Tony G does a brilliant job of demonstrating the blandness and complete lack of character at the Rio, by filming his video blog in a lovely taupe room where the World Series of Poker payouts are processed.
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At 4.10am the pop up banner announced a ten minute break. I never had a ten minute break on Poker Stars before. Well, I guess that’s something to be pleased about if I don’t make it now. Morning has broken, it’s getting light outside. I need to be up early in the morning to take Claire to school and her car to the garage. I wouldn’t mind being fit to drive, but that looks like a long shot. 373 players remain. 231 get paid, of which 220 walk away with an $11k package. Which really is an $11,000 cash prize, as Stars cannot register players into the WSOP. The chip leader is at my table, and he could easily fold to victory, yet he’s still playing, calling big bets, and knocking players out. I’d quite like to move tables. I’d also quite like to see a big hand and have it hold up. I’m below average now, but it feels like I’m one coinflip away from standing a damn good chance. That’d be a $5500 coinflip then. Where did my comfort zone go? EDIT: Nearly 6am. The four figure coinflop was 66 vs AJ. I raised, and the flop looked good. An ace on the river and it was all but over. 256th. 8 hours, no cigar. Welcome to stupidly large World Series of Poker satellite night. On Poker Stars, 150 seats are guaranteed to be given away and on Full Tilt another 100. In fact, between the two sites there’s over $4 million dollars in play – enough for 359 ten thousand dollar seats, and a bit of pocket change to the runners up. I never even thought of playing one of these until today, yet here I am, battling with nearly 7000 others on Poker Stars in Probably The World’s Largest Satellite Poker Tournament Ever. OK, actually it was ever so slightly bigger last year, but not so much you’d notice. Let’s rewind a bit.
This was an $80+$8 qualifier to the main satellite. The lobby called it a "last chance" tournament, but I will argue that it was actually my first and only chance. One in five got a seat, and it looked like a good way to use up my W$ balance, which has been doing pretty much nothing for as long as I can remember. Sure I could have sold them for 80% of value, but I figured eventually there’d be a more interesting way to spend them. This was going to be it. With 350 players remaining and 317 getting paid, I’d been fortunate enough to get two successive table breaks that landed me in a good seat, just as I was about to be blinded out. Game of skill my arse. Cards were irrelevant by that point. Almost nobody could survive one round of blinds, so all that mattered was hanging on longer than everybody else. With 38 tables left, 33 players left to be eliminated and the luxury of five free hands before I was forced in on the big blind, I needed 6 or 7 players to go bust for every hand played at my table. No problem. I was all set to fold pocket aces. Two hands later, you could probably hear my woohoos. I’d got a result in the turbo poker lottery, which from start to finish took just 75 minutes to eliminate 80% of the field. The main satellite will be somewhat slower, however. 30 minute levels and 6702 players to money. Could be a late one. After realising that the money I’d been putting aside to play in the Orleans Open this year was going to fall a little short, I’ve decided to look for backers to bump up my bankroll for this event. It’s not actually as daft as it sounds. Who’d want to stake me, you say? Hah… I’ll show you how wrong you are. I realised many months ago that the second half of this series of tournaments would coincide with our Summer O’ Vegas, and decided that I wanted to try to find a way to play three No Limit Hold’em events and also, for some reason that I really can’t explain, the Limit Hold’em Championship. The total entry fee for this little lot is a cool $2460. With this falling on the first week of our trip, playing these tournaments could make or break my bankroll, and so could also make or break the holiday. If it’s a total disaster, I don’t fancy the idea of spending the next three weeks chasing two and a half grand. Conversely, if I manage to win enough coinflips to go deep in one event, the payday could be much more than I’d ever consider letting myself take to Vegas. Treating week one’s poker separately to the rest of the trip seems like a very wise thing to do. So I’ve been putting money away for this the past few months, separate to my bankroll for "normal" poker and other Vegas vices. After next payday, I’ll just about have reached $2000. No small achievement given my track record for saving (it’s been the best motivation to save I ever had) but it still leaves me $500 short. I could always skip the $540 Limit tournament, but why would I do something as sensible as that? I’m selling off 20% of myself across all four tournaments to raise the extra $500, and (although I’m bound to say this) I’m doing a great deal! So good in fact that, already, I only have 10% left to sell. Paul Sandells knows value when he sees it. He’s in for $250, so hurry up if you want a piece of the action! Of the $2500 I want to take to Vegas, $2460 is buyins. I’ll spend the other $40 on essential expenses, like tips for the coffee ladies, or cookies from the vending machine. All poker rooms should have vending machines with cookies, but the Orleans is the only one I’ve ever come across. As the Orleans Open actually takes place in a room upstairs, there may be some critical route planning to be done for the breaks. But still, this is only a very small deduction from the investment – and you deny me coffee at your peril. So I don’t have a spectacular tournament history, and I don’t play that frequently. But I think I can hold my own and I do have some documented solid performances if you’d care to dig through the blog archives. Or if you can’t be bothered, I put a few links in this forum thread. The fact I’m still putting up 80% of the money myself should show that I’m comfortable playing at that level, and not just taking a shot at a big prize with someone else’s money. It’s a modest start, but you never know, with a good performance this could open the door to more staking deals in future, and the opportunity for me to play bigger tournaments. Obviously I’ll gratefully take the money however it comes, but I’m kinda hoping for ten more backers at 1% each. At least then I know I’ll have 11 regular blog readers for a whole week…! Even a 1% stake, costing $25, could net a four figure return. If I get exceptionally lucky. Don’t be shy now.
