ThisIsNotATripReport

There will be no real trip reports forthcoming. I was there for a week, saw my best friends, played cards, and have stories. But there will be no real trip report. Everybody else has already posted theirs are they’re better than mine. The extensive stay on the back end of the blogger party made this an odd trip for me, and getting sicker than fuck my last three days in Vegas didn’t help, so I’ll spend some time this week writing up my impressions of moments and fun things that happened, rather than any kind of chronological trip report.

But first – THANKS APRIL!!! AND HEATHER!!! AND LINDA!!!

I took no pictures, counting on Special K to handle that for me. Soooo, without further ado, let’s take a look at a story we’ll call “My god woman, would you please fold when I bluff!” or “Why Mrs. Columbo hates me” or “Always sit to the left of Ryan and Heather in the mixed game.”

I sat down again in the mixed game at the MGM. This proved to be less than profitable last time around, and judging by my table, wasn’t going to get any better this time. With Byron, Heather, Ryan, Shelly, Columbo and Mrs. Columbo, Statikkling and I’m sure some-damn-body else at the table that can play more than two of the 5 games we had in rotation, I felt well and truly destined to give away my buy-in, then let someone else have the seat.

H – Hold Em – I have a small clue how to play this one, and thus did myself no damage. I’m pretty sure I broke out the first live straddle in the session, garnering a grimace from Mrs. Columbo. This did not bode well, since for the next 24 hours, she would be in almost every pot I was in.

O – Omaha 8 – There are few words to describe the level of suck I have at this game, so I won’t. I played one hand in the first orbit of O. I got quartered. I hate that game.

R – Razz – I actually think this may be my best game, thanks in large part to a little tutelage I picked up from F-Train via the chatbox one night. I didn’t scoop every pot in the first orbit Razz, but I dragged the first three in a row, including the third one, in which Mrs. Columbo managed to tilt me a little by not believing I was as strong as I was representing (obviously I wasn’t, or I wouldn’t have cared). I’ve got an Ace for my door card, with an Ace-5 down, and I complete. There are no other aces up. I catch another wheel card on fourth street and lead out. I get two callers. Byron leaves on fifth street when I catch another card under an 8, but Mrs. C sticks around. I’m starting to sweat a little now, because I’m drawing to the 8, and that’s just not gold. But I figure I can run her out if I keep hammering on the expensive streets, and the 5 on sixth street only looks bad to me, since it gives me two pair. No such luck with the folding. Catching a 3 on seventh makes my 8 low good, and Mrs. C turns over her 8-6 to lose to my 8-5, and I’m golden but shaken.

She would not go away under any circumstances. This trend continues throughout the night as she and I trade chips back and forth, with her coming out significantly ahead of me thanks to her no-bluff, just play good cards strategy. This holds her in good stead against my play any BS cards and try to bully people strategy.

S – Stud hi – I suck. I fold a lot. I think I dragged one pot.
E – Stud 8 – I suck more, but get some great info from Ryan and Heather on playing the low and backing into the high, which leads to me getting half of a couple of pots. Good to play with people who understand the games and are actually willing to help out.

I sit for a couple of hours, thinking all the while that I should be toking Heather rather than the dealers, since she was explaining to them how to deal the games and read the boards, but I had a great time playing and getting lessons on safe play from Ryan and Heather and lessons on aggression from Brian. Good times.

Good times continue the next day when we get Caesar’s to spread a Crazy Pineapple game for us. This is my game, baby! I love me some Pineapple, so when Pablo suggests it, I fairly fly to the list. Then wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. By the time the game opens, Spaceman is on super-list tilt, and the game is gonna be crazy. There were actually a few times that the big blind didn’t get straddled, but none of them belonged to Mrs. Columbo, who had the ill fortune to sit to my immediate right, guaranteeing that no big blind would go unstraddled. It only took about three orbits for her to utter those sweetest words a woman can say at the poker table “I hate you.” It took a little longer, maybe four orbits, for someone to break a pair of sevens in order to play the hammer, but it did indeed happen. It was a crazy game, and I finished up a whopping $10, but thanks to the lack of service from Caesar’s I never had to worry about tipping any cocktail waitresses (but I think I did promise Columbo my firstborn child as a thanks for bringing me a burger).

