament), Sheraton and Grand Casino Resort all want me to spend a few nights there on the house. The normal rate for these rooms is $80-$120 per night. So why is it that I can’t even get one lousy comped night in the $59 Imperial Palace? Here’s my personalised Vegas offers showing my extra special rates (click to enlarge, or just squint):
And this is what it costs if you don’t enter any Total Rewards card when booking:
Should I really get excited about saving $5/night at IP, or $4/night at Paris? It’s a slightly better $9 discount at Bally’s, $10 at Rio and Harrah’s and a whopping $20 on the luxury rooms at Caesars. The Flamingo "GO" rooms have the best savings – up to $45 on some dates – but I’m just not the kind of person who goes for these fancy three-figure hotel rooms Maybe on a weekend, if there’s absolutely nothing else available… after tax. So here’s the explanation:
Although I can understand the logic behind not letting me exploit the system by playing the much better games in Laughlin and then staying in Las Vegas for free, it’s still is a little bizarre. Firstly, I agree the Imperial Palace is one-of-a-kind, but I didn’t chose it. It didn’t even chose me this time. In fact I’ve never played anything other than poker (and a few blackjack matchplays) there. I didn’t even play poker at Imperial Palace once at Christmas. So presumably without any Las Vegas action on my card to associate me with a property, by default I end up at the place they want to demolish most of all. Secondly, I played an awful lot at Harrah’s Laughlin to get Diamond in a Day. It’s not quite six weeks yet, but if $30,000 coin in doesn’t trigger a mailer from there I can’t imagine what will. This is also the cheapest hotel in Harrah’s fleet by some way, clocking in at $36/night if you walk in off the street. My extra special Diamond rate is a pathetic $31. What’s weirdest though is that I don’t even know where Tunica is – nevermind whether I’ve played enough to meet their requirements for a comp – but I can go there for free. Perhaps I should… In his show The System, which aired on Channel 4 on Friday night, Derren Brown showed that winning (or, by implication, losing) ten coinflips in a row is quite a normal occurrence and really nothing to get excited about.
If you haven’t seen it and don’t want me to spoil the surprise, go watch the full thing on YouTube. The show centered on a system for winning at horse racing, except in fact it wasn’t a system at all. The woman featured in the show was the "winner" of a elaborate brute force attempt to whittle a starting field of over seven thousand runners down to one person who had inevitably backed five winners in a row. Brown’s crew had sent out every possible permutation of tips across five six-horse races to find the one unlikely winner, removing anyone with a losing bet from the pool after each race. The number of participants required to do and produce one guaranteed winner is six times six times six times six times six, a total of 7,776. The ten heads video is apparently just a small clip from a nine hour flipathon, although because it’s Derren Brown I’m just not sure whether to really believe this. Don’t rule out some some magic coin shenanigans here, although the point he’s making is definitely valid: anything can happen, and it will happen eventually. Here’s an example I made earlier. Am I the luckiest blackjack player in the world because I got dealt this almost-impossible great trio of hands? It should happen roughly every 85,000 deals. I’ve lost count, but I must have played at least that number in the past six months, so it was bound to happen eventually.
The nine hour filming session suggest that their experiment ran a little behind expectation, although not too badly. Because the outcome is not guaranteed, variance needed to go in their favour to make sure this shoot didn’t last several days! A streak of ten heads should appear once every 1024 flips. One flip every ten seconds would be just over 3000 over 9 hours, but you have to figure the actual number would be much less than that, allowing for enough breaks to avoid insanity. He probably tossed the coin 1500-2000 times. Derren declinesd to mention whether or not they also experienced an equally likely streak of ten tails during this trial, and if so whether it put him and the crew on lifetilt. I expect it would do. This arrived in the post this morning:
I don’t like to look a free shit horse in the mouth. But really, what’s the point of sending out a promotional diary a full month into the year? I guess it’s a true reflection of just how unimportant a player I really am to BetDirect. I’m sure those that gave them some good action last year got their pocket sports diary well before 2007 came to an end. I bet they had boxes of the things, and they must have been working their way down the list with all the leftovers, finally realising they still had enough left to send to scumbags like me. I placed one £25 bet, which I hedged with another bookmaker, and then took the £25 welcome bonus bet, which I also hedged. Overall, doing this is worth about £10. It’s not spectacular, but it doesn’t take long and there’s no variance because one of your bets will always win. There are plenty of sportsbooks with these free bet offers so you can double the value if you hedge using another site’s signup promo. Anyway, it’s nice to know that when there’s a decision to be made over what to do with a pile of surplus stuff, I’m still slightly favoured over chucking it in the bin. In a call to Tiscali Broadband technical support today I was told, in pigeon English of course: "At peak times, between 5pm and 11pm, we block gambling sites". In fact it’s only Playtech sites I’ve been having trouble with. That’s the iPoker network (home to major European operators like Blue Square, Bet365 and Paddy Power) and also their casino product that’s off limits. Others seem to be working OK. There have been no such issues with my cable internet, so I could confidently deflect their arguments that it must be either me or the site I’m trying to connect to that had the problem. I’m quite fortunate to only use have Tiscali as a backup internet provider (relying on the net to work from home this seemed like a good idea after too many daytime cable blackouts last year, so I picked the cheapest ADSL option). However, the revelation that an ISP that I pay to – gosh – provide internet service only gives me access to certain parts of the net at their discretion came just a few minutes after the same person had