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February 28, 2007
My Trip To Las Vegas, Pt 2. I Rock At Video Poker
So I got into Las Vegas an hour and a half late, maybe a little more, and skipped over to Steakhouse 46 at the Flamingo for dinner with friends. My seared tuna was actually excellent, though just about everyone else ordered meat and got their meal a tad overdone. And given that it costs as much to eat there as a few places I like better (SW, Craftsteak) I don't think I'll be going back there unless I have some spare comp dollars.
My Vegas friend Ethan got my Akron friend Keith and his wife Tara a free room at Flamingo, which was a really nice suite despite the hideous pink décor. My other Akron friend, Chris, was waiting back at Caesars for me, so as soon as they were set I went back to the suite they had booked me in. Despite being in the older Palace Tower the room was identical to the one they had given me in Augustus on my last trip. Well played Harrah's.
After check-in I headed over to the Wynn to meet up with Richard and his new belle Jenni.
Michael Craig was at the top table of the nightly second chance tournament, but he was so excited to see me that he immediately ditched all of his chips to join us for drinks and cigars in the high-limit slot room. I can't blame him, I'm pretty amazing.
We had a fun evening of Opus X cigars and conversation, and I got to bed some time around 4.
(Here's me in my apparently thuggish orange cable knit sweater)
The next day Chris and I went over to Ethan and Andy's house to play a little bit of mixed games. We played some Chinese poker at first, 2-7 in the middle with some special bonuses, and then switched to mainly triple draw and my favorite game, badugi. I broke exactly even. Chris had to get back to take a nap before his flight, so I caught up on my emails and RSS feeds and called it an early night. My cold had gotten so bad that I was quite literally unable to talk in the morning and barely able to get much more than a whisper out later.
Friday was my day to make Harrah's love me some more. I thought it was triple points day at Flamingo, but due to a miscommunication between me and some lady with an accent (I've blogged before about my total inability to understand anyone who doesn't speak perfect English) it turned out to be Saturday. So I played a game with a huge house edge, but then this happened.
Ship it! I was pretty unlucky otherwise, but one royal is enough to make any session of video poker a winner, and I started my trip up a little over $3k.
Unfortunately it turns out I suck at non-video poker so I ended up going home only up a couple hundred, but more on that in a bit. I have a plane to catch.
Posted by themaroon at 1:38 AM | Comments (7)
February 25, 2007
My Trip To Las Vegas, Part 1: Getting There
Back during the World Series, a few weeks before the main event, I decided that since actual poker wasn't working out so well for me I'd goof around at its machine-based cousin for a little while. Apparently I spent enough time and money there to make Harrah's really like me, since they gave me a shiny new player's card and have since been offering me all sorts of really nice deals, like free rooms, show tickets, etc. It turns out that if you wager more in a couple hours than most Americans make in a year they treat you really well.
So I decided to head back out and see if I couldn't make them love me a little more. I began my little journey at the airport, my least favorite place in the world. Now that I'm a Silver Elite member on Continental (which, fortunately for me, has a hub in Cleveland, allowing me to fly direct to almost anywhere) and have given up my overpacking ways in order to fly carry-on, that's usually not too terrible anymore. No lines at the check-in counter, small lines in the special Elite security lane, no waiting for boarding, and frequent free first class upgrades all make traveling much more enjoyable. This trip, however, was an exception.
I got there an hour before my plane was supposed to leave because Continental's website said it would be on time. By "on time" they apparently meant "an hour and a half late". I guess I should have read the glossary. On the way in the board said the plane was on time too. So I sat down at Max and Erma's, ordered up a beer that took forever to get to me, drank it as fast as I could and then power walked my way over to the terminal hoping to get there just as Elite and first class members began boarding, only to find that I could have actually enjoyed my Great Lakes Nosferatu and a couple more as well.
I got to the terminal, noticed the lack of a plane, and sat down. As with all airports, the chairs at Hopkins are of the bench variety, so the fat guy 17 seats down who wouldn't stop shifting around made me seasick. I spent the next hour reading my RSS feeds in that god awful chair (which I think was scientifically designed to be less comfortable than sitting on pavement) praying the entire time that the giddy, morbidly obese fuckhead would have the massive coronary he deserved before he gave me whiplash.
