The Lucky Donut

As I've finally made the effort to figure out how to post YouTube videos on here, what could be better than a little festive music.

Ladies and Gentlemen
Please welcome
Performing "Christmas in Las Vegas"
From his new album "Silent Nightclub"
Which HMV told me was in stock
But won't deliever in time for Christmas
And it's now too late to order from anywhere else
The legendary
Richard Cheese
(ripple of applause)

New Year sucks. Christmas is over (well, actually that's not such a a bad thing). You've run out of turkey recipes, and still have half a bird left. It's starting to smell a bit, too. You can, if you wish, queue for hours in the freezing cold to stand a small chance of picking up a genuine bargain in the sales. Although I'm sure it won't be as bad as the insanity and violence of the PlayStation 3 queues in America last month. This year, I'm spending midnight at New Year's Eve on a plane. I know I won't care.

Oh, and all new for 2007 - the price of poker is going up again. All around the country this time, too.

Grosvenor Casinos have announced a new schedule of "session charges". Whilst they've had the sense to tier the fees so you pay less for a cheaper tournament, the attempt to justify it as the "true reflection of running costs of cardrooms" is unconvincing. I'm quite pleased that I managed to delete the word "bullshit" just then, very disciplined of me.

It's a £2 charge on a £5 tournament, but £5 on £20. Does one game really cost two and a half times as much to run as the other?

It's actually great for the game that the major casinos are finally starting to treat it as a game in its own right, and not simply something in the same league as £5 in free slot play or a complimentary drink. If they have to charge a little extra to do justice to their tournaments and keep the guys upstairs happy, then so be it. But c'mon, call a spade a spade. Call a service charge a rake (unless you're not allowed to). And acknowledge this session fee what it is - a way for casinos to begin making money from poker directly, rather just using it to try to bring in pit game suckers.

This is the Christmas window display in the Apple store on Regent Street, where I spent much too long drooling over £300 headphones last night.  Boy they're good.  Coldplay was on in the store, so I stuck on a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort 3s, turned on noise reduction and bam... no more background drivel.

I'm afraid I don't really get the tree-on-a-stick.  Maybe having just a snowman isn't enough to say "It's Christmas, buy more stuff".  And isn't that Tommy Cooper's hat?

Because for once we arrive in Vegas on a Saturday (T minus 5, by the way) we'll be able to spend Sunday camped out in a sportsbook watching ten NFL games simultaneously.  I've also somehow managed to convince Claire that this is a great way to spend Christmas Eve.  The obvious choice of venue is the Las Vegas Hilton Superbook.  It's huge, self-proclaimed World's Largest, of course, and more impressively boasts the "largest sports ticker in Nevada".  I'm quite fond of scrolling LED signs.  It's also enclosed by several banks of video poker machines that have pretty good paytables (or at least did the last time we were there) in case having multiple giant screens just isn't enough to make up for not being able to spin through the commercials on Sky+.

It's several years since we sat in a Vegas sportsbook to watch anything of note.  In 2002, we were on a two week romp along the West Coast.  Las Vegas was the last stop and, in retrospect, it would have made a better place to start.  Two jetlagged English folk didn't find a whole lot to do, waknig up at 4am in San Francisco.  The venue we'd chosen for Game 7 of the NBA Western Conference Playoffs between the LA Lakers and Sacramento Kings was Monte Carlo.  We'd arrived early enough to grab a good seat and brought a huge pizza for sustinence, which impressed those sitting next to us, although you could tell they wish they'd thought of it too.  The atmosphere was amazing and the game was pretty damn good too.  19 changes of lead, 16 ties (obviously I had to look this up, nobody's going to believe I remembered it) and an eventual overtime win for the Lakers.

My memories of exactly where we went on that holiday are sketchy, I think there were 8 hotels in 15 nights.  However, in a "do you remember where you were when Kennedy was shot" kind of way, I do remember quite clearly a dingy motel room in Torrence, California which we'd chosen because of it's proximity to the Del Amo Fashion Center - the mall where the money swap goes down from several different points of view in Jackie Brown.  That Days Inn was, oddly, also home to the first Indian restaurant we'd seen in the USA.  I'd turned on the TV to catch the last quarter of a previous Lakers/Kings game in that series, which featured possibly the single coolest moment in sports I ever saw.

