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September 9, 2006
End of AC
On day 2 of my Atlantic City trip I played in the $750 NL tournament. I started off by picking up a few chips but then quickly missed a 15 outer for half of my stack, took a 2 outer for the other half, and was gone before the end of round 1. I spent the rest of the day playing poker online (won a bit in the cash games) and watching tennis and bad movies on HBO.
Day 3 was the limit hold'em event. I had been offered a ticket to the US Open and was planning on going if I was out early enough. I predicted the night before that I would last long enough to miss out on that but not long enough to make any money and that's pretty much what happened. I was short-stacked all day, only winning the pots where I went all-in and taking bad beats right after to become short-stacked again. It's actually amazing that I made the dinner break, and not the good kind of amazing since it caused me to miss watching Federer delivering an ass-whooping.
Moreover my table was full of the dumbest people I'd ever played with. And when I call someone dumb or stupid or an idiot here I usually mean bad at poker (I realize more than most that there's a difference between being unintelligent and a bad poker player) but in this case I mean stupid. Actually borderline retarded would be more accurate.
In limit tournaments you usually have one or two guys who can't ever figure out how much they have to bet. The nice thing about no-limit is that you simply decide how much you want to put in, and except for when people try to raise less than the minimum (which few people can ever determine, but luckily most people tend to naturally raise more than that at all times so it doesn't come up too often) you just make up the bet size you want. In limit you have to bet a predetermined amount and therefore actually have to do some very simple math. Apparently figuring out what 75 times 3 is without a calculator is beyond most people's ability. I'm not joking or exaggerating when I say that 7 of the people at the table had to ask how much they had to put in the pot nearly every time they bet or raised.
I've never been so annoyed with players in my entire life. We were seeing maybe 20 hands an hour. The dealers were typically no better than the players at doing any simple arithmetic, and side-pots sometimes required calling the floor over. It got to the point where I was basically doing everything but shuffling cards and pushing chips because the only other two people at the table capable of such advanced tasks as addition and subtraction had gone broke by round 4 and were replaced by more idiots.
Out of the 15 or so dealers we had there were maybe three that didn't repeatedly make gross errors. I've never seen such bad dealing before, and I played at the WSOP for the last three years so that's saying something. I sat by and watched as one pot or another was shipped with an incorrect amount of chips, or as players somehow all put in $400 on the turn when we were playing $75/$150 and nobody was all-in. On numerous occasions I had to help a dealer split a pot because two players had the same hand and the dealer couldn't figure out how to do it. On one hand there was one 500 chip and ten 100s and the dealer couldn't figure out how to divide it up. He made two stacks of five 100 chips and then put the 500 chip on top of one of them and pushed it to a player. Then when people told him it was wrong (he was pushing 1000 to one player and 500 to another) he took the 500 chip and tossed it to the other guy. The guy tossed it back, at which point I tossed in four greens (worth 25), took out one black (worth 100, effectively making change) and made two stacks of 750. He stared at it for maybe 20 seconds before he saw what happened, then told me not to touch the pot. I said "I don't feel like sitting here for ten minutes while you figure it out. If you don't like it you can call the floor and I'll tell them how you can't even chop a pot correctly." Needless to say he didn't call the floor.
But as stupid as the dealers were, the players were even worse. Just to demonstrate how dumb one guy was, on a break he and I ended up in the same elevator (right after he had limped in with 46s and then hit a 2 outer against me on the river after calling the flop and turn with bottom pair). He wanted to go to the fourth floor, but initially forgot that elevators cannot read your mind and you have to push a button to tell it what floor to go to. He stood there breathing out of his mouth for a few seconds while other people got in and then said "damn, almost forgot" and pushed the 4 button. Another passenger said to his wife "let's go to the spa" and pushed the Spa button, which is really floor 2, and below all of the numbered buttons and above Casino, the floor we were on. The elevator went up one floor to the spa and the guy from my table saw that the little LCD that says what floor you are on read "S" and said "whoops, missed my floor." He got out (right behind the guy who said he was going to the spa) and, as the door closed, I could see him enter a flight of stairs. I then realized that he had mistaken the S for a 5, which wouldn't be totally unreasonable (since they look alike) if not for the fact that the guy who said he was going to the spa had exited, the fact that the trip had been way too short for anything short of a Soyuz to have ascended four stories, and the fact that the button for floor four, which he had pressed only moments earlier, was still lit. At least me and the other passenger got a good laugh out of his stupidity as we made our brief stop on floor four before continuing up to our floors. I wonder how long that donkey stood on the first floor before he realized what happened, or if he ever figured it out.