told me emphatically, "no sir we do not block anything". "You block BitTorrent though, don’t you", I enquired, knowing this to be the case. "No. We. Do. Not. Block. Anything". She spoke to me in the same patronisingly slow way that I’d been reduced to using myself in order to be understood. We’d already been through the rigmarole of trying to unearth my connection problem, despite me not actually having one. Is the router switched on? Is my PC switched on? Answer yes to both of these and they take their first stab at telling you it must all be your fault. No – I said I’m connected! How many lights are on the router? Well, not only do you not know what router I have, the number of lights will depend on how many network cables are plugged into it, so how the hell does that tell you anything? Apparently, if a light is flashing it means you don’t have a reliable connection (which is your fault, obviously) and not that data is being sent over the corresponding port, as I’d mistakenly believed for years. Can I replace my microfilters in case they’re broken? Oh yes, sure. That question a master stroke in call avoidance, encouraging anyone who called from a landline to hang up by making them unplug their phone! Assuming, of course, that they actually have a spare microfilter – I can’t imagine many would. "It’s not the router. It’s not the microfilter. Because! I’m! Already! Connected!" I was only putting myself through all this because I just wasn’t sure if it was a blanket ban, a side-effect of their recent cock up that blocked iTunes, or because I’d actually made their shitlist that I was denied access to some online gambling via Tiscali. I’m aware of their fair usage policy, under which the very highest bandwidth consumers are throttled during peak hours. Peak hours, here, are defined as 6pm to 11pm. Not 5pm to 11pm like they said on the phone. Certainly not 4pm to midnight, which is when I’m actually blocked from gambling with this ISP. I really wouldn’t be surprised if I have been flaged as an unfair user. After all, I do download a fair few TV shows onto a PC in the living room (and I use Tiscali for this so it doesn’t slow down my connection for work). It’s only the same shows you’d actually get on TV, except this way I can often get them a little earlier – and in high definition. Although I have a Virgin Media V+ box with high-def output, the sum total of their HD content is one channel (BBC HD), which is only on for about 4 hours a day anyway. I’d already noticed that it’s virtually impossible to use BitTorrent in the evening, but this really doesn’t matter much to me. I will just stick in whatever shows I want to download and let it do it’s stuff whenever. Usually everything is there the next day. Under the fair usage policy, you get three strikes before you’re out. (1) Please reduce your usage. (2) Pretty please, with a cherry on top, reduce your usage. (3) Fuck you, now try surfing at teatime you little piece of shit. I’ve never had a single warning. But now we know it’s a blanket ban. Online gambling, apparently, uses more of the network than other services and other customers could be affected by my degenerate activities. "Suppose there’s a file that another customer really wants to download, it could be really important to them and they can’t do it", was the brilliant example. It must not be that important to me, however, if I’m playing online poker for real money and I’m disconnected mid-hand (clearly, this would never happen during working hours though…) or I’ve already bought into a tournament for this evening and then can’t log in to take my seat. In fact it’s been an online casino that actually mattered to me this week. I have a £300 signup bonus that needs £8000 cycling through it on blackjack within 2 weeks or I’ll forfeit it. Expected value: £250. It’ll be a struggle if I can’t ever play before midnight. After 35 minutes on the phone, I asked to speak to a supervisor, was put on hold, turned on speakerphone and got on with something else while I naively waited for somebody that doesn’t actually exist to pick up the call. Fortunately I used saynoto0870.com to find a geographic number so it was included in my mobile phone minutes, because this is when I eventually gave up waiting:
Here’s something I’ve never actually seen in an online tournament before – a player who was left with exactly one chip after losing an early all-in confrontation.
This is extremely rare, and with blinds starting at 20/40, it will almost never happen on the first level. So if you want to try this at home and go for the most heroic chip-and-a-chair comeback to win ever, here’s how to get started: Get into a three-way all-in situation on the very first hand. Make sure there’s enough dead money that the pot won’t divide evenly by 3, and make sure you are out of position so you receive the extra chip. Pushing from the small blind and forcing the big blind out will do; that 40 chip big blind splits nicely into 14/13/13. In this case, everyone held a J on a 9TQK board. Never mind that it’s not the nuts, you can’t wait around that, just get all your chips in if the opportunity presents itself. Now that you have exactly one more chip than another player, you just need to get it all-in against him and lose. Make sure nobody else that covers you is in the pot too, otherwise you’ll either bust out or finish with two chips instead of one. Good luck! The first batch of Vegas mailers of the year arrived today. I don’t think there’s anything that would have been influenced by our play at Christmas yet, but still a few decent offers. It’s already enough to not have to pay for five of the nine nights on our trip in March! T-64, by the way. I got a two night free stay at Terrible’s which includes $50 of slot play just for showing up – pretty good. I’ve heard that Terrible’s have downgraded the 9/6 jacks-or-better video poker machines that were a positive expectation game when combined with food comps and gas card promotions. If this is true then we’ll probably just take their hospitality and money and not worry too much if they kick me off the mailing list for not giving them any action. Claire got two separate room offers from Four Queens. One is specifically for Superbowl weekend and even though we can’t use I’m quite excited that any casino would consider us valuable enough for a free room on one of the busiest weekends of the year! Of course, they’re not allowed to mention the NFL’s championship game by name, it’s simply an invitation to "the most spectacular game of the year".
