WITH MY TRAVEL DAY behind me, with my body slowly adjusting to Vegas Time (i.e., no clocks and no work make James a sleep-deprived boy), I arose on Thursday ready for some cards. I began the day with a trip to Whole Foods, located far west on Charleston, near the new Red Rock Station hotel and casino. Vegas's Whole Foods is a huge, grand temple of freshness, and I chowed down on hot breakfast selections, yogurt, and a bran muffin while reading printouts of AllVegasPoker's poker-room reviews and stealing glimpses of a strikingly curvy local sitting on the other side of the store window, with a friend, chatting and splitting a quarter-watermelon with a friend in the early morning heat.
But I didn't come to Las Vegas to look at women. (Well, it wasn't my first priority.) I was here for some poker, and this time around, I had a few new venues in which to play, and before settling down to some cards, I wanted to check out my broader range of playing options.
So after polishing off my muffin and casting one last longing look at the beauty beside me, I drove back down to the Strip, parked at the beautiful Wynn Las Vegas, and began my walking tour.
I did take a quick peek at Wynn's room, which actually opened more than a year ago but which still gets high grades from players. The average skill level there exceeds my own, even at the "lower" games (e.g., they spread a low-cost no-limit game, but there is no maximum buy-in, which skilled, aggressive players favor), so I have not played there yet, a trend that continued for this trip. Someday I'll give the $1/$3 no-limit or one of the inexpensive limit games a shot, but not this trip.
Next, I walked a sweltering block south to the Venetian. Their room went in only a few months ago, and it's a spacious affair with lots of tables, comfortable seats, the electronic seating board most new rooms install to help players see how long their wait might be, and a slew of smaller amenities like tableside dining and an automated login for player's cards so folks can track their comp dollars. A classy room for one of the more upscale properties on the Strip.
Across the street from the Venetian sits Treasure Island, or TI as they have renamed themselves in an attempt to snare the hipster crowd. Its sister property, the Mirage, had what was the premier poker room of its time when it was built in the Nineties. Years later, as poker ebbed, then rushed back in with the force of a Phil Hellmuth temper tantrum, TI finally offered a room to capture some of the wave. Although I missed it at first and had to ask a keno-desk person for directions, in retrospect it's pretty damn easy to find. Walking around from one of these new poker rooms to the next was like Christmas morning; each one a mystery box waiting to be unwrapped. TI's room is mostly enclosed, though you can watch the games from two large rail-windows or the main entrance. It looked very nice, and at that time of day (around 11:00 a.m.) wasn't really so crowded, but it was fairly small. I suspected it would fill up quickly during these weeks with the WSOP in town.
After TI, I took the tram over to the Mirage. I like playing here, even though in my early visits, I took a few solid lumps playing seven-card stud against devious experts. Had I not diverted into hold'em, I probably would have continued to work on my stud skills so I could play in the games here as an equal.
Trouble is, hold'em has almost completely displaced stud in Las Vegas. What few stud games still run are low-buyin, $1-$5 spread-limit games that attract mostly local retirees who play barely any pots, wait for the absolute nuts to begin betting, and castigate anyone who dares to raise a pot. The Mirage used to host two of the few mid-level stud games ($5/$10 and $10/$20) in town. When I visited the room that day and on future occasions, the low-limit version was all they had left. Aside from the Bellagio, where games of many types and nearly every limit can be found, I couldn't imagine where else the dedicate core of mid-limit stud players might have gone. Too bad, because it featured an interesting blend of personalities, which could almost be a blog post on its own.
One other change I regretted at the Mirage was in the change of dealer uniforms. This is a trend that has spread across most casinos. The traditional garb for a poker dealer is a white oxford or tux-inspired shirt, bowtie, black pants, and either a short apron or, increasingly, a fanny pack for personal items. Maybe a vest over the shirt, which always had a left front pocket for tips. In new rooms, and as time goes by in many old ones, poker dealers now wear the same smocks as the rest of the dealers, and what had once been a small company of professional-looking card dealers at the Mirage now had no individuality. Chalk it up to corporate monomania, or perhaps to sentimentality on my part. Another story I could tell you concerns how I actually played dealer at a birthday party, and how I approximated the classic look, even on a roasting-hot July day, but again, that can wait for another entry.
My walking tour — getting hotter by the hour under skies clouded by smoke blown in from a California wildfire — took me next to Caesars Palace. As part of the Harrah's megalith, which also owns the WSOP, opening a poker room in one of the company's star properties was a dead bang. As befits a sprawling resort like Caesars, its poker room is likewise immense. Equally large is the adjoining tournament area, where both independent competitions and satellites for the WSOP can be run. When I arrived, a new no-limit tournament had just started, and the side room was packed with players, the only sounds the clicking of myriad poker chips being nervously shuffled together as the players began forming early impressions of their opponents, testing the table's nerves with a raise here and there, nothing too crazy this early, just enough to let them know a Player is in town. Yeah, most of them have something akin to this kind of crazy dream, all except for the very new players, who have ponied up a buck-twenty for the entry fee and are shaking in their sneakers, or the seasoned local pros, who are already charting their way to the final table through this ill-kempt scrub and wondering which other regulars they will see there.
Having completed my survey of the new offerings in town, it was time to get some actual play under my belt. This will be the topic of my next entry, as will a demonstration of how right and how wrong the best starting hand in hold'em can be.
To view the first two moves along this tainted Candyland board of a city, slide over to these links:
Showing posts with label las vegas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label las vegas. Show all posts
Monday, August 07, 2006
Monday, July 24, 2006
Las Vegas 7/06: Landings, Lodgings, and First Blood
EACH TIME I HAVE visited Las Vegas, I have rented a car. It seemed like a given for the first trip, even though I was staying at the Flamingo, which is dead center on the Strip and accessible to many fine properties via foot or cab. I knew I was going to Hoover Dam, a trip I wanted to make on my own, not subject to the whims of a tour bus driver. It turned out I also made a couple of side trips into the depths of Vegas's non-Strip turf, at least once to take a break from the clanging slots and the vicissitudes of the blackjack tables.
This time was no different, and perhaps more essential, as I was staying Downtown again. My first three stays were at the Flamingo, then I gave the Golden Nugget a try Downtown. I gave them my business the next three times, only breaking the pattern this January when the Nugget's reservation system went kerflooie and I went a block away to the Plaza. Because this trip was planned with considerably less lead time than is typical for me, I didn't bother with the Nugget and went straight for the Plaza. I survived the last trip, why not try them again?
The plane landed on time — finding me with my eyes closed and my breath held. The only part of air travel I can't take is the landing. When the plane is taking off, if there's any sort of problem, I figure the plane can just wheel around and land. In the air, we have redundant systems, two to four engines, several alternate airports at which to land, and the ability to glide if all else fails. Coming in for a landing, however, I feel like I have the least control over anything. Granted, I have control over precisely nothing on the airplane at any time, but it feels most apparent at landing. Everything from the last five seconds above the ground, through that first shuddering touchdown, the throaty roar of the reversed engines, and the sway of the craft as it decelerates, finds me sitting stiff and straight and soaking my knees or the armrests with my sweating palms.
