Copied from the Triangle Poker Journal
Ducks Unlimited Poker Tournament Sep 8 - Clayton
Ducks Unlimited is holding their 2nd Poker Tournament Fundraiser Saturday, September 8, 2007, at 6pm in Clayton.
Doors open at 5pm with a full buffet and drinks included.A $100 donation gets you entrance to the event. Once in the building, you will be able to eat and drink all you want as well as play the tournament. Note: no money will be accepted at the event - tickets must be pre-paid.
There will be several guns raffled as well as a silent auction on several items including signed sport paraphernalia by local sports celebrities (Philip Rivers, Dean Smith, etc).
For those of you unfamiliar with Ducks Unlimited:
Ducks Unlimited is one of the largest environmental groups in the country. Their goal is to provide habitat for waterfowl, but, in doing so, they create habitat for the enjoyment of all animals and humans. One of the main landing spots for migratory birds is NC so preserving their habitat here is necessary for the survival of those birds and their ecosystem.
If you are interested in participating in this fundraiser, please email David Wall at mailto:dhwall@gmail.com or call 919.673.3303.
Copied from the Triangle Poker Journal
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Superior Player
There is "Super Player" (Shirk) and then there is "Superior Player" (The Juice). We all know how The Juice loves to push the action and impress us all with his feats of strength. His Triceps are huge compared to his bicepts. In other words he is good at pushing his chips all in the middle but not so good at pulling them back in. That was until Tuesday night where I saw a Juice "Light", it tasted like regular Juice but it was better for him. Amazing laydowns and folds all night long. At one point I even turned to him in amazement and told him he was playing some impressive poker that night......at least till the point where he went all in with Rick O'Reily (Leprechan reference) holding the stone cold nuts. Tuesday night was relatively uneventful aside from a couple bad beats (if that is even possible in Omaha) that I was able to stay out of the way of. 6 & 7 handed is nice but there is nothing like a full table of 9 players stradling and restradling and having preflop pots almost every hand over $300. Hopefully we will find some other players who have the intestinal fortitude (or stupidity, however you want to look at it) to play NL Omaha HI/LO
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
The "Juice" is loose!
I have found that reading the blogs on this site is as entertaining as sliding down a sliding board of razorblades into a tub of alcohol!! With the exception of a few of Rick's stories about Beating & Belittling Charles & all who follow his smallness, the blogs are just way to much to get way to little out of them!!! The "Juice" suggests that if you have a real "MEAT & POTATOES" Story, then tell it! If you are just going to give stories about how you hit a one outer on the river and won a hundred dollar pot then I suggest that you get a F'ng life, NOBODY cares. Now, a Meat & Potatoes story: As most of the readers of these long boring blog stories of Charles know, I am a action junkie. Last night at the Tuesday no limit Omaha I was as usual, the only real man at the table, All-in Blind! That's the Meat now here is the Potatoes. We all witnessed the master blogger on what we at the game call someone who is up and plays only the nuts "On Chip Preserve", well as the story goes his boyfriend Dean, we believe uses leftovers from the game on his lunch menu specials, also on chip preserve are always looking at me to double and sometimes triple them up. Unfortunately these two players are weak at best, and have no real stay power against me. Here is how the story ends. Rick once again took all the chips. I suggest we keep the blogs short and sweet, and tell it like it is!!! -- Rick took down all the chips and was still wanting more the greedy bastard that he is!!! We can always just cut & paste that last sentence as a Meat & Potatoes Blog!!!
The "Juice"
The "Juice"
I just missed him....
It was late, I believe that we had settled on one more round when I peeked down at 9x, 9x, 5x 2x, rainbow. Tom was seated to immediate right and was UTG. He straddled the $5/$10 blind to $30 and with the Juice to my immediate left, I decided not to throw $30 into the shredder. To my disbelief and dismay, the Juice just smooth calls as does the rest of the table. The flop was almost too bearable to speak of.... 9x, 9x, 6x. It checks to Dave who leads out with a bet of $85 or so and the entire table folds back to Tom who also folds. The Juice turns over his hole-card-sixes, giving him the boat, sixes-full-of-nines. Yep. The general consensus was that I would have gotten all of the Juice's chips, BUT you do have to be present to win.... and unfortunately I wasn't.
I guess... next time! But tonight, it was just the big one that got away.
Let the suck outs begin!
I guess... next time! But tonight, it was just the big one that got away.
Let the suck outs begin!
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Wow....
I love this prop bet...
I have no idea on how to post a video but here is the link to it:
http://www.pokertube.com/ShowMovie.aspx?movieID=b7d1a0fa-9d8d-44c8-aa47-543e23190feb
I have no idea on how to post a video but here is the link to it:
http://www.pokertube.com/ShowMovie.aspx?movieID=b7d1a0fa-9d8d-44c8-aa47-543e23190feb
Sunday, August 26, 2007
O8 - Questions After the Flop
These are questions from Lou Krieger's "The Poker Player's Bible How to play winning poker." I have been in the donk mode of late and was doing some review.... These are great questions that will help anyone playing O8. You'll have to buy the book to get the answers... LOL.
If I make my hand, will it be the nuts?
Was it raised? (and by who?)
How much money will I win if I scoop the pot, take half of it, or only make a a low hand and it's quartered?
How much of the pot am I hoping to win?
Do I have the right number and mix of opponents to justify drawing to my hand?
Let the suck outs begin!
If I make my hand, will it be the nuts?
Was it raised? (and by who?)
How much money will I win if I scoop the pot, take half of it, or only make a a low hand and it's quartered?
How much of the pot am I hoping to win?
Do I have the right number and mix of opponents to justify drawing to my hand?
Let the suck outs begin!
Friday, August 24, 2007
The Casino, the Mayor's Son, and the Shuffle That May Have Suckered Them Both
Copied from the Triangle Poker Journal
The Casino, the Mayor's Son, and the Shuffle That May Have Suckered Them Both
Once thought of as political operative material, Jacob Nickels was part of a nationwide casino-cheating ring, prosecutors say.
On a recent July evening, gamblers at the Nooksack River Casino heard an odd thing: A casino employee begging for somebody to win.
The game was "Whirlwind of Cash." It's a plastic tube filled with floating money that people are supposed to snatch out of the air. A raffle to determine who steps into the tube had been going on, unsuccessfully, for at least 15 minutes, but everyone who signed up seemed to have left. "Jim Thomas!" yelled the frustrated operator, adding, "I'd almost settle for somebody with those initials."
Next it's George, as in, "Is there any George?" A few more nonhits and gamblers were treated to this pathetic entreaty: "Please make some noise, somebody!"
The Sack (as some locals call it) is a bit of a drive out into the country, about 25 minutes from Bellingham down some gnarly tribal roads to the town of Deming. Lights shoot up from utter darkness like a crashed UFO in a B movie. Seeing as Deming had a population of 210 in the year 2000, according to the U.S. Census, there weren't many local players there that night. There weren't many players at all. The mini-baccarat table was shut down due to lack of interest. A dealer explained that it often operates during the day, when Canadians visit.
Slot machines occupy a majority of the floor space, and a few people were planted in front of them wearing the bemused mugs of terminal gambling addicts. They were monitored by a multiplicity of cameras and the ceiling-mounted sculptures of salmon. At the table-games area, mostly young dealers in salmon-colored uniforms slipped cards to mostly old, sometimes tattooed and leathery, players. The felt was worn and faded. A dealer accidentally knocked a chip into the hand of a player, who made a play at keeping it.
The Sack doesn't look like it could afford to lose $90,000. Yet according to federal indictments, that's what happened over four nights of play in October 2005, when the casino was descended on by the largest card-cheating ring ever prosecuted by the federal government—a megacorp of chicanery that, prosecutors say, employed more than two dozen people and stole as much as $20 million from nearly 20 gaming establishments targeted across North America. Among the cogs in this wheel of corruption, according to the government, was 26-year-old Jacob Nickels, son of Seattle's mayor. And the method of choice was one of the simplest tricks in existence: the false shuffle, aka the shank shuffle, aka the sky shuffle—or at any rate, a funny shuffle known to teenage magicians round the world.
Starting with a sleight of hand that netted $525 from the Sycuan Resort and Casino in Cajon, Calif., in 2002, erstwhile card dealer Phuong Quoc Truong built a coast-to-coast bilking business, according to indictments unsealed this past May (two in Washington and one in Southern California). Through the power of talk, money, and threats, Truong and his minions persuaded dealers from California to Connecticut to Canada to leave a substantial chunk of cards unmixed, the government charges. Based on previous games, the players could then predict the order of cards and raise their bets at the opportune moment.
Truong's ring, which prosecutors called the Tran Organization after one of its senior members, was inventive and relentless. In 2005, when the Resorts East Chicago Hotel and Casino in Indiana used automatic shuffling machines, cutting crooked dealers out of the action, one of them turned around and found a way to knock the machines out of commission, says Willy Allison, a 20-year casino-surveillance vet. "That's how cheeky these guys were," says Allison, who now runs the yearly Vegas-based World Game Protection conference and says he heard the story from a "confidential, reliable source." A spokesperson for Resorts East did not return repeated calls for comment.
That little trick at Resorts East appears to have allowed the cheaters to reap what the indictment says was $868,000 in 90 minutes—their biggest single-night haul in the States.
But as it grew, the Tran Organization developed striking vulnerabilities.
"Any of these scams can be successful short-term," says Jeff Murphy, who tracked the group as part of the Oregon Surveillance Network, a first-alert system for many casinos. "But if you try to make a living off of them, you're going to fall."
One of the organization's seminal blunders came in the summer of 2005, when some of Truong's underlings traveled to the tiny town of Deming to knock off the Sack. There, the cheaters allegedly befriended a pit boss who just happened to be the son of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. For a $5,000 bribe paid in three installments, a Washington indictment charges, Jacob Nickels, then 24, introduced the Tran operatives to two dealers who worked under him. One of the men, Levi Mayfield, has since pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
To raid the Sack, the Tran group allegedly used an individual named George Lee, who, according to a source involved in the investigation, was already suspected of helping execute a massive 2003 takedown of the Emerald Queen Casino, then located on a riverboat near Tacoma. Although authorities interviewed for this story wouldn't deviate much from the text of the indictments—which do not disclose how they caught up with the Tran group—it's very possible they recognized Lee at the Nooksack from videotapes at the Queen. "Mr. Lee was a person of interest," is all that J. Tate London, the federal prosecutor in charge of the case in Seattle, will say.
Nooksack showed the organization as overextended and overconfident, and suggested its next base of operations would be prison. Indeed, by August 2006, Truong himself was allegedly offering bribes to undercover federal agents.
But by then Truong and his crew had enjoyed a remarkable run of success, proving that in a world of cross-border, high-tech crime, a simple card trick can still be one of the most lucrative scams.
If Nickels did indeed take part in a record-setting criminal conspiracy, his Bellingham lifestyle didn't exactly show it. His last recorded address in the city was a four-bedroom house in the Alabama Hill neighborhood, a common landing ground for Western Washington University grads (and dropouts).
The design of Nickels' old pad appears to be influenced by the Jäger fumes emanating from the university. On a recent visit, liquor and beer bottles weighed down the kitchen and living-room tables. A large sofa faced a big TV tuned to The Simpsons, while Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta aimed guns in a wall poster from Pulp Fiction. In a side bedroom, one housemate—a nighttime card dealer—lay prostrate under a blanket mound, a fan trained on his slumbering body. From a lower room emanated the constant click-click-click of somebody manipulating poker chips.
"It's a four-dealer house," says Adam Mauhar, 24, who wears a Corona T-shirt while smoking a cigarette on the stoop. Mauhar says he took a break from Western to become a card slinger at the Sack, a job he says pays about $25,000. "It's one of the better jobs you can do if you don't have a degree, alongside construction, I guess."
He enrolled in a blackjack class, and that's where he says he met Nickels, who was living in the Alabama Hill house. They worked together and eventually became housemates. As a pit boss overseeing as many as six table games at a time, Nickels ranked higher than his housemates, but Mauhar says he didn't throw his weight around. "He never looked for drama," Mauhar says. "He tried to be friendly with everyone."
It was the same at the casino. "He had a rapport with the dealers," says Mauhar. "He was actually a very good pit boss. He was very well organized; he got shit done. I think he could've been table-games manager after a while."
Last year, Mauhar says Nickels even got him into Bumbershoot for free on his dad's mayoral pass.
Nickels, in other words, seemed to have that political gift, evoking positive responses from everyone—and loyalty. This reporter was able to walk into Bellingham's Quarterback sports bar and in five minutes find somebody who wanted to play character witness. "He's a great kid," said Jeff Reardon, a 36-year-old barber who says he met Nickels during back-to-back trips to Nooksack. "I'd have done the exact same thing [at his age]."
Mauhar is one of the few professed friends of Nickels who was willing to speak on the record. Messages from Seattle Weekly to buddies, former workmates, and old classmates went unreturned. A longtime friend who lived with Nickels in the Bellingham house declined to take a call from this reporter, and early the next day, a message from Nickels appeared on the friend's MySpace page: "Nicely done sir, I knew you would be able to handle those douchebags." Nickels did not respond to an interview request, and his attorney wouldn't comment on the case.
The conspiracy charge is quite a whopper compared to his previous record, which is marred only by a speeding ticket. A standard sentence for what Nickels is facing is 10 to 16 months' imprisonment, according to London. Nickels pleaded not guilty in June. His trial date is Sept. 17.
According to court records, Nickels is now living at his parents' house in West Seattle. His bond agreement forbids him from drinking, gambling, or going near casinos. He is working at a Starbucks, a spokesperson for the company confirms.
The threat level posed by casino cheats varies according to their sophistication. At the bottom end are crime-bent employees, such as dealers who try to steal high-value chips. "Usually what they do is palm chips, and they act like they're stretching and drop them down their shirt [sleeve]. Or they'll yawn and stick it in their mouths," says Romi Miyamoto, a former casino shift supervisor and the owner of the Seattle Gaming Academy, a dealer-training school in the Greenwood neighborhood. It's a bold maneuver—given that a chip is about the germiest thing in a casino besides the toilet seat—and one with a poor track record. Surveillance operators and supervisors who monitor the number of chips can usually pick up on such attempts at concealment.