OK, I know you didn't click the link, so here goes.  The Lakers are down 2-1 in the best-of-seven series and by two points in the game.  Seconds to go.  Superstar Kobe drives in to try to take the game to overtime... no good.  Superstar Shaq has a crack... denied.  The ball falls into the hands of Robert Horry standing behind the 3-point arc who apparently doesn't know the meaning of the word pressure.  He launches and nails it as the buzzer sounds, and the Lakers win 100-99.

Since then, we've always seemed to be in Vegas at the wrong time to catch any sport worth watching on TV (yeah, it's usually baseball season) or flown on two Sundays when there's football to be missed.  Now we're going to be in town for Week 16, when almost all the games are going to matter.

I'm ready for some parlay card action, and probably another large pizza.

More information just in from Mansion:

Clothing: To help you pack, Fox Sports Net requests that men wear business attire--collared shirts, jackets, ties optional; women—smart business attire--suits, dresses. Note: no white clothing, no logos for the telecast.  The dinner Friday night is held at one of the top restaurants in Caesars Palace or the Forum Shops, please wear appropriate business or resort attire.

It's over seven years since I had to wear a suit to work, but I still have quite a collection of downright horrible ties.  Given that I very much doubt they'd consider any of my non-plain shirts to be business attire (let's be realistic - they're not) a tie looks like my best chance to wear something ghastly on TV.  I used to be a master at picking the tie that clashed most with any given shirt.  Can't wait to see if I've still got what it takes.

I'm not completely sure what they mean by "resort attire".  I have a couple of t-shirts from Caesars, and - seriously - also a dressing gown.  If it was a toga, and I was a little more attractive, it might be OK.

In answer to a Trivial Pursuit question that I can remember from like twenty years ago, table tennis is apparently no longer the only sport that you can't play dressed in white.

The guys from the Sentinel apparently spent all day yesterday trying to get hold of Claire for a quote, causing much embarassment in the classroom. "Miss, your phone's vibrating". Repeatedly.

She never got chance to talk to them but it looks like they've run the story anyway. I'm right there, above a story about the panto.

http://digbig.com/4qhdr for the full story.

I think it was a wise decision not to show my full face in either photo.

Apparently I'm going to be featured in The Sentinel tomorrow. Possibly even on pages one and two, the photographer said! Surely something more interesting will happen in the meantime... even in Stoke.

This is thanks (I think... having second thoughts now!) to Mike who asked me if he could write and submit the story as part of his journalism course requirements. I'm not even sure if he's getting credit for the story any more.

No doubt I'll write more once I've had chance to read it.  I'm down in London tomorrow though so I'll have to rely on the online copy.

For anyone that ends up here as a result though (I don't know if they'll actually print my blog address - it was worth a try!) and wants to know more about Poker Dome, click on the banner below. Then click on it again. One click not good enough. It's a security feature, or something.

Hotels in Las Vegas tend to skip the 13th floor.  As far as I'm aware, they just pretend like it doesn't exist, numbering the floors 11, 12, 14, 15, etc.  It might be possible to grab a crowbar and jam open the doors at just the right moment to get there but (a) that was the 7^1/2 floor in Being John Malkovich, so it may only apply to floor numbers ending in a fraction and (b) why the hell would you want to tempt fate like that anyway?

I worked out that I've been to Las Vegas twelve times in the past seven years.  You don't actually want to know how long it took to figure this out, from passport stamps, email history and - where everything else failed - a mountain of old credit card statements.  But I'm glad I made the effort. 

It's eleven days  (not that I have a countdown using oversized playing cards or anything...) to trip number fourteen.

Yes, fourteen.

Honest.

And just to prove I'm not insane, I took a ten question multiple choice test:

You're not 100% superstitious, but there are certain things that you'd rather avoid…just in case! ... Overall, you likely realize deep down that superstitions are mostly not true, but the ones you follow have become old habit. It makes you uncomfortable to break them, so it's simply easier to keep - especially since many of them are tightly woven into our cultural fabric. ... As long as your superstitions are not controlling your life in any way, there's probably no harm in them.

