WSOP 2011 about to start

Soft opening for the WSOP May 30, 2011
I will start dealing Wednesday.

Boulder City Car Show

Terrie really wanted to stay outside of Vegas and was able to get the last available room in Boulder City this Memorial day weekend.  Not only was it a holiday weekend but Boulder City was hosting an Antique Car Show and Barbeque Cook-off.

We didn't get any of the barbeque, but had a great Chicken Ceasar Salad "Al Fresco" after wandering through all of the old cars.  There were many classics from the forties and fifties, beautiful restorations.
Boulder City was founded to support the construction of the Boulder Dam which was renamed in 1947, "Hoover Dam".  Now it essentially supports the tourists for Hoover Dam and the people who maintain the dam and generate electric power for the region.

Hoover Dam from the Arizona, Lake Mead side

Terrie in front of the Motorcycle park at the Auto Show

Antique shop exterior behind the Boulder City Hotel

"Dead cows for sale" Curio Shop Boulder City, NV

My sister Terrie came to visit. 

This year's ride. I got the seat to work for a few seconds. That's all I need.   I even figured out how to set the clock!!!

WSOP 2011

Back in Vegas for the World Series of Poker.  I guess this would be the fourth chapter in the Rookie Dealer adventure.

I flew in and was picked up at the airport by my friend Barry, who thinks of himself as "The Skydiving Panda".  We got settled into our place, same home as last year, with Sara, the dancing pua.  No, that's not PUA Pick Up Artist, that's pua the Hawaiian word for Flower.  The dancing part refers to her hobby of Ballroom Dancing with Alvin.  Originally, Barry was to stay with Al but things change and now were both at Sara's place.

I have a better car this year.  A BMW that a friend of Sara's was not using.  It's a 1994 with 98000 miles on it.  Runs fine with good A/C I am told.  It is a step up from the Miata I used the last 2 years.

Barry and I went over to the Stratosphere.  The buffet is cheap and reasonably good and over the past few years we have had some success at the Poker tables there.

Barry busted out of the tournament early, but found the $1-2 table to his liking.  I think he sent four different players home broke.  He had a good night.

I on the other hand, couldn't catch a break all night.  In the tournament, with a nice above average chip stack got it all in on a Q-9-3 rainbow flop with pocket Kings and got called by a much shorter stack holding Q-10.  Wouldn't you know it, he caught a 10 on the river to cut my stack in half.  After that I was never a factor and busted out when my A-8 suited ran into JJ in the blinds and never improved.

At the cash tables my play was good but my luck just wouldn't hold out.  I got it in twice with the best hand but the poker gods wouldn't let them hold up.  One time it was all in with top pair and top kicker against a flush draw that got there and the other was with AA in a three way pot against A-10 and A-K but when the board ran out 2-3-10-J-Q, the A-K rivered a straight and that was all she wrote for my Aces.

Boasting or Baloney?



Who plays Q-4 anyways?

 Yeah, yeah, yeah, Q-4 is an insta-fold.  But at the Tampa Hard Rock, in the $1-$3 No Limit Hold'em game, from late position, in a limp pot where nobody is raising, for $3 you can see if you can get lucky and flop something stupid.  So it happens that this is exactly the situation I am faced with. 

After 3 players limp I toss in my $3 and a guy behind me calls.  The Small Blind folds (much to the amusement of many at the table) and the Big Blind checks his option.

Okay, now for the stupid lucky flop:  Q♥-8♦-4♦ giving yours truly top and bottom pairs. Stupid lucky. Maybe. It is pretty strong, but it can be beat. It can also be drawn out on by any hand containing 2 diamonds.

After the Big checks, player bets $20. Obviously he likes this flop. When 6 people see a flop, players do not usually bet to try to bluff against five players. There is just too much chance that somebody connected with the flop and will not fold. We assume he has something - a pair of queens or a flush draw with overcards or even a flush draw along with a pair of queens. Two people fold. I call, deciding that I will see the Turn card and if I like it, I will make a move. One player behind me also calls and the Big Blind folds.

 The Turn card is the 5♣ .

Innocent looking enough. It might fill in an inside straight but I am not really worried about that. I am just relieved that it wasn't another diamond and didn't pair the 8. The player bets another $20. I think about this for a while and decide that I likely have the best hand and anyone with a draw to beat me is going to have to pay for the priviledge. I pull a stack of $5 red chips aside and take four of them in hand, thinking. Then I put the four chips aside and slide the remainder of the stack ($80) forward. "Eighty." The player behind me folds. After some thought, player calls the additional $60.

The River. "Please don't be a diamond!" The voice inside my head shouts. The dealer burns a card and places the 3♦ in position on the board. Shit. Player says, "I'm all in." And pushes enough of his chips forward to cover the $95 I have left. Why did it have to be a diamond? I was going along just fine, about breaking even or a little better up to this point in the game. Now I have to make a decision for all my chips. Just the other night, my buddy Frank was obviously pulling for a suit, got it, and used it to bluff me out of a pot. Could this be happenning again? Crap. After (or while) pushing the chips forward, the player kicked over something near his feet. There was a little commotion and he wiggled around and looked down under the table but now he was still. He sat with his head down staring at nothing, waiting for me to act.

Then it occurred to me. That guy bet $20 on the flop at an $18 dollar pot. If he had a flush draw, he would check or he would make a small "blocking" bet to try to minimize his investment in the draw. No, he made a flop bet like a typical player would make if he wanted to get the draws to fold or pay too much to see another card. Obviously, by going all in he was convinced that I didn't have a flush. I wasn't ready to go home, but I wasn't ready to give up either.

"I call," I say as I slide the remaining $95 of my chips forward.

