The Lucky Donut

Apparently.  So far reported by two unregistered posters on Gutshot forum, and a call from someone who knows a guy who says he was there.

A few minutes later, the BBC agree:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6267603.stm

There has been a story in the news about some crooks being jailed for, apparently, cheating at poker.  I first heard this in a brief report on the radio so my first thought was exactly what they'd been done for - even in a fully licenced casino, the house pretty much can't (or wont) do anything about a poker cheat, on account of it being a game that's played only against other players.  If they're not stealing from the casino, the worst that will happen is a swift ejection from the premises.  They usually want to keep punter-worrying stories quiet, especially when they don't have to worry about getting their money back.

The crime in question took place in September 2005, but with the story breaking less than 24 hours before a verdict is expected in the Gutshot case, and showing the public - and the jury, if they are allowed to watch TV - that a licenced casino is a very safe place to be, the timing is impeccable.  I may very well say more about the Gutshot defense and their shocking definition of gambling and expert witness who does not understand conditional probability after judgement has been served later today.

Footage of the scam taking place confirms that the three men had actually been caught cheating at three card poker.  Just having the word poker in the name of the game will help to carry the story in the media, but really this is just a poker-style carnival game, played against the dealer and featuring a juicy house edge.

According to the ITV news report I saw last night, they got away with "three and a half (pause for effect) thousand pounds", suggesting that these guys were stupid enough to not only hang around long enough to be seen repeatedly winning at a game with horible odds, but also that they only got away with a little more than one month's minimum wage each.  The BBC coverage, however, suggested a much more respectible figure (although only a guestimate) of £250,000, won over a four month period. 

Yau Lam and his partners in crime - Fan Tsang and the fabulously named Bit Wong - used a lipstick camera concealed in his sleeve, positioned to see the faces of the cards as they were dealt.  The pictures were transmitted to a nearby van where his accomplice could speak the relevant information to a hidden earpiece.  Sky News has pictures of the kit.

As only 26% of hands in three card poker are decided by a pair or better, even seeing just one of the dealer's cards is very valuable indeed.  After placing an initial ante bet, the player has the choice of "raising" - doubling the bet to find out if he beats the dealer's hand - or "folding" and forfeiting his bet immediately.

The basic strategy is to raise if you hold a Q64 or better, otherwise fold.  However every time you have a queen-high hand but see that the dealer was dealt an ace or king, you can save a bet by playing opposite to the normal strategy because you already know you are beaten.  Quite clearly though, if you are only investing more money on winning hands, the casinos is soon going to notice.

In case you'd somehow forgotten, it was actually the World Poker Tour that invented fucking tiny cameras (not Noel Edmonds or Timmy Mallett as I believed in my younger days).  If the police didn't get these guys, WPTE's lawyers would have done, and that's a much scarier prospect than a few years of porridge.

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.

Harrah's have announced the schedule for this year's WSOP.  Someone who is disgustingly well bankrolled has 55 ways to win a bracelet in 2007 - 9 more than last year.  That is, of course, providing she is a female casino employee aged 50 or older.

The 52 open events now include much mixed-game fun: a $1000 buy-in SHOE, $2500 and $5000 HORSE and $1500 and $5000 mixed limit/no-limit Hold'em events.  These are in addition to the return of the $50,000 HORSE "real world championship".  Gone are the $1000 and $1500 bracelet events that took place alongside days 3 to 7 of the main event, and in fact you'll only get to play a $1000 No Limit Hold'em tournament at all if you are a lady or a senior.  The buy-in for these so-called World Championship events is almost as patronising as the fact that they have to take place at all.

"As part of our commitment to innovate for the benefit of all players, we've added nine bracelet events", says WSOP commish, Jeremy Pollack.  Yep, that'll be the reason.  Harrah's are, after all, world-renound innovators.  Like the groundbreaking conversion of Caesars Palace from one of the classiest, most opulent resorts in the world into - well - just another Harrah's with a few columns on the outside.  More likely it has something to do with the certain drop in the number of internet qualifiers this year and the huge amount of rake they're going to lose from the resulting smaller Main Event field.

They're still planning for 9000, which is 1000 more players than last year's capacity - the final total also includes several hundred alternates.  The World's Most Vacuous Cardroom is being expanded to accomodate up to 3000 players at a time and Main Event Day One will be split into three days, rather than the four they had last year.  Day 2, which was split into two, is now scheduled for one day only.  If they do manage to sell 9000 seats - I guess we'll just have to wait and see about this - it's going to be a very long first day, with over two thirds of the field having to bust out before the end of play.

The press release and full schedule can be found here:
http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/news/fullstory.sps?inewsid=393478

Just got home to find a beautiful home-made Christmas card in the mail, apparently from Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet.  I guess I haven't been paying enough attention to realise that these two were connected in some way, other than both offering insane amounts of reload bonuses - it's basically free rakeback for everyone as long as you keep cycling money through.