Thus far, this has passed quickly, and when we are merely rolling across the tarmac, with the unmatched skyline of the Las Vegas Strip gliding by the window, all the excitement of the destination rushes back and stomps my landing anxiety into the desert sands.
After the glitch last January with the rental car, I decided not to take chances and rented a Hertz vehicle straight out of the airport. It costs more to rent there, because of fees and taxes McCarran imposes on airport rentals, but with the flight out to Vegas in January free due to frequent flyer miles, I was $300 ahead of the game. The convenience was worth paying for. I had to wait for about 15 minutes for them to find me a car, because I used a AAA upgrade. I wondered how many travelers got sick of waiting, told the clerks to cancel the search, and took what they were initially assigned. I decided not to give the house any advantage. Many folks in the rental hut were not as lucky, having walked straight in from the planes that had gotten them there and tried to rent cars without reservations. Their waits were destined to be much longer than mine.
After that quarter hour, during which I tried not to listen to a high-talking man bray into his cellphone at full lisp about his business problems (the day they permit cell access on planes, expect a logarithmic rise in passenger fistfights and air-marshall weapon discharge reports), I hightailed it across the sizzling parking lot to a Toyota Solara, which was occupied by the Texas family that had just returned it. I evicted them, tossed my two bags into the trunk, and roared off toward the Strip.
As hungry as I might be upon arrival, as late as cross-country storms may have made my flight, as much as I might need caffeine or a bathroom to eliminate same, I always cruise up the Strip early in my trip. I watch the crowds milling from casino to casino in the late-morning sun. I scan the skyline for construction cranes to see if any of the megaresorts have suddenly added a tower or two in my absence. I ride along under the fringe of the Strip's palm trees, maybe even with the window down to hear the delight of the crowd and the carnival barkers outside the gamble palaces offering their alluring temptations. I soak up the heat and the sounds and the absurd architecture and feel at peace. At least, as peaceful as you can be with 50-foot depictions of acrobats, impersonators, and clowns screaming at you from every signboard.
A word here about the Toyota Solara. As rental cars go, this one rates near the bottom. Ergonomically everything felt off. It was probably more spacious inside than the Corolla, from which I had upgraded via AAA, but the positions of various buttons and levers was disquieting and just inconvenient enough to feel like I was wearing someone else's favorite sweater. Of particular vexation was the trunk door and release. The gas-door latch was above the trunk latch, which itself was recessed beneath the floor-line of the car. Time and again I was readying my gas tank for a good sugaring. Triggering the trunk release with the remote required me to press and hold the button for several wasted seconds. Worst of all, the trunk required a good slam to shut it properly. I didn't realize all this until near the end of the first full day, but by that time, I was too set on actually enjoying my vacation to sweat out another stretch in the rental office. The trunk almost cost me dearly, however, when I unthinkingly closed it in the parking garage of one of the casinos, and, upon returning later, noticed that it had not latched shut at all. I slowly opened the trunk, steeling myself to discover my backpack swollen with all manner of books and papers to be gone, but there it was. Call it goodwill, or maybe gambling-focused monomania on the part of the casino's patrons, but as Vegas luck goes, this was my peak.
As is my usual practice, I spent my arrival day checking in (which got me a fine, high, south-pointed view of the Strip), unwinding from the trip, unpacking, driving around a bit, walking to foot-accessible Downtown casinos to snoop about . . . everything but poker. I did gamble, however. Before I left in January, I bought $10 in $1 chips at the Plaza, because they had recently rebranded their casino with a cool new Googie-inspired logo, and I wanted a stack to shuffle next to my keyboard while I thought between sentences. (If you've watched a certain amount of poker TV, you've seen the players riffling two stacks of chips between the fingers of one hand into a single, taller stack. Generally, new players' ability to do this is inversely proportional to their actual poker skill. Yes, I'm including myself. Besides, all the cool kids were doing it!) These chips were now somewhat grotty from my constant nervous fiddling (I blame Full Tilt Poker), so I trucked them back to Las Vegas for redemption.
Or . . . perhaps . . . maybe I could make some small coin with them. I sat down at a $5 blackjack table and deployed my massive, two-bet's-worth stack. The dealer certainly didn't tell me to go somewhere else with it. This is Downtown, last refuge of the low-roller. I figured, the worst that happened was I rented these chips for a ten-spot over the past half year. As it turns out, I didn't really have to call on my wavering knowledge of basic blackjack strategy, because the deck hit me quite firmly. I managed to double up my stack to $22 after two shoes, which featured both a lucrative splitting opportunity, a good double down on 11, and a natural. I tipped the dealer one of my white checks and cashed out for an $11 profit. If only every investment yielded a 110% return so effortlessly!
Next up, my return to the fishy waters of no-limit hold'em in Vegas.
Read the start of this descent into poker madness at Escaping West and the Course Curriculum.
For the next chapters in this sordid saga, hit up this list:
This time was no different, and perhaps more essential, as I was staying Downtown again. My first three stays were at the Flamingo, then I gave the Golden Nugget a try Downtown. I gave them my business the next three times, only breaking the pattern this January when the Nugget's reservation system went kerflooie and I went a block away to the Plaza. Because this trip was planned with considerably less lead time than is typical for me, I didn't bother with the Nugget and went straight for the Plaza. I survived the last trip, why not try them again?
The plane landed on time — finding me with my eyes closed and my breath held. The only part of air travel I can't take is the landing. When the plane is taking off, if there's any sort of problem, I figure the plane can just wheel around and land. In the air, we have redundant systems, two to four engines, several alternate airports at which to land, and the ability to glide if all else fails. Coming in for a landing, however, I feel like I have the least control over anything. Granted, I have control over precisely nothing on the airplane at any time, but it feels most apparent at landing. Everything from the last five seconds above the ground, through that first shuddering touchdown, the throaty roar of the reversed engines, and the sway of the craft as it decelerates, finds me sitting stiff and straight and soaking my knees or the armrests with my sweating palms.
Thus far, this has passed quickly, and when we are merely rolling across the tarmac, with the unmatched skyline of the Las Vegas Strip gliding by the window, all the excitement of the destination rushes back and stomps my landing anxiety into the desert sands.
After the glitch last January with the rental car, I decided not to take chances and rented a Hertz vehicle straight out of the airport. It costs more to rent there, because of fees and taxes McCarran imposes on airport rentals, but with the flight out to Vegas in January free due to frequent flyer miles, I was $300 ahead of the game. The convenience was worth paying for. I had to wait for about 15 minutes for them to find me a car, because I used a AAA upgrade. I wondered how many travelers got sick of waiting, told the clerks to cancel the search, and took what they were initially assigned. I decided not to give the house any advantage. Many folks in the rental hut were not as lucky, having walked straight in from the planes that had gotten them there and tried to rent cars without reservations. Their waits were destined to be much longer than mine.
After that quarter hour, during which I tried not to listen to a high-talking man bray into his cellphone at full lisp about his business problems (the day they permit cell access on planes, expect a logarithmic rise in passenger fistfights and air-marshall weapon discharge reports), I hightailed it across the sizzling parking lot to a Toyota Solara, which was occupied by the Texas family that had just returned it. I evicted them, tossed my two bags into the trunk, and roared off toward the Strip.