I think his constant vibrating caused the lid to come off of a tiny bottle of mouthwash I had packed, soaking everything else in smelly blue liquid. The geniuses at the TSA now make you stick all of your toiletries in tiny bottles, all of which must fit in one Ziploc bag for no good reason at all. Don't give me any terrorism-related bullshit either. I've made plastic explosives before (yes, it's so simple that high school kids can and do make them all the time from readily available materials) and trust me, a baggie full of that stuff is more than enough to take out a plane with ease. An ounce alone could easily rip a hole in the side of a 737. The fact that the baggie goes through nothing but an ordinary metal detector at almost all airports makes it yet another bullshit government regulation designed to make the average moron sleep easy. Here's 57 channels of American Gladiator. Go back to bed America.
Finally I got on the airplane and was lucky enough to have decent neighbors. That's rare. I usually have terrible luck with that. I can't imagine how most people stand it. I have some ridiculously expensive headphones scientifically designed to block out screaming babies, but if you aren't willing to drop a nickel on ear buds (and I doubt many people are) you're really gambling. I've been on exactly one flight in the last two years without them, and of course I got the screaming baby right behind me.
I figured I would end up next to the fat guy who couldn't stop rocking again. Sitting next to fat people is the worst, because there aren't any earphones made that block out obesity. You can't even hope to use the mutual armrest, because they have some flabby appendage for which doctors have no name resting partially on it, and partially on your elbow. Often they ask if they can lift up the armrest in between you. I once told a guy that I didn't think I'd make it home alive if he did that. Next time I end up next to one of those people, I'm calling the pilot and demanding that the fucker has to at least pay for two seats, with the profit from the second going to me. Why should I have to suffer just because he likes Big Macs?
But I got a couple of doctors from Akron who were pretty nice. I asked the woman, who was an OB/GYN, if she could cure my cold. No luck.
So the flight itself wasn't too bad. Usually the flight itself is the worst part because the stewardesses (or as I call them, cocktail waitresses) unfortunately don't work for tips. They really should. I have a feeling I'd get water more than once on a five hour flight then. Some times I get one that's motivated, and I got lucky with that on this trip, but more often than not they sit in the rear compartment reading the paper and gossiping about which pilots they slept with. It's a little more consistent up in first class, but even then I'd say 1/3 of the cocktail waitresses on any airline are terrible.
The only thing that kind of sucked on the flight happens to me every time I get stuck in coach. It's going to the bathroom. I had to walk all the way to the back of the plane, and there are always assholes milling about aimlessly in the aisle. Always. Half of them can't figure out to just go back to where there seat is for one second so I can get by them easily, they want to turn sideways and have me slip past them that way.
Then I get to the bathroom and wait in line. That, in and of itself, is one of my biggest pet peeves. I was specifically designed by evolution, or God, or whatever to be able to piss quickly. Having to wait to do so violates the natural order of things.
Finally an old man came out and I went in to do my business, but as old men for some reason always do, he pissed on the seat. This happens to me every time. If I'm lucky I don't need to sit anyway, but even then I face a dilemma when I'm done. Now there's piss all over the seat and I have two options. I can clean it up myself with a tissue, or I can leave the bathroom and face whoever is behind me in line knowing that they didn't see the old man exit and are going to think that I pissed on the seat. My aversion to other people's excretions far outweighs my concern over what they think of me, so it's not a tough choice, but either way it's a lose/lose situation. When I'm emperor of the world I'm going to have all toilet seats retrofitted with urine detectors, and if even one drop gets on it and the jackass who did it doesn't clean it up by the time they touch the door handle it will lock and start slowly filling the bathroom with tear gas. Either they'll clean the damn seat off or there will be one less old person in the world. I figure it's win/win.
Also I never heard anyone say "yeah, I had a cold but then I went on the airplane and now I feel better." Those things have such an amazing power to make you sick that they should be classified as biological weapons. I don't know how they do it either. It isn't the circulated air, as everyone seems to think, since they use HEPA filtration. And it can't be in the food or beverages because you rarely get any. But I do know that if you board a plane with a minor cough you have full-blown SARS by the time you land, which is pretty much what happened to me.
Then I had to walk a mile through McCarran, because I always land in a terminal that I think may technically be in California, and again it's crowded and full of morons milling about aimlessly. And worst of all, I had to walk by the smoker's lounge. That place is noxious even when you’re 20 feet away. I've heard that a lot of parents who catch their kid smoking make them inhale an entire pack to teach them a lesson. What they should do is just take them to Vegas and make them sit in that room for five minutes. Then I suppose the next stop on the itinerary should be whatever city the Mayo Clinic is in so they can begin chemo right away.
