The Lucky Donut

Putting rude words as your name in the high score table on a pub quiz or "skill game" machine.

There should be a snappier name for this wholesome activity.  May I suggest "poo-tabling", derived from my very favourite - and almost always first choice - word to use?

It's short, simple, slightly rude, a little graphic (if you think about it for too long) and obviously not a real name - but hardly offensive, even pre-watershed.

Some machines are poo-friendly, some are not.  Yesterday the mix-and-muddle-the-fruit game that I can't even remember the name of didn't like like poo, which is a little unfair when a different game on the same machine already had a big cock.  Really.

At least it's clear to see that we are not alone in wanting to - nay, enjoying - testing the limits of a computer program's profanity filter.

That's Claire's finger doing the honours.  This poo was a joint effort, and top score on the table won us a massive two quid, after an extremely courageous decision to gamble after hitting the £1 mark.  Even so, wanting our first choice of name to be immortalised for days, maybe even weeks, was too much to ask.

Jerry Yang (a new poker millionaire, not the Yahoo! billionaire) took it, with pocket eights against Tuan Lam's ace queen with all the money in pre-flop.  After getting outflopped, he runner-runnered a two-gap gutshot straight for $8.25m.  A true champion.

5 Q 9
(unnecessary long pause)
7
(even longer pause)
6

A novelty side bet, that is.  A bracelet... nah, he still hasn't got one.

Thanks to some dodgy geezer streaming the ESPN pay-per-view coverage on a dodgy web site, I've been able to watch some of the Main Event final table live.  Although, I didn't exactly sit and watch it intently because it's just a little bit on the dull side.

Of particular dullness are the incomprehensibly long delays where the dealer dutifully freezes (I think he's also required to not breath) between dealing each round of cards when a player is all-in.  They must have to take a moment to drag in a few more cameras, as it's very important to make sure they can catch the reactions of all two players in the hand, get a fresh look at the prize money, and also see all five board cards as they sprint across almost half a yard of felt.  How on earth does the ESPN crew cope with NFL games?

When everyone's ready the announcer says, "Here comes the turn card".  Thanks for that.  These guys have been playing this tournament for eight out of the past 12 days.  Right now it's level 32 ($150,000/$300,000 blinds with a $40,000 ante) so that's about 64 hours, not counting breaks, in total so far.  They all know what comes after the flop by now, even if they didn't when they paid $10,000 to enter.

The live audience may not have been paying such close attention as the players the past fortnight, but they turned up to watch the World's Slowest Poker Game - it's not like there's nothing else to do in Vegas today - so they must have at least a passing interest in the game.  I'm pretty sure they know that the last card dealt is called the river.

The folks watching at home (some of them at least) paid $19.95 to have 16 hours of their life drained away, so they probably know a bit of the lingo too.  Even if they didn't, there's still Phil Gordon and A. N. Sidekick saying pretty much the same thing as the announcer at pretty much the same time.  And when it's shown to the masses on ESPN proper in August, there'll still be Norman Chad.  (I can't possibly even start to go there).

So back to the victory.  Phil Hellmuth was making his way to the commentary booth - which is actually a desk - and Gordon made a bet with Sidekick: how long before Hellmuth mentions his eleven bracelets?  The line was set at 45 seconds, and Gordon took the under.

Hellmuth was given a flattering introduction... and then...

36 seconds.  $100.  Ship it.

The New Frontier closed yesterday.

The decision to close only came a couple of months ago, but it's been on the cards - and on the Las Vegas Casino Death Watch list - for as long as I can remember, so I made sure I took plenty of photos in January.

Another classic sign goes dark, and now as far as I can remember there's just one major freestanding backlit sign left on the Strip, at the Tropicana.  I don't remember if the Riviera has one out front, but even if it does neither would surely have very long left.

The Frontier was a dump and has been pretty much left to rot for years.  I will have no sentimentality for the casino whatsoever.

The sign, on the other hand, was fabulous...

There are some pictures of the Frontier's final day here:
http://www.letis.com/dmr/pics/vegas/finfront/

Remember what I was saying about cheap limit tournaments, where most of the players don't actually want to be there?  I had the pleasure of getting my pocket aces cracked by one of them just now, but it was more than made up for when I flopped a set a little later.