14.

I can't really be bothered to rant about this any more.  But just look at this trail of misinformation leading to a four hour wait in and around Watford Junction station on a very cold Sunday afternoon - although it could have been a lot worse...

All because of a bit of wind.

On the train from Stoke on Friday evening, there is an announcement.

... Due to engineering works there will be no trains from London to the Midlands before 2pm Sunday.

Our return ticket was for 12:50 Sunday.  Once I'm off the train I call Virgin Trains Aftersales.  Their Indian call centre knows nothing about the state of UK railways.

... There are no problems with that train, sir.

Saturday lunchtime I call the Virgin Traveller club.  Nobody told them either.

... My system says that train is still running.

Saturday evening I check the National Rail Enquiries web site.

... There is no information.

Perhaps we imagined it.  Sunday morning, I try National Rail Enquiries again.

... Take a Silverlink train to Northampton, then a Virgin train to Stoke.

Not too bad, just have to leave a bit earlier.  We're there at 11.30 and the man at the station gate tells us the way to go.

... There are no trains to Northampton.  Take the train to Milton Keynes, then a coach to Northampton, then the train to Stoke.

Worst route ever?  We decide it's better to wait a couple of hours for a direct train sometime after 2pm.  A lady in a Virgin Trains jacket on the platform is sympathetic to our plight.

... Don't go to Milton Keynes.  We haven't ordered the coaches yet.  Wait until 3pm, there'll be a direct train and it won't be busy.

Honest at least, glad we decided to wait!  She also recommend a very good cafe just up the road.  Credit where credit's due.

The joyous news finally arrives.

... The Mancehster train has left Euston.  It's already full and standing room only.

Thankfully the trend of everything we were told being wrong continued, and we did actually get a seat.

Oh, we were in London to see any random show that they had half price tickets for.  Ended up being Blue Man Group.  They are still the coolest thing on earth.  Fact.

An announcement I heard on the Tube yesterday:

"There are currently severe delays on the Central line, due to a man under a train at Bethnall Green."

They wisely changed the description of the problem to a "severe customer incident" later on, which answered the question of whether or not the man was actually meant to be there (hey, he could have been fixing the brakes or something...) but I still need more information.  I just can't find any though!

Typo...?

 

I've got my dates now: Episode 36, filming January 27th, airing on Fox Sports Net on January 28th.

The show is now being shown on FX over here.  That makes four programs on that channel, alongside X-Files, Highlander and Cops.  But obviously those stalwarts of the schedule get top priority and Pokerdome is squeezed on at 2am.  I've put it in Sky+ and will try to work out how far behind we are.

The package includes:

Round Trip Air Transportation to Las Vegas
They've confirmed that this is for one person only.  Although it's unlikely Claire can get time off during term time anyway so I'm almost certainly going alone.  Which will be strange.  If they book it for Fri-Sun though it won't be a direct BMI flight.  At the very least I need to try to get them to make it Thu-Sun and then I can get diamond club miles too, as well as stand a chance of being awake when the tournament starts!  Have to make sure they've heard of other airlines than Virgin so I don't end up having to get to Gatwick!  If I'm only going to be there for a weekend, a 24 hour round trip journey is an absolute upper limit, don't you agree?

VIP Pick-up from Airport to Hotel
It's a big black minibus, according to
http://kickasspoker.blogspot.com/2006/10/mansion-poker-dome-rules-and.html.  A limo with attitude.

VIP Check-in at Caesars Palace (2 nights included Friday and Saturday)
Never stayed at Caesars.  Always said its probably where I'd choose if money was no object, and I said that even before they had a card room.  So this is pretty damn cool.

Welcome VIP package in the room (champagne, mansion welcome wear)
Free shirts = always good.  Champagne = don't care.  How much fun is it going to be to arrive by yourself and sit in your room and drink bubbly anyway?  I'm sure I can find an appreciative wino...