Posted by themaroon at 9:06 PM | Comments (6)
February 22, 2007
Leaving For Las Vegas
In the airport now, should be there in 5 hours or so. I'll be there until late Tuesday evening. Anyone else in town?
Posted by themaroon at 4:19 PM | Comments ()
February 16, 2007
Scientific Proof That Daniel Negreanu Isn't Racist
He has a black friend:
Posted by themaroon at 6:56 PM | Comments (2)
Is Daniel Negreanu Racist? Does Anyone Really Care?
Is it me or did Daniel Negreanu recently take a few classes at the Trent Lott school of public relations? If BET had a poker show, right now he'd be on there apologizing in third person.
Of course the difference here is that Trent Lott actually did make an amazingly racist remark (you know it's got to be extremely racist when a crowd full of Republicans stands aghast) and was trying to save his political career, where as Daniel's video was more or less harmless, and even if it wasn't it wouldn't really hurt his win rate.
But really the P.R. moral here is the same. The best response to that sort of stuff is no response at all. Daniel is giving people whose stupidity and hyper-sensitivity allows them to be offended by such an inane video credibility by responding to them. Why bother? He knows he wasn't doing anything racist. Anyone with the IQ above that of the average rutabaga knows he was just goofing around. If a bunch of poker forum reading morons think otherwise, oh well. Who cares?
And really, Daniel does a much better Indian impression anyway. He did this bit on the Party cruise a few years back impersonating an Indian guy and it, unlike that video, was very funny. I won't even try rehashing it here, but if you ever see him ask him to do it for you. I'm sure he'd see it as a welcome break from autograph requests. Just don't do it when he's on a bathroom break.
Posted by themaroon at 5:40 AM | Comments (5)
February 12, 2007
The Tax Man Cometh
One interesting thing that I think a lot of online poker players have learned all too recently is that anyone with over $10k in a foreign bank or "financial account" are required to fill out a Treasury Department form and check a box on Schedule B of your 1040. From what I understand from the searching I've been doing lately Neteller, ePassporte, and other similar ewallets, almost definitely qualify as "financial accounts". It is also my understanding that it is unclear whether or not poker sites qualify, due to "constructive receipt". Of course given the money we all have stuck in Neteller with little hope of ever seeing, I'd personally consider Neteller funds not to be constructively received either, but for some reason I doubt the IRS would agree with me.
I can't even begin to guess at the number of people who've had over $10k in their Neteller account. Considering that it was the most popular way of cashing out money ever since PayPal stopped taking online casinos, it has to be a large number. How many people won a $10k or larger prize in a tournament (dozens each day, as even lower buy-in tournaments often had top prizes in that range) or had a good run at any game $15/$30 or above? It had to be thousands, and maybe in the tens of thousands. And I'd bet no more than a handful knew of them filled out that form for the Treasury Department.
So I decided to ask Russ Fox over at Taxable Talk what he thought those of us who had not filled out that form for years prior to 2006 (you still have until June to do it for last year) should do. He was gracious enough to take the time to answer, and here's what he said:
To report a foreign bank account(s), there are two things you must do. There are two boxes at the bottom of Schedule B of your tax return that have to be checked (one to indicate that you have a foreign bank account, and on the other you must list the country(ies) where they are. Of course, that's if you meet the $10k aggregate limit. You must also fill out Form TD F 90-22.1 by June 30th (postmark deadline) to the Dept of the Treasury, not the IRS.If you haven't completed the Treasury Dept form for previous years, you have two options. The first is to immediately fill out the form for the previous year, and send it to the Treasury. Realize that you've just raised a huge flag that says to the IRS, "Audit me." Unfortunately, the other option—hoping that the Treasury Dept/IRS doesn't find you—can make you liable for a felony (punishable by civil fines, criminal fines, and possible jail time).
While it's in theory possible for someone to be fined for completing the form late, in almost every case it's much better for you to report yourself than for the government to come after you in this matter. I haven't heard of fines for completing the form late when it's been an innocent mistake.
None of this is meant as legal advice. Everyone should consult their own professional tax advisor and/or legal counsel as everyone's situation is different.
I also found this quote on about.com:
The law governing form TD F 90-22.1 "provides for a nonwillful penalty of up to $10,000 per violation for violations occurring after October 22, 2004. This penalty will be waived, however, if the person can show reasonable cause for the violation and if the person provides a late-filed [Form TD F 90-22.1] with the information that should have been reported earlier."IRS will consider the facts and circumstances of each case in determining whether penalties are appropriate. Persons who have not timely filed [Foreign Bank Account Reports] should attach a statement explaining why the [Form] was not timely filed."
