My Results

Seeing as it looks like FX isn't going to show Poker Dome again for another month, and I have no idea when my heat is going to be on TV, I'm just going to go ahead and do this from memory.  Without the aid of any screencaps of me sweating lots and looking like a nervous buffoon.

** Spoiler alert ** If for some reason you do actually want to watch the show with some degree of suspense, do not read on. 

** Length alert ** Sorry, longest blog post ever.  Promise it won't happen again.  For busy people: I was 4th.

For what is probably the most high-tech show on TV, the seat draw was decidedly low-tech. At the Friday night players' dinner at The Palm, after enjoying a delicious Filet Mignon (I couldn't help checking the menu: it's a $38 steak, and we had a private room and three other courses) I got to pick first from six books of matches, each with a number one to six written under the flap.

Seating:
1. Steve Day
2. Carl Olsen
3. Chad Padgett
4. Hello, it's me
5. Trey Aitken
6. Tom Bashioum

(I don't know whether to be pleased with my Google skillz that I managed to find the obscure link to Tom, or upset that I couldn't find anything at all for Chad).

The limo bus dropped us downtown at just about the only unit still in use at Neonopolis at just before 1pm.  The show started at 6pm but in the meantime we had to go through "poker school", where we were taught how to play speed poker.  It's not just a little bit faster - you also have to announce every move you make, always stack your chips neatly (splashing is strictly forbidden), and learn to never, ever block the little camera.

Then we had a bit of a rehearsal where I managed to stack Steve after calling a raise with 24o and flopping 2 pair.  For what it's worth.  He was playing his hand blind and got his chips back anyway.  We all got to press the time extension button and make the lights go mental for thirty seconds.  I'm still a bit disappointed that I never did this during the show itself, but there was never a decision that I really needed that long to make, or a situation where I had to convince someone my decision was harder than it actually was.  The latter is how I'd hoped I'd be using it.

The set really is very cool, and the music is not as annoying as you'd think really.  With all the commercial breaks there's plenty of silence to break it up.  The droning music helps hide for the fact the dome is not perfectly soundproof; you can't hear much without it but you can't hear anything when it's going.  I did expect the audience to be completely blocked from view when the lights were down - in fact you can see the outline of the first few rows.  It would actually be possible to signal to a player if you really wanted to, but it would be very obvious, and probably followed by a swift ejection for all concerned. 

We filmed some headshots in the dome (this will be what they use to project my face onto a casino in the opening sequence) and some extremely tacky thumbs-up shots.  The film you see of the players getting fitted with heart monitors and being scanned for cellphones is bullshit though.  Sorry, I mean that's the magic of television.  It's recorded separately; I got scanned by a wand that wasn't turned on on camera, but we did actually all get searched properly before going onto the set, and dark glasses were given particular scrutiny.

I did take some shades, but you won't see them.  Probably nobody will ever see them.  They were even worse than the tie I wore, which people kept telling me they liked.  I always replied that I didn't believe them.  Why would they like it?  It's awful.  Simply the fact that it had glitter on should have been a big enough clue that I wasn't serious, surely?

Walking back from the fake security check we meet Michael Konik, who has amazingly managed to write two Vegas books that I don't have.  They actually might be the only two.  Of course I didn't mention this.

The button is in seat 1, making me first to act on the first hand.  Matt Savage tells me that I have a very special role to play, giving the commentators enough time to explain how the timer works.  I must not, under any circumstances, do anything in the first ten seconds.  I have some kind of garbage, probably four-something as it felt like every hand I had for the first hour had a four in it, and I wait an age before making an easy fold.  Has to be said, because I'll look like a moron who's just going for the screen time.

Matt Savage is very modest, by the way.  He reminded us not to forget to go see Lucky You when it's released in March.  I already know the answer, but I asked anyway.  "Are you in it?".  "Yeah", he replied, "it stars Drew Barrymore, Matt Savage, Eric Bana and Robert Duvall".  Second on the bill, apparently.  See his illustrious movie career unfold here.