$500.00 Casino Credit
Sounds like this is actually just five black chips, according to http://pokerworks.com/article-674.html.  Play em or cash em... well I can't see there being any tables games lower than $25 minimum at Caesars on a weekend, so I'll probably cash em.  Or, I could try to do some real life rampaging at $2/$5 NL and see how just far I can spin it up...!

Welcome Dinner and Introduction to the Poker Dome (Friday Night)
Oh God, I have to be sociable?  After an 11 hour flight?  At like 5am UK time? Is this optional?

VIP Transportation to and from the Poker Dome (Saturday)
Why they're not putting us in a Downtown hotel I don't really know.  I'd probably still want a ride from the El Cortez at night, but anywhere else saves them a load of hassle. 

$50 meal credit at hotel
If it's good at the Cheesecake Factory, you can be sure I'm going to be trying to smuggle a couple of those bad boys back home.

VIP transportation back to airport
BFH.  Super, smashing, great.

The tournament itself is a three round, six-handed, speed poker shootout for a million dollars.  15 players stand between me and $1m - hey, it's just like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire!  And, if this article is to be believed, you can almost ask the audience too.  There's also that annoying drone of tension music all the way through.  If I beat five players, I win some money that I can't lose and get to come back for more.  It's $25,000 for round one, and a further $50,000 for round two.  Second place gets diddly squat though.  The speed poker element is that you get 15 seconds to make each decision and there are two dealers to keep the cards flowing quickly.

In the rules I've been sent (which, incidentally, are all TV rules, and nothing to do with poker) state no logos on clothes, no ipods, and no recourse whatsoever if they decide to make stuff about you to make the show more interesting.

"I hereby release Producer from, and covenant not to sue Producer for, any claim or cause of action, whether known or unknown, for libel, slander, invasion of right of privacy, publicity or personality, or any other claim or cause of action"

I'm also a bit worried why they need to include this:

"I understand that there is a possibility of i) risk of injury to me or others and/or ii) damage to either my property and/or the property of a third party as a direct and/or indirect result from my participation in or connection with certain activity(ies) which may be included within the production of the Program."

It's not like this is bungee poker or anything...

Tesco have been giving away a free box of mince pies with every grocery delivery lately.  A nice little bonus for sure, but these may well be the sweetest mince pies of the season.  A very nice, completely unexpected freebie from Virgin Trains no less! Pies, cheese and booze.  The perfect combination.

 And yes it does indeed say:

 It's better if I keep that out of context, don't you think...

My return trip from London usually involves a late train.  That way I never have to worry about leaving the office on time, getting stuck on a delayed tube and missing the train.  It does, however, mean that I'm hanging around for up to two hours at Euston.  This is where a cheap First Class upgrade comes in handy.  By "cheap" I mean that you get the very lowest tier of First Class ticket.  These are only available after they stop serving hot food to your seat, and instead you get a sandwich and a banana.  However usually they put the most expensive tickets at the front of the train so they get first dibs on all the snack food, and by the time yours truely gets served the sandwich choice is probably only egg.

It's still better than at weekends, where you have to fetch everything yourself.  And as the shop is right in the middle of standard class, you have to climb over three carriages of poor people (you can't hear the irony, but it's there I promise, because I only use the train at the weekend on a free ticket) to pick up a "snack box" that contains a couple of crackers and some dried fruit.

Still, it means I get somewhere warm to sit for a couple of hours with an unlimited supply of complimentary coffee and crisps.  Today, they even have some rather nice chocolate truffles.  I was actually disciplined enough to just have one.  Impressive.

When I'm bumming about in the lounge above Euston Station, I'm usually online.  No change there.  There's a wifi hotspot - touted as a feature of first class, when you still have to pay £4/hr to use it - but I now have my super funky phone with wireless modem and unlimited data calls, which is just as good when there's 3G coverage.