We can actually use the other offer on our next trip. To very tenuously commemorate the Chinese New Year, we can take 3 nights free any time in February or March and add additional nights at a bargain rate if we can’t get enough freebies anywhere else. Not only that, but as it’s the Year of the Rat, there’s another very special players club offer that’s going to be very hard to resist. Earn 777 slot points ($6216 coin in) and get a free "collectable jeweled rat". I do hope it’s in addition to the $19 cashback those points will earn, not instead, but however it works I’m sure curiosity will get the better of me on this one. Who wouldn’t want a lucky rat? And with jewels too!
I am delighted to report that my first trip to Dublin – which of course involved a little poker – was an astounding success. I’m about even. I played at Cool Hand Luke’s, which is in the process of being converted to Gutshot’s Dublin venue. The basement is already decked out with orange and black G-swirls, and has a fine internet cafe and deli open until 4am. The casino and card room upstairs, however, are quite different – and different to anywhere I’ve ever played before. It’s a very homely place, in fact it all just feels like a big house, like you’re playing in someone’s living room. Very laid back, very friendly and very loose poker. It’s just a shame I couldn’t find a hand to take advantage! I went deep in the EUR 20 rebuy tournament, making the final table and just missing the money by 5 places. This is an even more impressive achievement if I reveal that a massive six players started the game, although numbers had swolen to 18 at one point. This hand presented an interesting ruling: at 25/50 and on my big blind (the cheek of it all) the player to my left raised to 150, his neighbour re-popped it to 500 and the next player moved all in for 1350. A surprise fold next, followed by another re-push for about 2000. The next player to act realised he had only been dealt one card and asked the dealer what happens now. The floor came over and explained that theres’ no way it’s a do-over with all that action and he mucked his card without even looking at it. Back to the original raiser who obviously didn’t like his spot and called a different supervisor over for another ruling on the same thing. Just in case, I suppose. Of course, he said the same thing – the action all stands. "But you can play with one card if you want", he added. Would he want to, facing three raises? I’m actually not sure. It’s feasible if he had a good card like a jack or queen. However it was too late and Original Raiser realised that he could negate his positional disadvantage by getting all the chips in pre-flop and called, and four hands got flipped over for a marathon. One of them actually had pocket kings, the rest all ace-rag and the worst one – A4, but it was sooted – spiked two fours to take it down. After my elimination, the only game running was Omaha. Short handed too – just five others when I joined the game – and as I’ve never played Omaha live before, this was going to be interesting. I bought in for the minimum, sat tight, waited for the nuts and then showed it down for a 3-way chop. Fantastic. We all had the straight on the turn, but I was the only one with a flush redraw – does that qualify as a bad beat story in Omaha? An American exchange student turned up wanting to play Hold’em and so the players agreed to change our game to round-of-each so he could join in. The action was fast and furious in both games and I was glad I’d only bought in for EUR 50. I’m actually a little more fond of the Euro now I’ve heard the Irish call it a "quid". Take it a step further, call it a "pound" and tweak the exchange rate a little and I’m all for it. After one player called off EUR 230 on the river with a set vs the nut straight in Omaha, he created an awesome tilt pot in Hold’em a few hands later. Betting and raising in the dark for most of the hand against a player who flopped two pair with king-ten in the small blind, he was finally forced to look at his cards after being check-raised on the turn. The board showed KT3A and, somehow the blind raiser had been sitting on ace-king all along for a EUR 800 pot after all the money made it to the middle. It lasted about three rounds before we were back to just Omaha. The token American had busted and went home, although he did last long enough to try to explain how the presidential elections work. He must had made a good job of it too, as I actually feel like I have a clue now. In the last hand of Hold’em I folded 35o face-up to a button raise on my big blind (realising I’d hardly played a thing and wanting to show why) only to be advised "that’s not a bad hand in a two-handed pot". I’m not convinced – there’s only two hands it dominates, and one of them is The Powerhouse – but unfortunately it was too late to adjust my style anyway. I carried on leaking at Omaha until my host for the trip (apparently I was there for work) joined the game, at which point I suddenly doubled up through him and then stacked him! The most impressively bit was when my pair of kings and two spanners got there on the river on a QQ7AK board. Hey, don’t blame me, I never pretended to know anything about this game! |
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