Then there are the crooked players, who can range from drop-dead dumb to pretty damn sophisticated, according to Miyamoto. The former might try something like slipping additional chips into a pre-existing bet when the cards turn his way, or counting cards to predict the odds of a future hand (which is not illegal but can result in being barred from the casino). More gifted cheats could employ something more 007ish, such as marking cards with an invisible ink that only they can see, thanks to a special set of glasses. Miyamoto says the "ink pad" can be hair soaked in ink; the cheaters can rewet their fingers with a casual touch to their heads.
There are also schemes involving collusion between players and employees. The false shuffle falls into this category, and it terrifies casinos because it can go undetected, even when it's not done all that well. That's because to the ceiling cameras it looks like a regular shuffle. "If you're not looking for it specifically, you'll never find it," says Bill Zender, a former Nevada gaming agent who now runs the Vegas-based Last Resort Consulting. The Tran group is said to have hauled off more than $1 million during its visit to the Emerald Queen, and yet, "I look back at some of the videotapes, found some of the dealers who are doing it, and they're doing a very poor job of it. But they're still getting it on," says Zender, who was brought in by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tacoma to examine the Queen case. "It does take some skill level, but nothing serious."
Security consultant Allison blames the shuffle's recent success on a decline in casino-security proficiency. "Over the last 10 years, [casinos] have been constantly reducing supervision," he says. "Now the guys on the floor are 'hosts.' They're there to rate people and market to people and assess whether a player's a player and if the casino should be comping them. So they've lost the aspect of really supervising the games," he says. "Nobody pays any attention to the shuffle."
There's also the problem of determining that the dealer intentionally messed with the cards (and didn't just make a mistake), as well as proving collusion. "Who's involved? Is it everyone at the table, or did six people just go, 'Let's follow the lucky guy?'" says Allison. "You start thinking everybody's guilty. But you can't prove it, all the way up the line." The difficulty of detection may be why the Tran Organization was allegedly able to infiltrate even the high-security bubble of Vegas, where, prosecutors say, they tackled the Palace Station casino.
Allison rates the false shuffle, as rudimentary as it is, as the second-most-profitable cheat to hit casinos in recent years. (It's right after "card mucking," in which players obtain or counterfeit a casino's cards and swap them in and out of play.) When exploited by a single player, the false shuffle provides consistent results and high returns. In a group situation involving a table of keyed-in players, as the Tran Organization is said to have arranged, the tactic yields total destruction. When they know the outcome of the hand, they all can bet the maximum limit and extract a mammoth payload.
But such a feat takes a team. After allegedly testing out a false shuffle on the employers at the
Sycuan casino, Truong and an associate were arrested and fired, a California indictment says. So they took their show on the road, rounding up fellow cheaters as they traveled.
"Most of the time these things start with bribes, and that's how these started out. Palm Springs started out with bribes. They actually didn't get hit, because the dealers went and spoke with casino management," says the Oregon Surveillance Network's Murphy, now a director of table-games operations at Seven Feathers casino in Southern Oregon. "Foxwoods [in Connecticut] started out with a $500 bribe. Then, yeah, you do have the threats for your safety and your family." (One of the indictments does ascribe threats and intimidation to the Tran group but doesn't give specifics.)
The recruitment of casino insiders can take many forms. Allison interviewed one flipped dealer
in his casino in Australia and recalls that "it sounded to me like Amway. She was approached at a bar after work, shown how to do it. I think they offered her a BMW right up front as a sign-on, and then there was a percentage of the profit of the scam each time she did it," he says. "But then she was also offered money for every dealer that she could recruit."
People expect the progeny of major politicians to pursue careers worthy of their parents' station in life. It's an unfair expectation, but nevertheless, it exists. Nickels at first seemed to bear such lofty goals. He had an innate political intuitiveness, especially when it came to matters affecting his West Seattle neighborhood. Cathy Allen, a local Democratic political consultant, recalls grilling veggie burgers with a teenage Jake at Greg Nickels' annual fund-raising barbecues.
"I can remember talking to the kid when he was, like, 16 and, I mean, holding his own, talking about who we should be supporting in West Seattle," Allen says. "At every political fund-raiser, he was always like a definite, terrific political campaign manager in the making." Had the younger Nickels come into her office back then, Allen says, she would have been "the first person to hire him."
Nickels attended Garfield High School, where he favored crew cuts and Eddie Bauer gear. He appears in his 1999 yearbook as a member of the school's bowling team, but the book doesn't list him in any other organizations. His face appears amid a page of alphabetically arranged portraits of his classmates, many of whom adorned their photos with thuggish quotations such as, "It's my world and I won't stop and if you stand in my way your [sic] bound to get dropped" and "Two faces get you punched in both of your mouths." For his own quotation, Nickels chose the rather regrettable motto, "You can get farther with an idea and a gun than with an idea alone," a slight alteration of a quote attributed to Al Capone.
Nevertheless, it was only ideas he found himself studying as a Western student. He chose a PPE major—philosophy, political science, and economics—that is modeled after a well-known Oxford major. Students embarking down the PPE path generally have their eye on one well-paying white-collar job or another. "Public administration would be one obvious area," says Philip Montague, a professor emeritus who now teaches part time in Western's philosophy department. "There's a strong ethics component," he adds, "but obviously it doesn't seem to have worked for a couple of students." Montague says he would've taught Nickels, though he can't recall him.
Nickels first attended Western in 1999, and, according to the university registrar, was last enrolled in the summer of 2006.
At the end of 2003, he took a dealing job at the Sack. If nothing else, it fit with his apparent interest in anything sporting. Nickels' MySpace page is wallpapered with photos of local players, while his handle, Jigga8481, appears as a frequent commenter on the U.S.S. Mariner, a blog devoted to the Seattle Mariners. Jigga8481 also appears on a site devoted to online poker. Nickels enjoyed casino card playing, according to his old housemate Mauhar, and made and lost large amounts.
At Nooksack, Nickels proved to be a quick learner. He was promoted to "dual rate" after only six months—meaning he dealt half the time and worked as pit boss for the other half.
In the wake of the indictments, the obvious question was whether Nickels' quick rise to management indicates the tribe was trying to curry favor with Seattle's mayor. But there's no evidence that the Nooksack had any business with Nickels Sr. And the suspicion may overstate the importance of the younger Nickels' position.
"I can teach you how to be a [pit boss] in probably two hours," says the Gaming Academy's Miyamoto. The qualifications include watching dealers shuffle, being handy at making out schedules, and looking good in a suit. There's also a willingness to take home a smaller paycheck. Pit bosses often make less than half of what dealers gather through tips, says Miyamoto, especially at smaller casinos. In some cases, he says, "pits are the lowest men on the totem pole just because of the pay."
There's the added ignominy of working at the Sack, which is apparently among the dregs of Washington casino work. Employees are constantly reminded of where they could be working by the huge, blinking sign of the nearby Silver Reef casino, operated by the Lummi Nation. The Reef, unlike the Sack, has a hotel, steak house, spa for pedicures, a security guard at the door who checks IDs and stamps hands (this young-looking reporter got into the Nooksack without any questioning), and recently, an appearance by Davy Jones, formerly of the Monkees.
Mauhar claims that pay and tips at the Sack are half that of the Reef.
By 2005, the cheaters had perverted the false shuffle into a grotesquery. The indictment alleges that a dealer at Foxwoods didn't shuffle a stack of 103 cards. Even the surveillance workers manning the eyes in the sky would have had a hard time missing that massive chunk of undisturbed cards. The dealer was later fired.
Then another dealer at the Barona Valley Ranch Resort and Casino in San Diego stole the record by not shuffling a 376-card brick, according to the government.
Such chutzpah allowed the cheaters to rake in progressively larger sums—an alleged $427,820 from L'Auberge Hotel and Casino in Louisiana and, six days later, the nearly million-dollar night that followed the short-circuiting of the shuffling machines in Indiana. But it also kept them visible: They grew a tail of more than 10 federal, state, tribal, and foreign authorities. The FBI began amassing a paper pile on them that would soon total at least 7,145 pages of documents. By the time two alleged California cheaters, 26-year-old George Lee and 49-year-old Tien Duc Vu, flew out to Seattle to visit the Nooksack in September 2005, an alert with identifying info on the Tran people had been broadcast to area casinos.
And yet the Sack job was quiet. "I was pretty new, so I had no idea what was going on at the mini-bac table," says Mauhar. Another dealer who worked at the Sack at the same time as Nickels and did not want to be identified says the "only form of cheating I noticed or heard about was card counting, and they were usually spotted right away because it's pretty obvious."
London, the prosecutor working the Tran case, won't say how Vu or Lee made the acquaintance of Nickels and the dealers. "Suffice it to say that Tien Duc Vu and George Lee traveled to the Nooksack casino, [and] they played there and befriended the three." The first to join the cheaters, according to London, was Nickels.
"It's not uncommon at all" in collusion schemes for cheaters to go to the management first, says Miyamoto, the gaming-school owner. "Because if you know that your immediate boss standing right behind you is in on it with you, it's so much easier to operate."
For his involvement, says London, Nickels took $5,000. In taking the alleged wad, Nickels also accepted the obligation to solicit a couple of his dealers and pay them a similar amount. Prosecutors say he chose 24-year-old Levi Mayfield, who attended Western with Nickels, received a business degree, and lived in Bellingham on a street below Nickels' hilltop abode. Nickels is also said to have shoulder-tapped 23-year-old Kasey James McKillip, who apparently applied to Western—his name is "in the system," says a staffer in the registrar's office—but who has no record of attending classes.
Mayfield learned the false shuffle from Lee in a Bellingham motel, according to the indictment, and he then taught it to McKillip. The operation went live on Oct. 7 and lasted until Oct. 28, which is when Lee and Duc Vu were barred from the casino. Nickels' dealers left at that time and were later served with summonses asking them to appear in court. The pit boss himself continued working at the casino until late last year.
The federal indictment does not explain why Nickels remained employed at the casino for so long after the dealers were busted. "They might've found out later on," consultant Bill Zender speculates. "[Let's say] we get rid of the two dealers involved because we know they false-shuffled it, right? So now all of a sudden we start doing credit-card checks on all these guys, bank checks, and all of a sudden we find out that they transferred some funds to this kid at the same time [they did to the dealers]. That would lead me to want to fire him, you know what I'm saying?"
The indictment doesn't say whether Nickels left the job voluntarily or not. But his departure came days after the Washington State Gambling Commission sent out agents to interview him on Oct. 12, 2006. "I just got up one morning to get a drink of water, and there was, like, agents in our living room," says Mauhar. "I was, like, 'What the hell is going on?'" The agents were conversing with Nickels "pretty cordially," and when Nickels told him it was nothing and to go back to bed, Mauhar did.
The Tran Organization, meanwhile, was piling one stupid mistake atop another.
In June 2006, the alleged card cheats lost $50,000 at the Isle of Capri Casino in Louisiana after a false shuffle went wrong. Truong and an associate offered a $500 bribe to a floor supervisor at the Imperial Palace Casino in Biloxi, Miss. The supervisor turned out to be an undercover agent. In August, Truong offered another agent posing as an Imperial dealer a $3,000 bribe. (All of this is according to the indictments.)
Truong and his helpers were doomed. All they'd accumulated is now subject to forfeiture, including three properties; at least four bank accounts; a 2003 Cadillac Escalade belonging to Lee; and a 2001 Porsche 911 Carrera, a 2007 Toyota Tacoma truck, a 2002 Dodge Ram van, and a Rolex Presidential watch belonging to Truong.
Truong's out of jail and awaiting an Aug. 30 court hearing. His pretrial agreement states that he and his wife still manage a restaurant in San Diego, where he once owned a Mercedes-Benz worth $101,530 with California plates reading PGJOHN, an homage to his honorific, Pai Gow John.
Other believers in the false-shuffle scam will probably take his place, though. "This isn't the first time or the last time—especially with the success rate they had—that it will be seen," says Murphy.
Copied from the Triangle Poker Journal
The Casino, the Mayor's Son, and the Shuffle That May Have Suckered Them Both
Once thought of as political operative material, Jacob Nickels was part of a nationwide casino-cheating ring, prosecutors say.
On a recent July evening, gamblers at the Nooksack River Casino heard an odd thing: A casino employee begging for somebody to win.
The game was "Whirlwind of Cash." It's a plastic tube filled with floating money that people are supposed to snatch out of the air. A raffle to determine who steps into the tube had been going on, unsuccessfully, for at least 15 minutes, but everyone who signed up seemed to have left. "Jim Thomas!" yelled the frustrated operator, adding, "I'd almost settle for somebody with those initials."
Next it's George, as in, "Is there any George?" A few more nonhits and gamblers were treated to this pathetic entreaty: "Please make some noise, somebody!"
The Sack (as some locals call it) is a bit of a drive out into the country, about 25 minutes from Bellingham down some gnarly tribal roads to the town of Deming. Lights shoot up from utter darkness like a crashed UFO in a B movie. Seeing as Deming had a population of 210 in the year 2000, according to the U.S. Census, there weren't many local players there that night. There weren't many players at all. The mini-baccarat table was shut down due to lack of interest. A dealer explained that it often operates during the day, when Canadians visit.
Slot machines occupy a majority of the floor space, and a few people were planted in front of them wearing the bemused mugs of terminal gambling addicts. They were monitored by a multiplicity of cameras and the ceiling-mounted sculptures of salmon. At the table-games area, mostly young dealers in salmon-colored uniforms slipped cards to mostly old, sometimes tattooed and leathery, players. The felt was worn and faded. A dealer accidentally knocked a chip into the hand of a player, who made a play at keeping it.
The Sack doesn't look like it could afford to lose $90,000. Yet according to federal indictments, that's what happened over four nights of play in October 2005, when the casino was descended on by the largest card-cheating ring ever prosecuted by the federal government—a megacorp of chicanery that, prosecutors say, employed more than two dozen people and stole as much as $20 million from nearly 20 gaming establishments targeted across North America. Among the cogs in this wheel of corruption, according to the government, was 26-year-old Jacob Nickels, son of Seattle's mayor. And the method of choice was one of the simplest tricks in existence: the false shuffle, aka the shank shuffle, aka the sky shuffle—or at any rate, a funny shuffle known to teenage magicians round the world.
Starting with a sleight of hand that netted $525 from the Sycuan Resort and Casino in Cajon, Calif., in 2002, erstwhile card dealer Phuong Quoc Truong built a coast-to-coast bilking business, according to indictments unsealed this past May (two in Washington and one in Southern California). Through the power of talk, money, and threats, Truong and his minions persuaded dealers from California to Connecticut to Canada to leave a substantial chunk of cards unmixed, the government charges. Based on previous games, the players could then predict the order of cards and raise their bets at the opportune moment.