All references to Mrs. Columbo must be taken with tongue firmly in cheek, because she is in fact a fine card player and a beautiful woman (who never wants to sit to my immediate right) and under no circumstances should any of the BS I’ve been slinging be construed as anything other than the poking of fun I usually reserve for donkeys like Penner (.

Cowboy poker at the Imperial Palace

So I’d been tracking this cowboy all around the IP poker room for the last hour or so. No because I’m gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and not because of any particular interest in his well-being, but because he’d just taken down the 7PM tourney at the IP, was drunk off his redneck ass, and looking for help with carrying around that extra thousand bucks or so in his pocket. I was determined to help out any way I could.

I was sitting in a donkey 2-4 Limit game (like there’s any other) just racking up my comp points until the tourney broke and they could open a new 1-2 NL table as cowboy walked to the bar for his fourteenth little girly drink with the umbrella. He had a red t-shirt on, a carefully pre-distressed cowboy hat and his pants hanging halfway down his ass. This didn’t appear to be an outgrowth of some gangsta lifestyle, more likely he just had lost all external feeling.

After about $40 of 2-4, my new table opened up, and there sat Cowboy, sorta doing his own little whirling dervish chair dance, the one where you’re far too drunk to sit still so you kinda spin on the axis of your ass in the chair? Yeah, you know the move. He bought in for the table max of $100, and continually had to be told when to bet, how much to bet, and sometimes would just randomly throw chips into the pot when it was his turn. He held his cards so far up that the player in the 1s (Cowboy was in the 10s) told the dealer that he could see his cards. Dealer’s reply “It doesn’t matter to this hand, man.” And Cowboy, as drunk as he was, had the classic betting pattern tell. $10 preflop meant an Ace with a 9 or better kicker. $10 on the flop meant he missed and wanted to buy it. $20 on the turn meant he hit, but $10 meant he missed and could be pushed away. If he bet the river, he was pretty strong. If he checked the river, he was 50/50 to fold or call. I usually pushed him out on the turn or folded on the flop, so I didn’t see many rivers.

Except this one. I’m sitting UTG with 5-7 of hearts, and Cowboy is three behind me. I know that he’s going to see every flop, so I toss out two reds ($10) to play with only him. The rest of the table had been pretty much staying out of each other’s way if he was in the hand, so I got Cowboy and one caller. Perfect for my silly draw.

Flop comes 6h, blank, 4h, giving me the open-ended straight flush draw, and I check it. Cowboy bets his $10 and I call. Other player goes away. Turn is a blank, and I check/call Cowboy’s $10, so now I know he missed and I’m seeing the river for free anyway, since I know a river bet will buy it unless an ace hits. When the 8h comes on the river I think that maybe Cowboy will call a 1/3 pot bet, so I toss out $20. I begin to be sad panda when he mucks, and the dealer begins to rake in the flop.

“Hold on, I’ve gotta show this one.” And I table my 8-high straight flush.

“Floor! Got a high hand on 6!”

Huh? It didn’t have to get called? Cool! What do I get? And the floor walks over with a $50 gift certificate to the 5th floor snazzy restaurants at the IP. Not as cool as the cash you get for one at Harrah’s next door, but they don’t take anything out of the pot for a jackpot drop at the IP, so I thought that was pretty frickin’ sweet.

I continued to play the role of card rack for that session and finished up about $200, then me and E3 went to eat, living Twitch to double his buy-in before finally going to bed.

Oh and Cowboy? He went broke two hands later, wandered off to get more money, and when we came back from food, saw his mom bitching him out at another table for throwing away almost everything he’d won earlier that night.

Viva Las Vegas.

Vegas

There will be a real trip report coming, I promise. Right now I'm recovering from my redeye flight into the humid South and trying to stop coughing up pieces of desert that have lodged in my lungs over the course of the week. Here are few things that will be forthcoming -

Tales from the TV table

Walking the Strip at 3AM

Tilting blondes at Harrah's and the IP

Aces suck 3 times out of 4

3-5 Spades is Gold, Baby!