As hungry as I might be upon arrival, as late as cross-country storms may have made my flight, as much as I might need caffeine or a bathroom to eliminate same, I always cruise up the Strip early in my trip. I watch the crowds milling from casino to casino in the late-morning sun. I scan the skyline for construction cranes to see if any of the megaresorts have suddenly added a tower or two in my absence. I ride along under the fringe of the Strip's palm trees, maybe even with the window down to hear the delight of the crowd and the carnival barkers outside the gamble palaces offering their alluring temptations. I soak up the heat and the sounds and the absurd architecture and feel at peace. At least, as peaceful as you can be with 50-foot depictions of acrobats, impersonators, and clowns screaming at you from every signboard.
A word here about the Toyota Solara. As rental cars go, this one rates near the bottom. Ergonomically everything felt off. It was probably more spacious inside than the Corolla, from which I had upgraded via AAA, but the positions of various buttons and levers was disquieting and just inconvenient enough to feel like I was wearing someone else's favorite sweater. Of particular vexation was the trunk door and release. The gas-door latch was above the trunk latch, which itself was recessed beneath the floor-line of the car. Time and again I was readying my gas tank for a good sugaring. Triggering the trunk release with the remote required me to press and hold the button for several wasted seconds. Worst of all, the trunk required a good slam to shut it properly. I didn't realize all this until near the end of the first full day, but by that time, I was too set on actually enjoying my vacation to sweat out another stretch in the rental office. The trunk almost cost me dearly, however, when I unthinkingly closed it in the parking garage of one of the casinos, and, upon returning later, noticed that it had not latched shut at all. I slowly opened the trunk, steeling myself to discover my backpack swollen with all manner of books and papers to be gone, but there it was. Call it goodwill, or maybe gambling-focused monomania on the part of the casino's patrons, but as Vegas luck goes, this was my peak.
As is my usual practice, I spent my arrival day checking in (which got me a fine, high, south-pointed view of the Strip), unwinding from the trip, unpacking, driving around a bit, walking to foot-accessible Downtown casinos to snoop about . . . everything but poker. I did gamble, however. Before I left in January, I bought $10 in $1 chips at the Plaza, because they had recently rebranded their casino with a cool new Googie-inspired logo, and I wanted a stack to shuffle next to my keyboard while I thought between sentences. (If you've watched a certain amount of poker TV, you've seen the players riffling two stacks of chips between the fingers of one hand into a single, taller stack. Generally, new players' ability to do this is inversely proportional to their actual poker skill. Yes, I'm including myself. Besides, all the cool kids were doing it!) These chips were now somewhat grotty from my constant nervous fiddling (I blame Full Tilt Poker), so I trucked them back to Las Vegas for redemption.Or . . . perhaps . . . maybe I could make some small coin with them. I sat down at a $5 blackjack table and deployed my massive, two-bet's-worth stack. The dealer certainly didn't tell me to go somewhere else with it. This is Downtown, last refuge of the low-roller. I figured, the worst that happened was I rented these chips for a ten-spot over the past half year. As it turns out, I didn't really have to call on my wavering knowledge of basic blackjack strategy, because the deck hit me quite firmly. I managed to double up my stack to $22 after two shoes, which featured both a lucrative splitting opportunity, a good double down on 11, and a natural. I tipped the dealer one of my white checks and cashed out for an $11 profit. If only every investment yielded a 110% return so effortlessly!
Next up, my return to the fishy waters of no-limit hold'em in Vegas.
Read the start of this descent into poker madness at Escaping West and the Course Curriculum.
For the next chapters in this sordid saga, hit up this list:
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Return to Las Vegas in Sight!
THE POWERS THAT BE at work have realized that our shift in production methods will not occur until after the summer. The ban on extended vacations therefore has been rescinded.
In English, that means: Vegas, baby!!
This greatly reduces the chance that I will go berserk sometime in mid-August. I gave my boss a vague time of when I will go, but I have just booked the trip. There's no going back on the booking, but there's all kinds of going back to Las Vegas!
More, surely, to come. For now, I have local poker planned for tomorrow night, which will, I hope, help with the bankroll for the trip.
In English, that means: Vegas, baby!!
This greatly reduces the chance that I will go berserk sometime in mid-August. I gave my boss a vague time of when I will go, but I have just booked the trip. There's no going back on the booking, but there's all kinds of going back to Las Vegas!
More, surely, to come. For now, I have local poker planned for tomorrow night, which will, I hope, help with the bankroll for the trip.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Las Vegas 1/06: Shuffle Up and Deal
JUST FIVE SHORT YEARS ago, poker was a game in decline in Las Vegas. Gambling veterans tended to study blackjack or craps, or perhaps the tuxedo-clad mystique of baccarat. Then the one-two punch of the World Poker Tour and Internet player Chris Moneymaker's 2003 win in the World Series of Poker sparked a renaissance. Suddenly, Vegas casinos reopened their poker rooms, expanded their existing ones, or included them in the blueprints to catch the wave. The town is now an ocean of poker, and many thousands swim among its green-felt islands . . . some of them fish, others sharks.
I am neither. I am a seasoned beginner at poker in general and Texas hold'em — the type you mostly see on TV — in particular. I know enough to stay out of obvious danger, but I haven't logged enough table time to match wits with leather-assed Vegas or Atlantic City locals who play every day or visitors who have honed their skill on the Internet. However, if there are some casual players at the table, like a rich lunatic who treats poker like any other luck-based table game in the place, or one or two people who are flush with booze or starved for sleep, I've got a better chance. This helped me score a sizable win in July 2005, when I haunted the Aladdin's poker room and its rich crop of mediocre players.
To sidetrack: It's not enough simply to know the rules, what hands to play, or how to bet. Even the famous tells — unconscious physical or verbal clues to the merit of a player's hand — are but one factor, as most skilled cardsmiths conceal them or drop false ones as traps. Finding tables where you are most likely to win is key — as is getting up from a table where you either can't make money (i.e., few hands get played to showdown) or where you are outclassed in skill.
What made the Aladdin so lucrative last year was its tournament schedule. People want to play the no-limit hold'em tournaments they see on TV, although for far smaller entry fees (anywhere from $40 to $100 for the smaller ones, vs. $1,500 and up for the WSOP events). Inevitably most of these players lose all of their play tournament chips and, spying the non-tourney no-limit ring games in progress, often decide to make a run at recouping their entry cash. One good hand and they're set, right? Problem is, if they were a rotten tournament poker player, they're going to be just as bad a ring-game player.
That's where they run into me.
I am not a genius. I am not a math whiz. I am not a wild gambler or a crazy bluffer. I am just a patient, slightly paranoid poker player who gets aggressive with hands that I think will go the distance. I don't get drunk at the table on the free booze. I don't take smoke breaks every 10 minutes and miss critical details on other folks' styles of play. I don't pound the table angrily when the flop connects with the hand I just folded. And I don't get emotionally attached to hands that — despite being statistical favorites to win — get beaten anyway. I fall back on the same expression every player uses when he takes a beating against the odds or at the hands of a shitty player — "Nice hand" — count my remaining chips . . . and consider it a loan.