This is a $1k guaranteed tournament on Empire Poker that I dropped on during late registration.  With 299 players and a $6 buy in, it's somewhat different to the uber-tight $215 tournament I played last week.  There's just 159 players remaining at the first break - one hour in and nearly half the field has gone broke already.  I expect most of them wanted to.

As no hand history convertor appears to work with limit tournament hands, I'll have to do my best to recount the action using actual words.  Skip about four paragraphs if you want to avoid what is technically a bad beat story, even though I couldn't really less about losing that hand.

I have pocket aces in middle position.  There's a limp and a raise ahead of me, and I 3-bet.  Six players see the flop: 5c 3c 9d.  Yes, six.  I pinched myself to make sure I wasn't in Vegas yet.  Sadly not - it's still seven days away.  I check/call the flop hoping to see a good turn card so I can punish the draws on the next betting round.  A risky play, but nobody's folding for one small bet here, and I don't expect anyone to raise ahead of me if I bet.

OK, one player folds for one small bet when it comes from the player to my left, and five of us see the turn: Kd.  It looks like a good card for me, except that there's now two flush draws to avoid in a 5-way pot.  I can't let anyone draw for free, so I bet.  At first I'm happy to see the next player raise, although when I work everything out it's not as good as it first seemed.  I realise that I'm way out of practice at counting large multi-way pots: anyone else tagging along now is going to get pot odds of at least 6-1.  It's really as much as I could hope for to try to force out the draws, but it's not quite enough.

However somehow we're heads for the river: Jc.  It's now just a case of whether I actually have the best hand and I should probably bet/fold here, but I check/call instead.  Of course he had rivered the flush with 7c 8c.

Let re-evaluate: (1) cold-calling three bets pre-flop with a very poor hand (2) open betting a weak flush draw and gutshot on the flop and (3) raising the turn when calling with this draw would be infinitely superior.  This beat was actually great news for me.  His flop play wasn't terrible, but I now know that this player wants to play big pots and won't give up with much of anything.  He is playing a death-or-glory strategy and has potential to throw his chips away.  I just need to get lucky to capitalise.

Getting lucky happened with pocket deuces.  I'd limped and our friend raised pre-flop so I stuck around to see three more cards.  One of them was exactly what I wanted.  The flop: Tc 2s Kc.  Can I check/raise him here?  You bet.  I check/call the flop, hoping to win at least half a big bet extra by waiting until the turn to speak up.

It works.  The turn: a harmless 5d.  I unleash the check/raise and he makes it three bets.  Well, if I've been screwed by another set-over-set here so be it.  Much more likely he has one or two pair.  I cap it.

River: Ts.  Not great.  Although I have a full house, he just caught up if he had KT.  But, given the high likelihood of spewage, I decide to go for it.  I lead straight out, he raises, three from me and he caps.  His ace-king is far from good, and I rule.  Hello the chips.

A result in this tournament isn't going to be life changing, although $388 first prize isn't bad at all for a $6 investment.  But still it's more much-needed limit tournament practice, and hopefully once the field has thinned a little it will play a little more sensibly.  I just need to run well enough to maintain a playable stack for a few more rounds.

EDIT: 4th for $104.65.  Woohoo.  Trip report may follow tomorrow, not sure yet

I've said it before so I'll say it again: everyone loves a graph.

Just you try to deny it.

So I've been fiddling around with an idea I had for posting real time poker tournament updates to my blog, and it's evolved into something rather more fancy than I first anticipated.  The updates will look something like this.

This is not my result.  It comes courtesy of mrmacacan on the UK Poker Life forum, where I've been making a nuisence of myself looking for testers for the new system.  This tournament is all over now and mrmacacan won, which is why he gets the dubious honour of being immortalised right here.  You never know, someday someone might even notice.

When I'm in Vegas (T-8, it's so close now!) the graphs I post here will be live updates with my chip stack progress in real time.  For anyone with a passing interest in how I'm doing - and particularly those who have a piece of my action - you can now get that information at-a-glance from a chart, saving you valuable seconds.  Stakes in me for the Orleans Open are now sold out, thanks to eBay.  Two of the three winning bidders have even paid me already, and I'm delighted that I actually managed to meet my bankroll fundraising goal on the very first try!

It's a fiendishly simple system, but really quite funky - even if I do say so myself.  At any time while you're playing, you can send your chip counts in a text message and the graph will update itself automatically.  So far it only have one UK-based incoming number, but there's no reason that numbers in other countries can't be added, so that world domination can ensue.