Truong's ring, which prosecutors called the Tran Organization after one of its senior members, was inventive and relentless. In 2005, when the Resorts East Chicago Hotel and Casino in Indiana used automatic shuffling machines, cutting crooked dealers out of the action, one of them turned around and found a way to knock the machines out of commission, says Willy Allison, a 20-year casino-surveillance vet. "That's how cheeky these guys were," says Allison, who now runs the yearly Vegas-based World Game Protection conference and says he heard the story from a "confidential, reliable source." A spokesperson for Resorts East did not return repeated calls for comment.
That little trick at Resorts East appears to have allowed the cheaters to reap what the indictment says was $868,000 in 90 minutes—their biggest single-night haul in the States.
But as it grew, the Tran Organization developed striking vulnerabilities.
"Any of these scams can be successful short-term," says Jeff Murphy, who tracked the group as part of the Oregon Surveillance Network, a first-alert system for many casinos. "But if you try to make a living off of them, you're going to fall."
One of the organization's seminal blunders came in the summer of 2005, when some of Truong's underlings traveled to the tiny town of Deming to knock off the Sack. There, the cheaters allegedly befriended a pit boss who just happened to be the son of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. For a $5,000 bribe paid in three installments, a Washington indictment charges, Jacob Nickels, then 24, introduced the Tran operatives to two dealers who worked under him. One of the men, Levi Mayfield, has since pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
To raid the Sack, the Tran group allegedly used an individual named George Lee, who, according to a source involved in the investigation, was already suspected of helping execute a massive 2003 takedown of the Emerald Queen Casino, then located on a riverboat near Tacoma. Although authorities interviewed for this story wouldn't deviate much from the text of the indictments—which do not disclose how they caught up with the Tran group—it's very possible they recognized Lee at the Nooksack from videotapes at the Queen. "Mr. Lee was a person of interest," is all that J. Tate London, the federal prosecutor in charge of the case in Seattle, will say.
Nooksack showed the organization as overextended and overconfident, and suggested its next base of operations would be prison. Indeed, by August 2006, Truong himself was allegedly offering bribes to undercover federal agents.
But by then Truong and his crew had enjoyed a remarkable run of success, proving that in a world of cross-border, high-tech crime, a simple card trick can still be one of the most lucrative scams.
If Nickels did indeed take part in a record-setting criminal conspiracy, his Bellingham lifestyle didn't exactly show it. His last recorded address in the city was a four-bedroom house in the Alabama Hill neighborhood, a common landing ground for Western Washington University grads (and dropouts).
The design of Nickels' old pad appears to be influenced by the Jäger fumes emanating from the university. On a recent visit, liquor and beer bottles weighed down the kitchen and living-room tables. A large sofa faced a big TV tuned to The Simpsons, while Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta aimed guns in a wall poster from Pulp Fiction. In a side bedroom, one housemate—a nighttime card dealer—lay prostrate under a blanket mound, a fan trained on his slumbering body. From a lower room emanated the constant click-click-click of somebody manipulating poker chips.
"It's a four-dealer house," says Adam Mauhar, 24, who wears a Corona T-shirt while smoking a cigarette on the stoop. Mauhar says he took a break from Western to become a card slinger at the Sack, a job he says pays about $25,000. "It's one of the better jobs you can do if you don't have a degree, alongside construction, I guess."
He enrolled in a blackjack class, and that's where he says he met Nickels, who was living in the Alabama Hill house. They worked together and eventually became housemates. As a pit boss overseeing as many as six table games at a time, Nickels ranked higher than his housemates, but Mauhar says he didn't throw his weight around. "He never looked for drama," Mauhar says. "He tried to be friendly with everyone."
It was the same at the casino. "He had a rapport with the dealers," says Mauhar. "He was actually a very good pit boss. He was very well organized; he got shit done. I think he could've been table-games manager after a while."
Last year, Mauhar says Nickels even got him into Bumbershoot for free on his dad's mayoral pass.
Nickels, in other words, seemed to have that political gift, evoking positive responses from everyone—and loyalty. This reporter was able to walk into Bellingham's Quarterback sports bar and in five minutes find somebody who wanted to play character witness. "He's a great kid," said Jeff Reardon, a 36-year-old barber who says he met Nickels during back-to-back trips to Nooksack. "I'd have done the exact same thing [at his age]."
Mauhar is one of the few professed friends of Nickels who was willing to speak on the record. Messages from Seattle Weekly to buddies, former workmates, and old classmates went unreturned. A longtime friend who lived with Nickels in the Bellingham house declined to take a call from this reporter, and early the next day, a message from Nickels appeared on the friend's MySpace page: "Nicely done sir, I knew you would be able to handle those douchebags." Nickels did not respond to an interview request, and his attorney wouldn't comment on the case.
The conspiracy charge is quite a whopper compared to his previous record, which is marred only by a speeding ticket. A standard sentence for what Nickels is facing is 10 to 16 months' imprisonment, according to London. Nickels pleaded not guilty in June. His trial date is Sept. 17.
According to court records, Nickels is now living at his parents' house in West Seattle. His bond agreement forbids him from drinking, gambling, or going near casinos. He is working at a Starbucks, a spokesperson for the company confirms.
The threat level posed by casino cheats varies according to their sophistication. At the bottom end are crime-bent employees, such as dealers who try to steal high-value chips. "Usually what they do is palm chips, and they act like they're stretching and drop them down their shirt [sleeve]. Or they'll yawn and stick it in their mouths," says Romi Miyamoto, a former casino shift supervisor and the owner of the Seattle Gaming Academy, a dealer-training school in the Greenwood neighborhood. It's a bold maneuver—given that a chip is about the germiest thing in a casino besides the toilet seat—and one with a poor track record. Surveillance operators and supervisors who monitor the number of chips can usually pick up on such attempts at concealment.
Then there are the crooked players, who can range from drop-dead dumb to pretty damn sophisticated, according to Miyamoto. The former might try something like slipping additional chips into a pre-existing bet when the cards turn his way, or counting cards to predict the odds of a future hand (which is not illegal but can result in being barred from the casino). More gifted cheats could employ something more 007ish, such as marking cards with an invisible ink that only they can see, thanks to a special set of glasses. Miyamoto says the "ink pad" can be hair soaked in ink; the cheaters can rewet their fingers with a casual touch to their heads.
There are also schemes involving collusion between players and employees. The false shuffle falls into this category, and it terrifies casinos because it can go undetected, even when it's not done all that well. That's because to the ceiling cameras it looks like a regular shuffle. "If you're not looking for it specifically, you'll never find it," says Bill Zender, a former Nevada gaming agent who now runs the Vegas-based Last Resort Consulting. The Tran group is said to have hauled off more than $1 million during its visit to the Emerald Queen, and yet, "I look back at some of the videotapes, found some of the dealers who are doing it, and they're doing a very poor job of it. But they're still getting it on," says Zender, who was brought in by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tacoma to examine the Queen case. "It does take some skill level, but nothing serious."
Security consultant Allison blames the shuffle's recent success on a decline in casino-security proficiency. "Over the last 10 years, [casinos] have been constantly reducing supervision," he says. "Now the guys on the floor are 'hosts.' They're there to rate people and market to people and assess whether a player's a player and if the casino should be comping them. So they've lost the aspect of really supervising the games," he says. "Nobody pays any attention to the shuffle."
There's also the problem of determining that the dealer intentionally messed with the cards (and didn't just make a mistake), as well as proving collusion. "Who's involved? Is it everyone at the table, or did six people just go, 'Let's follow the lucky guy?'" says Allison. "You start thinking everybody's guilty. But you can't prove it, all the way up the line." The difficulty of detection may be why the Tran Organization was allegedly able to infiltrate even the high-security bubble of Vegas, where, prosecutors say, they tackled the Palace Station casino.
Allison rates the false shuffle, as rudimentary as it is, as the second-most-profitable cheat to hit casinos in recent years. (It's right after "card mucking," in which players obtain or counterfeit a casino's cards and swap them in and out of play.) When exploited by a single player, the false shuffle provides consistent results and high returns. In a group situation involving a table of keyed-in players, as the Tran Organization is said to have arranged, the tactic yields total destruction. When they know the outcome of the hand, they all can bet the maximum limit and extract a mammoth payload.
But such a feat takes a team. After allegedly testing out a false shuffle on the employers at the
Sycuan casino, Truong and an associate were arrested and fired, a California indictment says. So they took their show on the road, rounding up fellow cheaters as they traveled.
"Most of the time these things start with bribes, and that's how these started out. Palm Springs started out with bribes. They actually didn't get hit, because the dealers went and spoke with casino management," says the Oregon Surveillance Network's Murphy, now a director of table-games operations at Seven Feathers casino in Southern Oregon. "Foxwoods [in Connecticut] started out with a $500 bribe. Then, yeah, you do have the threats for your safety and your family." (One of the indictments does ascribe threats and intimidation to the Tran group but doesn't give specifics.)
The recruitment of casino insiders can take many forms. Allison interviewed one flipped dealer
in his casino in Australia and recalls that "it sounded to me like Amway. She was approached at a bar after work, shown how to do it. I think they offered her a BMW right up front as a sign-on, and then there was a percentage of the profit of the scam each time she did it," he says. "But then she was also offered money for every dealer that she could recruit."
People expect the progeny of major politicians to pursue careers worthy of their parents' station in life. It's an unfair expectation, but nevertheless, it exists. Nickels at first seemed to bear such lofty goals. He had an innate political intuitiveness, especially when it came to matters affecting his West Seattle neighborhood. Cathy Allen, a local Democratic political consultant, recalls grilling veggie burgers with a teenage Jake at Greg Nickels' annual fund-raising barbecues.
"I can remember talking to the kid when he was, like, 16 and, I mean, holding his own, talking about who we should be supporting in West Seattle," Allen says. "At every political fund-raiser, he was always like a definite, terrific political campaign manager in the making." Had the younger Nickels come into her office back then, Allen says, she would have been "the first person to hire him."
Nickels attended Garfield High School, where he favored crew cuts and Eddie Bauer gear. He appears in his 1999 yearbook as a member of the school's bowling team, but the book doesn't list him in any other organizations. His face appears amid a page of alphabetically arranged portraits of his classmates, many of whom adorned their photos with thuggish quotations such as, "It's my world and I won't stop and if you stand in my way your [sic] bound to get dropped" and "Two faces get you punched in both of your mouths." For his own quotation, Nickels chose the rather regrettable motto, "You can get farther with an idea and a gun than with an idea alone," a slight alteration of a quote attributed to Al Capone.
Nevertheless, it was only ideas he found himself studying as a Western student. He chose a PPE major—philosophy, political science, and economics—that is modeled after a well-known Oxford major. Students embarking down the PPE path generally have their eye on one well-paying white-collar job or another. "Public administration would be one obvious area," says Philip Montague, a professor emeritus who now teaches part time in Western's philosophy department. "There's a strong ethics component," he adds, "but obviously it doesn't seem to have worked for a couple of students." Montague says he would've taught Nickels, though he can't recall him.
Nickels first attended Western in 1999, and, according to the university registrar, was last enrolled in the summer of 2006.
At the end of 2003, he took a dealing job at the Sack. If nothing else, it fit with his apparent interest in anything sporting. Nickels' MySpace page is wallpapered with photos of local players, while his handle, Jigga8481, appears as a frequent commenter on the U.S.S. Mariner, a blog devoted to the Seattle Mariners. Jigga8481 also appears on a site devoted to online poker. Nickels enjoyed casino card playing, according to his old housemate Mauhar, and made and lost large amounts.
At Nooksack, Nickels proved to be a quick learner. He was promoted to "dual rate" after only six months—meaning he dealt half the time and worked as pit boss for the other half.
In the wake of the indictments, the obvious question was whether Nickels' quick rise to management indicates the tribe was trying to curry favor with Seattle's mayor. But there's no evidence that the Nooksack had any business with Nickels Sr. And the suspicion may overstate the importance of the younger Nickels' position.
"I can teach you how to be a [pit boss] in probably two hours," says the Gaming Academy's Miyamoto. The qualifications include watching dealers shuffle, being handy at making out schedules, and looking good in a suit. There's also a willingness to take home a smaller paycheck. Pit bosses often make less than half of what dealers gather through tips, says Miyamoto, especially at smaller casinos. In some cases, he says, "pits are the lowest men on the totem pole just because of the pay."
There's the added ignominy of working at the Sack, which is apparently among the dregs of Washington casino work. Employees are constantly reminded of where they could be working by the huge, blinking sign of the nearby Silver Reef casino, operated by the Lummi Nation. The Reef, unlike the Sack, has a hotel, steak house, spa for pedicures, a security guard at the door who checks IDs and stamps hands (this young-looking reporter got into the Nooksack without any questioning), and recently, an appearance by Davy Jones, formerly of the Monkees.
Mauhar claims that pay and tips at the Sack are half that of the Reef.
By 2005, the cheaters had perverted the false shuffle into a grotesquery. The indictment alleges that a dealer at Foxwoods didn't shuffle a stack of 103 cards. Even the surveillance workers manning the eyes in the sky would have had a hard time missing that massive chunk of undisturbed cards. The dealer was later fired.
Then another dealer at the Barona Valley Ranch Resort and Casino in San Diego stole the record by not shuffling a 376-card brick, according to the government.
Such chutzpah allowed the cheaters to rake in progressively larger sums—an alleged $427,820 from L'Auberge Hotel and Casino in Louisiana and, six days later, the nearly million-dollar night that followed the short-circuiting of the shuffling machines in Indiana. But it also kept them visible: They grew a tail of more than 10 federal, state, tribal, and foreign authorities. The FBI began amassing a paper pile on them that would soon total at least 7,145 pages of documents. By the time two alleged California cheaters, 26-year-old George Lee and 49-year-old Tien Duc Vu, flew out to Seattle to visit the Nooksack in September 2005, an alert with identifying info on the Tran people had been broadcast to area casinos.
And yet the Sack job was quiet. "I was pretty new, so I had no idea what was going on at the mini-bac table," says Mauhar. Another dealer who worked at the Sack at the same time as Nickels and did not want to be identified says the "only form of cheating I noticed or heard about was card counting, and they were usually spotted right away because it's pretty obvious."