While at the table I actually got to the point where I wanted to go broke just to get away from those idiots, that's how dumb they were. I've been playing poker for seven years and that's the first time that has ever happened. Seriously, I'm not kidding, the prospect of doubling up and having to suffer another hour of that made me sick to my stomach. I can't even begin to describe how miserable the entire situation was, with the poor dealing, the freezing room temperature (why are all poker tournaments like that? Have tournament directors never heard of the thermostat?), and the constant waiting while those retards tried in vain to figure out how much it cost to raise. If it weren't for my headphones (their chat was exactly what you'd expect from such neanderthals) I probably would have just got up and left.
They all played poker about as well as you would expect too. Most pots were contested with at least five players. People were open limping left and right. The same with cold-calling threebets. One idiot reraised me every time I raised (and I was playing fairly tight, which I didn't enjoy but had to do) which was good because he was the only guy all day who didn't bad beat me after putting in a bunch of money drawing slim. He was wearing a weird top hat and trench coat and looked like a gay Dick Tracy. He should have used his little radio watch to ask someone with an IQ above that of the average cassowary how to play his hands, because then they might have told him that he shouldn't three bet me preflop with 78 offsuit. If it wasn't for him gifting me all of his chips I wouldn't have lasted past round 3 and I wouldn't have had to suffer through the table from hell for 8 hours.
Though not all people who are bad at poker are stupid, all people who are stupid are bad at poker, and that table was, as my Bahamian cab driver would have said, "off the fuckin' chain". I honestly haven't seen play like that since I used to play $3/$6 games at the Akron Las Vegas nights, and even then the dumbest of those people could figure out the bet sizes. Even a $0.5/$1 game on Party Poker is much tougher than my table ever was in that tournament. Only in America could people that stupid have $500 worth of discretionary income to spend on a poker tournament. If those guys were born in Africa most of them would have died of starvation by the age of 12.
After I finally busted (and that was truly the first, and I hope the last, time that I have ever been happy about busting from a tournament) I had just enough time to get up to the room before the Steelers game started. Right before kickoff I checked my email to find a note from Mansion basically stating that I had improperly placed the wager and that if it lost it would not be refunded. I thought "this is great, I'm running so badly that I'm even going to lose on a freeroll."
Mansion's letter said that I had placed the bet in the sports exchange, rather than the sports book. I thought to myself "that's impossible" and was pretty sure that I had even specifically mentioned in this very blog not to do that. And then I remembered that Google Desktop caches webpages I visit. It turned out that I was right, I had placed the wager in the sports book. All I can think of is that the real problem was that their terms actually specified you had to stand to win $1,000 (i.e. take the wager at -110) whereas I stood to win more than that since when I made the bet it was at -107.
Either way though I figured I was screwed and was going to be stuck with the loss. So I suddenly found myself with an accidental $1,100 wager on a football game. That's more than fifty times as much as I have ever wagered on a sporting event (excluding situations where I couldn't lose) before. I don't really care for sports (I consider football tolerable, which is about the best it gets) and I don't get any joy out of gambling, so sports betting isn't really my bag. The last thing I'd ever want to risk $1,100 on is a football game where I have no edge, but I found myself a few minutes before it kickoff with nothing left to do but wave the terrible towel and hope.
Among Borgata's many recent improvements (that place could now fit in on The Strip, and is probably in my top 5 favorite casinos) are a few nice new restaurants. They now have a Bobby Flay steakhouse and a Michael Mina seafood restaurant, but my favorite is their Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill, whose menu is a carbon copy of the one at the MGM Grand in Vegas. It has all of my favorites, most notably the Truffled Potato Chips with Maytag Blue Cheese (please resist the urge to make the same washing machine jokes everyone else does) and the chopped vegetable salad. The only difference is the beer selection, which is better in Vegas, if only because they have Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The best they had at Borgata was Pyramid Hefeweizen, which, with a lemon in it, is still a fantastic beer, but damn it I need a good pale ale.