Personally I have no desire to become a felon, or pay any sizeable fines, so I'm going to fill out those forms immediately and pretty much prepare for an audit. An audit will certainly be a pain in the ass, but I've been paying taxes so I'm not too afraid. I have a feeling I'll be spending a week or two making pretty excel sheets, and if any of you have ever survived an audit I would love to hear what you have to say about it. I may or may not opt for a tax attorney, as I'm told that if you have all of your ducks in a row they really aren't necessary, and I think I do/will.
Thoughts?
Posted by themaroon at 3:09 AM | Comments (8)
February 9, 2007
Help Spread The Word
I'm trying to organize an Anna Nicole Smith memorial campaign. Please see here for details. I think it's important that we honor this fallen American institution.
Thank you for your time.
Posted by themaroon at 2:35 AM | Comments (3)
February 8, 2007
Neteller Sucks, Part 3
Neteller released this statement today affirming their commitment to paying out American customers. The FBI agent turned out to be at least somewhat correct (about the seizure, I have no idea about Kylie Minogue) and they claim total assets stolen to be under $55 million, which is low enough that I'm still hopeful about getting mine back. They're definitely a strong enough company financially to eat that if they really have to.
The interesting part of the release is:
The Group is, under advice of its legal advisers, commencing production of documents and intends to cooperate with the USAO in its investigation.
All of us who actually paid our taxes should now be patting ourselves on the back. Those of you who didn't might want to speak to a tax attorney for advice immediately.
Posted by themaroon at 7:30 PM | Comments (4)
February 7, 2007
Neteller Sucks, Part 2
So there’s a story going around about Neteller’s funds having been seized by the FBI. A Google News search will show you about 8 million stories, but every one of them merely cites one USA Today article in which an FBI agent named Neil Donovan made the claim. Mass hysteria has, of course, ensued, with forum residents and shitty sites like Gambling 911 posting their uneducated opinions.
The USA Today article in question is very vague. A lot of people have taken it to mean that it was actually funds of BetOnSports customers that were seized. It has been pointed out that Neteller, as a licensed and regulated FSA in the United Kingdom, would be required to report such a seizure immediately and has not. And Neteller is sticking to their story of our funds being held in a trust somewhere.
So it will be interesting to see how this pans out.
As a side note I Googled the FBI agent in question’s name and the only other story I found about him was also on that turd of a website Gambling 911 where he was talking about Kylie Minogue breaking up with her boyfriend.
“USA Today quoted FBI agent Neil Donovan "They have made it clear that the decision to go their separate ways was mutual and amicable," the statement said.”So, I’m not sure how the FBI agent is really to be trusted.
Either way the situation pretty much sucks. I had more money stuck in there than I had realized, and now I pretty much have no way to get it out. Anyone know how hard it is to become a Canadian citizen?
Posted by themaroon at 12:21 AM | Comments (2)
February 3, 2007
Group Hug
Apparently Daniel Negreanu agrees with my scorekeeping. I hereby declare myself the official arbiter of all feuds in the poker world. I work for free too.
Posted by themaroon at 5:55 PM | Comments ()
February 2, 2007
Joe Rogan Wins
Lol. A reader posted this link to Joe Rogan's blog featuring the audio of Daniel's bit on O&A and Rogan's response to his recent blog comments. Pretty funny stuff actually.
I have to say I side with Rogan on this one. The official ruling:
Joe Rogan: 1
Daniel Negreanu: 0
Posted by themaroon at 2:10 PM | Comments (4)
Daniel Negreanu, Charismatic vs. Annoying.
I found this cool site called convinceme.net which is all about debate. Pretty neat idea. Argue over stuff publicly and people vote on it.
Maybe I'll throw up some poker related ones. What are some good ideas? Here are a few I thought up:
Phil Hellmuth, best player ever?
Liz Lieu, hot vs. just another anorexic Asian chick with a boob job. (Seriously, you can't throw a stick in Los Angeles without hitting a carbon copy of her.)
Bill Frist, asshat vs. serial cat killing asshat?
Matt Maroon, great poker blogger, vs. the greatest poker blogger.
Any others?
Posted by themaroon at 4:54 AM | Comments (5)