So is 5-7 Hearts!

Luxor game sucks ass

Venetian room is sweeeeet

and other nonsense

So glad to meet and hang with everyone I could, hate I missed meeting some of the others, but that's why there's always next time around!

Tags: WPBT, Vegas, Poker

A minute with Mike

I’ll admit to having been a little nervous walking up to Mike Sexton in the Caesar’s Poker Room Saturday afternoon, but my brazen desire for good material outweighed the little bit of starstruck, so I did. I introduced myself and said that I write for Pokerworks, and could I get some time this week for an interview?

He said sure, and gave me his card, which doesn’t have his office number on it, but rather his mobile number, and his personal email address. So we chatted for a few minutes about his schedule for the week, and decided that I should call him around 10AM today to try and set something up. So I did, and he was golfing today, but told me to call him around 6 and we’d see about scheduling something.

So Suzy and I go over to the Rio to gawk a little bit, pick up a bit o’ swag, and I call him a hair after 6PM.

“Where are you now?”

“I’m at the Rio.”

“Why don’t you come up to my room and we’ll do it tonight.”

So we hop on the elevator and go interview the 2006 WSOP Tournament of Champions winner. Off the cuff. No notes. Flying completely without a net, and with no real idea of what to expect.

And it was great. The ten-minute interview I expected went into more than half an hour, with great stories about the original Tournament of Champions and Stu Ungar, and great insight into Mike’s opinions on poker, poker players, and how he came to be the host of the World Poker Tour. He was charming, open, passionate about the charities he supports, optimistic about the future of poker and the ability of poker champions and sites to use their tournament winnings to do some good in the world, and just an all-around damn fine guy. And when we were done, he told me that I did a good interview.

It was a good night.

I was at the TV table last night for f'n sure

#1s – Falstaff
#2s – Biggestron
#3s – Noted Poker Author DoubleAs
#4s – Blinders
#5s – Iggy (playing YoSoyVeneno’s Stack)
#6s - Smokkee
#7s – Alan (Geek & Proud)
#8s – Civilian
#9s – Shane Nickerson
#10s – Joe Speaker

And I’m up $1 in wheel spin bets.

WPBT Summer Classic #1

Some quick first impressions and quick hits before I head over to Caeasar’s for the blogger tourney.

1. God, there are getting to be a lot of blogger chicks. That’s pretty damn cool. As Dawn and I were walking to the IP last night to hit up their fishy $1/2 NL game she remarked on how many there are. Pretty cool, because once a concept/fad/cultural phenomenon crosses the gender barrier, it adds more staying potential, so this influx of women playing the game and writing about it will help keep the poker boom strong.


2. Felicia (fe-lee-cee-ya, for the record) is a lot funnier in person than I thought she’d be. I expected this blunt, caustic bitch, which she kinda is, but she’s a really funny, blunt, caustic bitch. Felicia “Filter-Free” Highlights from day one include – “I thought when I saw you that you’d lost weight, but you’re fatter than ever.” “You’re a good-looking guy, one of the better-looking guys here, you just look old.” And “Hey, Alan, are you gay? I heard you were gay.” He’s not. I took to turning on my new geek-ass digital voice recorder whenever I was around her just in the hopes of catching some of that shit.


3. Me and F-Train were completely enthralled by the stripper bachelorette party that was molesting the guy from Thunder from Down Under in the entrance to Excalibur last night. Dawn, for some reason, was not entranced. She has some strange resistance to the hypnotic power of the boobies. Oh yeah, it’s cause she’s got her own.


4. 2-4 HORSE was much more enjoyable this time around, since I now have a rudimentary understanding of 3 out of 5 games, and actually feel mildly competent at two of them. I still suck at Stud, O8 and Stud/8, but got some good tips from Heather and Ryan on Stud/8.


5. I really felt a couple of times like I should have tipped Heather instead of the dealer during the Razz portion of the game, since she was running the game and the dealer was just slinging cards. Why offer a mixed game if your dealers can’t deal it? There was nothing really bad, just general lack of understanding. Good thing almost everyone at the table knew what was going on.