London, the prosecutor working the Tran case, won't say how Vu or Lee made the acquaintance of Nickels and the dealers. "Suffice it to say that Tien Duc Vu and George Lee traveled to the Nooksack casino, [and] they played there and befriended the three." The first to join the cheaters, according to London, was Nickels.
"It's not uncommon at all" in collusion schemes for cheaters to go to the management first, says Miyamoto, the gaming-school owner. "Because if you know that your immediate boss standing right behind you is in on it with you, it's so much easier to operate."
For his involvement, says London, Nickels took $5,000. In taking the alleged wad, Nickels also accepted the obligation to solicit a couple of his dealers and pay them a similar amount. Prosecutors say he chose 24-year-old Levi Mayfield, who attended Western with Nickels, received a business degree, and lived in Bellingham on a street below Nickels' hilltop abode. Nickels is also said to have shoulder-tapped 23-year-old Kasey James McKillip, who apparently applied to Western—his name is "in the system," says a staffer in the registrar's office—but who has no record of attending classes.
Mayfield learned the false shuffle from Lee in a Bellingham motel, according to the indictment, and he then taught it to McKillip. The operation went live on Oct. 7 and lasted until Oct. 28, which is when Lee and Duc Vu were barred from the casino. Nickels' dealers left at that time and were later served with summonses asking them to appear in court. The pit boss himself continued working at the casino until late last year.
The federal indictment does not explain why Nickels remained employed at the casino for so long after the dealers were busted. "They might've found out later on," consultant Bill Zender speculates. "[Let's say] we get rid of the two dealers involved because we know they false-shuffled it, right? So now all of a sudden we start doing credit-card checks on all these guys, bank checks, and all of a sudden we find out that they transferred some funds to this kid at the same time [they did to the dealers]. That would lead me to want to fire him, you know what I'm saying?"
The indictment doesn't say whether Nickels left the job voluntarily or not. But his departure came days after the Washington State Gambling Commission sent out agents to interview him on Oct. 12, 2006. "I just got up one morning to get a drink of water, and there was, like, agents in our living room," says Mauhar. "I was, like, 'What the hell is going on?'" The agents were conversing with Nickels "pretty cordially," and when Nickels told him it was nothing and to go back to bed, Mauhar did.
The Tran Organization, meanwhile, was piling one stupid mistake atop another.
In June 2006, the alleged card cheats lost $50,000 at the Isle of Capri Casino in Louisiana after a false shuffle went wrong. Truong and an associate offered a $500 bribe to a floor supervisor at the Imperial Palace Casino in Biloxi, Miss. The supervisor turned out to be an undercover agent. In August, Truong offered another agent posing as an Imperial dealer a $3,000 bribe. (All of this is according to the indictments.)
Truong and his helpers were doomed. All they'd accumulated is now subject to forfeiture, including three properties; at least four bank accounts; a 2003 Cadillac Escalade belonging to Lee; and a 2001 Porsche 911 Carrera, a 2007 Toyota Tacoma truck, a 2002 Dodge Ram van, and a Rolex Presidential watch belonging to Truong.
Truong's out of jail and awaiting an Aug. 30 court hearing. His pretrial agreement states that he and his wife still manage a restaurant in San Diego, where he once owned a Mercedes-Benz worth $101,530 with California plates reading PGJOHN, an homage to his honorific, Pai Gow John.
Other believers in the false-shuffle scam will probably take his place, though. "This isn't the first time or the last time—especially with the success rate they had—that it will be seen," says Murphy.
Copied from the Triangle Poker Journal
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Woman's Game? Lady's Game?
With words and phrases that would make your mother blush, it's hard to believe that a self-respecting woman would sit at a table with a handful of degenerates all wanting to be the first to blurt out a phrase to see what calibre of lady has joined them. Many phrases that seem almost inspired by a desire to alienate the fairer sex..... For the most part, the nicer casinos all have rules that are usually enforced but in local mitt joints, be prepared or at least warned!
Here's a few that were tossed around with a young lady present Friday in Cary.... you decide.
Bitches
Dirty bitch
Nuts
Whores and fours
Big slit (I know, I actually coined this one in honor of AQ... since Big Slick was AK)
Big Pair (now has more meaning since Jennifer Tilly is playing on TV)
Rack (see Big Pair)
Backdoor
Betting on the come (yep, the spoken is more powerful than the written here)
And those are just the phrases that mean something associated with the game! Depending on which game you frequent, the cornacopia of saucy terms thrown around might make the occasional sailor blush.....
For the most part, I guess male players try to at least recognize the presence of a lady by tempering the conversation but if you are a lady and you plan on visiting some of the local establishments, you should at least take an ipod and show some cleavage for christ's sake.
Let the suckouts begin!
Here's a few that were tossed around with a young lady present Friday in Cary.... you decide.
Bitches
Dirty bitch
Nuts
Whores and fours
Big slit (I know, I actually coined this one in honor of AQ... since Big Slick was AK)
Big Pair (now has more meaning since Jennifer Tilly is playing on TV)
Rack (see Big Pair)
Backdoor
Betting on the come (yep, the spoken is more powerful than the written here)
And those are just the phrases that mean something associated with the game! Depending on which game you frequent, the cornacopia of saucy terms thrown around might make the occasional sailor blush.....
For the most part, I guess male players try to at least recognize the presence of a lady by tempering the conversation but if you are a lady and you plan on visiting some of the local establishments, you should at least take an ipod and show some cleavage for christ's sake.
Let the suckouts begin!
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Now That’s How You End the Night!
Well, it was a particularly crazy evening last night. Eli was back after a long road trip, and started off the evening tight and playing good cards. After, oh, his fifth hand or so, the old Eli was back, and he was as loose as I’d ever seen him! His three favorite words: “All in blind.” He became so loose it even slowed Dave down!
At any rate, once all the pretenders, wannabes and hit-and-run artists left, Tom, Dave and I sat down to play some $5/10 Omaha High. We basically just traded punches (well, jabs mostly) for a while. I got involved in a smaller hand with Tom, and I only mention it because it kind of sets up the last hand. I flop a big wrap with a flush draw, and he flops top set. I call a decent bet on the flop, and when a brick comes on the turn, he thinks for a minute before making a big overbet, pushing all-in for something like $1,000 into a $300 pot. I put him on the set and fold, of course, but not before giving him a little light-hearted grief about being scared. Truth is, I don’t blame him at all! I see players make horrible calls all the time, especially when it gets late. Also, I had spiked a sweet river card against him earlier in the evening to scoop a $3,800 multi-way pot, so I think he was feeling a little snake bit.
I believe it was the very next hand, when I look down to find As-Ah-Js-5s. We have our usual $20 straddle, and Dave bumps it up to $100 when it gets to him. Hmmm, how to play, how to play… Dave has $2,000 behind, and I have him well covered. After contemplating a raise to $300 or $400, I decided to take a page out of Tom’s playbook (after all, with Dave you just never know). I announce I’m “pulling a Tom” and going all-in. Dave turns up his hand to show pocket kings with one suit, and goes into the tank for a few minutes. It’s no secret to Dave that I have aces. Tom mentions that we have the “Greenstein-Farha” scenario (Barry’s aces vs. Sam’s kings, when Sammy spikes a king to win a monster pot). After taking as long as I remember Dave taking to make a decision, he finally gives me a grin and slams his stack of chocolates into the middle.
Of course, the flop comes king-high, and all of a sudden I’m the one that needs to get lucky. The flop was something like K-10-4 with one spade, so I basically need an ace, queen or running spades. I get some help when a 9s comes on the turn. After selling my soul to Satan for the umpteenth time (you know where I’m going when I leave this earth), the river brings a sweet little 6s to give me the nut flush, and more importantly, all Dave’s chips! The aces held up like they should have, but geez, why do the poker gods always have to make you sweat…? :-)
See ya at the tables…
Rick
At any rate, once all the pretenders, wannabes and hit-and-run artists left, Tom, Dave and I sat down to play some $5/10 Omaha High. We basically just traded punches (well, jabs mostly) for a while. I got involved in a smaller hand with Tom, and I only mention it because it kind of sets up the last hand. I flop a big wrap with a flush draw, and he flops top set. I call a decent bet on the flop, and when a brick comes on the turn, he thinks for a minute before making a big overbet, pushing all-in for something like $1,000 into a $300 pot. I put him on the set and fold, of course, but not before giving him a little light-hearted grief about being scared. Truth is, I don’t blame him at all! I see players make horrible calls all the time, especially when it gets late. Also, I had spiked a sweet river card against him earlier in the evening to scoop a $3,800 multi-way pot, so I think he was feeling a little snake bit.
I believe it was the very next hand, when I look down to find As-Ah-Js-5s. We have our usual $20 straddle, and Dave bumps it up to $100 when it gets to him. Hmmm, how to play, how to play… Dave has $2,000 behind, and I have him well covered. After contemplating a raise to $300 or $400, I decided to take a page out of Tom’s playbook (after all, with Dave you just never know). I announce I’m “pulling a Tom” and going all-in. Dave turns up his hand to show pocket kings with one suit, and goes into the tank for a few minutes. It’s no secret to Dave that I have aces. Tom mentions that we have the “Greenstein-Farha” scenario (Barry’s aces vs. Sam’s kings, when Sammy spikes a king to win a monster pot). After taking as long as I remember Dave taking to make a decision, he finally gives me a grin and slams his stack of chocolates into the middle.
Of course, the flop comes king-high, and all of a sudden I’m the one that needs to get lucky. The flop was something like K-10-4 with one spade, so I basically need an ace, queen or running spades. I get some help when a 9s comes on the turn. After selling my soul to Satan for the umpteenth time (you know where I’m going when I leave this earth), the river brings a sweet little 6s to give me the nut flush, and more importantly, all Dave’s chips! The aces held up like they should have, but geez, why do the poker gods always have to make you sweat…? :-)
See ya at the tables…
Rick
Monday, August 20, 2007
How I've improved my play...
...it's been about 8 months since I have been in North Carolina and reading this blog makes me think back to the nights at PKR and a few of the other games in the area. It's amazing I had any money left after the way I played some of those nights, but I consider them cheap lessons compared to the way I am playing these days.
When I first started playing it was more of a way to spend some time and I really enjoy the banter and camaraderie of sitting around the table with people and getting to know them and talk about various topics. Being fairly new to NC, it was a great way for me to meet people.
I won some, lost some, then sometimes lost some more. So when I got back to Iowa and was going to have more free time to play I decided to try to spend some time after every session analyzing my play and making notes to read before I sat down at the tables next.
The first thing I realized was that I played WAY to many hands out of sheer boredom. Instead of mucking cards I knew were going to be way behind, I'd play them just to make sure I still had a pulse. Now I make sure I always have a seat where I can immerse myself into what is on TV and every 2 hours I take a 15 minute break to walk around the casino.
Showing my cards too often was also a major weakness. I used to do it as a show of friendliness if the person who folded wanted to see them. Now I try to pick my spots and only show strong hands on nights I've bluffed a few times, or show weak hands on nights the cards are running strong.
But the biggest problem for me had been the cost of the hand. Many times there are waits for seats at the table, so I'd find myself playing blackjack downstairs while I wait for my seat. Well, it's tough to worry about calling $10-20 when I've been playing $100-200 hands of blackjack just moments before. So now the rule is I only play blackjack on my way OUT of the casino.
I'm still not the player I want to be (who is?) but I've made some changes and realizations which have greatly improved my play and allowed me to be more competitive on a regular basis.
And reading this blog has helped, too. It's always nice to see how others think about certain hands and different ways people would play them.
Hope all is well in NC, and I'll be down this fall so will try and meet up with a few of you to donkey off some money like old times. :)
Chad
When I first started playing it was more of a way to spend some time and I really enjoy the banter and camaraderie of sitting around the table with people and getting to know them and talk about various topics. Being fairly new to NC, it was a great way for me to meet people.
I won some, lost some, then sometimes lost some more. So when I got back to Iowa and was going to have more free time to play I decided to try to spend some time after every session analyzing my play and making notes to read before I sat down at the tables next.
The first thing I realized was that I played WAY to many hands out of sheer boredom. Instead of mucking cards I knew were going to be way behind, I'd play them just to make sure I still had a pulse. Now I make sure I always have a seat where I can immerse myself into what is on TV and every 2 hours I take a 15 minute break to walk around the casino.
Showing my cards too often was also a major weakness. I used to do it as a show of friendliness if the person who folded wanted to see them. Now I try to pick my spots and only show strong hands on nights I've bluffed a few times, or show weak hands on nights the cards are running strong.
But the biggest problem for me had been the cost of the hand. Many times there are waits for seats at the table, so I'd find myself playing blackjack downstairs while I wait for my seat. Well, it's tough to worry about calling $10-20 when I've been playing $100-200 hands of blackjack just moments before. So now the rule is I only play blackjack on my way OUT of the casino.
I'm still not the player I want to be (who is?) but I've made some changes and realizations which have greatly improved my play and allowed me to be more competitive on a regular basis.
And reading this blog has helped, too. It's always nice to see how others think about certain hands and different ways people would play them.
Hope all is well in NC, and I'll be down this fall so will try and meet up with a few of you to donkey off some money like old times. :)
Chad
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Harvard Law's Cure-All: Poker
Copied from the Triangle Poker Journal
Harvard Law's Cure-All: Poker
Harvard Law school thinks it has found the solution to many of society’s problems, from teenage delinquency to world diplomatic crises: a hand of poker.
The card game that is a game of skill to its advocates, and a potentially ruinous bet on chance to its detractors, is to be taught to disadvantaged US school children and college students to teach respect, business acumen and even war strategy.
Charles Nesson, a Harvard Law school professor, will next week unveil a plan to set up “global poker strategic thinking societies” at universities around the world, including Harvard, Yale and Oxford, when he attends a conference on virtual worlds and cyberspace in Singapore.
The societies will set up poker workshops at schools, sponsor university poker matches and develop an online poker curriculum for any institution that wishes to use it.
Prof Nesson, who once sold a computer programme he devised based on five-card draw, jacks-or-better – a variation of poker – for $50,000 (£25,000), said workshops had been arranged as an after-school activity for disadvantaged children in the Boston area and in Jamaica that involved real money, albeit very small stakes.
“Poker teaches people to think for themselves, it is a key component of individuality and a prime aspect of managing resources,” Prof Nesson said, admitting that some of these instincts for survival hardly encouraged notions of mutual trust.