I haven't played on Absolute for, probably, a year.  Their bonuses attract a huge number of rocks - probably female rocks if their marketing is successful - so the games just aren't that good.  My hand history shows nothing more than me dumping a free $5 bonus on blackjack in September.  I've played maybe three or four tournaments on Ultimate Bet in total, never really got going on there after signing up because of some of the satellites they run.  I've never had any freebies from them.

But in the spirit of Christmas, here's some free money!  And not just a few dollars to my poker account with a play requirement before I can actually withdraw it... inside the Christmas card was a disposable American Express card preloaded with $25!

That's as good as real money.  If only I could think of somewhere that will actually accept it...

I don't mean to be overly dramatic, but this will change everything, one way or another.

Gutshot's trial kicked off this morning at Snaresbrook Crown Court.  Although quickly adjourned because of some kind of legal thing that I won't pretend to understand, it's still very much game on for the CPS and the UK casino industry vs a bunch people who just want to play cards.  No more delays - this is all expected to be settled, one way or another, in eight days.

Derek Kelly, who is facing criminal charges under the 1968 Gaming Act, published an article on Gutshot.com this morning, confidently looking forward to the challenge ahead whilst also taking time to reflect on how things had come to be this way.  In a week's time, it may be looked on as the first eulogy for what was once Europe's busiest card club.  Meantime, this along with the expected daily updates is essential reading for anyone who gives a shit about poker in the UK, not just the twenty thousand registered Gutshot members.

I still can't see any result being a good result.  If Gutshot win, it's also an easy victory for all of the imitators that have been springing up around the country playing the "if they can do it, so can we" card.  Unlicensed, unregulated, law-unto-themselves card clubs will spring up almost as fast as Subways (can you believe that even Stoke - surely the only city in the world still without any kind of franchise coffee house - has five Subways that I'm aware of, probably more, and another is apparently opening opposite the train station soon).  It's difficult to see whether that's much better - not taking into account, of course, the consequences for Mr Kelly - than if they lose.  The game - for those not wishing to play bingo poker at the major casino chains and pay a 25% rake - simply becomes underground, unlicensed and unregulated.

Thanks to the miracle of Sky+ I'm about to start watching New York Giants @ Philadelphia even though it started an hour and a half ago.

But by way of an update - woohoo, I'm five for five so far!

One more to go.  I need NYG to win or lose by less than seven, and it's a hundred and fifty quid in the bank baby!  High roller or what?

--

EXCITING (for me) UPDATE: NYG 20 - 23 PHI!

"See those blue and silver guys, Maggie? They're the Dallas Cowboys. They're Daddy's favorite team, and he wants them to lose by at least three points." -- Homer Simpson

I'm 3 for 3 on my NFL bets this weekend so far :)  I'd hurried a couple of paylays on just before everything kicked off last night, leaving it all to the last minute as usual.  No time to shop around, the price was Dallas+2 against Seattle.  A two point spread is probably the least useful of all football bets when you're backing the underdog, and I'd usualy try to take the team as a straight win to get better than even money when they win.

I mean, really, how often does a 2 point dog cover the spread without winning?

But once there was a possibility that it could happen, in between skipping the commercials in the second wildcard game this morning, the crazy gambler inside me took over, and that was the score I wanted.  It took one of the most bizarre plays I've ever seen - a Dallas fumble on their own goal line that everybody and their dog had a piece of, ruled first as a touchdown and after review as a safety - followed by a quick Seattle score and failed 2-point conversion.  But then, with four and a half minutes to play, we were staring a one point ball game in the face and the clock couldn't run down fast enough!

Probably the most exciting game I've watched all season, and there's me willing the score to stay the same.  It really didn't matter.  As long as Seattle didn't score again, I was winning, and that looked unlikely with the time remaining.  So I was just holding out for the "glamour" win.

And then, as it was probably my fault that Dallas fumbled a 19 yard field goal attempt with just over a minute to go, I couldn't help feeling just a little bit disappointed for them when it actualy did end 20-21.

Perhaps they don't know how powerful I am..

Not long left to get your decorations down, and take all the snow and those cheesy little Christmas graphics off your web sites...

They didn't hang around in Vegas.  This is the huge Christmas Tree shaped structure on Fremont Street, on Christmas Eve...

...and at 7am on December 26th, Christmas is officially over.

If you will allow me to bore you with more photos of the festive period in Las Vegas then read on...

Let's talk about the next trip before I'm done talking about the last one then...

Mansion are putting me in a top notch room in Caesars Palace for Friday and Saturday night, but as I'm going early I need somewhere to stay for the first five nights.  January is typically very quiet and great for room offers, and I've already had a few attractive looking mailers to help do things on the cheap.