6. Getting aces cracked twice in five hands will induce tilt no matter how hard you try to contain it. Once to a four-flush and I managed to not pay off the big value bet on the river, and once when we got all the money in the middle preflop AA v 10 10, and donkey catches runner-runner straight on the river. No way all my money isn’t getting into the middle at some point in that hand, since it ended up 9-high to make it 10-high straight. Rivering a Q-high straight ten hands later will not only put you within striking distance of even for the session, but it will vindicate your play a little in your head.

Headed off to Caesar’s for the tourney now. Since my tourney game has sucked so much donkey nuts lately, my strategy is going to be a mix of Kill Phil Basic with a lot of small ball style. Essentially I’m willing to see a bunch of cheap flops with the first 1/3 – ½ of my stack, then I’m shifting into a very tight style with two moves – push or fold. We’ll see. Stuck $200 for the trip so far, but don’t think it’s indicative of my NL play. The $75 I paid for HORSE lessons last night was exactly that, paying for lessons.

Give a little bit...

Click on the ForPeyton.com banner over on the right side of the page, or just follow the link to the cool stuff that Bobby, Jason and their celebrity buddies have wrangled up for the auction to raise money for a little girl who lost her mommy. Nobody should have to grow up parentless and I think it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen that Bob, Jason, Shelly and the gang have done all this work for nothing but the warm fuzzies that come from helping somebody. Not bad for a bunch of degenerate gamblers, huh?

Good weekend

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to clap at the opening credits of a movie before, but hearing the theme to Superman in a theatre again pretty much made me wanna stand up and yell like the uber-geek that I am. Suzy and I dragged E3 along to see the new Superflick, and it was worth the $9 a head, which is almost never my opinion of movies these days.

The big blue boy scout is all he’s ever been, and Suzy thinks the new one is almost as hot as Tom Welling (Smallville). I was less enamored of Kate Bosworth’s Lois Lane, but how can you go wrong when Kevin Spacey is your villain and Parker Posey is his moll? She’s fantastic in everything, and Spacey’s a creepy little fuck when he wants to be, so that was a great pairing.

All in all, we really enjoyed the movie, I thought it did justice to the mythos and the movies that came before (while successfully ignoring some of the atrocities committed in the later films). But it was a little creepy to see Brandon Rouch’s lips move, and hear Chris Reeve’s voice come out. It was absolutely freaky how much this kid sounds like Reeve, who will always be Superman in my eyes, given my age.

New Superman movie yesterday, and the new Johnny Cash album today – doesn’t get much better for me. This is American V, the album he was working on with Rick Rubin just before he died, and you can hear the years taking their toll on the man in some songs, especially Like the 309, which sounds a lot like a man who knows his time is coming soon. Death has been a present specter in all of the American Recordings Cash albums, but on this one it sounds more like an old friend he’s waiting on the porch for than something he’s fighting against. Somebody give Rick Rubin a medal for bringing Cash back to the forefront of music in his last years, we all almost let that national treasure of songwriting fade away.

Oh yeah, you thought this was a poker blog! Ok, I played a shitload of poker this weekend, putting something like 400 miles on the car just cruising to home games and underground games. It went something like this:

Thursday night – drive to G-Vegas. Sit between G-Rob and The Mark. Regret that position for 5 hours. Go home down a buyin and change (-$125)

Friday night – host a game at my house. Run over the table for an hour, donate everything back by the end of the night. Suzy finishes the night up a buyin (+$50).

Saturday night – learn the hard way that when the chick dealing check-raises your queens, you’re probably fucked. Drop 1.5 buyins in 2 hours. Go home reeling (-$300).

Sunday – drive back to G-Vegas for a tourney at Casa de Mark. Continue my stellar tournament performance, proving the wisdom of my decision not to register for any WSOP events this year (-$55). Gambool like a degenerate in the cash games and rake the biggest single pot of my life when I hit one of 14 outs on the river to beat The Mark’s flopped two pair in a hand with 2 all-ins and an absolutely retarded level of action (+$900).