Business dealmakers could learn from poker the art of avoiding making the first offer, he added, while teenage tearaways could take from it life skills such as patience, composure, respect for their foes and understanding someone else’s point of view. Law graduates would understand the law of evidence and diplomats could apply the art of bluffing to international relations.
As for personal finance and risk management, Prof Nesson said there was no better educational tool than poker to teach people how to make the most of their limited chips stack and “how to lose” or “to lose well”.
“As far as I’m concerned, it would be a better world if we all played poker,” Prof Nesson said.
Prof Nesson, who defended Vietnam war whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg in the 1971 Pentagon papers trial, hopes the idea will support those who want to legitimise the game in the US, where Congress last year passed legislation in effect banning online poker.
Copied from the Triangle Poker Journal
Harvard Law's Cure-All: Poker
Harvard Law school thinks it has found the solution to many of society’s problems, from teenage delinquency to world diplomatic crises: a hand of poker.
The card game that is a game of skill to its advocates, and a potentially ruinous bet on chance to its detractors, is to be taught to disadvantaged US school children and college students to teach respect, business acumen and even war strategy.
Charles Nesson, a Harvard Law school professor, will next week unveil a plan to set up “global poker strategic thinking societies” at universities around the world, including Harvard, Yale and Oxford, when he attends a conference on virtual worlds and cyberspace in Singapore.
The societies will set up poker workshops at schools, sponsor university poker matches and develop an online poker curriculum for any institution that wishes to use it.
Prof Nesson, who once sold a computer programme he devised based on five-card draw, jacks-or-better – a variation of poker – for $50,000 (£25,000), said workshops had been arranged as an after-school activity for disadvantaged children in the Boston area and in Jamaica that involved real money, albeit very small stakes.
“Poker teaches people to think for themselves, it is a key component of individuality and a prime aspect of managing resources,” Prof Nesson said, admitting that some of these instincts for survival hardly encouraged notions of mutual trust.
Business dealmakers could learn from poker the art of avoiding making the first offer, he added, while teenage tearaways could take from it life skills such as patience, composure, respect for their foes and understanding someone else’s point of view. Law graduates would understand the law of evidence and diplomats could apply the art of bluffing to international relations.
As for personal finance and risk management, Prof Nesson said there was no better educational tool than poker to teach people how to make the most of their limited chips stack and “how to lose” or “to lose well”.
“As far as I’m concerned, it would be a better world if we all played poker,” Prof Nesson said.
Prof Nesson, who defended Vietnam war whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg in the 1971 Pentagon papers trial, hopes the idea will support those who want to legitimise the game in the US, where Congress last year passed legislation in effect banning online poker.
Copied from the Triangle Poker Journal
The Fine Art of Sucking Out
Well, there you go. Rick's been waiting for quite some time for me to own up to the skill of chasing the old one or two outer only to have it smack me right in the face..... I can only take credit for the times where it happens and I actually get to see the other persons cards. I blogged one of the worst ones that I've ever done (as best I can recall). See last week's blog "So that's what it feels like to get your money in bad and suck out! I like it!" I ended putting all my money after flop with a blown low draw, a pair of twos and not much else only to have the board go runner/runner second nut straight. Sweet!
Rick accused me of sucking out last night when I raised pre-flop and the board comes X, 2x, 2x. I've got Ah, 3h, Qx, Qx and we both check the flop. The turn was a 7x and I really liked that card and I don't know why I decided not to bet... probably 2 reasons: Fear and Common Sense. You see, Rick is my nemesis. He has hit more flops, turns and rivers on me with the cooler hand than anyone else that I've ever played against. If I didn't know him so well, I'd swear he was cheating. LOL. I mean, how many one-outers can he hit! And they not only give him the stone-cold nuts, but it hits my hand too which entices to me to call or even worst.... raise! At any rate, we both checked the turn and guess what hits the river, Qx! Whee! And low and behold, tricky-Ricky, bets out with $50 and I re-raise another $100. I don't know why. I would have probably laid it down if he came over the top, giving him credit for Quad-deuces. LOL. So he accuses me of sucking out on him and mucks his cards. What do you think? He had a deuce? I don't know, he mucked!
Probably my worst suck out of the week came late Friday against Big Dave! I've got Ah, 2h, 4c, Jd and make a little raise of $60 into the $60 pot and get, well I think that everyone called and there were a couple of phone-ins. The flop... Ax, Ax, 9x. I have to be strong! The whole idea of sucking out is to get the money in while you are behind and then slam it to him when the card hits! Whee! I pot. I think it was about $200 something. Mike D folds and after much deliberation, Big Dave pushes all-in for another $190 or so and I of course, preparing for the suck out immediately call. Dave turns over Ax, Qx, X, X. You got it! The river hits my jack.... Ah yes.... the fine art of sucking out!
That pot helped me right the ship and we only played about another 45 minutes or so after that hand... but I was fully prepared to suck out again.... given the right circumstances!
Rick accused me of sucking out last night when I raised pre-flop and the board comes X, 2x, 2x. I've got Ah, 3h, Qx, Qx and we both check the flop. The turn was a 7x and I really liked that card and I don't know why I decided not to bet... probably 2 reasons: Fear and Common Sense. You see, Rick is my nemesis. He has hit more flops, turns and rivers on me with the cooler hand than anyone else that I've ever played against. If I didn't know him so well, I'd swear he was cheating. LOL. I mean, how many one-outers can he hit! And they not only give him the stone-cold nuts, but it hits my hand too which entices to me to call or even worst.... raise! At any rate, we both checked the turn and guess what hits the river, Qx! Whee! And low and behold, tricky-Ricky, bets out with $50 and I re-raise another $100. I don't know why. I would have probably laid it down if he came over the top, giving him credit for Quad-deuces. LOL. So he accuses me of sucking out on him and mucks his cards. What do you think? He had a deuce? I don't know, he mucked!
Probably my worst suck out of the week came late Friday against Big Dave! I've got Ah, 2h, 4c, Jd and make a little raise of $60 into the $60 pot and get, well I think that everyone called and there were a couple of phone-ins. The flop... Ax, Ax, 9x. I have to be strong! The whole idea of sucking out is to get the money in while you are behind and then slam it to him when the card hits! Whee! I pot. I think it was about $200 something. Mike D folds and after much deliberation, Big Dave pushes all-in for another $190 or so and I of course, preparing for the suck out immediately call. Dave turns over Ax, Qx, X, X. You got it! The river hits my jack.... Ah yes.... the fine art of sucking out!
That pot helped me right the ship and we only played about another 45 minutes or so after that hand... but I was fully prepared to suck out again.... given the right circumstances!
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Prop Bets
I love making prop bets. I think it makes any game more exciting. The problem is that I can't get a lot of action. Its funny how guys who do not hesitate to drop a hundred on a game or even a few thousand on any given Sunday during football season won't do many prop bets. They won't even take bets on black vs red flops, backing up a read on someone's hand with a side bet, who will be the first to go busto, or or wins and loses the most. Nothing big, just simple things that can make a boring night a little more interesting. Plus, it helps me pay more attention to each and every hand throughout the night.
I would also like to know if anyone has any interesting bets out there.... where are the true gamblers at?
I would also like to know if anyone has any interesting bets out there.... where are the true gamblers at?
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
“There’s Nothing I Can Fold”
Being good at math can be a blessing and a curse. Sometimes basic math dictates putting a large amount of chips into the pot with a marginal hand. Regardless of the pot odds or implied odds you’re getting, the fact is the worst hand will usually lose, so in the short term it can be easy to bleed off a lot of chips in situations like this if the flop keeps missing you. Though I consider myself primarily a feel player, I also know the math very well, and this means (depending on position) I will almost always call a bet if the price is right. After all, the whole concept of playing the odds is that, over time, you will make money if you truly are getting the right price to call a bet.
A situation like this came up last night in our $5/10 NLO8 game. Though I forget the exact pre-flop betting sequence, I believe we have our usual $20 straddle, a raise to $60 and a couple callers. I’m in middle position with 3-5-6-7 with a couple spades, and toss in the call. The action gets to Charles, who raises something like another $240 on top. If it folds to me it’s a pretty easy fold. Instead, Dave and Tom both call, and Elvie (almost sure to call) is yet to act behind me. I say “There’s nothing I can fold” (nothing I could call the first $60 with, that is) and toss in the call as well, and we have a nice little pot a-brewing.
Now, this is a very specific situation which I actually like to find myself in. Everyone at the table knows that Charles has A-A, and he most likely has at least one good low card to go along with them. The bad thing about the situation is that for me to get a decent low hand, I’ll need an ace to come (and probably a deuce as well), and at least two of them aren’t available. The good thing about it is that if an ace does come, most players (though Charles is not necessarily one of them) will never be able to get away from the hand, and you can sometimes win a huge pot. In this situation I would be much happier with a deuce in my hand - something along the lines of 2-3-5-6, but hey, you play the hand you’re dealt.
Anyway, there’s around $1,500 out there, and the flop is flat-out magic, A-2-4 rainbow. I flop the double-nut wheel with a redraw to a higher straight. Before I can even best determine how to get all the chips in, Dave announces he’s all-in for $600, and Tom calls for less behind him! I have everyone covered, mumble something about there being too much money out there to fold, and call as well. Charles suspects he’s beat by at least one of us, but at this point doesn’t have much choice but to call also. The turn and river actually bring a couple bricks like J-8, nobody else has the wheel, and I scoop a sweet little $3,500+ pot!
I had a couple other “could-a-been” monster hands, but they didn’t quite work out as well as this one. Still, I was able to slowly build the stack the rest of the night, and cashed out for over $5K. A very good night - especially considering two of the big action players (Bill and Eli) were absent. Dave’s face is having some kind of allergic reaction, but it’s not near as red as it’s gonna be next time, when I clean out what’s left of his bank account. Dave, make sure your mommy is on speed dial, because you’ll be crying to her before midnight!
See ya at the tables…
Rick
A situation like this came up last night in our $5/10 NLO8 game. Though I forget the exact pre-flop betting sequence, I believe we have our usual $20 straddle, a raise to $60 and a couple callers. I’m in middle position with 3-5-6-7 with a couple spades, and toss in the call. The action gets to Charles, who raises something like another $240 on top. If it folds to me it’s a pretty easy fold. Instead, Dave and Tom both call, and Elvie (almost sure to call) is yet to act behind me. I say “There’s nothing I can fold” (nothing I could call the first $60 with, that is) and toss in the call as well, and we have a nice little pot a-brewing.
Now, this is a very specific situation which I actually like to find myself in. Everyone at the table knows that Charles has A-A, and he most likely has at least one good low card to go along with them. The bad thing about the situation is that for me to get a decent low hand, I’ll need an ace to come (and probably a deuce as well), and at least two of them aren’t available. The good thing about it is that if an ace does come, most players (though Charles is not necessarily one of them) will never be able to get away from the hand, and you can sometimes win a huge pot. In this situation I would be much happier with a deuce in my hand - something along the lines of 2-3-5-6, but hey, you play the hand you’re dealt.
Anyway, there’s around $1,500 out there, and the flop is flat-out magic, A-2-4 rainbow. I flop the double-nut wheel with a redraw to a higher straight. Before I can even best determine how to get all the chips in, Dave announces he’s all-in for $600, and Tom calls for less behind him! I have everyone covered, mumble something about there being too much money out there to fold, and call as well. Charles suspects he’s beat by at least one of us, but at this point doesn’t have much choice but to call also. The turn and river actually bring a couple bricks like J-8, nobody else has the wheel, and I scoop a sweet little $3,500+ pot!
I had a couple other “could-a-been” monster hands, but they didn’t quite work out as well as this one. Still, I was able to slowly build the stack the rest of the night, and cashed out for over $5K. A very good night - especially considering two of the big action players (Bill and Eli) were absent. Dave’s face is having some kind of allergic reaction, but it’s not near as red as it’s gonna be next time, when I clean out what’s left of his bank account. Dave, make sure your mommy is on speed dial, because you’ll be crying to her before midnight!
See ya at the tables…
Rick
Two SC men charged with operating gambling business in NC
Copied from http://www.wistv.com/
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6908116
Two SC men charged with operating gambling business in NC
RALEIGH, NC (AP) - Two South Carolina men are accused of operating illegal gambling businesses in North Carolina.
Forty-two-year-old James Otis Henderson of Inman and his brother, 43-year-old Barron Sloan Henderson of Lyman are charged in the federal investigation.
James Henderson is charged with operating an illegal gambling business and bribery of a law enforcement official.
Barron Henderson is charged with operating an illegal gambling business and witness tampering.
Court papers indicate that James Henderson told an undercover investigator that at least two county sheriff's in North Carolina accepted cash bribes to protect an illegal gambling business.
Video poker machines became illegal in North Carolina on July 1st.
Copied from http://www.wistv.com/
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6908116
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6908116
Two SC men charged with operating gambling business in NC
RALEIGH, NC (AP) - Two South Carolina men are accused of operating illegal gambling businesses in North Carolina.
Forty-two-year-old James Otis Henderson of Inman and his brother, 43-year-old Barron Sloan Henderson of Lyman are charged in the federal investigation.
James Henderson is charged with operating an illegal gambling business and bribery of a law enforcement official.
Barron Henderson is charged with operating an illegal gambling business and witness tampering.
Court papers indicate that James Henderson told an undercover investigator that at least two county sheriff's in North Carolina accepted cash bribes to protect an illegal gambling business.
Video poker machines became illegal in North Carolina on July 1st.
Copied from http://www.wistv.com/
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6908116
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Poker Defendant: NC Sheriffs Took Bribes
Copied from www.washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/08/AR2007080802126.html
Poker Defendant: NC Sheriffs Took Bribes
By MIKE BAKER
The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 8, 2007; 8:25 PM
RALEIGH, N.C. -- A man charged with operating an illegal gambling business told investigators at least two county sheriffs accepted cash bribes to protect his enterprise, according to court papers.
James Otis Henderson, 42, was busted after he attempted to bribe the Rutherford County sheriff, who was working for federal investigators, with $10,000 in December, according to court papers filed Tuesday.
During a videotaped conversation, Henderson told Conner that other sheriffs in nearby counties were also taking bribes, according to a judge's order to detain Henderson pending trial. He said one sheriff wanted $100 per video poker machine per month for protection, while another sought monthly installments.
"The acts of the defendant show involvement in a widespread criminal conspiracy which has the potential to corrupt the criminal justice system in the Western District of North Carolina and this state," wrote U.S. Magistrate Judge Dennis Howell in his order.