Harrah's properties from $45/night:
In fact, when I clicked the link in the email, none were actually $45.  Flamingo rates started at $60 but there was nothing available on the dates I wanted for less than $90 at the start of the week.  All rates were well into three figures by the Wednesday.

Aladdin from $49/night:
"Your last chance to stay at the Aladdin" before it finally becomes Planet Hollywood.  Claire went hunting for Silver Strikes here last week whilst I was playing at Caesars and reported a much changed interior - not a single fake plastic jewel in sight.  The offer is available only on six random dates in January, but it includes my first two nights.  However it already says the Sunday is sold out (yeah, ok) and every other night is $169.  In fact the Las Vegas Hilton was also showing sold out for the duration of my trip, which I don't believe either - unless there's a very large Star Trek convention on I don't know about.

Terribles free stay:
This one actually is pretty good.  The envelope promised an "Exciting Special Offer!!! Inside!!".  Yes!!! Punctuated! Like! That!!  It's two midweek nights free, and it wouldn't cost the earth to extend it for three more nights.  Although Terribles isn't half as smokey and dingy as it used to be, I'd still feel pretty isolated there by myself.  It's walkable to the Hard Rock, possibly to Tuscany, otherwise I'd need a car or a lot of cabs to get anywhere.

So the criteria for choosing a place came down to (a) must have internet so I can work and (b) must be close to a good card room so I can play.  The Hilton looked a good first choice at first - even though it's a (large) block away from the strip it's on the monorail, and would definitely be somewhere I could work.  After this trip I'm dubious about the quality of internet access downtown, and many of the rooms are small and probably wouldn't have a desk, so even the superb $29/night poker rate at Binions would be a dodgy gamble.

I set Travelaxe on the case and it gave me a few options.  Call me a snob, I just didn't fancy the Gold Spike - even at $22/night.  But this is why Travelaxe rocks - it found me a Premier Tower room at the Stratosphere for $53/night, when their direct booking web page said $99 upwards.  There's still a $5/night resort fee to add, and their internet isn't cheap ($49/week) but I know the net works and I know that rooms in this tower have desks - we were there last Christmas.  Actually we'd booked a World Tower room - the much smaller hotel building, presumably left over from Vegas World - but there was some blood on the bathroom walls (I do have a photo, but really it could be of anything) which we discovered was plenty reason enough to get an instant upgrade!

As well as being a home-from-home (this will be the 7th time I've stayed there I think), the Strat is a great location for me really.  It has the shortest cab ride to downtown of any of the strip hotels and it's walkable to the Sahara which has decent poker tournaments three times a day, and a monorail station.  At $5 a ride, when you can get a cab to almost anywhere for $10, I've always though the monorail would only really be worth it when you're travelling alone.  Now I guess I'll find out.

There is formula to certain stories on Radio 1 news that runs something like this.

(someone)
who (did something bad)
has been found guilty of (some offense).
He could face (some punishment).

In the story they just read, the blanks were filled as follows.

person = "a doctor"

bad thing = "texted a patient asking for a date"

offense = "acting unprofessionally"

punishment = "the sack"

Really struggling to fill the 40 second bulletin today...

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.

Back from Vegas. Mustn't grumble - going back again in less than three weeks.

Ten days without blogging - I didn't plan for that so I need to regain momentum now. When you land a hotel that only pretends to have internet access though, it's kind of a problem. Sure, there was a decent wifi signal. It looked to be working great too, right up until I put in my credit card number. It accepted and told me to go surf. I tried. It got slow. It died. It never recovered. Still don't know whether they actually charged me or, really, who the hell it was operated by. The hotspot name was Cheetah something or other (hah - not kidding), and I'll find out more if they do actually think I'm going to pay for it.

So all my plans to write lots of random crap about Vegas at Christmas time were thwarted. I did say to Claire I should try to find some net access and at least put up a post to explain, but then she pointed out that my reader was also stuck in Vegas with no net access.  Thanks.

I do have a notebook with a few scribbles and a few hundred photos to sort through as soon as I'm a bit more awake to do that so there'll be some retrospective holiday cheer to come. Before Twelfth Night too, with any luck. Here's a very quick summary, with elaborations to follow:

Two final tables, two cashes and two bustouts with pocket kings - which I'll try to argue I couldn't avoid - from 7 tournaments. Christmas lunch is just dinner with a couple more turkeys served at lunchtime.  Wayne Newton is still a Vegas legend, but it would be nice if he could still actually sing.

I found a link to the fireworks we missed here: http://tinyurl.com/swega.  Bear with the commercial - it's worth watching.  My New Years Eve was celebrated with the pilot reading out the most pathetic countdown you ever heard and a plane half-full of passengers mumbling a bit.  Nobody dared sing Auld Lang Syne, or lift up their top.  Happy New Year.