"Showdown!" The dealer says.

He sits. He doesn't move from his pose. "I call. Let's see them." There's a rumble around the table as people are getting annoyed that here is a big showdown and the players are wasting time not showing their cards. My feeling is that I just paid $95 to see this guy's cards and dammit, the rules say that because he took the last aggressive action, he must show. Without looking up, he turns over the Q♦.

"I need to see the other one."

"Don't worry, you're good." I hear from another player who has not yet seen my cards.

Shaking his head, he then turns over the K♠. I immediately turn over my 2 pair. The dealer counts out $95 from my opponent's stack and pushes me the pot. Whew!

No walking these dogs

Looking for "name the puppy" suggestions. Gladstone ?  Not Winston.
Buster (below) guards the door

Ray J in New Orleans

My friend Ray J went from the gig in Hollywood to the WSOP Circuit event in New Orleans.  I had to miss it, but Ray wanted the folks back home to know what was going on there.  It sounds like they are a lot busier in New Orleans than we were at the Hard Rock despite the fact that, according to Matt Savage, the WPT event was the largest prize pool in the history of Poker in Florida.

Ray J sent an email to his list of friends that went like this:

Hi, been a while....
Here is a link to the events scheduled at Harrah's New Orleans......tourneydetails . With news of the Mississippi River cresting, the super stars of poker have been dribbling in all week so far......
Most of us dealers are coming in at 11:20 am, dealer meeting, table assignment, pick up the chips, decks, and be ready to start exactly at noon.......
The noon tournaments run till 2am, then we bag the players chips, clean up, and clock out at about 3 am.........Then down to the French Quarter (24 hr bars) to unwind....Those players come back at 2pm the next day to finish....Meanwhile, that same day we have the previous days "restart" plus a 9pm nighly tournament that ususally runs till 5am...Live cashgamesare max'd out, super busy and if I am let go early, I sometimes deal out in the casino at thelive poker games....it is crazy busy....Usually every 2 hours of dealing we have a 30 min break...Sometimes I don't even see the day light once at work, lol.......or know what day it is or what city I'm in....cause a room full of 90 poker tables is the same city after city..lol.......

Well, just wanted to give you an idea of what work is like out on the circuit....we do have a nationally televised event comimg up this week, tape delayed i'm sure, and then off to Vegas.....R&R and work..lol.....


Best to you..Ray

I bought an iPhone

During my previous gig at the Chicago Poker Classic I was able to visit my daughter, Mary, who is attending Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame.  She had her new iPhone with her.  She loves it.  She told me, "Get an iPhone.  It will change your life."

My wife bought one and was hinting that I might want one, too, "We can have video calls with each other while you are in Vegas!"

So I broke down and bought an iPhone.  It came in very handy during my Seminole Hard Rock gig.  This iPhone is very cool.  The camera in the iPhone is very good. It even has a flash. It also works as an iPod music player and syncs up with my computer. I played it through my car stereo all the way from Hollywood to Tampa and had all kinds of battery left over.  Text messaging is on it is just elegant. It saves the messages in a thread with your replies so that you can easily see messages going back and forth to someone. Each person you text starts its own thread. It also does email really well - for a phone. I was surprised at how well and easily it handled email. I can see people just doing all of their email on the iPhone as long as they aren't like me writing 400 word notes to people. You can even browse the web, Google information, get stock quotes, access your financial accounts, and it even has a GPS map to provide directions and nearby points of interest. It has a compass. It has an appointment calendar that syncs with your PC. It functions as an alarm clock. It works as a pocket calculator, a very nice one basic straight up or turn it on its side and it becomes a scientific calculator with trig functions and exponents, etc. It has a voice recorder so you can make yourself voice notes and a nice simple notepad for jotting down things when you don't have a pen or paper. I added the Nook app and I can read all the ebooks I purchased.  Whew! It's the Swiss Army Knife of electronic devices.

Just think. You go out of town and forget everything and you leave home without your laptop/netbook for email, your compass, your Garmin (GPS), your appointment book, your alarm clock, your pocket calculator, your eReader, your legal pad, your favorite pen, your tape recorder and your camera. But if you have an iPhone, you have them all with you.

People think an iPhone is expensive, but if you avoid buying a Garmin, an alarm clock, a calculator, a tape recorder, an appointment calendar and an MP3 player, it's cheap.

It is a huge step up from the candy bar phone I have used for the last few years.

Please note:  This is not a paid advertisement for Apple.  I suppose you can do everything above with a Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia or other Android or Windows phone.  Our family just happens to have settled on  Apples.

Dealer Chairs

If Poker dealers had a union, they would bargain for a working conditions requirement that the dealer chairs be height adjustable to within 3 inches of the table bottom, or some similar rule that would have the house provide dealer chairs that go up to an appropriate height.

At the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, FL, the dealer chairs were height adjustable but they only went down, never high enough.  Every dealer chair in the place was fully extended upward and most dealers were sitting on multiple seat cushions in an attempt to raise themselves up to a comfortable position to deal from. 

The optimal position puts the thighs just touching the underside of the table.  As you can see in the photo, even with the aide of a cushion, the seat is about 4" too low.

I thought it was a shame that the Seminoles purchased such  beautiful chairs with custom logos on the backs and deep cushioned leather seats but simply too short to be good dealer chairs.  Notably, they also provided the players with cushioned folding chairs that were too low.  Every day we heard complaints from the players that the chairs were too low and that they hated sitting at a table that came up to their armpits.

BTW, in the photos, dealers are sitting at the ends of the tables rather than the middle because the pics were taken during the Heads Up Tournament when we place two matches at each table with a dealer at each end.  The chair situation is the same at either position.