Suellen Pierce, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Department of Justice in Charlotte, declined to comment Wednesday, saying the case remains under investigation.
Henderson and his brother, Barron Sloan Henderson, both of Lyman, S.C., operated Henderson Amusement Inc. and are charged with operating an illegal gambling business. James Henderson also is charged with bribing a law enforcement official.
North Carolina began to phase out video poker machines last year, and they became illegal July 1. When the machines were legal, operators could place a maximum of three machines at a single location, and the most a player could win was $10 in merchandise.
In an indictment unsealed last week, federal prosecutors allege the video poker ring earned $5 million in seven years and often paid out jackpots worth thousands of dollars.
James Henderson's attorney, Thomas Boggs, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Among those also indicted are two former Buncombe County sheriff's deputies, both charged with conspiracy in connection with the gambling operation.
A message left with their sheriff's office was not immediately returned.
Copied from www.washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/08/AR2007080802126.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/08/AR2007080802126.html
Poker Defendant: NC Sheriffs Took Bribes
By MIKE BAKER
The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 8, 2007; 8:25 PM
RALEIGH, N.C. -- A man charged with operating an illegal gambling business told investigators at least two county sheriffs accepted cash bribes to protect his enterprise, according to court papers.
James Otis Henderson, 42, was busted after he attempted to bribe the Rutherford County sheriff, who was working for federal investigators, with $10,000 in December, according to court papers filed Tuesday.
During a videotaped conversation, Henderson told Conner that other sheriffs in nearby counties were also taking bribes, according to a judge's order to detain Henderson pending trial. He said one sheriff wanted $100 per video poker machine per month for protection, while another sought monthly installments.
"The acts of the defendant show involvement in a widespread criminal conspiracy which has the potential to corrupt the criminal justice system in the Western District of North Carolina and this state," wrote U.S. Magistrate Judge Dennis Howell in his order.
Suellen Pierce, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Department of Justice in Charlotte, declined to comment Wednesday, saying the case remains under investigation.
Henderson and his brother, Barron Sloan Henderson, both of Lyman, S.C., operated Henderson Amusement Inc. and are charged with operating an illegal gambling business. James Henderson also is charged with bribing a law enforcement official.
North Carolina began to phase out video poker machines last year, and they became illegal July 1. When the machines were legal, operators could place a maximum of three machines at a single location, and the most a player could win was $10 in merchandise.
In an indictment unsealed last week, federal prosecutors allege the video poker ring earned $5 million in seven years and often paid out jackpots worth thousands of dollars.
James Henderson's attorney, Thomas Boggs, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Among those also indicted are two former Buncombe County sheriff's deputies, both charged with conspiracy in connection with the gambling operation.
A message left with their sheriff's office was not immediately returned.
Copied from www.washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/08/AR2007080802126.html
Monday, August 13, 2007
Some Thoughts on Tilt
One thing I have discovered about Tilt is that there are ways to prepare for it in advance (as opposed to trying to react to it when it happens).
Absolutely the best way (and I know this probably seems obvious, but I think many people are guilty of this) is to never play for more money than you are comfortable losing. Again, sounds simple, but lets face it...if you were comfortable losing the money in the pot - then you wont be upset when you do. Now this does not make up for the frustration of losing THE HAND, which I know for many of us is even more important that the money. But it is a start.
Music absolutely helps me. When I played the WSOP this year, I took a tip from Bluff magazine and actually made a "tilt mix" on my iPod. THey suggested soothing music...I actually went the opposite direction and put together a nice brutal mix of hardcore, metalcore and other "aggro" genres. That works for me...maybe it'll be Enya for you.
I have a friend/mentor who took 3rd place in a WSOP event this year, and he had a great suggestion that I have used many times. This obviously only works on line. I tend to mostly play $10 and $24 buy in tournaments on Full Tilt. He suggested that when I take a bad beat in one of these online tournaments to just go ahead and open up a $1 tournament or a $2 Heads Up Tournament...and go crazy! Bluff. Make loose calls. Donk off as many chips as you want. By playing this way in a $1 tourney it really seems to help me NOT do that in the one I am actually taking seriously. One night I did this by entering a $1 rebuy on FTP. An hour later I was the chipleader and was simply running people over with aggression. A handy bi-product of being on tilt from a game these guys did not even know I was playing. I ended up final tabling that tournament and making a nice return on my $1! And burning off some tilt.
Absolutely the best way (and I know this probably seems obvious, but I think many people are guilty of this) is to never play for more money than you are comfortable losing. Again, sounds simple, but lets face it...if you were comfortable losing the money in the pot - then you wont be upset when you do. Now this does not make up for the frustration of losing THE HAND, which I know for many of us is even more important that the money. But it is a start.
Music absolutely helps me. When I played the WSOP this year, I took a tip from Bluff magazine and actually made a "tilt mix" on my iPod. THey suggested soothing music...I actually went the opposite direction and put together a nice brutal mix of hardcore, metalcore and other "aggro" genres. That works for me...maybe it'll be Enya for you.
I have a friend/mentor who took 3rd place in a WSOP event this year, and he had a great suggestion that I have used many times. This obviously only works on line. I tend to mostly play $10 and $24 buy in tournaments on Full Tilt. He suggested that when I take a bad beat in one of these online tournaments to just go ahead and open up a $1 tournament or a $2 Heads Up Tournament...and go crazy! Bluff. Make loose calls. Donk off as many chips as you want. By playing this way in a $1 tourney it really seems to help me NOT do that in the one I am actually taking seriously. One night I did this by entering a $1 rebuy on FTP. An hour later I was the chipleader and was simply running people over with aggression. A handy bi-product of being on tilt from a game these guys did not even know I was playing. I ended up final tabling that tournament and making a nice return on my $1! And burning off some tilt.
Got Tilt?
In response to ftp_pirate, I couldn’t agree more with your last statement. Half the reason I blog is because I learn more from writing about a hand or situation than I do from just thinking about it. I find it interesting that many times I’ll end the blog thinking differently about a hand than when I started. An example of this was a hand I posted a couple weeks ago, where all four players would have had boats (mine being the winner). At first I was bummed that I didn’t win a larger pot because I bet a couple others out too early. After some writing and analyzing, I realized that if I hadn’t bet them out pre-flop, they probably bet me out on the flop, and I don’t get to stick around to hit my free two-outer on the turn.
I think tilt is a great topic for discussion, as it’s something that almost all of us struggle with at one time or another. I tilt on occasion like most others, but when I do, it’s usually because I’m upset at myself more than the play of an opponent. I’m very much a perfectionist (believe me, it’s more of a fault than a strength), and this normally happens when I make mistakes like not charging an opponent enough to chase his draw, misreading the strength of someone’s hand, or paying someone off when I know they hit their card.
As far as “bad beats” go, I think the term is way overused. True bad beats don’t really happen very often, and if they do, you should consider yourself lucky! That means you’ve found a juicy game, where your opponents call your bets getting (presumably) improper odds. Of course, unless they’re drawing dead, simple math dictates that they will suckout on occasion. Although it’s sometimes easier said than done, you have to try and look at the big picture (love the call, hate the card).
Say, for example, an opponent always calls your bet as a 5:1 underdog, while always getting 3:1 on his money. Now (other than not paying him off if he hits) your job is done. Through some combination of good play on your part and bad play on their part, you’ve got them to put their money into the pot in a horrible situation. If you just take a small sample (say one night), those odds may not even out. Maybe on this night your opponent gets into this situation four times, and draws out on you three times. He won the battle, and you should not just congratulate him, you should encourage him! Over time, you will win the war. Think of a coin flip. If you flip a coin 10 times, it might come up heads 8-9 times. If you flip it 100,000 times, the odds will even out and (give or take a tenth of a point or two) it will be heads 50% of the time.
We all have some form of “poker memory,” in that we seem to remember all the times we get sucked out on, but we rarely remember the times we won when we were “supposed to,” or when we suckout ourselves. I believe if most of us kept track of all the hands, we would find the numbers even out over time. If you still fee like you’re getting drawn out more times than you should, it may be that you’re not charging enough, and/or you’re paying off a river bet once your opponent hits their card.
Say you have a set, and bet $75 into a $150 pot, giving your opponent 3:1 odds to draw to his up and down straight draw. He’s not getting proper pot odds, as he has 8 outs, and is getting 4.5:1 odds to hit his straight. However, if your opponent puts you on a strong hand like a set, and knows you’re the type of player who will pay off, say, a $150 bet on the river, then the implied odds make it correct to call your $75 bet. If it’s your goal, then I believe you can train even a bad player to stop chasing draws once they realize they’re not getting paid if their card comes. Then again, why would you want to…? :-)
If you do find yourself in a situation where you can feel the hot vapor creep up your neck, into your brain, and start to escape through your ears, then you should probably walk away from the table for a few minutes. Even if it costs you a blind or two, that’s nothing compared to the cost of one bad decision in a large pot. Go get a drink of water or some fresh air, and try to step back and analyze the hand from a subjective point of view (big picture, big picture…). If you did something wrong, you simply try to learn from it and not make the same mistake again. If you were the victim of a true bad beat, then smile and pat yourself on the back, because that probably means you played the hand perfectly!
And if none of these techniques work, there’s always alcohol…
See ya at the tables…
Rick
I think tilt is a great topic for discussion, as it’s something that almost all of us struggle with at one time or another. I tilt on occasion like most others, but when I do, it’s usually because I’m upset at myself more than the play of an opponent. I’m very much a perfectionist (believe me, it’s more of a fault than a strength), and this normally happens when I make mistakes like not charging an opponent enough to chase his draw, misreading the strength of someone’s hand, or paying someone off when I know they hit their card.
As far as “bad beats” go, I think the term is way overused. True bad beats don’t really happen very often, and if they do, you should consider yourself lucky! That means you’ve found a juicy game, where your opponents call your bets getting (presumably) improper odds. Of course, unless they’re drawing dead, simple math dictates that they will suckout on occasion. Although it’s sometimes easier said than done, you have to try and look at the big picture (love the call, hate the card).
Say, for example, an opponent always calls your bet as a 5:1 underdog, while always getting 3:1 on his money. Now (other than not paying him off if he hits) your job is done. Through some combination of good play on your part and bad play on their part, you’ve got them to put their money into the pot in a horrible situation. If you just take a small sample (say one night), those odds may not even out. Maybe on this night your opponent gets into this situation four times, and draws out on you three times. He won the battle, and you should not just congratulate him, you should encourage him! Over time, you will win the war. Think of a coin flip. If you flip a coin 10 times, it might come up heads 8-9 times. If you flip it 100,000 times, the odds will even out and (give or take a tenth of a point or two) it will be heads 50% of the time.
We all have some form of “poker memory,” in that we seem to remember all the times we get sucked out on, but we rarely remember the times we won when we were “supposed to,” or when we suckout ourselves. I believe if most of us kept track of all the hands, we would find the numbers even out over time. If you still fee like you’re getting drawn out more times than you should, it may be that you’re not charging enough, and/or you’re paying off a river bet once your opponent hits their card.
Say you have a set, and bet $75 into a $150 pot, giving your opponent 3:1 odds to draw to his up and down straight draw. He’s not getting proper pot odds, as he has 8 outs, and is getting 4.5:1 odds to hit his straight. However, if your opponent puts you on a strong hand like a set, and knows you’re the type of player who will pay off, say, a $150 bet on the river, then the implied odds make it correct to call your $75 bet. If it’s your goal, then I believe you can train even a bad player to stop chasing draws once they realize they’re not getting paid if their card comes. Then again, why would you want to…? :-)
If you do find yourself in a situation where you can feel the hot vapor creep up your neck, into your brain, and start to escape through your ears, then you should probably walk away from the table for a few minutes. Even if it costs you a blind or two, that’s nothing compared to the cost of one bad decision in a large pot. Go get a drink of water or some fresh air, and try to step back and analyze the hand from a subjective point of view (big picture, big picture…). If you did something wrong, you simply try to learn from it and not make the same mistake again. If you were the victim of a true bad beat, then smile and pat yourself on the back, because that probably means you played the hand perfectly!
And if none of these techniques work, there’s always alcohol…
See ya at the tables…
Rick
How to handle tilt....
I have no idea and that's why I hoping that everyone can and will share their thoughts on this. Playing live, I usually listen to music and get so focused that I don't tilt anymore. Maybe I've just taken so many bad beats that I expect them and when they happen, I'm not surprised to see how bad someone else played, only disappointed that I didn't win. Online is a different story for me. Playing so many hands an hour and take so many bad beats that sometimes it is just overwhelming and before I know it, I've thrown away most of my money trying to force something.
So what do you do to help you from tilting or if you do tilt, how do you keep the damage minimal to your stack?
Post your thoughts in the comments section or create a blog yourself. I've found that blogging here has actually improved my game b/c writing about hands and going through and really analyzing them can make a huge difference.
So what do you do to help you from tilting or if you do tilt, how do you keep the damage minimal to your stack?
Post your thoughts in the comments section or create a blog yourself. I've found that blogging here has actually improved my game b/c writing about hands and going through and really analyzing them can make a huge difference.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
The Good & The Bad....
There is nothing quite like the poker feeling when you mentally put someone on a hand, follow-through with the hand to the end and find it to be correct. And, in reverse, how painful is it when you put someone on a hand, follow through with the hand to the end and find the proctologist standing there.... no glove, no lube, no dinner, no kiss.... just the, as Chevy Chase quipped in FLETCH, "Moon River."
Friday night in Cary, I've got an interesting hand, Kd, 2d, Kc, 3c and the flop gives me my needed Ace, a 4x and I remember correctly a 9x. I believe that everyone checked the flop and the turn brought us a 7x. I believe it was Brendan who led out with a pot sized bet of about $30, I called and Rick called. As soon as he bet, it was a pretty easy process to put him on the nut low. I called and Rick called. The river was another middle card, I think maybe an 8 or 10. Rick leads out with... "I'm all-in" but he actually still had about $108 or so left over (important fact, but I missed it), Brendan called the $250 bet by Rick and I moved all-in with another $350 or so, Rick made a crying call with his last $108 and Brendan called. Everyone knew that someone was going to get quartered, but until the cards were turned up, no one really knew who. I had put Rick on the high and Brendan on the nut low. I had the nut low and pocket Kings. I pushed all-in thinking that Rick was out of chips and that if Brendan called I would quarter him and basically take half of his remaining chips. I was right and I think that had Rick had a lot more chips he may folded his two pair thinking that I had him beat. Rick was definitely the big winner in that pot, but I made money thanks to my re-raise all-in from Brendan and the side pot. There was a little table talk about it for a few minutes, but I think that everyone understood the move.