I’ve never seen so many flopped sets get beaten! It’s pretty difficult to say how I thought I was playing at that level, because whenever it felt like I’d got going, the doomswitch flipped in and spoilt it all. Spoken like a true loser, I’m sure you’ll agree. Really, five buy ins just isn’t enough to know for sure – my last two major beats alone could have been a $320 swing in the right direction if the poker gods had just smiled in my direction a little. After being so close to getting back even, too… I did have some rotten luck, but I also came up against both players who were tougher than at 50NL and, apparently, also more terrible moves than I’d seen at that level. I wasn’t quite sure how to adjust to this mix, or even whether the guys calling me down with bottom pair were really that bad, or just had a good sense of when to do that and it worked out for them often enough that they could afford to keep up this image. Oh for a few thousand more hands to try to find out… NL50 definitely seems more weak-tight, and either my style already suited that game, or I’d already adapted to playing in those conditions. I know there’s some adjustments I still need to make to do better at NL100 the next time I get there. Assuming that I can grind my way back up, and I wasn’t just on a 40 buy-in upswing all along… But for now it’s as I was just three days ago. Wow, that’s a bit depressing, but I need to stay patient, try to forget anything I was trying to do to adjust to NL100, and above all remember that $2 pre-flop isn’t a minimum raise any more. It’s just like how the Montecito in the TV show Las Vegas can’t stand still. That ficticious casino must have occupied just about every possible spot on the Strip by now. In the latest season, exterior shots put it on the far south end of the Strip opposite Luxor, whereas the view from James Caan’s office looks like it’s taken from inside Treasure Island, nearly three miles away. The Bank Casino featured in Ocean’s Thirteen has Montecito syndrome. It appears to have slid about a mile along the road in between being built and opening. I finally have the photographic evidence I was so obsessively trying to find, and with it an excuse to post a whole bunch of Vegas pictures. I actually got these screencaps from a German language bootleg – the added bonus was being able to hear the translation of Don Cheadle’s craptastic English accent. In this scene, during the construction of the hotel, you can see the Mirage dead centre and the letters "PHAN" from a banner for Phantom – The Las Vegas Spectacular to the left of Al Pacino’s back. The location has to be somewhere between Venetian and Wynn, presumably it was filmed in the shell of Palazzo, or possibly Encore at Wynn Las Vegas.
They appear to be very proud of the CGI for the Strip’s latest monstrosity, and we get to see it from several angles as well as different lighting conditions – during the day, in the evening and after sunset. This close up shows what the architecturally impossible, twisty brown thing that’s meant to be a hotel actually looks like.
And here a wider shot shows its location on the Strip.
So we’re looking North along the Strip with the Stratosphere in the far distance. Monte Carlo is at the bottom left and the top of New York New York is just poking into the frame. The Bank sits right between Polo Towers (bottom right) and Aladdin/Planet Hollywood (white hotel with two jutty out bits). Follow the road and you’ll see the fake Eiffel Tower, and just across the street the dancing fountains at Bellagio are in action. Look really hard and you’ll see the Stardust is still standing. To be fair, you have to know what you’re looking for, so I’ve added a subtle visual clue below. This is surely the last time you’ll see it in a movie.
The Bank’s outward location is somewhat confirmed by a southerly view from inside the hotel. Polo Towers is the building with the neon outline at bottom centre, and towards the upper right corner you can see the MGM Grand Marquee, a hotel tower which I think must be the Tropicana (where did the big green MGM go?), and Mandalay Bay.
Also from the ground, this still looks about right. Our POV is behind crowds standing outside the casino looking across, and down the street a bit, at the Bellagio.
However here’s the view that I’m just not sure about. Ignore the silhouette of Matt Damon’s legs, and you’ll see Paris, Caesars and Bellagio all visible. How does that work then? I just wouldn’t be doing my job as a Vegas nit correctly if I didn’t point out that in the second photo on the far left you can just see the same Bellagio marquee as in the ground-level shot above; but from a totally different angle. I guess it’s just a big hotel, or something.
Anyway, enough pedantry and gratuitous photos of Las Vegas, what did I think of the film? I loved it. I’m pretty sure I was always going to, so I know I can’t really review it constructively. To be fair, it’s a very average heist movie, with an over-the-top cast of big names, too many to squeeze them all into a coherent storyline. So the end result is a bunch of megastars doing a bunch of stuff in and around Vegas. On that basis: A+, movie delivers.