So anyway, onto the hands I did play.  I can remember eight of note:

1. My first button.  I have 22 and it's folded to me.  I raise the pot and Trey or Tom calls from one of the blinds.  I don't remember who, or what the flop was, but there was a bet and I had to let the hand go.   I do remember the sudden tightening of the heart rate monitor as soon as he made the call, and the realisation that... bloody hell we only have 50 chips, I can only do that a couple more times.

2. I have pocket 8s and am first to act.  I raise the pot.  Only Chad calls from the big blind, and he donk-bets a KK9 flop.  With deeper stacks (and less sweaty hands) I'm popping him back, but I don't have enough chips to test him, nor the balls to make a big move with an underpair here this early in the game.  There's plenty of hands that he's already beating me with here, and I'm only just better than 60% to make it to showdown if he only has overcards.  Good bet, I fold.

3. I fold my third pocket pair, this time jacks and this time pre-flop.  Trey raises and Tom immiediately re-raises.  It's folded to me in the big blind, and I can (a) commit my stack right now, (b) call and play a mediocre hand out of position (assuming Trey doesn't re-raise) or (c) get out of the way.  Plan C looks like the best option by a mile, but I can't help wondering whether I just have to bite the bullet and go for it there.  We've been going maybe twenty minutes now, so there's not much time left.  I made it known that I'd folded JJ and asked Tom if he had me beat.  He wasn't able to play it cool convincingly, so I was a little happier.

4. I have ace-something suited on the big blind.  Blinds are 1k/2k and Steve raises to 7k from the cut-off.  It was either ATs or A8s, I don't remember for sure, because in my head it was much stronger than that.  I reraise another 10k and Steve shows he has been paying attention by giving it up.  This was just about the last chance I would have had to pull a re-steal without moving all-in, it seemed like a good spot and so I took it.  I still don't know what he had - I was probably ahead anyway, but if I did make him fold a better hand then I'll be having a screencap for my windows wallpaper!

5. Tom is a min-raising scumbag on my big blind, and it's not the first time he's made that bet.  I make an almost compulsory (read: spite) call for 4k more with 64s.  I figure he doesn't have any of my outs, at least.  All kinds of uneventful things can happen, but the board brings a massive scare: AKJ.  It's my turn to lead the flop, and then beat myself up when he re-raises - the minimum again just to add insult to injury.  I'm still not sure if this was a move I had to try, or whether I was just throwing good chips after bad.  I can get him to fold TT or lower here and probably QQ, and QQ or TT alone is more likely than a set with that board, but what's his range for the good old minimum raise?  I don't know yet. 

6. Desparation sets in.  Chad has been eliminated.  Everyone folds to Carl on the button, who decides to let me fight it out with Trey.  My Jd4d is irrelevant with 6k up for grabs and less than 20k left.  I ignore the warnings in poker school about not moving all in when you have more than the pot and let the guys backstage figure out just how much I'm allowed to raise.  I get 4k back, Trey calls, and my future looks somewhat gloomy.  The flop brings a queen and two diamonds, and I then proceed to suck out on Trey's Q9.

7. Trey is the desparate one now and moves all in (or close to it) first to act.  I have QQ, he has AQ, my hand holds up and and for a brief moment I'm alive again whilst Trey gets escored from the stage on the arm of one of the "chip girls".

8. Of course, I bust myself even before Trey has left the set.  We share an exit interview with Leeann Tweeden, who I later learn is actually a respected sports analyst and not just a pair of jugs to host the show.  I have AQs on the small blind, Carl raises from the button and I get it all in against, of course, AK.

Carl goes on to win, showing almost no emotion in the process.  He probably agrees with the 2+2 sycophants that there was never any contest.

Plane landed on time, once I finally got there.  That's the last time I let someone organise a ride for me, as my limo ended up nearly an hour late, and I was getting just a little flustered.  The flight was half empty and I wasn't the last to get there, but I had no time to eat.  Aside from some snackage in the green room and picking at plane food, the last thing I ate was Saturday morning, a horrible greasy breakfast skillet thing at Imperial Palace .  Ready for a curry!  It took a while for them to assemble the staircase to the plane.  Either there was no proper gate available or the pilot had missed the jetty by a mile.  We piled out onto the tarmac, with everybody managing to refrain from kissing the ground.