The bad came a little later when I ran into Raj. Frank raised the pot pre-flop to about $40 leaving him only about $25 or so behind. Raj and I make the call. I'm holding Ax, 4x, 5x, 6x and the flop is 2h, 3x, 9x. Raj leads out with a bet hoping I guess hoping that I will just go away, but I smooth call. The turn is the 10h and Raj pots it. Now there's about $250 or so in a side pot between Raj and I. I felt that Raj had a set and was just trying to bet me out of the pot. The river is the card that Rick describes as .... if there is a card that will cost you money, it'll come!" and there it was, the 5h giving me the wheel and a 6 high straight. So I push all-in! Raj takes about 5 minutes squirming around which was making me feel as if I had made the right move and had him beat and maybe even a scooper. He finally calls and turns over the nut low with the second nut flush! Wow! I couldn't get over the deliberation! If I had that hand, I would have re-raised my opponents all-in... LOL. A monster. He said that he thought that I might have had the Ah, 4h. Nope, only Rick has cards like that! LOL. So Frank turned over the Ah, 10h and quartered Raj and I in the main pot and Raj quartered me in the side pot and took a mountain of chips away from me!
We had a good table and quite a bit of action considering some of the real action players were MIA.
Oh well... back to the felt!
Friday night in Cary, I've got an interesting hand, Kd, 2d, Kc, 3c and the flop gives me my needed Ace, a 4x and I remember correctly a 9x. I believe that everyone checked the flop and the turn brought us a 7x. I believe it was Brendan who led out with a pot sized bet of about $30, I called and Rick called. As soon as he bet, it was a pretty easy process to put him on the nut low. I called and Rick called. The river was another middle card, I think maybe an 8 or 10. Rick leads out with... "I'm all-in" but he actually still had about $108 or so left over (important fact, but I missed it), Brendan called the $250 bet by Rick and I moved all-in with another $350 or so, Rick made a crying call with his last $108 and Brendan called. Everyone knew that someone was going to get quartered, but until the cards were turned up, no one really knew who. I had put Rick on the high and Brendan on the nut low. I had the nut low and pocket Kings. I pushed all-in thinking that Rick was out of chips and that if Brendan called I would quarter him and basically take half of his remaining chips. I was right and I think that had Rick had a lot more chips he may folded his two pair thinking that I had him beat. Rick was definitely the big winner in that pot, but I made money thanks to my re-raise all-in from Brendan and the side pot. There was a little table talk about it for a few minutes, but I think that everyone understood the move.
The bad came a little later when I ran into Raj. Frank raised the pot pre-flop to about $40 leaving him only about $25 or so behind. Raj and I make the call. I'm holding Ax, 4x, 5x, 6x and the flop is 2h, 3x, 9x. Raj leads out with a bet hoping I guess hoping that I will just go away, but I smooth call. The turn is the 10h and Raj pots it. Now there's about $250 or so in a side pot between Raj and I. I felt that Raj had a set and was just trying to bet me out of the pot. The river is the card that Rick describes as .... if there is a card that will cost you money, it'll come!" and there it was, the 5h giving me the wheel and a 6 high straight. So I push all-in! Raj takes about 5 minutes squirming around which was making me feel as if I had made the right move and had him beat and maybe even a scooper. He finally calls and turns over the nut low with the second nut flush! Wow! I couldn't get over the deliberation! If I had that hand, I would have re-raised my opponents all-in... LOL. A monster. He said that he thought that I might have had the Ah, 4h. Nope, only Rick has cards like that! LOL. So Frank turned over the Ah, 10h and quartered Raj and I in the main pot and Raj quartered me in the side pot and took a mountain of chips away from me!
We had a good table and quite a bit of action considering some of the real action players were MIA.
Oh well... back to the felt!
Saturday, August 11, 2007
So that's what it feels like to get your money in bad and suck out! I like it!
$2/$5 Pot Limit Omaha 8 in Cary last night and there were several very interesting hands for me that I'll probably post separately from each other just because of time constraints.
One of them was near the end of the night. My family has been out of town all week in Chicago for my son to represent NC in a roller hockey State Wars tournament. They played very well, but ended up finishing just out of the medals. At any rate, they were getting back in around 11 so I knew I wouldn't be able to play very late. It was around 10ish and I had just been quartered in a huge pot so I was back down to just above my original buy-in.
I'm ready to go, half on tilt and I re-straddled for $15 and there are several callers. I believe it was Tom who raised another $50 or so I call and I believe that it was Akash that called along with me. I've got Ac, 2d, 8d, Qd... a vulnerable hand at best. Vulnerable? To a $50 raise and another caller, is there anyone who believes that I am not way behind?
The flop.... 2x, 7x, 10x - how does it miss me? Let me count the ways. Tom pots it for over $200 and I've only got about $170 or so left. It's rare that you ever hear these words at the poker table, "there's too much money in there for me not to call." I think that Elly coined that phrase originally. So even though I feel like I'm contributing to Tom's kid's education fund. I push my remaining chips in the middle and Rick and I are watching my cards and the board as it comes 9x on the turn and then a miracle Jx on the river. Yep, you run the numbers.... 8x, 9x, 10x, Jx, Qx. I ended up scooping the pot from an almost drawing dead position after the flop. Like I said, "so that's what it feels like to get your money in bad and suck out!" I apologized to everyone involved including the bystanders and pulled the $700+ pot into my corner.
Onward and upward and back to the felt!
One of them was near the end of the night. My family has been out of town all week in Chicago for my son to represent NC in a roller hockey State Wars tournament. They played very well, but ended up finishing just out of the medals. At any rate, they were getting back in around 11 so I knew I wouldn't be able to play very late. It was around 10ish and I had just been quartered in a huge pot so I was back down to just above my original buy-in.
I'm ready to go, half on tilt and I re-straddled for $15 and there are several callers. I believe it was Tom who raised another $50 or so I call and I believe that it was Akash that called along with me. I've got Ac, 2d, 8d, Qd... a vulnerable hand at best. Vulnerable? To a $50 raise and another caller, is there anyone who believes that I am not way behind?
The flop.... 2x, 7x, 10x - how does it miss me? Let me count the ways. Tom pots it for over $200 and I've only got about $170 or so left. It's rare that you ever hear these words at the poker table, "there's too much money in there for me not to call." I think that Elly coined that phrase originally. So even though I feel like I'm contributing to Tom's kid's education fund. I push my remaining chips in the middle and Rick and I are watching my cards and the board as it comes 9x on the turn and then a miracle Jx on the river. Yep, you run the numbers.... 8x, 9x, 10x, Jx, Qx. I ended up scooping the pot from an almost drawing dead position after the flop. Like I said, "so that's what it feels like to get your money in bad and suck out!" I apologized to everyone involved including the bystanders and pulled the $700+ pot into my corner.
Onward and upward and back to the felt!
Friday, August 10, 2007
Blogworthy?
One question I’ve been asked a few times over the past year or so is why I blog one particular hand over another one. For example, why would I blog a hand that won (or lost) a $600 pot and not a hand that won a $2,000 pot?
Probably the biggest factor as to whether I blog at all is time. I do most of my blogging at work, and my job is such that I’m usually either relatively bored or extremely busy - there’s not a whole lot in-between (I guess you can tell what today’s like…). I may not blog for a few weeks, but then I might post one or two large ones. I stare at a 19” computer screen most of the day, so jumping on the computer is about the last thing I want to do when I get home. Since I have cable, TiVo, and a Pioneer plasma, I prefer to stare at a 50” screen instead…
For me, there are a couple things that might make a hand “blogworthy.” Of course, the sheer size of the pot would be a factor. If I scoop (or get rivered out of) a $3,000 pot, that’s probably getting blogged. We’ve all had those moments of anticipation while involved in a huge pot, waiting for the river card that will almost certainly determine our fate for the evening. Your entire stack is at risk. You catch your card, you probably go home a big winner – your opponent catches theirs, you go most likely go home a loser. Although most of us not named Dave would prefer to avoid these moments of heart-stopping terror, they are sometimes inescapable.
The other, more important factor of a hand’s blogworthiness lies in the uniqueness of the hand. Perhaps it was quads vs. quads. Perhaps, if played differently, the hand might have had a drastically different outcome. Perhaps it was the last hand of the night, and four players decided to go all-in blind. These are not necessarily huge pots (though that last scenario could be), but I might find them interesting.
Those of you who are regulars know that I don’t mind sharing my thought process during a hand. Heck, to me that’s half the point of blogging at all – to share your thoughts on a particular hand or situation, and get others to put in their two cents on what they may have done. Some players are afraid of sharing their thoughts, for fear that others may “figure them out.” Oh, please…
The truth is that information like this doesn’t help a bad player at all (and in fact will probably just confuse him even more). This information won’t do much for a good player either, because he’s most likely already “figured you out” after 30 minutes of sitting at a table with you.
I look at a blog site like this not just as a great opportunity to share triumphs, tragedies, suckouts and bad-beats, but as a forum to openly discuss strategies so we all can expand our knowledge base and improve our game. If the site attempted to be 100% entertainment I believe it would become irrelevant, and if it attempted to be solely a poker lab, then it would just seem too much like college (but without the drunk coeds).
I would encourage everyone to post the hands that interest them. One of the great things about poker is that the size of the game is all relative. For me, a $3,000 pot will get my juices flowing. For others, a $20 pot may be a monster. Others, however, may not get excited about any pot with less than $100,000 in it (gulp!). In this respect, the money is not important, so don’t be afraid to post a hand just because the pot was “only” $72. If it was interesting, I’d like to read about it, and I’m sure others would also!
See ya at the tables…
Rick
Probably the biggest factor as to whether I blog at all is time. I do most of my blogging at work, and my job is such that I’m usually either relatively bored or extremely busy - there’s not a whole lot in-between (I guess you can tell what today’s like…). I may not blog for a few weeks, but then I might post one or two large ones. I stare at a 19” computer screen most of the day, so jumping on the computer is about the last thing I want to do when I get home. Since I have cable, TiVo, and a Pioneer plasma, I prefer to stare at a 50” screen instead…
For me, there are a couple things that might make a hand “blogworthy.” Of course, the sheer size of the pot would be a factor. If I scoop (or get rivered out of) a $3,000 pot, that’s probably getting blogged. We’ve all had those moments of anticipation while involved in a huge pot, waiting for the river card that will almost certainly determine our fate for the evening. Your entire stack is at risk. You catch your card, you probably go home a big winner – your opponent catches theirs, you go most likely go home a loser. Although most of us not named Dave would prefer to avoid these moments of heart-stopping terror, they are sometimes inescapable.
The other, more important factor of a hand’s blogworthiness lies in the uniqueness of the hand. Perhaps it was quads vs. quads. Perhaps, if played differently, the hand might have had a drastically different outcome. Perhaps it was the last hand of the night, and four players decided to go all-in blind. These are not necessarily huge pots (though that last scenario could be), but I might find them interesting.
Those of you who are regulars know that I don’t mind sharing my thought process during a hand. Heck, to me that’s half the point of blogging at all – to share your thoughts on a particular hand or situation, and get others to put in their two cents on what they may have done. Some players are afraid of sharing their thoughts, for fear that others may “figure them out.” Oh, please…
The truth is that information like this doesn’t help a bad player at all (and in fact will probably just confuse him even more). This information won’t do much for a good player either, because he’s most likely already “figured you out” after 30 minutes of sitting at a table with you.
I look at a blog site like this not just as a great opportunity to share triumphs, tragedies, suckouts and bad-beats, but as a forum to openly discuss strategies so we all can expand our knowledge base and improve our game. If the site attempted to be 100% entertainment I believe it would become irrelevant, and if it attempted to be solely a poker lab, then it would just seem too much like college (but without the drunk coeds).
I would encourage everyone to post the hands that interest them. One of the great things about poker is that the size of the game is all relative. For me, a $3,000 pot will get my juices flowing. For others, a $20 pot may be a monster. Others, however, may not get excited about any pot with less than $100,000 in it (gulp!). In this respect, the money is not important, so don’t be afraid to post a hand just because the pot was “only” $72. If it was interesting, I’d like to read about it, and I’m sure others would also!
See ya at the tables…
Rick
Thursday, August 09, 2007
$1/$2 No Limit Hold'em with Ed and Laura!
With the family still out of town this week I was wondering what to do tonight and as I was doing some pruning of my email I came across this weeks invitation by Ed to join them tonight for hamburgers and hot dogs and 1/2 No Limit. With my recent bought of pancreatitis at least over for now, I can't seem to get enough burgers! So, I made a quick call to see if Rick wanted to join me but I'm guessing he was crashing from a late night/early morning with the Juice as they were still going strong Tuesday night when I cashed out.
Ed is using one of the tables from PKR and a very nice heavy set of poker chips. I like them! Especially when I get a lot of them... LOL. There were some guys that I recognized from the cash games and tournaments from PKR and some new faces. I knew that it was going to take me a little while to adjust to $1/$2 NL Hold'em after playing $5/$10 NL O8 almost exclusively for the past few weeks. And I did have to re-buy, but I soon caught on and got back in the groove in pretty short order. There were a couple of big hands for me, one against a guy named Stevie (I believe). It was kind of noisy and I couldn't quite make out his name when I asked. I flopped a small flush draw with a straight draw and the straight draw became an up and down straight draw on the turn. Unfortunately as Rick says, "if there is a card that will cost you money, it'll come!" I bet all the way to the river and Stevie smooth called the entire way and when the flush hit on the river, he quickly put his remaining chips in to take the pot with a queen high club flush.