If only I'd come up with the idea a few weeks ago, gazillions of players at the WSOP could have been whipping out their cellphones to create their very own graph for the benefit of friends back at home.  While there's plenty of live reporting going on at the Rio, your chances of being covered are very slim indeed: first you have to be drawn to sit at a table with a known professional, and then you have to get involved in an interesting hand with them.  Self-inflicted live updates are the wave of the future.

I'm still adding features to the software and I'm not prepared yet to say that it's completely stable, but if you want to have a peek and get your own graph, mosey on down to chipgraph.com.

Of course, it's extremely important that you understand the house rules regarding cellphones at the poker table, in case you happen to come up against an angle-shooting prick like David Singer.  Singer was eliminated from this year's Main Event on Day 1 after moving all-in with the worst hand, but is still adamant that his opponent's hand should have been killed when his phone rang.  The WSOP rules (rule 82) prohibit players from talking or texting when a hand is in progress, so Singer immediately jumped at the opportunity to try to get something for nothing.

Did his opponent answer the call?  No.  However, rather than subjecting the table to thirty seconds of whatever dreadful polyphonic soundalike ringtone identified that phone as his own while two players contested a significant pot, he pressed a button to reject the call.    I guess if you know you're about to lose ten grand, courtesy means nothing.

Fortunately, depsite Singer playing the quintessential sore loser and threatening to take the matter to the Gaming Commission, common sense has prevailed.

My computer died today.  I fixed it (because I'm great, obviously) but it was the strangest thing.

I'd nudged the base unit with my knee after I pulled my chair under the desk and there came a little strangling noise from the PC.  I don't wish to mock the sound of an actual strangling where a person may really die, but if I had to illustrate the sound in a comic book, it would look something like this.

ZWIP-EEEE-GLUCK-EEEE-CLAK-CLAK-EEEE-VZZZZ-VZZZZ-THWUP-THWUUUUZWUP

On second thoughts, perhaps I'd hire a professional to do the sound effects.

Abruptly, the sound ceased.  I thought no more of it until a couple of minutes later when everything went black.  The PC powered down, and only then did I begin to notice the rather nasty cooking smell.

Out came the screwdriver.  I wanted to find out exactly what was burning, but almost everything was hot and it took me a few really sensible attempts at powering the machine on and letting it die several painful deaths before I noticed the CPU fan was not spinning.  Then I noticed the reason why.

Out came the camera.  The loose green cable in the picture below is looking a little mangled, but in remarkable condition considering it's fate.  It had somehow managed to wrap itself around the fins of the fan.

So how does this happen?  I have no idea.  Effectively, someone shoved a stick through the spokes on my bicycle, except the fan spins a lot faster than a bike wheel - 3600 RPM, so the PC says.  I can't even imagine trying to doing this by hand even if I wanted to.  It'd just be a painful way to trim your fingernails.

So did I learn anything from the $215 limit tournament that, truthfully, I should have never played?  Yes I did, but it definitely wasn't worth the money.  I'm sure I could have learned exactly the same thing from a $30 or $50 tournament.

One thing I'd forgotten is that fixed limit poker plays out much slower than no limit, and how significant that could be in a tournament.  Because many more hands go to a showdown, you get to see play hands per level.  Even starting with 2500 chips (62.5 big bets at 20/40), it didn't seem long before everyone was short stacked.  After an hour, 29 players (of 36 in total) still remained but with the next level being 150/300 and the average stack at just over 3100 chips, most players are already just two pots away from busto.

Players don't go broke in the early stages, and even the very worst - or the very unluckiest - bleed away slowly, so unless you can accumulate a lot of chips (usually by runing very hot) you end up like the rest of the field: waiting to see a big hand and hoping it holds.  Therefore I suspect that, during the first few levels, looking for opportunities to play hands with big pot potential like suited connectors and small pocket pairs cheaply is much more valuable than trying to milk a tiny edge from your very strong hands pre-flop.  One extra bet won in level 1 is only worth half a bet as soon as the clock chimes in level 2.

The main point of strategy I'd overlooked though was blind play.  Whether it was trying to defend against suspected stealers or finding opportunities to steal myself, I never really got it right.  With more severe blinds stealing becomes more attractive and defending with marginal hands - particularly out of position to a button raise - becomes a very volatile strategy.