One other thing I do is to take notes. I am still learning this game. The strategy I just described is very basic. Against pros, I would get peeled open like a ripe Jiffy Pop. So I write down on 3" x 5" cards details of the hands, bet amounts, what the opposing hands were, and (if I lost) what I could have done differently. Even if I get beaten or busted out, I grit my teeth, note what happened and why, and either buy more chips if it's an otherwise beatable table, or call it a night. (If this is in Vegas, a consolation In-N-Out Burger is not out of the question.)
So that's the preparation that goes into this sort of poker binge. How did I do this time?
Days 1 and 2: 2005 Redux
I returned to the Aladdin poker room with hopes that the caliber of players would match that of the crowd in July 2005. The lineup of dealers was largely the same — good news, as the Aladdin's crew is fast, friendly, and not into a lot of needless chitchat during hands. I did recognize a couple of regular players from last time as well, which helped me fold my borderline hands with more caution against these folks. In one case, it kept me from turning my two pair into an all-in situation and busting out to a guy's straight.
As for the rest of the players these two days, most of them were tourists staying at the hotel or just there for the morning tournaments, and were predictable and profitable. People like to talk during a game, and this is how you first get a sense of how much you might be able to get away with versus this or that player. Sometimes they've played regular weekly tourneys at their homes, or at bar leagues. Maybe they have a Party Poker account and they're giving live play a shot while in town for a convention. Sometimes it's a young hotshot, the best player in his Thursday night home game, who plays brashly, drinks heroically, and takes bad beats with a storm of obscenities because he has equated skill with entitlement, and is disappointed by both.
I took it all in, but kept largely mum on my own abilities. When the regulars began raising and reraising each other, or targeting the transient players, I backed well off and let the carnage pass me by. On both days, I managed to increase my initial buy-ins by at least 50%.
More important, when I called home at the end of my first-day session to check with my mother (who had had a test scheduled for her vision impairment), she said there was only a 50% blockage in a single carotid artery; probably not enough to warrant immediate surgery, just close observation. She once again exhorted me not to think of her while I was out there, and I breathed a sigh of relief audible even over the clanging slot machines in the main casino.
Day 3: The Luckbox Versus the Locals (and Me)
Here is where I was caught between heeding my advice over table selection and falling into the temptation to see when a player's lucky streak would end.
I should say that I have a neutral attitude toward luck. Specifically in poker, there are a few occasions where a super-strong hand is a 100% favorite to win. But often there is a mathematically expressible chance that a favorite will be beaten. I don't think this is "luck" in the sense of some wave of math-warping mojo, even as I use the term casually to describe it (kinda like how I use the names of the Christian Trinity, usually in vain, despite being a massively lapsed Catholic). Still, when a single player piles up unlikely wins in the face of statistical logic, it's tough for the human mind — ever the seeker of rational patterns — to avoid considering this some sort of mystical rush.
The crowd on the third day was distinctly different. On Sundays, the Aladdin runs single-table tournaments with the same format as those offered online. These are the sit-and-go tourneys I describe halfway through this post. This brought out veteran Internet players in bulk, so when I sat down at the no-limit ring game this time, it was mostly locals. It was safe to assume that I was going to see real skill here. I nonetheless decided to give it a spin.
I wasn't disappointed on the skill count. These players were deeply bankrolled, willing to raise big on single-pair hands or to bluff when the cards on the board were weak, and showed down just enough legitimate hands to make picking out these bluffs difficult. Although a few of the guys were playing on little sleep or too much early-morning booze when I first sat down, these guys eventually went to bed or breakfast to be replaced by solid players busted out of the SnGs but who still craved action. I played tightly (i.e., bet on few starting hands and raised with still fewer) while getting a feel for the players, but still couldn't make too much headway. I had two trips (pokerese for three of a kind) I was down about $50 out of my $200 starting stack when the biker sat down.
I don't know if he was actually a biker — he never stated his profession during the hours he played, nor did he have any motorcycle club insignia on — but he looked and sounded precisely like a Hell's Angel. Tall, husky, bearded, with a cigarette-ravaged grumble of a voice, he walked up to the podium wearing denim bib overalls and a stained baseball cap. Half of my table watched him, sensing fresh meat.
I watched but did not prejudge. That's dangerous. I got my ass handed to me once at the Bellagio by a sweet old man who plaintively asked, "Why?" every time I raised him in a pot. I later learned that he was leaving for the East Coast in two weeks to play high-limit seven-card stud for a couple of months. Assumptions can be costly. Dummying up and observing is free. So I let the locals salivate and decided to watch him for a couple of rounds to see how he played.
It didn't take long. He was there to gamble, but also to win.
Selectively applied aggression pays in poker. When you bet your good cards hard, or attack perceived weakness in other players' betting patterns, people think twice about calling your bets, and especially your raises. They begin folding hands they ought to play. And when they make mistakes like this, your chances of profiting increase.
The players at my table were not afraid of aggression, merely cautious. When the biker fired out bets of $10 to $20 each time he entered a pot before the flop (in a game where the typical raise might be to $7 or so), they pegged him as a LAG — a loose aggressive gambler. Professional poker players, especially those who have made deep mathematical studies of the game, eschew the term gambler. They believe they are making bets, raises, and bluffs on a rational, if carefully unpredictable, basis. What remaining randomness in the way the hands end up is a residue of their preparation, observation, and experience. (They tend also to be found in the kitchen at parties.)
The usual way to approach a LAG at a no-limit hold'em game is to tighten your range of starting hands, sometimes let him do the betting when you hold strong holecards, then reraise to get him and yourself heads-up and then try to take him to the cleaners. This is what the locals were trying to do with the biker. The problem was that the biker was making fantastic hands. Unlike the usual LAG, whom you can occasionally catch raising on a bluff and then get him to fold or go all in with a strong reraise, this guy was getting more than his fair share of pocket Kings and Aces, or two high suited cards, and hitting three of a kind or flushes on the board. If the flop looked remotely threatening, he would bet at least half the pot. None of the locals could tell if he was bluffing or not, so they folded (possibly wrongly) or called and lost more money. His constant aggression was cutting a path through their chips just as surely as an icebreaker across the Arctic Circle.
I only got heads-up with this guy once. After a couple of hours of dodging the locals and folding to the biker's raises, I got Kings in the hole. I raised to $15, and the biker was my only caller. The flop contained a third King, I bet somewhere around half the pot, figuring the biker would raise me, which he did. Three of a kind is sometimes safe to play slowly (without the full level of aggressive betting) if you figure the other player is going to do the raising for you. However, this can backfire if the next card is threatening, as it was in this case. The turn card made three clubs on the board, and neither of my hole Kings was a club. Worse, there were two cards that could help make a straight.
At this point, the biker announced he was going to call any amount I bet. Technically this is a binding bet. He then showed me one of his cards —the Jack of clubs — which is legal when only two players are in a hand. I decided to put my last $103 in the center. I had lost money not pushing trips hard in a previous hand, so I decided to make a stand.