Tonight I took the plunge. This is only a shot at the higher limit, and I decided that if I fall 5 buy-ins then I should drop down again for a while. It’s difficult to report anything after one session (I played about 800 hands) but I don’t think the higher stakes are particularly scaring me yet. I had something of a baptism of fire, running into quads with a full house on my first orbit and then being treated to the wrong end of a set vs set battle three times. I don’t actually have the figures for how rare this is (probably something I should know) but I don’t think I’d been on the losing end of set vs set three times in total at the lower level! I know it’ll be tough if I continue to see my bankroll slip away so rapidly, but so far the game doesn’t feel too different and I felt like I was in control. I’m used to raising using clicks on the bet slider, so a 3x pre-flop raise is still two clicks, even though it’s now $3, not $1.50. Watch this space – more graphs to come for sure!
As I still haven’t found the screencaps I wanted for the stuff I was going to write about Ocean’s Thirteen (watch this space, I’m sure it’ll be worth it, no unnecessary hype here) in the meantime I will leave you in the more than capable hands of a somewhat ranty Mark Kermode, expressing his dislike not only for the movie, but also for the city I will one day call home. Cheekily borrowed from the podcast of his BBC Five Live show. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. I’m not transcribing the whole thing – just press the damn play button, it’s only a minute long – but here’s a taster. "If truth be told, Las Vegas needs to be wiped from the face of the earth because it is an evil abomination and, you know, bad and a blight upon mankind. Obviously."
I met a prospective new client today. Half way through the meeting, as he stood up to fetch me a coffee, one of his colleagues muttered something to him, they both grinned, and then this happened. "Chris, rub that plant" "Eh?" "It’s not a trick or anything, just rub it, it’s a lucky plant" I am confused as hell, but I eventually oblige, expecting it to be a comedy vibrating plant, or to light up or start singing or something. Instead, as I touch the leaves I notice a pound coin begin its trajectory upwards. "Heads or tails?" "Err… heads" It lands on the floor – tails. Apparantly I broke the plant. He pulls a wad of money from his pocket and starts counting. So I was only wearing three items of casino clothing today (Caesars jacket, Plaza shirt, Luxor socks – obviously I like to dress well for such meetings) but even if he’d noticed the subtle signs, I guess it’s wrong to offer me a piece of that action when he hardly knows me. "So what happened?", I ask. "You lost me a hundred and fifty" I think the meeting went well otherwise. Hooray for starting a premature collection of dollars. Or "dullards", as Matt keeps telling me they’re called, even though he can’t tell me why… The best exchange rate in town was at the Cheque Centre, which has recently taken over a butcher’s shop in Longton. The shop is so new you can still smell the carpet glue. They offered $1.92 to the £1 and 0% commission – two or three cents better than everywhere else. In fact the rate on my Citibank dual currency account was only $1.94. Not much in it if you change up the cash before you leave, when you have to pay ATM fees over there. "How would you like the money", he asked. "Large bills are fine", I replied. I remembered where I was and readjusted to British English. "Hundreds, if you’ve got them". "We’ve got fifties", he offered with a smile. Oh dear. Our faces dropped in unison. I tried to explain. "Well, we’re going to Vegas and fifties are unlucky. But twenties would be like this big..". I held my hands a good few inches apart, apparently indicating the five figure bankroll that one day I actually hope to have, and not the few hundred we’d gone to change up. From his reaction I’m sure he hadn’t heard this nonsense before, and I’m glad. Because I have no idea where it came from, and just wouldn’t know how I’d explain it if pressed. We talked about this afterwards. Claire says it’s something I told her, but I’m sure it’s something I picked up from her. I’ve searched online to try to find some far fetched urban legend or just some unwritten rule, but nothing turned up. Google does index unwriten rules, right? The best I’ve managed to find is an old Question of the Day from Las Vegas Advisor, which I can’t even link properly to because it’s a subscription-only page, so I’ve had to reproduce some parts of it here and hope that Anthony Curtis doesn’t mind. Actually, if I find out that a Vegas legend reads my blog I wont really care about the consequences! If you’re a subscriber, you can see the full thing here. "The Las Vegas Hilton told us that they hold some $50s, but that many casinos don’t order them, because they’re considered unlucky. (They also said that casinos tended to avoid dealing with them in the past because of their resemblance to $100s and the risk of error, although we’d have thought that this would apply more to $10s.) The Plaza acknowledged that a bit of superstition surrounds the $50, with some people considering them lucky and others the reverse, but they didn’t know the reason behind either belief. Stratosphere claimed its Asian customers like getting $50s, while the Imperial Palace stated that its big players do not like them. The Golden Gate said they don’t hold $50 bills, i.e., if they receive them they’re not given out, only banked. But they didn’t know why. Bally’s, Binion’s, and Caesars had all heard of the unlucky connotations, but they all keep and give out $50s." So essentially, nobody really knows. Still, better not take any chances eh? |
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