With a short stack, blind play requires great care indeed.  There is no such thing as a resteal move - the best you can do is offer the raiser 5-1 pot odds to see a flop - and you cannot open-push in order to put maximum pressure on the blinds.  If you decide to raise, you have to be prepared to play a flop.

The biggest mistake you can make in limit hold'em is to fold the best hand for a single bet.  However in a tournament, making thin value calls can be devastating when that single bet represents a large proportion of your stack, or even your last few chips.  Now that I am a little more prepared to think ahead, hopefully I will be able to avoid going too far in situations where a crippling river call would be mandatory.

I made many notes to try to convince myself I was getting something of value of the tournament.  I forced myself just to pick just one hand to write about.  I began with 1130 in chips - just over 5 big bets at the 100/200 level:

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, Q. Hero posts a blind of 50.
6 folds, Button raises, Hero 3-bets, 1 fold, Button caps, Hero calls.

Flop: A, 6, 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets, Hero calls.

Turn: 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets, Hero calls.

River: 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button checks.

I found myself insta-raising with AQ from the small blind when facing a button raise.  As you do.  However, I'm pretty sure this was a mistake when the reraise already committed about 30% of my chips to the pot, and possibly more if it was capped.  Although a smooth call encourages the big blind to come along for the ride, in this situation I think it's a risk you have to take.

I should have chosen to control the pot size, rather than to force out the third player in the hand.  I figure that my hand is probably the best and I definitely want to see a flop, but I'm not going to check-call off almost all of my stack one bet at a time with just ace high.  Leading out when I miss the flop is going to be the only chance to bluff at this pot, and the smaller the pot, the more significant my flop bet will be.

So with the pot as big as it could possibly be, I immediately decided to just check-call with the top pair in an attempt to lose as little as possible.  His pre-flop cap showed strength, or so I thought, so AK was a very likely holding.  I couldn't lay the hand down, but I did not expect to be winning.  This thinking is dreadful.

Had I thought ahead like I was meant to, I would have realised that one more small bet and two big bets would have left me with just 230 chips - barely one big bet, and almost no chance of recovery in the tournament.  The decision to go all the way if I hit the flop should have been made pre-flop.  Then, when I do hit, the objective is to get as many chips into the pot as possible.

That means I have to try to get in a check-raise for a big bet.  So I should check-call the flop and then let him bet again on the turn - as I did, but for the wrong reason, and without firing the check-raise with a hand that was committed to this pot.  If there's no turn bet it means I've got it all sewn up so then I can lead the river (but probably don't win any more money).

Trying to trap here, even without being at all certain that my hand is best, gives him the opportunity to lose money with worse hands than mine, and I don't scare off unimproved pocket pairs by admitting that I liked the ace on the flop.  It gives me the best chance to get all my money in the pot, which is what I clearly have to do if I make a hand that I'm prepared to take to showdown.

He showed JJ, and I survived - for a little longer at least.

Here endeth the $215 lesson.

Well I'd been hoping to drop on a non-stupid fixed limit tournament all week, and it just happened.  Right there staring at me in the Poker Stars lobby the minute I signed in... way beyond my bankroll but how could I possibly say no after all this time?

$215 Weekly Fixed Limit Hold'em - Late Reg.

Baptism of fire coming right up then.  It's 10/20 blinds in level one with 2500 starting chips, and I got a walk on my first big blind.  Definitely playing a little tighter than I've seen before.

EDIT: Nitted my way to 14th place.  Wasn't as useful as it should have been for $215 but at least I did pick up some things to consider.  Probably post some hands tomorrow.

Sometimes I see things in my web stats that disturb me just a little.  Such as discovering that not only did I appear on the first page of Google results for the very specific search phrase "motel room swallowings of dicks", but that three people actually clicked on that link to view my blog.

I have to assume that they were disappointed.

In just three weeks time I'll be playing the first of four tournaments I plan to enter in the Orleans Open.  Three no-limit Hold'em poker tournaments, and one fixed limit folly.  My backers may be wondering what I've been doing in order to prepare for the fixed limit event.