If you'd told me any time this week that I'd be spending my last night in Vegas at Pure I'd have laughed in your face.  But after the trip back from Downtown to Caesars in the party limo bus (it was a long trip, but it could have been longer - the coolest vehicle I've ever been in) I joined some of the other losers and their friends and did just that.  I could call it camaraderie, but mostly I think it was just that we all wanted to go and get drunk.

Yeah, I lost.  No real spoiler there, you know I'd be bragging much sooner if I'd won it!  I think I'll post some hands I remember separately but still before I get to see the show.  Although it went out in the USA whilst I was flying, it should be on late Wednesday night here but it's not showing in the Sky EPG at all any more!  I might have to find a torrent in order to watch myself looking like a nervous donkey and probably folding the best hand too many times.

I wasn't sure that playing $20 roulette was the best way to get free drinks, but the game was kind to me.  And apparently we played briefly with Jim Belushi, although I never even noticed, so I'm starstruck in retrospect only.  I played four numbers and hit three of them in the first four spins!  Beginner's luck I'm sure, as all I've done before is the odd matchplay coupon and being an evil influence on Vij one time.  He'd gone to make a bet for a friend at work, just a $25 double or nothing bet on red.  When it hit, I managed to convince him that he could press it and go again.  Then if it wins he keeps $50 himself and pays his mate off too, but if it loses then nobody really knows.  Plus EV to be sure... :)  The next spin is black, of course.

I still have no idea how we got into Pure.  Seat Five, Trey Aitken (long "a", silent "t" - he wasn't going to get it misprounced on TV) did something or said something and then suddenly we were jumping ahead of about 400 people standing in line around the casino.  Par-tay animal Trey blew his $500 in chips the night before on table service with a bottle of vodka.  No table this time, but hey you can't have everything...  Welcome to the home of the $10 beer, but this place is something else.

Let's start with the fact that it's so damn big it needs an elevator.  You can jump right in and go straight up to the strip level balcony.  Which is fantastic.  It's not going to be the great city-wide view like you'd get at the clubs in Palms and Rio that are fifty something stories high, but it's right in the heart of the action.  Neon in your eyes and desert air in your face.  Just awesome.  And if that wasn't good enough, there's the Pussycat Dolls too.  Caesars' answer to the Binion Dollar Babes - a poor substitute, but they'll do

I have a ton more pictures as usual (actually 351 it says, not bad for a week's work eh) and some of them are even in focus.  Expect me to bore you rigid throughout the week!

They did get me a car to Caesars.  Yay!  I've just done my pre-match interview nonsense, which involved me struggling to think of anything interesting to say whilst trying to smile and not look like a psychopath.  After I maxed out on poker last night, I'm pretty spaced and trying to be human was all a bit too much effort really.

My mimes are: trying to look tired (as I've travelled further than anyone else this week); jazz hands (they will project Vegas behind me, apparently); trying to not drop a laptop whilst typing with one hand.  For all of them they kept asking to tilt my head down to avoid glare from my glasses, but I'm sure this will just have created new glare from my rapidly thinning scalp.

Now I have some free time (wowee) until dinner later, when I'll get my $500 in chips.  In the meantime I'm contemplating a poker-free day.  Yesterday I played three tournaments and three hours of no-limit and nothing went right.  OK, maybe a poker-free afternoon.  There's always the 11pm tourney at Caesars or $2/$4 over at the IP.

My champagne just arrived too.  Felt like I needed to tip but (a) they weren't expecting me to be here and (b) I'm not going to drink it.  I might have the ice bucket though

So yesterday, I lost at The Orleans at midday, Binions at 8pm and the Strat at midnight, with a bit of $1/$2 NL inbetween.  I have bad beat stories from each if anyone would care to ask, but I'm sure they won't.

Binions have let me down though.  Here's the scenario.  We're down to three tables and I'm in need of chips.  I see A7 and push.  It's early position, but we're seven handed, and I just can't wait any longer.  I get one caller, but as we go to flip our cards the caller notices he no longer has them.  The dealer has taken his hand and mucked it.