So I decided to go hang out at the bar there and root the Steelers to victory with good food and random people. I also got a very funny story out of it for my good blog that I'll try to toss up either tonight or tomorrow. Luckily Pittsburgh won (it was a nail-biter until two interceptions late in the game put it away) so I ended up winning a little over a grand on the game.
And, better still, when I looked at my affiliate account on their site today I found that I had made much more than that in referral fees from telling you guys about it here. Apparently 59 of my readers signed up and took the wager, meaning that, by posting about it here, I made you readers almost $60,000. That's freakin' awesome. And don’t worry, you guys made me a little chunk of change too. Win-win scenario there. Blogging is great sometimes. By the way, big ups to Craniac are in order for tipping me off to this whole thing. I definitely owe him dinner over that one.
This morning I decided that I've had enough poker for the week (and really for this lifetime) and came home. I guess that's the nice thing about driving, when you want to leave you just jump in your car and go. And damn do I love my car by the way. Seriously, if you're looking for an SUV in that price range, buy yourself a Lexus RX350. That car is perfect in every way. Every time I get in that thing I say to myself "damn, I love this car." No joke. I've bought a lot of stuff in my life, and am a very hard to please consumer, but that was the best purchase I've ever made.
Anyway, I may or may not go back to AC around the time of the main event. I'll most likely head out to Philly for Al's charity tournament/boathouse bash (send me the hotel info hippie!) so maybe I'll stop out there first. I'm not really sure. I don't see myself playing in the main event, as there is no way for me to get there in time to get a good night's sleep before day 1 and I'm a little too down on poker right now to be buying into an event that big anyway. I'll save that for Foxwoods.
Posted by themaroon at September 9, 2006 3:17 AM
Comments
Wish we could get Sierra Nevada up here. Please load up the 350 and bring North of the 49th.
Posted by: Stephen at September 9, 2006 12:29 PM
Another great post. Love the donk-in-the-elevator story. Two quick observations:
1) I really think you're on to something with the "born-in-Africa" index. Most of the people I've played against at the Nautica Poker nights in Cleveland's Flats, for example, would have been infant mortalities, whereas the typical middle stakes limit player in Vegas would have a BIA of at least 15.
2) At the risk of sounding totally cynical (and maybe injecting a measure of sour grapes as I was one of the folks who attempted to get in on the freeroll too late), could the Mansion Poker deal have been a scam? It reeks of bait-and-switch. When they sent you the e-mail informing you that the bet had been incorrectly placed, did they offer you the opportunity to rescind it? Call me cynical, but it seems a tad too easy for them to make some arcane interpretation of the rules and turn would-be freerollers into an actual sports bettors.
3) While play at the $3/6 limit games at Las Vegas Nights is as crappy as ever, there are a few regulars in the $10/20 game who know what they are doing. (On my good nights, I like to think that I'm one of them.) I don't frequent LVN because of the squalid, depressing atmosphere -- which, if anything, you have understated. But I do like to play live once in a while, and whenever I drop in there, the same two or three guys seem to have all the chips.
Posted by: unkletony at September 9, 2006 1:53 PM
Where do you live Stephen?
And the BIA index is a great idea. I've been using the concept for a long time but have never thought to make an actual index out of it. Brilliant.
I'm pretty sure the mansion promotion was legitimate because most people didn't get the email I did. I'm not positive though. It's a pain in the ass to get verified there so I haven't cashed out yet, we'll see how that goes.
And in any group of players someone will be the winner. There are some decent players at the Vegas Nights.
Posted by: Matthew Maroon at September 9, 2006 2:20 PM
Vancouver... hell of a drive for you!
Posted by: Stephen at September 9, 2006 10:40 PM
Well, if I ever make it I'll be packing a car full of the finest Pale Ales for ya.
Posted by: Matthew Maroon at September 9, 2006 11:24 PM
I have cashed out from the sports bet no problem. Thanks!!
Posted by: Paul Goodchild at September 11, 2006 6:07 AM
I was very surprised to see the cash in Neteller so quickly.
Based on that I'll probably switch sportbooks to take my monsterous $10 parlay bets each week.
Posted by: Drizztdj at September 11, 2006 1:06 PM
I requested the cashout 10 minutes after the game ended and the money was in my Neteller account by 2am.
Posted by: gobucksindy at September 11, 2006 2:07 PM