"Shit," he said, and settled back into his seat to think. Nobody — not even the dealer — pointed out that he had stated an intent to call any bet I made. Another $103 would have been only about a tenth of the massive wall of red $5 chips fronting his seat. Plus, on the off chance he was actually drawing to a straight flush, the Aladdin had high-hand jackpots that would have paid him an extra $599 for hitting it. So he had to factor that potential gain into his play here.
After a couple of minutes, he finally folded. He explained that my all-in raise led him to think that he was facing a made King- or Ace-high flush, and that his Jack was the high and only club in his hand. We asked the dealer to show the now-irrelevant river card (which is usually not done in casino poker). To the biker's shock, it would have completed his straight flush!
I stuck around with my now-refreshed stack of chips for another hour or so, hoping to get the biker in another hand, but eventually he ambled over to the podium with three racks nearly full of red chips (almost $1,500!). The locals exhaled heavily, counted their remaining bankrolls, and waited for easier prey.
Said prey turned out to be my undoing. A young guy soon sat down to my immediate left. I could tell he was a tight player like me, but by this point, I was getting tired, and my radar was not returning signals rationally. I was dealt KK, raised, was reraised by the new player, raised again, was reraised again and this time all in, called, and was shown a baleful pair of Aces. The flop put out a third Ace but also a Queen and a Jack, so any 10 would have given me a straight. No 10 came, though, so as they say on the Internet, IGHN — I go home now.
The reversal of that day cost me my first two days' worth of profit and a couple of hundred more. I decided to back down in limits for my next outing, which, after nearly 7 hours of play that Sunday, was not gonna happen before Monday. If nothing else, I got to watch how players with daily experience react to a whirlwind like our biker. I also had reinforced for me the importance of picking the right table. I took this lesson to the Paris Las Vegas Champagne buffet, and began plotting my next game amid mounds of crêpes and stems of bubbly.
I am neither. I am a seasoned beginner at poker in general and Texas hold'em — the type you mostly see on TV — in particular. I know enough to stay out of obvious danger, but I haven't logged enough table time to match wits with leather-assed Vegas or Atlantic City locals who play every day or visitors who have honed their skill on the Internet. However, if there are some casual players at the table, like a rich lunatic who treats poker like any other luck-based table game in the place, or one or two people who are flush with booze or starved for sleep, I've got a better chance. This helped me score a sizable win in July 2005, when I haunted the Aladdin's poker room and its rich crop of mediocre players.
To sidetrack: It's not enough simply to know the rules, what hands to play, or how to bet. Even the famous tells — unconscious physical or verbal clues to the merit of a player's hand — are but one factor, as most skilled cardsmiths conceal them or drop false ones as traps. Finding tables where you are most likely to win is key — as is getting up from a table where you either can't make money (i.e., few hands get played to showdown) or where you are outclassed in skill.
What made the Aladdin so lucrative last year was its tournament schedule. People want to play the no-limit hold'em tournaments they see on TV, although for far smaller entry fees (anywhere from $40 to $100 for the smaller ones, vs. $1,500 and up for the WSOP events). Inevitably most of these players lose all of their play tournament chips and, spying the non-tourney no-limit ring games in progress, often decide to make a run at recouping their entry cash. One good hand and they're set, right? Problem is, if they were a rotten tournament poker player, they're going to be just as bad a ring-game player.
That's where they run into me.
I am not a genius. I am not a math whiz. I am not a wild gambler or a crazy bluffer. I am just a patient, slightly paranoid poker player who gets aggressive with hands that I think will go the distance. I don't get drunk at the table on the free booze. I don't take smoke breaks every 10 minutes and miss critical details on other folks' styles of play. I don't pound the table angrily when the flop connects with the hand I just folded. And I don't get emotionally attached to hands that — despite being statistical favorites to win — get beaten anyway. I fall back on the same expression every player uses when he takes a beating against the odds or at the hands of a shitty player — "Nice hand" — count my remaining chips . . . and consider it a loan.
One other thing I do is to take notes. I am still learning this game. The strategy I just described is very basic. Against pros, I would get peeled open like a ripe Jiffy Pop. So I write down on 3" x 5" cards details of the hands, bet amounts, what the opposing hands were, and (if I lost) what I could have done differently. Even if I get beaten or busted out, I grit my teeth, note what happened and why, and either buy more chips if it's an otherwise beatable table, or call it a night. (If this is in Vegas, a consolation In-N-Out Burger is not out of the question.)
So that's the preparation that goes into this sort of poker binge. How did I do this time?
Days 1 and 2: 2005 Redux
I returned to the Aladdin poker room with hopes that the caliber of players would match that of the crowd in July 2005. The lineup of dealers was largely the same — good news, as the Aladdin's crew is fast, friendly, and not into a lot of needless chitchat during hands. I did recognize a couple of regular players from last time as well, which helped me fold my borderline hands with more caution against these folks. In one case, it kept me from turning my two pair into an all-in situation and busting out to a guy's straight.
As for the rest of the players these two days, most of them were tourists staying at the hotel or just there for the morning tournaments, and were predictable and profitable. People like to talk during a game, and this is how you first get a sense of how much you might be able to get away with versus this or that player. Sometimes they've played regular weekly tourneys at their homes, or at bar leagues. Maybe they have a Party Poker account and they're giving live play a shot while in town for a convention. Sometimes it's a young hotshot, the best player in his Thursday night home game, who plays brashly, drinks heroically, and takes bad beats with a storm of obscenities because he has equated skill with entitlement, and is disappointed by both.
I took it all in, but kept largely mum on my own abilities. When the regulars began raising and reraising each other, or targeting the transient players, I backed well off and let the carnage pass me by. On both days, I managed to increase my initial buy-ins by at least 50%.
More important, when I called home at the end of my first-day session to check with my mother (who had had a test scheduled for her vision impairment), she said there was only a 50% blockage in a single carotid artery; probably not enough to warrant immediate surgery, just close observation. She once again exhorted me not to think of her while I was out there, and I breathed a sigh of relief audible even over the clanging slot machines in the main casino.
Day 3: The Luckbox Versus the Locals (and Me)
Here is where I was caught between heeding my advice over table selection and falling into the temptation to see when a player's lucky streak would end.
I should say that I have a neutral attitude toward luck. Specifically in poker, there are a few occasions where a super-strong hand is a 100% favorite to win. But often there is a mathematically expressible chance that a favorite will be beaten. I don't think this is "luck" in the sense of some wave of math-warping mojo, even as I use the term casually to describe it (kinda like how I use the names of the Christian Trinity, usually in vain, despite being a massively lapsed Catholic). Still, when a single player piles up unlikely wins in the face of statistical logic, it's tough for the human mind — ever the seeker of rational patterns — to avoid considering this some sort of mystical rush.
The crowd on the third day was distinctly different. On Sundays, the Aladdin runs single-table tournaments with the same format as those offered online. These are the sit-and-go tourneys I describe halfway through this post. This brought out veteran Internet players in bulk, so when I sat down at the no-limit ring game this time, it was mostly locals. It was safe to assume that I was going to see real skill here. I nonetheless decided to give it a spin.