Almost the exact same thing happened on Monday at the final table.  A player moves all in, a shorter stack calls and I umm and ah and fold pocket 7s - I have him covered but not by much.  Whilst I'm deciding the delaer has taken his hand.  Jenny the Floor comes over and tells it like it is - players must protect their hand, and as soon as it hits the muck it's dead.  The short stack doubles up without even showing her cards.  If I'd called here, I'd have eliminated a player without showdown.  The floorlady shows a printed copy of the TDA rules to the protesting player and we move on.

So why, this time, is the hand recovered from the muck and played out?  I can't really explain this without sounding like an angle-shooting asshole, and that's exactly how I came across at the table.  I didn't want to push too much because, basically, I agree that if the dealer makes a mistake costing the player a pot then they should try to make an effort to put things right.  But here's how it actually played out.

Ethan the Floor whispers to the player.  The player whispers back.  Ethan picks up the muck, riffles through it and gives the player back two cards.  I ask why he's changing the rules and he says, "I have discretion and I'm doing it for the integrity of the game".  So much for integrity when it's one rule for one and one rule for another.  I was close to asking whether he knew the player, but thought better of it, took my shot against his pocket nines and left.

It was only on the bus back that I realised why this was so bad.  I don't care so much about the hand being played out, but that rule is there for a reason.  It's to ensure that cards cannot be swapped, and if your cards touch another player's unprotected cards as you throw them in, both hands are instantly killed.  This is exactly the way the situation would be handled if the floorman was colluding with the player.  That's not what I'm saying happened here, and I don't believe it did.  It was just a power-hungry floorman who thought he was doing the right thing, and was not going to let anyone tell him what the actual rule was.  So now, sadly, there's always going to be doubt in my mind as to whether something dodgy was going on here.  If they must go hunting for cards in the muck - which I've never seen done before, just the idea of doing so is ridiculous really - at least announce the cards you're looking for out loud, and then turn the muck face up to see if it's there and the cards are next to each other.

Four tournaments played and one cash - 3rd place at Binions - put me into a small profit for the trip so far.  Then I blew it by losing nearly $200 at $2/$4 on the coldest streak of cards I'd seen pretty much ever.  The table was great, including a Hawaiian woman who couldn't see the cards very well and sometimes just hoped she'd actually made a pair.  Wasn't happening for me though - it was 2h45m before I won my first pot (must be a record) with pocket aces, although the table had dropped to 6 players at that point so it was a little easier for a big pair to hold up.  The very next hand I had AA again, it won a second time, but then every other hand I hit I ended up splitting the pot.

In the Binions tournament I stayed to watch the last two battle it out with stupidly high blinds and they actually kept it going for some time.  Then, the internet poker gods intervened.  On a flop of 789, both players get it all in.  One shows 78, the other somehow found a call with AQ.  Turn J.  River T.  Lovely.

I'd wiped the slate clean on my poker results spreadsheets on 1st Jan.  Things didn't go exactly to plan with me playing a pretty random collection of tournaments and running quite cold indeed.  This one was random too - it was just whatever was starting after I managed to get online from my hotel in King's Cross.

PokerStars Tournament #40451369, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $10.00/$1.00
1101 players

You finished the tournament in 7th place.
A $363.34 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

It all went my way early on, getting some stupidly easy payoffs every time I hit a hand and I then managed to maintain and stay in the top pretty much all the way.  This was a 10 minute level tournament - not quite a speed game, but faster than usual and by the end the monster chip leader only had 20 big blinds in his stack.  I ended up busting after I pushed with KJs and ran into an eager caller with AJ in the blind.

I was deliberately not looking at my results spreadsheet to see how much I had to win to get back even for the year, or I'd probably have played much weaker and tried to limp into as big a payoff as possible, whilst never standing a chance of winning the thing.  This is a very good payoff for a $10 tournament and three hours work (although, of course, first place was over 2 grand) but it still doesn't quite get me out of the hole.  Nevertheless, I'm pretty darn pleased with the result, and in terms of performance against a large field, this is probably my best MTT result ever.  Certainly my best result on Stars.