The hand in question went something like this – we were down to five-handed. I was on the button, Juan (down a pile of cash already but an amazing action junkie) in the SB, Walt (up and down stacks all night) in the BB, The Mark (strong aggressive action junkie, table chip leader) in the straddle and Shep Tiltstein in the CO. Shep call the straddle, I look down at AQ diamonds and pop it to $10. Juan calls, Walt calls, The Mark calls, Shep folds.

Flop Kd Qs 10d giving me middle pair with the nut flush and straight draws. Checked to me and I bet $30. Juan comes over the top all in for another $70. I pause. The Mark comes over the top of that for another $70. I pause a LOT. Then I push my remaining $300 into the pot.

The Mark goes deep into the tank, and I tell him that I’m behind, but still a favorite to win. Interestingly enough, we had talked a couple hours before about how AK sooted is a favorite over QQ after a J-high flop with two of the correct suit. Mark tells me he has K 10, and I tell him he’s technically a dog to my hand, calling out the percentages we’d found on the cardplayer odds calculator earlier (I was actually about 1% more of a favorite than in that particular hand, since I also had straight draws, but that was pretty irrelevant). Mark thinks a little while longer and calls.

Turn is a four of clubs and my nuts curl up somewhere comfy behind my pancreas. I look down and ask for a Queen…or an Ace. And Walt kindly flips over the Ace of clubs for a pot in excess of $700, by far the largest single pot I’ve ever pulled down. I don’t know if I would have been able to make that push if I didn’t already have $100 in profits from the afternoon session in my pocket, and I’m not sure I can make that push at a reasonable hour of the day or night, but at past 1 AM, it felt like the right thing to do.

I did go back to the odds calculator and see that I was indeed a 55/45 favorite in the hand, but I’m not sure how often I’m gonna have the stones to push with it. I know there’s no way I’d have made that move after the turn. Had I just called, then seen the four come up, I would never have had the strength of conviction to stick with it any further. So I’m glad I made the push, and now just need to make sure I don’t let Mark sit to my left when we’re in Vegas this weekend, or he’s gonna push me around like the skinny kid in the schoolyard.

Heh. I just went back and erased “next weekend” to replace it with “this weekend.” I fly in three days, and I had my first Vegas dream tonight. I know that’s kinda sick. And the fact that Nickerson was there teaching me to throw craps was also kinda twisted.

More Heroes, Please

It was about ten years ago. It was an overflowing county commission meeting filled to the brim woth artists, left-wing radicals, right-wing nutjobs and a few normal people sprinkled through. We were all there to talk, listen, scream, wail, gnash our teeth and beat our breasts over public funding for theatre in Charlotte. We were there because there had been a production of a play about some queens, and some people got pissed that the theatre producing the play got a few pennies of tax money for their operating budget, and those pissed off folks wanted to yank all the county arts funding to punish the pernicious peddlers of smut. You know, theatre people.

In the middle of all the rhetoric, all the accusations and all the hissy fits, a skinny guy in a wheelchair rolled up to a microphone and gave an impassioned plea for reason. He talked about the value of the arts in a society and in a life. I could tell that this guy was having a hard time making this happen, because his body was rebelling against him, but he wouldn't be beaten. He said his peace, he rolled away, and we lost that night's fight.

And he kept talking to people in boardrooms and private homes all over town, and a couple of years later four of the five council members who voted to repeal arts funding were defeated in the next election, and the private donations that came into the arts community in Charlotte doubled the money that was stripped from the budget.

And last year we opened a brand new beautiful Children's Theatre facility named after him, a thank you from a grateful arts community for his fighting on our behalf, when he had his own fight going on.

And today, he lost. Complications from Lou Gehrig's disease killed Joe Martin at age 65. And I sit here at my keyboard, crying a little for the passing of a man I never met face to face, but owe a debt to nonetheless. Betrayed by his body, he never stopped fighting.

Can we have a few more of these?

Please?

4:40 pm | Charlotte crusader Joe Martin dies

FRANCO ORDOÑEZ

fordonez@charlotteobserver.com

One of Charlotte's most well-known advocates passed away this morning.