Fixed limit tournaments are quite rare - The Orleans has two $40 limit tournaments in their normal weekly schedule, but they're the only ones in town that I know of.  I've never played one live before.  I've played a few online, but mostly by accident on Party Poker, where they still insist on labelling fixed limit as simply "Hold'em" and you're meant to remember that the default format for a poker tournament is fixed limit.  The infinitely more popular no-limit tournaments are labelled "NL Hold'em" and pot limit is marked "PL Hold'em", so I guess the distinction is there.  But given that even the times I've intended to enter a limit tournament, I've ended up at a table with at least half the players not wanting to be there, they might consider making a simple change for the benefit of many of their players.  Oh, never mind, I just remembered who we're talking about...

From what I remember, the first few hands always go like this:

Raise raise cap call call call call call.
Bet raise raise cap call call call call call.
Bet raise raise cap call call call call call.
Bet raise raise cap call call call call call.

The sound of half a dozen players trying to bust out so they can start again in a different tournament that they actually want to play.  But even after all that action, the losers still have 80% of their starting stack left.  And so the pattern begins again.

You never know, it might be just the same as this in a $540 festival tournament, but I doubt it.

I've not really found anything lately, but I'm still on the lookout for some limit tournaments I could try online.  I want to find a tournament with a decent sized field (I remember playing in a field of just seven on Empire a while back) and one where the players do actually want to be there, so I can get a feel for how the dynamics of the game change as the limits increase.

In case I don't find anything suitable in time though, I can always keep in mind the strategy employed by the youngest ever World Series of Poker bracelet winner, Steve Billirakis.  He won Event #1, $5000 World Championship Mixed Hold'em event - which alternated between no-limit and fixed limit every 30 minutes - aged 21 years and 10 days.

In this interview with Phil Gordon from the Expert Insight WSOP Podcast, Billirakis revealed (obviously I'm paraphrasing) that he is an arrogant rich kid who was desparate to get onto TV playing poker as soon as possible after his 21st birthday, without having - or thinking he might need to have - any idea how to actually play a game that made up 50% of this tournament.  Sadly, he got very lucky.

LOL dickaments.

"I don't have much experience playing limit Hold'em, so I pretty much avoided playing limit Hold'em"

Oh, if you still want a piece of my action, I only have 5% left for sale, and it's going on eBay very shortly if I don't shift it!

With the twins in Big Brother putting Stoke-on-Trent on the map in their very own, very pink way, Charley and Laura had this to say about their hometown:

I finally figured out how to do this YouTube thing all the cool kids are doing, and I made the clip especially short so there's a chance somebody will actually watch it.  But still, even though it's only a 25 second clip, I know you probably didn't brother pressing play.  So here's what you need to know.

Charley: Where they born, Stoke-on-Trent?
Laura: Yeah.
Charley: Maybe they're a bit behind time.
Laura: Could be.
Charley:  By about ten years?
Laura: Yeah, ten I'd say.  Yeah.

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to be shopping in Hanley and noticed that there was a new Costa Coffee at the entrance to the Potteries Shopping Centre.  Pretty unremarkable you might think if you come from anywhere that lives in the twenty first century.  But this is actually Stoke's first franchise coffee house.

OK, there was a tiny Costa inside a branch of a building society for a while, but it didn't last long, and that doesn't really count.  This is the first genuine, stand-alone chain coffee joint in town.

Not only that, but I saw a Millies Cookies that wasn't there before and some kind of new chain juice bar I could care less about (cookies, on the other hand...) - they must have popped up about the same time.  It's almost as if Hanley suddenly became a modern town overnight.

Still, Stoke must still be the only place in the universe that doesn't have a Starbucks.  It must have been passed over so many times already, when other nearby cities of similar sizes have multiple franchies.  Nottingham, for example, has three Starbucks and Derby has two.  With over 500 stores in the UK, and a new stores opening every two weeks in London alone, you would think that England's 12th largest city might get a look in.

So I had to check just when the almost-nationwide infestation of such places began.  Starbucks first set up shop in the UK in May 1998 - just over 9 years ago.

Charley, you were so close.

Not everyone loves Las Vegas, so in the interest of providing balanced - although in this case clearly wrong - opinion, here is another rant (here's the first one) from BBC movie reviewer Mark Kermode.

".. Las Vegas is not a place to go and have a good time, Las Vegas is a cesspit on the face of the Earth and it shouldn't be there.."

Ocean's Thirteen should remains in the box office charts for a few more weeks, so I'm sure we'll have more of these to look forward to...