As I've now been back from Vegas for longer than it is until I go again (T-8!) I should probably lay to rest the stuff  have from the last trip that I haven't talked about yet but would definitely have blogged if the crappy net access didn't let me down.

I had two tournament cashes.  I already wrote about the result at Binions, but I also hit a $964 payout at Caesars Palace.  This was a 12-way chop that gave everyone remaining a prize just better than the third place money.  Amazingly, only eleven accepted the deal to start with.  Blinds were about to double (they skip some levels in the lunctime tournament to get it over with quicker than the evening one) leaving nobody with a stack much bigger than 10 big blings.  He soon came round though, and I got to experience the bureaucratic nightmare that is a Harrah's casino poker payout of $600 or more.  Form-filling-tastic.

Somehow I'd lost my Total Rewards card (or at least I thought I had, it did turn up much later) whilst playing video poker at Caesars, resenting the downgrade from 9/6 Jacks or Better (99.5% payback) to a pathetic 7/5 paytable (96.1%).  To get the payout from the cardroom, I needed to hand over both my ID and the players card.  I tossed in my passport to let them get started on the paperwork and went hunting for the card, with paranoid visions of neither my passport nor my money being there when I got back.  The card wasn't where I thought I'd left it, so I had to beg the players club staff to give me a new one: at first they insisted I needed my passport to get it reprinted, but eventually they believed my story that I'd had to leave my ID in the poker room and just let me write my name on a piece of paper, found me on the system and asked me if the address on screen was correct.  A peculiar security procedure to say the least, especially after nothing else I had on me was acceptable proof of ID - including a Visa card that has a photograph on it, that they wouldn't even look at!  I was pleased when I eventually found my old card however - it was a World Series of Poker edition card from the summer and these things matter!

I did meet another English player who'd cashed in that tournament who passed on some useful information on how to be an illegal immigrant.  He'd been living there for some time now with his friends who play poker for a living.  He, he insisted, was not that good yet but tagged along and still enjoyed some success.  "How did you get a visa then", I obviously asked.  "Don't need one mate", he replied, going on to explain that as long as you leave the country every three months you can take full advantage of the visa waiver.  Nobody at the airport pays attention to when you were last here, he insisted.  As I've been a bit concerned about my return next weekend so soon after this trip, especialy travelling alone this time and almost certainly fitting some kind of profile, this was quite reassuring.  "The only thing is", he advised, "if you get into any kind of trouble they'll try to kick you out.  But we know a guy.  He'll take you Mexico for $99, then next day you can come right back".

That was my largest win of the trip, and a good result at the right time really, putting me back into the black for the trip.

My only other win of note was a profitable session playing $1/$2 No Limit at the Golden Nugget.  Apart from one session last summer playing $1/$3 in a local's game, which didn't help a great dea;, I was a complete noob to this game.  I played almost nothing all night, and somehow ended up leaving with $129 more than I came with after nearly six hours.  I'm still unsure whether loose no-limit games could suits me - I have a long way to go to be confident enough to take full advantage of the weaker players and the donators, but at least I could spot who they were.  The bigger pots I won, if I recall correctly, came from a well-timed check-raise holding only second pair - which I felt very good about - and a bizarrely played ace-jack that I might still hold back for another entry in the future.  All I can think looking back on that hand is that I played it like it was limit poker, and somehow it worked.  I know I have much to learn.

The Nugget is actually now home to the coolest swimming pool in the world.  That would be because it's got a goddamn shark tank in the middle of it!  And a water slide where you go right through the sharks!  On a chilly evening in December - definitely not swimming weather - the Nugget opened its doors just to show this baby off as soon as they'd finished building it.  And quite rightly so.  Best pool ever. 

I must also mention that we finally went to see Wayne Newton.  I'd heard that his voice isn't what it used to be, and they weren't kidding.  His orchestra and backing singers did a fairly good job of making just enough volume that you couldn't quite tell how badly he was choking.  There were plenty of talky bits for recovery time between musical numbers and he was also professional enough to always cough and splutter away from the microphone.  It was a very odd experience to be in the presence of greatness but have to imagine what the Wayne Newton experience is actually meant to be like.  He is clearly a fantastic entertainer, and still puts on a decent show, but it looks like he was way past his best several years ago.  Nonetheless, it's something that had to be ticked off the "things to do in Vegas before I (or they) die (or get eaten by a tiger)" list.