Joseph B. Martin, a retired Bank of America executive, former Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board member, and brother of former N.C. governor Jim Martin, died from respiratory problems caused by a pulmonary embolism, family members said. He was 65.

In 1994, Martin was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, as it is commonly known. The illness eventually left him without the ability to walk or talk. But it never lessened his drive for fighting for causes in which he believed. Even after his diagnosis, he worked tirelessly for ALS patients, better schools and race relations.

He introduced "Race Day," challenging Charlotteans to invite a person of a different race to lunch. He helped create the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Education Foundation. He and his brother raised more than $3 million to build the Carolinas Neuromuscular/ALS Center at Carolinas Medical Center.

He wrote two books, one about living with the illness, the other a novel about teenagers growing up in South Carolina in the 1950s.

The Public Library of Charlotte and the Children's Theater of Charlotte named their joint children's complex -- ImaginOn: The Joe and Joan Martin Center -- after Martin and his wife.

Bank of America, in his honor, established the Joe Martin Scholarship Program, which offers financial assistance for college or vocational schools to dependents of associates.

"He was the most universally loved people I knew," said Hugh McColl Jr., former Bank of America CEO, who called Martin one of his most trusted advisers and the "conscience of the company."

Tags: Charlotte, Joe Martin

My buddy Warbucks is a gambler, pure and simple. He and I have very different reasons that we play poker.

Once again my dear friend Falstaff missed the boat. Playing smarter and at tables where you've done better is NOT the cure for "fear & doubt". Not worrying about losing your bank roll IS the Cure.
Gambling money is (and should always be) entertainment dollars that you can afford to lose and still pay your bills. To me, poker is an absolute blast, win, lose, or draw. Obviously I want to win just like everyone else. It's simply NOT the "be all, end all".

Isn't that what I said? Exercising proper bankroll management and table selection means that you won't ever worry about losing your bankroll. If I don't play above the limits dictated by my bankroll, I don't have to worry about losing it. I pretty much adhere to a 10% rule, which is not exactly the tightest bankroll strategy, but it works for me. I don't sit down at a table with more than 10% of my roll in front of me. I can lose a couple of buy-ins at $200 a clip without being crippled, and I'm a decent enough player to be able to pull the plug on a shitty session if I'm going to go further south than that in one session anyway.

Warbucks looks at his poker money as gambling money, which to him is entertainment money. I look at my poker money as a self-supporting revenue stream, contributing positively to my personal net worth. That's a pretty stark difference, and it highlights the two most common opposing viewpoints of poker players.

If you want to play recreationally and to have fun, go for it. You're more than welcome at my home game just like the dear friends who came over last night, some of whom donated and some of whom took cash away. If you look at the game as recreation, then Warbucks' view is absolutely correct - play with extra money, just like you spend your extra cash going to the movies. Do NOT ever play with money you can't afford to lose.

If you want to play seriously and as a form of revenue, then you might want to consider a little deeper the concept of bankroll management. If you don't ever put more than 10% of your bankroll on the table, you're not going to go broke. If you pick your tables carefully, you'll have a better shot at growing your bankroll to increase the limits at which you play.

There's nothing wrong with either view, I just tend to look at poker a little more seriously than the average recreational player. I still have fun, win or lose. But I have more fun when I win and play well. The odds of me ever becoming a professional poker player are slim to none (and Slim, he left town). But I'm a hell of a lot better player than I was a year ago, and I know that I can continue to improve and move up in limits with more study and analysis (I know Warbucks thinks that's crap). And that's another part of what I enjoy about the game, the ability to improve and learn. And make more money. I likes money.

In other news, if the opportunity ever arises to sit between G-Rob and The Mark in a G-Vegas home game, come down with dysentery. Fast. I felt lucky to get out of that bloodbath only down one buy-in (and a little change). Raises, re-raises, push-monkey moves and a blatant misuse of the "Easy" button made for a hilarious time and a nice little lesson in dodging hyper-aggressive players for me.

Tags: poker, bankroll management