I wasn't disappointed on the skill count. These players were deeply bankrolled, willing to raise big on single-pair hands or to bluff when the cards on the board were weak, and showed down just enough legitimate hands to make picking out these bluffs difficult. Although a few of the guys were playing on little sleep or too much early-morning booze when I first sat down, these guys eventually went to bed or breakfast to be replaced by solid players busted out of the SnGs but who still craved action. I played tightly (i.e., bet on few starting hands and raised with still fewer) while getting a feel for the players, but still couldn't make too much headway. I had two trips (pokerese for three of a kind) I was down about $50 out of my $200 starting stack when the biker sat down.
I don't know if he was actually a biker — he never stated his profession during the hours he played, nor did he have any motorcycle club insignia on — but he looked and sounded precisely like a Hell's Angel. Tall, husky, bearded, with a cigarette-ravaged grumble of a voice, he walked up to the podium wearing denim bib overalls and a stained baseball cap. Half of my table watched him, sensing fresh meat.
I watched but did not prejudge. That's dangerous. I got my ass handed to me once at the Bellagio by a sweet old man who plaintively asked, "Why?" every time I raised him in a pot. I later learned that he was leaving for the East Coast in two weeks to play high-limit seven-card stud for a couple of months. Assumptions can be costly. Dummying up and observing is free. So I let the locals salivate and decided to watch him for a couple of rounds to see how he played.
It didn't take long. He was there to gamble, but also to win.
Selectively applied aggression pays in poker. When you bet your good cards hard, or attack perceived weakness in other players' betting patterns, people think twice about calling your bets, and especially your raises. They begin folding hands they ought to play. And when they make mistakes like this, your chances of profiting increase.
The players at my table were not afraid of aggression, merely cautious. When the biker fired out bets of $10 to $20 each time he entered a pot before the flop (in a game where the typical raise might be to $7 or so), they pegged him as a LAG — a loose aggressive gambler. Professional poker players, especially those who have made deep mathematical studies of the game, eschew the term gambler. They believe they are making bets, raises, and bluffs on a rational, if carefully unpredictable, basis. What remaining randomness in the way the hands end up is a residue of their preparation, observation, and experience. (They tend also to be found in the kitchen at parties.)
The usual way to approach a LAG at a no-limit hold'em game is to tighten your range of starting hands, sometimes let him do the betting when you hold strong holecards, then reraise to get him and yourself heads-up and then try to take him to the cleaners. This is what the locals were trying to do with the biker. The problem was that the biker was making fantastic hands. Unlike the usual LAG, whom you can occasionally catch raising on a bluff and then get him to fold or go all in with a strong reraise, this guy was getting more than his fair share of pocket Kings and Aces, or two high suited cards, and hitting three of a kind or flushes on the board. If the flop looked remotely threatening, he would bet at least half the pot. None of the locals could tell if he was bluffing or not, so they folded (possibly wrongly) or called and lost more money. His constant aggression was cutting a path through their chips just as surely as an icebreaker across the Arctic Circle.
I only got heads-up with this guy once. After a couple of hours of dodging the locals and folding to the biker's raises, I got Kings in the hole. I raised to $15, and the biker was my only caller. The flop contained a third King, I bet somewhere around half the pot, figuring the biker would raise me, which he did. Three of a kind is sometimes safe to play slowly (without the full level of aggressive betting) if you figure the other player is going to do the raising for you. However, this can backfire if the next card is threatening, as it was in this case. The turn card made three clubs on the board, and neither of my hole Kings was a club. Worse, there were two cards that could help make a straight.
At this point, the biker announced he was going to call any amount I bet. Technically this is a binding bet. He then showed me one of his cards —the Jack of clubs — which is legal when only two players are in a hand. I decided to put my last $103 in the center. I had lost money not pushing trips hard in a previous hand, so I decided to make a stand.
"Shit," he said, and settled back into his seat to think. Nobody — not even the dealer — pointed out that he had stated an intent to call any bet I made. Another $103 would have been only about a tenth of the massive wall of red $5 chips fronting his seat. Plus, on the off chance he was actually drawing to a straight flush, the Aladdin had high-hand jackpots that would have paid him an extra $599 for hitting it. So he had to factor that potential gain into his play here.
After a couple of minutes, he finally folded. He explained that my all-in raise led him to think that he was facing a made King- or Ace-high flush, and that his Jack was the high and only club in his hand. We asked the dealer to show the now-irrelevant river card (which is usually not done in casino poker). To the biker's shock, it would have completed his straight flush!
I stuck around with my now-refreshed stack of chips for another hour or so, hoping to get the biker in another hand, but eventually he ambled over to the podium with three racks nearly full of red chips (almost $1,500!). The locals exhaled heavily, counted their remaining bankrolls, and waited for easier prey.
Said prey turned out to be my undoing. A young guy soon sat down to my immediate left. I could tell he was a tight player like me, but by this point, I was getting tired, and my radar was not returning signals rationally. I was dealt KK, raised, was reraised by the new player, raised again, was reraised again and this time all in, called, and was shown a baleful pair of Aces. The flop put out a third Ace but also a Queen and a Jack, so any 10 would have given me a straight. No 10 came, though, so as they say on the Internet, IGHN — I go home now.
The reversal of that day cost me my first two days' worth of profit and a couple of hundred more. I decided to back down in limits for my next outing, which, after nearly 7 hours of play that Sunday, was not gonna happen before Monday. If nothing else, I got to watch how players with daily experience react to a whirlwind like our biker. I also had reinforced for me the importance of picking the right table. I took this lesson to the Paris Las Vegas Champagne buffet, and began plotting my next game amid mounds of crêpes and stems of bubbly.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Las Vegas 1/06: I'm-a Riiiiidin' for Red Rock
UPON AWAKENING TO MY first full day in Las Vegas, I headed west on Charleston away from the Strip, toward the town's Whole Foods Market. My parents had given me two of their gift cards for Christmas, and I figured I would snag some healthful food to buffer the buffets. The distance on the map was deceptive; by the time I reached the market, I was closer to the edge of the city than its center and well above the level of the valley. It was worth it, though, because this is a huge and well-stocked Whole Foods, featuring a hot-breakfast area in addition to the many baked and packaged temptations available for those greeting the Vegas sun. I shopped for snacks and fruit, then assembled a solid hot breakfast that I ate at a gloriously leisurely pace (definitely not a work-week option).
When I headed back to the car, I again noticed how close I was to the city limits, and the desert and mountains beyond. There they stood, glowing in the morning sun in stunning ochre, russet, and red. (It took a supreme effort not to buy my first digital camera at the Best Buy near the Whole Foods in order to do true justice to the mountains.) Though I had packed up for a day out gambling, I decided that the nonstop poker action could wait a couple of hours, and continued west on Charleston, past the last fringes of new condo developments and the shell of a nearly completed casino, into the open desert of Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
I had visited the park on my first visit, driving the long loop of Route 159 past the various and gorgeous scenic rock formations, I didn't recall visiting this particular part of it before. Perhaps I took a different turn. When you leave Las Vegas via this route, the changeover to desert is quite abrupt. One minute you're passing corporate parks and cloned condos, and then you're bumping over a metal grid set in the road to deter the native burros from leaving. Yes, Red Rock and the tiny neighboring community of Blue Diamond are home to wild burros, and there are signs around warning visitors not to get too close, as they bite. I saw no burros on either trip, though I did hear a rooster crowing from the yard of one of the houses in the arid town just outside my destination.