 So I think that's it - that trip is finally put to bed.  Until I remember something else, anyway.

Binions are trying so hard to position themselves as the home of poker in Downtown Las Vegas, if not in the whole city, but it doesn't appear to be working too well.

I played the 8pm tournament on 24/12 - way too tired after waking up at 3am on the first day there to be concentrating properly on poker, but I still made the final table and finished just out of the money.  It attracted just 36 players.  Sure, it's Christmas Eve - most tourists won't land for a few days (although you wouldn't know it from the traffic, which you can be sure I'll whinge about plenty) and the locals who play there regularly might easily have other commitments.  I thought very litle of the poor turnout until I heard someone asking whether this was typical and the dealer replied that they'd normally run with about five tables.  When I played the afternoon tournament later in the week, five tables was spot on.  Seven spots were paid but the last eight made a deal, giving $400 to me and six others and $1000 to the massive chip leader.

In the summer, these games were regularly getting 100+ runners both afternoon and evening.  I love the Binions card room and it's not good to see it struggle, especially when the casino floor was busier than it's been for quite a while.  This may or may not be aided by the new carpet (yes they did have one before, but the replacement is definitely not before time), and the Binion Dollar Babes, who were as good at dancing around to Shania Twain CDs as anyone I've ever seen.  These ladies are cunningly positioned right inside the main doors and visible from Fremont Street as you pass.  Who needs fountains to get people to stop walking outside your casino?

They've already cut the buy-in on the weekend tournaments (used to be $125) so it's $70, with a $40 rebuy, every day.  They're pushing a $29 poker room rate, a $4/$8 game with 5% rake and also trying to draw in bigger players with the Ultimate Poker Championship events.  I did play one of these, buying in directly for $660 after I dumped out of a satellite.  I'd already decided to buy into one, so I would play two if the satellite attempt worked.

This could very well be the best regular tournament in town - 10,000 starting chips and 40 minute levels, with the top seven coming back the next day to be filmed.  Once again, numbers were down and i was amazed that only 32 took part.  Four spots were paid, so three would to get their fifteen minutes on television without taking home a penny!

Those that bothered to show were mostly very tough players, and I was pleased to keep up with the pack until my KK ran into AA, with me getting it all in pre-flop and still wondering whether I could have avoided it.  If you don't want to hear the bad beat story, turn away now.

I raised first to act and, although just ahead of an average stack, did not have enough chips to put in a third raise of anything less than everything when he came over the top.  The player has only been at the table about 20 minutes and I don't have much information, but he's seen me being my usual tight self.  However, I still figure to be ahead more often than not here.  QQ or AK are both possible, and although there's a very good chance I'm only called if beaten, I move all-in for really no other reason than I can't work out how to play it post-flop if I call out of position leaving myself with just one pot-sized bet.  I can't fold KK pre-flop to a single re-raise and I can't check-fold any flop.

After the long walk home to the hotel next door, I scribbled some dirty maths and convinced myself the push was still +EV, even if we never expect him to have pocket jacks or worse.  Fortunately I binned the notes so you don't have to endure that right now, but I might have another go sometime.

That $400 chop was on the last night and I didn't want to push my luck with any more tournaments, so I sat in a $2/$4 game until I could stay awake no longer.  Things started rotten, with me flopping top two pair against bottom set in back-to-back hands.  I swung down $150 and not winning a single pot for over two hours before finally dragging one down with a QQ that I played much too softly against TT on a low board.  With confidence restored, a new beer on the way and having had plenty of time to work out that this table was, in fact, a great one I ran warm enough to claw it all back.  In my last hour at the table I was red hot, making quad jacks and then shortly afterwards quad eights.  There's no high hand jackpot at Binions yet (so there's only $4 taken from each pot, not $5) but you do get a shirt or a cap for hitting four of a kind or better.  I had one of each

I ended the seven hour session with $5 more than I started with. Not the best hourly rate in the world ever, but a respectable recovery.