Today, the phone said I had a full four bars of 3G signal but I couldn't connect to squat.  It dialed, it thought, it gave up.  Same thing happened trying to get online from the phone itself, and it's still the same problem now that I'm on the train.  I waited a good ten minutes on hold to T-Mobile, but nobody is there this time of night... at half past six?  Unlikely.  So I decided to bite the bullet - and bite into some complimentary fruit cake - and pay for the wifi.  I still had over an hour to kill and thought I may as well do something useful, even if "something useful" is trying to find out whether the 6-max $2/$4 game at Noble Poker is as soft as it appears to be, or if I just ran very hot so far.  The early signs are good (and here I go tempting fate again).  Sure, I've been getting lucky with some hands, but it's so lovely and passive, they're just always letting me catch up - and then paying me off!  Of course I don't mind winning $30 pots with two pair made on the turn from 47o in the big blind, it's just a little embarassing... I'm sure people in the lounge were watching me!

However, as I've bought into Gutshot folklore, I was particularly pleased with this hand.  Would have been worth an extra $50 at their online cardroom too!

The hotspot let me log in, but I had zero credit and when I tried to reload it said "this feature is not available".  There's an award winning business plan buried away in there somewhere I'm sure...

So I was feeling a little marooned.  NO INTERNET!  But then I remembered the time I playing PokerStars here and my credit ran out but I was still able to play.  I hadn't figured out whether it was because I still had an open connection and it didn't know how to disconnect me after the credit ran out, or if it just wasn't configured to block poker traffic.  Turns out, it's their configuration.  Which means...

Free poker!

Well, for some sites anyway.  Noble Poker worked just fine.  I could see the lobby and sit at tables.  The only problem was accessing the cashier, which uses web pages within the client.  But as I already had a balance, I could play away happily.  And, yes, it still feels pretty soft.  I think Stars will work, although I couldn't test it properly.  It tried to get a software update, presumably from a web site, and failed.  Party Poker and Mansion would not connect at all, but Paradise worked fine, and their cashier does not use the web so it looks like you get full functionality.  For free!

That's about all I had time to check, but I'll be doing more research!  They definitely block web and email access until you sign in with a credit card, and apparently MSN messenger too.  However I could connect to ICQ and Yahoo! Messenger without any problems, and without paying!

I only have limited experience with wireless hotspots.  The odd hotel and airport, and once at Starbucks when it was the hot new thing, which was memorable because it just didn't work.  I wonder just how many actually allow free access like this! 

Playing beyond your bankroll completely rocks when you get lucky.

I knew the PokerDome satellite was too expensive for me to justify buying into direct.  Even with its awesome added value - a $215 seat was worth $343 tonight - I'm just not serious enough or good enough to play three-figure buy in tournaments on a regular basis.  I was well aware that I couldn't continue playing this tournament every week, as I desparately wanted to, without running a little bit hot at first.

Last Saturday, I used some of the money remaining from the very nice Mansion NFL bet bonus I took advantage of earlier in the year to buy into the $100+$9 rebuy and the $200+$15 freezeout.  It was pretty uneventful - I didn't survive the first hour in either of them and couldn't remember anything vaguely interesting to write about, so I didn't even mention it.

Today I went only for the freezeout, figuring my balance could support two more cracks at it and I wasn't really likely to play anything else at Mansion.  They have a few money-added tournaments during the day, but they're now making a big deal about a Christmas tournament series with $250,000 added.  Very attractive (and a $50+$5 buy in is much more realistic for me) but they all start at 3am.  So despite the Mansion server clock being GMT, they pretty much don't give a hoot about their European players and have put this quarter of a million up for grabs only to attract the Americans that are still looking for a place to play.  You can see why they'd do that, but just a couple that start during the day for US players - a token effort - would be nice.

Oh, did I forget to say the result before I went off on one?

First place baby!  $7000 PokerDome package and $3430 cash.

What follows now will probably be waffle.  I'm completely wired but also in need of sleep (I have to catch a train at 07:24).  In this case especially, the size of the prize is much more interesting than how I actually won it, so I definitely won't be offended if you don't read any further.

Everything started great and I was chip leader within 15 minutes after eliminating two players with big pairs that held up.  Had to make a terrifying all-in call with QQ on TT2 flop.  The other player had called my third raise pre-flop and moved all-in immediately after the flop.  There's a chance he's playing AA or KK in a donkish way there, but I found it hard to believe he wouldn't try to check-raise me on that board if he had anything that beats my queens.  In fact, a check-raise there may well have got me to fold the QQ (I'd be putting him on JJ-AA), but instead he donated his stack when AK did not improve.