The other big hand came a little later and it too included Stevie and a late-comer, a very nice oriental gentleman that sat right next to me. Mattrix was there and I believe that it was him that made a $10 or so raise pre-flop. There were several callers and since I was sitting a couple places to Mattrix's right, I could smooth call with almost anything getting about 7-8 to 1. Lo and behold, my down cards are 3s, 5s. I know, it doesn't seem like 2 cards is enough cards when I'm so used to getting 4 cards down in O8. At any rate, the flop comes 7s, 6s, 3d and I really like this flop so I lead out with a $40 bet and the oriental gentleman immediately pushes all-in for another $30 or so. There are about 4 callers and I smooth call, the turn is a 4h and Stevie immediately pushes all-in for something over $200 and I have him covered. I immediately call and everyone else folds. The river is a meaningless Ax. The oriental gentleman made Aces and sevens. The 4 on the turn had given Stevie two pairs, threes and fours. And my 7 high straight scooped the largest pot of the night... somewhere around $800ish. I like it! While he could have had a higher straight on the turn, my flush draw was still live and I knew that even if I was behind, I had outs. It might just be the 4 of spades, but it was an out. LOL
We did stir up the discussion again about Scott's blog from a week or so back when he pushed all-in and got 2 callers who immediately "verbally" agreed to check it down. It actually happened again tonight. There was a pretty heated discussion about it and I tried to make everyone understand that I wasn't looking to argue only to make the point that its perfectly OK to check it down, but I don't feel that it is right to verbally agree to do so once the other player is all-in. I'm fine with the check/check, check/check, just not the "Let's check it down!" While it may not be against any rules, from an etiquette perspective, I think that it is very wrong. It is very possible that an aggressive player who made the call may end up betting out a hand that would beat the guy who is all-in, but if it is just checked all the way down, that can't happen. I think that they were just fired up over the specific hand that Scott had blogged rather than the foundation of my feelings on the subject. But no one was hurt and play continued.
It was a group of fun guys and Laura did a great job dealing. I understand that Ed is moving his game to a better location a little farther south later this month/first of September. Sounds like it is going to be much better than the current facility which was very adequate. I think it only got up to about 95 degrees in there tonight! But the hamburgers and hot dogs were great!
So I would strongly recommend playing in the game, but you should arrive early as the table filled up pretty quickly.
Again, I had a great time and actually won (sucked out) on several players as always! As one of my famous poker quotes from back in June by Susie Isaacs, "Play good, and when all else fails --- suck out!"
Back to the felt!
Ed is using one of the tables from PKR and a very nice heavy set of poker chips. I like them! Especially when I get a lot of them... LOL. There were some guys that I recognized from the cash games and tournaments from PKR and some new faces. I knew that it was going to take me a little while to adjust to $1/$2 NL Hold'em after playing $5/$10 NL O8 almost exclusively for the past few weeks. And I did have to re-buy, but I soon caught on and got back in the groove in pretty short order. There were a couple of big hands for me, one against a guy named Stevie (I believe). It was kind of noisy and I couldn't quite make out his name when I asked. I flopped a small flush draw with a straight draw and the straight draw became an up and down straight draw on the turn. Unfortunately as Rick says, "if there is a card that will cost you money, it'll come!" I bet all the way to the river and Stevie smooth called the entire way and when the flush hit on the river, he quickly put his remaining chips in to take the pot with a queen high club flush.
The other big hand came a little later and it too included Stevie and a late-comer, a very nice oriental gentleman that sat right next to me. Mattrix was there and I believe that it was him that made a $10 or so raise pre-flop. There were several callers and since I was sitting a couple places to Mattrix's right, I could smooth call with almost anything getting about 7-8 to 1. Lo and behold, my down cards are 3s, 5s. I know, it doesn't seem like 2 cards is enough cards when I'm so used to getting 4 cards down in O8. At any rate, the flop comes 7s, 6s, 3d and I really like this flop so I lead out with a $40 bet and the oriental gentleman immediately pushes all-in for another $30 or so. There are about 4 callers and I smooth call, the turn is a 4h and Stevie immediately pushes all-in for something over $200 and I have him covered. I immediately call and everyone else folds. The river is a meaningless Ax. The oriental gentleman made Aces and sevens. The 4 on the turn had given Stevie two pairs, threes and fours. And my 7 high straight scooped the largest pot of the night... somewhere around $800ish. I like it! While he could have had a higher straight on the turn, my flush draw was still live and I knew that even if I was behind, I had outs. It might just be the 4 of spades, but it was an out. LOL
We did stir up the discussion again about Scott's blog from a week or so back when he pushed all-in and got 2 callers who immediately "verbally" agreed to check it down. It actually happened again tonight. There was a pretty heated discussion about it and I tried to make everyone understand that I wasn't looking to argue only to make the point that its perfectly OK to check it down, but I don't feel that it is right to verbally agree to do so once the other player is all-in. I'm fine with the check/check, check/check, just not the "Let's check it down!" While it may not be against any rules, from an etiquette perspective, I think that it is very wrong. It is very possible that an aggressive player who made the call may end up betting out a hand that would beat the guy who is all-in, but if it is just checked all the way down, that can't happen. I think that they were just fired up over the specific hand that Scott had blogged rather than the foundation of my feelings on the subject. But no one was hurt and play continued.
It was a group of fun guys and Laura did a great job dealing. I understand that Ed is moving his game to a better location a little farther south later this month/first of September. Sounds like it is going to be much better than the current facility which was very adequate. I think it only got up to about 95 degrees in there tonight! But the hamburgers and hot dogs were great!
So I would strongly recommend playing in the game, but you should arrive early as the table filled up pretty quickly.
Again, I had a great time and actually won (sucked out) on several players as always! As one of my famous poker quotes from back in June by Susie Isaacs, "Play good, and when all else fails --- suck out!"
Back to the felt!
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Good fold....
We've all said it, but sometimes it really is true! Tonight with the Juice.... there were a couple of big hands for me. This was certainly one of them! I only had one regret, the Juice had already busted out and I believe he could be heard upstairs rolling pennies. But... this particular hand, there's a $30 straddle and I believe there were 5 callers. I've got the kind of down cards which usually earns me a Q, Q, J flop, but not this time.
My hand...
The flop....
I know, right now, I've just got the nut low with some great re-draws so, acting from late position, I lead out with an $80 bet and get 3 callers.
The turn....
Now I've got the wheel with a flush draw (albeit not a very high one) and the top 2 pair so I lead out with a $125 bet and get 2 callers.
The river....
Sweet! Although I'm not certain what anyone could have been calling with but I still have to bet hoping that someone caught something. But the $200 bet on the river goes uncalled.... like I said.... very good fold! Nut low and Aces full.... sounds like something that Dean would run into.
I did catch Dave in one hand earlier when I smooth called his $40 straddle with Ac, As, 3s, 5d. Everyone at the table and a couple of guys from the topless bar next door smooth called and of course when it gets back to Dave he raises $100 and I believe there were 3 callers before it gets back to me and I have already eye-balled the other stacks of the callers and they are rather short-stacked, but I decide to push anyway. And my friend, Rick, does it again, he talks Dave out of calling.... "I can't believe that you say you don't want to give Charles any chips but you do anyway!" Nice Rick.... so Dave folds and I get two callers for less than my $900 bet, Bill T and Elvie. The flop is a little scary.... 4x, 4x, 4x, but no low gets there and my crappy boat holds up. I'm sure Rick folded the case 4.
It was a good night and other than a couple of instances where I wanted the pot to get large, I managed to steer clear of any ball-buster hands and ended up cashing out for a tidy profit.
Oh, well... next time! Back to the felt!
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Making some changes....
I've decided to quit playing live poker for the rest of the year except for once or twice a month just to get out of the house and focus on playing online. I hope this time to do the impossible and actually practice bankroll management this time..... To top it all off, I'm only going to start with the $9 I had left in my Full Tilt account and go from there. So far I'm already at $111 and that is after a couple hundred hands of play. The problem that I have always faced playing micro-stakes online and playing live $1/2 regularly & $2/5 on occasion is that I get bored after a while playing nickel dime games online and just like clockwork, after about an hour of play I'm searching for an action game and end up on the wrong side of the river. I really think that if I stick to the deep stack games where I'm at my best and can be very patient, I will be successful. Also, won't play first thing in the morning (which is where the vast majority of my loses have come from for some unexplainable reason) and I will play short sessions taking breaks every hour or so and no more multi-tabling. Three tables max.
Plus I think I really need this challenge right now. I play outside my means and now after some health concerns with my wife, I have my priorities straight again. Its going to be interesting, fun, frustrating and difficult but if I stay focus with the task at hand I should be sitting great by the end of the year and next year should really be a break out year for me but only if I stay focused and keep my emotions under control.
Of course, it would be easier if I just play dumb luck and hit and run on everyone.......
Plus I think I really need this challenge right now. I play outside my means and now after some health concerns with my wife, I have my priorities straight again. Its going to be interesting, fun, frustrating and difficult but if I stay focus with the task at hand I should be sitting great by the end of the year and next year should really be a break out year for me but only if I stay focused and keep my emotions under control.
Of course, it would be easier if I just play dumb luck and hit and run on everyone.......
PPA August Advocate!
Dear Fellow PPA Member:
Thanks to your efforts, we have made tremendous progress in our fight to protect the rights of poker players. More than 40 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have committed to clarifying federal laws to preserve your ability to play poker online. But we still need your help to get the attention of every U.S. Representative.
Congress is in recess for August and your Representative will be returning home to host local events and town hall meetings. These are great opportunities to tell them that poker is not a crime and to support H.R. 2046, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act and H.R. 2610, the Skill Game Protection Act.
Here's how to find out when these events are happening:
Get the phone number of your U.S. Representative's hometown office by clicking here and entering your ZIP Code.
Call to ask when and where these events are taking place in the month of August.
Go to one of these events and bring your fellow poker players. Tell your U.S. Representative that poker is not a crime and to co-sponsor H.R. 2046 and H.R. 2610 when they return to Washington. Let them know that you will support them if they support the rights of law-abiding poker players.
Thank you for being an "August Advocate" for the Poker Players Alliance.
Proud to Play Poker,
Senator Al D'Amato
Chairman of the Board
Poker Players Alliance
Thanks to your efforts, we have made tremendous progress in our fight to protect the rights of poker players. More than 40 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have committed to clarifying federal laws to preserve your ability to play poker online. But we still need your help to get the attention of every U.S. Representative.
Congress is in recess for August and your Representative will be returning home to host local events and town hall meetings. These are great opportunities to tell them that poker is not a crime and to support H.R. 2046, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act and H.R. 2610, the Skill Game Protection Act.
Here's how to find out when these events are happening:
Get the phone number of your U.S. Representative's hometown office by clicking here and entering your ZIP Code.
Call to ask when and where these events are taking place in the month of August.
Go to one of these events and bring your fellow poker players. Tell your U.S. Representative that poker is not a crime and to co-sponsor H.R. 2046 and H.R. 2610 when they return to Washington. Let them know that you will support them if they support the rights of law-abiding poker players.
Thank you for being an "August Advocate" for the Poker Players Alliance.
Proud to Play Poker,
Senator Al D'Amato
Chairman of the Board
Poker Players Alliance
Monday, August 06, 2007
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Glad To Be An American
I don't play much live but I play a tremendous amount online. There is rarely a day that goes by that I don't curse this country we live in. I hate that players here in the Trinagle have to be worried about their games getting raided. I hate that I can't move money around from site to site online as easy as I used to. I hate that I can't play at all the sites like Party and Pokerroom anymore. However, sometimes I do feel appreciative to live in this country even with rogue prosecutors like Nifong running around. For an interesting, eye-opening, and really scary read check out the post on this blog about getting arrested for playing poker in Thailand.
http://www.grindblog.blogspot.com/
Let me add that my personal opionion of this guy is that he is a total douche bag. I do believe his story to be true though. I've read his blog some in the past and I've been realtively familiar with him for some time. He's done some pretty shady stuff in the past. He's also been banned from the popular poker forum 2+2 for some of his past actons. If someone were going to get locked up in a Thai prison and have them throw away the key it probably couldn't happen to a more deserving individual. Well that may be a tad bit harsh but to say the least I do not hold him in very high regard.
Next time I'm cursing the US I will have to remember that as absurd as we feel the laws concerning poker are in this country at least we haven't gotten to the point where we have to worry about being treated like this. At least not yet.
http://www.grindblog.blogspot.com/
Let me add that my personal opionion of this guy is that he is a total douche bag. I do believe his story to be true though. I've read his blog some in the past and I've been realtively familiar with him for some time. He's done some pretty shady stuff in the past. He's also been banned from the popular poker forum 2+2 for some of his past actons. If someone were going to get locked up in a Thai prison and have them throw away the key it probably couldn't happen to a more deserving individual. Well that may be a tad bit harsh but to say the least I do not hold him in very high regard.
Next time I'm cursing the US I will have to remember that as absurd as we feel the laws concerning poker are in this country at least we haven't gotten to the point where we have to worry about being treated like this. At least not yet.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Amazing 4 Handed O8 Hand!
We were a little short-handed last night in Cary. My family is traveling this week so I didn't even drive down until around 11:00PM or so and when I finally got there, there were only 3 players. Rick, Akash, and Dean. Not exactly my dream table. And I know that Rick will get a kick out of this statement, as it turns out, I was about the wildest guy at the table. LOL
There was one amazing hand. And boy, could it have played out differently! I'm far from an O8 wiz-kid, but the dynamics of 4 handed play compared to a full table is huge. This one hand, as it turns, our last hand of the night was amazing!
The hand begins with Rick on the button to the dealer's left, then Dean in the small blind, Akash the big blind and I'm utg. We're playing $2/$5 Pot Limit and I just sucked out from way behind on another crazy hand against Rick. So Rick probably has around $400-$500, Dean-O has about $500 and Akash and I have around $1,000 each. As is normally the case, I straddle for $10 and Rick re-straddles for an additional $10 to make it $20 to go. Everyone calls back around to Rick with his restraddle on the button and he pops it up $50. Dean calls and Akash and I fold. Now imagine this hand when I run it out for you if Rick only checks his action here or makes a smaller bet.
As it turns out, Rick had the best hand pre-flop and was way ahead until the flop anyway.... By the way, remember, it was late, I was tired so some of the suits may be incorrect, but you'll get the basic idea.
Rick's hand....
Akash's hand
XX
XXCharles' hand
The flop comes .....
Yep, Dean flops the second nut! Jack's full of fours and decides to "let someone catch up or hopefully someone bets." If I remember correctly, it goes check, check.
The Turn
Oooops! Rick turns what is now the second nut! It's just like him.... Aces full of fours and leads out with a $50 bet and Dean pushes all-in for another $125. I think Rick asked him before he called if he had aces... LOL.
The River
What a card! Had everyone played.....
Rick would have taken everyone's stack with Aces full of fours. Dean-O would have come in second with Jacks full of fours. I would have come in third with two boats: sixes full of fours and fours full of sixes (just for kicks, I would have turned the nut flush as well) and Akash would have also made a boat with fours full of sixes!
Nice! Back to the trap-ridden felt!
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