I drove along blacktop bordered on either side by sand and scrub, following signs and marveling at the crystal-clear blue skies, until I stopped in a largely empty and new-looking parking lot at the base of the mountains. I was as far out as I could drive at this point, and short of the few streets and the houses sparsely set along them, and the signs indicating the rules of the rest area and the beginning of the self-guided nature walk, I was entirely alone. Dead silent, the only sound a flock of birds that took off and landed in a body from one part of the rock face above to the other. As I watched them, a Hummer pulled up, and two young women disembarked and started up a trail toward the mountains. Red Rock features numerous trails of varying difficulty, but I am suited to none of them, so I contented myself with watching this duo ascend for a spell.
This particular corner of Red Rock used to be part of a ranch, which was granted back to the state to maintain and protect from development. It features a nature walk around a spring-fed meadow, which is circled by a boardwalk trail with signs describing the wildlife and geological formations in the area. I followed this trail around the meadow, a broad expanse of yellow grass with a couple of trees set along the course of the spring runoff, until I reached the source of the spring itself, pouring with a loud gurgle in the silent desert air from a recess in the sandstone into a swampy pond. This pond, in turn, filtered into the meadow, which apparently hosted a wide variety of greenery and animals in the warm season, all adapted to steal what moisture they could in the wet times to better resist the brutal Las Vegas summer. While walking along, I saw sandy-brown birds hopping in the sparse, defoliated bushes, and once I surprised a hidden rabbit, which bounded out of a thicket and disappeared behind rocks.
The only other sounds I heard came from far above me, from the Tatooine-like rock face rising hundreds of feet above me as I sat writing at the meadow's edge. I had forgotten about the two hikers while walking along the nature tour. When I heard distant voices, I looked up, there to see two tiny dots of color moving along the rusty rock face. There were the two women, ascending even further with careful yet confident strides up the trail!
I imagine there are diehard Vegas visitors, and not a small number of locals, who never come out here. I find that sad. When the women finally came back down and returned to their truck, I felt a great surge of envy. New Jersey has natural wonders, certainly, but those mountains against that sapphire sky had temporary possession of my heart. What a wonderful natural resource to have, with such stark beauty, and what an opportunity to be able to hike across the park's trails, or simply to come to this little park to read or barbecue or simply watch the sun rise against the stone. Funny that the park, and not the casinos, should inspire such envy of the locals in me.
From the edge of this park, the mighty Las Vegas Strip is a grey line of shadowed sculpture, millions of times younger than the walls of ancient rock that lower down upon it. The problems of so many people would ease themselves if folks took the opportunity to visit this park, or the Valley of Fire north of Vegas, or even the Grand Canyon a day-trip's distance away. Just to absorb the raw beauty surrounding the city. Thankfully, this whole area is a Federally protected enclave, and the few residents who came in before this mandate seem devoted to repelling any development by the rapacious condo or casino companies. I saw a couple of Red Rock locals while driving around, working in their xericultured yards, riding horseback in the gentle winter morning, or jogging along. They seem happy to have no neighbors in great numbers, and I suspect most of them understand what a precious treasure they live near.
I decided at that point, as I headed back to the car, that I could get my ass handed to me at the tables, my bankroll crushed, but at least I would have this beautiful natural resource waiting for me.
When I headed back to the car, I again noticed how close I was to the city limits, and the desert and mountains beyond. There they stood, glowing in the morning sun in stunning ochre, russet, and red. (It took a supreme effort not to buy my first digital camera at the Best Buy near the Whole Foods in order to do true justice to the mountains.) Though I had packed up for a day out gambling, I decided that the nonstop poker action could wait a couple of hours, and continued west on Charleston, past the last fringes of new condo developments and the shell of a nearly completed casino, into the open desert of Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
I had visited the park on my first visit, driving the long loop of Route 159 past the various and gorgeous scenic rock formations, I didn't recall visiting this particular part of it before. Perhaps I took a different turn. When you leave Las Vegas via this route, the changeover to desert is quite abrupt. One minute you're passing corporate parks and cloned condos, and then you're bumping over a metal grid set in the road to deter the native burros from leaving. Yes, Red Rock and the tiny neighboring community of Blue Diamond are home to wild burros, and there are signs around warning visitors not to get too close, as they bite. I saw no burros on either trip, though I did hear a rooster crowing from the yard of one of the houses in the arid town just outside my destination.
I drove along blacktop bordered on either side by sand and scrub, following signs and marveling at the crystal-clear blue skies, until I stopped in a largely empty and new-looking parking lot at the base of the mountains. I was as far out as I could drive at this point, and short of the few streets and the houses sparsely set along them, and the signs indicating the rules of the rest area and the beginning of the self-guided nature walk, I was entirely alone. Dead silent, the only sound a flock of birds that took off and landed in a body from one part of the rock face above to the other. As I watched them, a Hummer pulled up, and two young women disembarked and started up a trail toward the mountains. Red Rock features numerous trails of varying difficulty, but I am suited to none of them, so I contented myself with watching this duo ascend for a spell.
This particular corner of Red Rock used to be part of a ranch, which was granted back to the state to maintain and protect from development. It features a nature walk around a spring-fed meadow, which is circled by a boardwalk trail with signs describing the wildlife and geological formations in the area. I followed this trail around the meadow, a broad expanse of yellow grass with a couple of trees set along the course of the spring runoff, until I reached the source of the spring itself, pouring with a loud gurgle in the silent desert air from a recess in the sandstone into a swampy pond. This pond, in turn, filtered into the meadow, which apparently hosted a wide variety of greenery and animals in the warm season, all adapted to steal what moisture they could in the wet times to better resist the brutal Las Vegas summer. While walking along, I saw sandy-brown birds hopping in the sparse, defoliated bushes, and once I surprised a hidden rabbit, which bounded out of a thicket and disappeared behind rocks.
The only other sounds I heard came from far above me, from the Tatooine-like rock face rising hundreds of feet above me as I sat writing at the meadow's edge. I had forgotten about the two hikers while walking along the nature tour. When I heard distant voices, I looked up, there to see two tiny dots of color moving along the rusty rock face. There were the two women, ascending even further with careful yet confident strides up the trail!
I imagine there are diehard Vegas visitors, and not a small number of locals, who never come out here. I find that sad. When the women finally came back down and returned to their truck, I felt a great surge of envy. New Jersey has natural wonders, certainly, but those mountains against that sapphire sky had temporary possession of my heart. What a wonderful natural resource to have, with such stark beauty, and what an opportunity to be able to hike across the park's trails, or simply to come to this little park to read or barbecue or simply watch the sun rise against the stone. Funny that the park, and not the casinos, should inspire such envy of the locals in me.