Players fell fast down to three tables remaining.  Two tables were getting paid, with $350 for places 10-18.  On the bubble there were three mega short stacks, with about 1000 chips each and blinds at 300/600.  I had a heart attack when I saw KK on the big blind with players who mostly had me covered, and was never more pleased to get a walk with a big hand.  It wasn't just me who wanted to lock in $350 then - that's almost two more goes at this in my weak mind!

There were some crippled stacks on the final table so it dropped to 6 remining pretty quickly.  That had guaranteed me a four-figure payday.  I was keeping up with the pack pretty well, but I know I could have played stronger to take advantage of the bubble effect - when two players had very short stacks but the next jump in money was $600, I fancied the $600.  I was helped by someone playing AK much too passively.  He smooth-called a minimum raise from a habitual min-raiser, forcing me to pay one bet to see a flop with K8s from the big blind.  I didn't hesitate when the flop came KQ8 and got the payoff. 

The jump between 4th and 3rd was $1500 and I was extremely glad that it happened on a pretty easy decision.  I had AJs on the big blind and the small stack button pushed.  He flipped over J8o and stood up.

Then I dithered a bit too much.  The problem (if you can call four grand in the bank a problem) was that 3rd paid a nice chunk of cash ($4116) whereas 2nd was "only" $235 in addition to the PokerDome package.  $4116, or indeed the $3430 extra for first place, would nicely take care our house rental next summer.  Claire did just this with the extra cash she won alongside her WSOP seat last year, so I wanted to do the same.  So my strategy at that point should have been to go for broke: get myself a massive chip lead or bomb out and guarantee the biggest cash prize on offer.  Finishing 2nd, chances are I'm going to Vegas by myself, unless by some freak of timing the event I've qualified for is either the weekend we're already going to be there or lands in a school holiday.  Plus, I'd heard other players talking about previous satellites, saying that the 3rd place finisher is also taken to Vegas as a reserve.

By the time I'd realised that I needed to make this adjustment, it was too late.  The other two were going at it, and we were heads up.  The other guy had about a 2:1 chip lead on me.  Playing, basically, a freeroll for $3000 in a satellite is a very strange experience.  It's the biggest leap in prize money on offer, even though both the players remaining have pretty much already achieved what they came for.  We were both on our way to Vegas.  But the tournament just kept on playing, there was no time to take that in, no time to start leaping around and not even time to go and wake Claire and get a sleepy hi-5.  I'd been running excitedly back and forth with updates all the way down to 5 players left, as she's much more conscientious at the whole having-to-get-up-at-6.30 thing than me.  That's like 5 hours away... and still no way I can sleep!

The heads up slaughter lasted about 45 minutes.  I suck at heads up.  I'm way too weak, and this guy was a big bully.  He bashed me down to about 15k vs his 120k and I got lucky to survive.  From then on I somehow slogged my way back even, eventually picked up a big hand and got paid off and once I'd fought my way to a 3:1 chip lead his TT held up against my AQ and we were back to level footing.  Same old story - he bashes away at me and I have to get lucky again.  Although by now I'm wondering if the Kill Phil heads up strategy of "go all in every hand" wasn't such a bad idea.  I was definitely outclassed, but on the bright side I now have some great experience of playing heads up for a big prize.

We already know that it's bad karma to turn down a deal.  Here we were, almost at the stage where it was time to race random cards for $3000 and I offer a deal.  Don't even know if it's possible to do that on Mansion, but he wasn't interested anyway.  Can't blame him really.  He knew he was better, and I'd have been overjoyed to take any kind of deal to have it over with.

But when it's with you it's with you.  I got ahead again, calling a small bet with middle pair and making 2 pair on the river.  I never saw what he had, but I must have been behind most of the way.  So with nearly a 4:1 chip lead I decided to have a crack with K9 to try and end it.  It was good enough:

   

Now, you never know, going on TV might be enough to push me just that little bit harder to lose some weight...