From the edge of this park, the mighty Las Vegas Strip is a grey line of shadowed sculpture, millions of times younger than the walls of ancient rock that lower down upon it. The problems of so many people would ease themselves if folks took the opportunity to visit this park, or the Valley of Fire north of Vegas, or even the Grand Canyon a day-trip's distance away. Just to absorb the raw beauty surrounding the city. Thankfully, this whole area is a Federally protected enclave, and the few residents who came in before this mandate seem devoted to repelling any development by the rapacious condo or casino companies. I saw a couple of Red Rock locals while driving around, working in their xericultured yards, riding horseback in the gentle winter morning, or jogging along. They seem happy to have no neighbors in great numbers, and I suspect most of them understand what a precious treasure they live near.
I decided at that point, as I headed back to the car, that I could get my ass handed to me at the tables, my bankroll crushed, but at least I would have this beautiful natural resource waiting for me.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Las Vegas 1/06: The January Jinx Peaks Early
I HAVE VISITED LAS Vegas three times in January. The first two times, there was some sort of emergent situation that gave the end of the trip a bit of a jinx. In 2004, I had to leave Vegas prematurely on a redeye the night before my actual departure day, because a huge blizzard charging into the New York area would have paralyzed the airports and left me either orbiting Newark or cooling my heels in Pittsburgh. In 2005, I got food poisoning from Mon Ami Gabi at Paris Las Vegas, and spent the last night in town horribly ill and the plane flight back in a feverish zombified state. It seemed I had acquired something of a January jinx.
To counteract the former possibility for this trip, I used frequent flyer miles, so if my flight were canceled, I was out exactly $5. To guard against the latter, I stuck to eateries I had survived repeatedly in the past or ones I could trust implicitly. For the rest, I trusted, as one does in Las Vegas, to chance.
Chance soon stepped forward.
I have been staying at the Golden Nugget in Downtown Las Vegas for the past several trips. I tried them for the first time in January 2004, when they sent me a postcard with ridiculously low rates ($39/$59) for a winter stay. For the chance to stay at the nicest property in Downtown, it was an absolute steal. A sidenote: Downtown Las Vegas sits above the Strip, and was the original site of both the town itself and its gambling halls. Downtown has long offered cheaper rooms, if in sometimes older and humbler lodgings, but for hardcore gamblers the table limits offer both cheaper prices and more liberal rules. Downtown has attempted to capture more tourism by adding the Fremont Street Experience lightshow and the Neonopolis neon museum, but the fact remains that between it and the Strip, you have to cross a run-down zone of cheap motels, drive-through wedding chapels, and slum apartments. This deters the casual visitor.
But once in your hotel, especially the Nugget, you are as safe as you would be anywhere on the Strip, and you will pay less for a decent room to boot. I enjoyed my first stay at the Nugget, which used to be part of the same family of properties as the Bellagio and the Mirage, and in my two subsequent visits I found it to be kept up just as nicely. One area, however, where the new owners have not upgraded the apparatus is in the reservation system.
When I arrived, I was told that their reservation computers were down. I could check my bags with the concierge if I wanted, and they anticipated having the system up in an hour or so. I also had to pick up a rental car from Dollar, theoretically based at the end of the reservation desk. This is when I found out that Dollar had left the Golden Nugget a week before my arrival — despite my getting a confirmation email from them the night before — to be replaced by Budget.
Okay. Neither glitch was insurmountable. I was, after all, in Las Vegas already. The hard part was over. I ditched my luggage with the concierge, and called Dollar's central office to scout out another location in town. Perhaps I was still in the system, and had only to go to that outlet.
Turns out the closest Dollar was at the Sahara, which is on the North Strip, not too far from Downtown. They volunteered to send someone from Dollar over to retrieve me. Fair enough. Fifteen minutes later, a Dollar-branded car pulled up to the Nugget's rear entrance, and I asked the driver if he was the one who would take me to the Sahara. He looked surprised, because he had been told that he was transporting someone to the airport. I assured him that I was going to the Sahara for a car that had been lined up for me, and he just shrugged, unlocked the trunk, and sped me on my way.
I ended up having a pleasant chat with the gent, a relocated Chicagoan, but I couldn't help wondering if there was some poor bastard standing at the front entrance of the Nugget, bags stacked next to him in the windy Vegas morning, wondering when his transport to the airport would arrive. The way I saw it, this Dollar driver showed up precisely where and when I had confirmed it with the dispatcher. To quibble over details would be to oppose the flow of the universe. And in Las Vegas, you don't bet against a rush.
By the time I got to the faux-Arabic Mob-funded Old Vegas icon that is the Sahara, the mild irritation I had felt over the double whammy of the hotel reservation and the car glitch had subsided. What would getting angry serve? Especially on vacation? There are tens of thousands of rooms and rental cars in town — and failing the latter, a flotilla of taxis that would make the Spanish Armada look like a poorly funded bathtub navy. I had options. And plastic. I would soon exercise both.
I tooled back to the Nugget in my rental Sebring (who names a car after a Manson victim?), only to find that the reservation computer was still down. A long line of suitcase-burdened vacationers filled the lobby, the mood distinctly un-Vegas. I called home to kill the time, and while I was talking, one of the Nugget employees announced the system was back up. Perfect. I said goodbye to my parents . . . and seconds later, the same employee sheepishly declared the system down again.
This time, they tried to bribe folks with lunch at the buffet or coffee shop. I decided they had had their chance. I called Las Vegas information for the number of the Plaza, which as you can see in this map from CheapoVegas is right down the street at the head of Fremont Street. I got their reservation desk, was quoted a price on a room comparable to my still-in-limbo reservation at the Golden Nugget, accepted the quote, and told them I would be there in about 10 minutes.
As CheapoVegas notes at the head of their review, the front entry of The Plaza has been in a number of movies, but the camera usually stops there. The casino, despite a recent re-theming with the new logo and a touch of
Check-in at the Plaza was swift, and the room, up on the 16th floor, offered a great view of the Las Vegas Strip from the north — I looked forward to seeing it at night — as well as the mountains to the west of the city. The furniture was plain, with only a dresser, a nightstand, and a table with no writing desk, but the table was actually more usable than the ones in the Golden Nugget's rooms, because it came with a real chair, not a cushioned piece of furniture that can't be pulled up under a desk or table. Instantly I knew it would have been perfect for the laptop, but considering the change in venue, I would have been concerned about securing it in their vault. (The safe deposit boxes didn't look like they would hold a 17" PowerBook.) Still, it would be just right for scrawling notes for this very blog (some of which I have drawn upon as I've been going here).
By this time it was nearly 3 p.m., or 6 p.m. by my reckoning, so I didn't do anything all that elaborate for the rest of the day. I walked around the Plaza casino for a bit, resisted the urge to sign up for one of the nightly poker tournaments, wandered over to Binion's (where the World Series of Poker began and, until recently, was held each summer), and got a hero at the Subway downstairs. I wish I could tell you that I then proceeded to tear up the local rounders in a knives-bared no-limit hold'em match, but sadly, I returned to the room and wrote while eating. I don't like to dive right into gambling the first day I'm in Las Vegas. I'm tired from travel, acclimating myself to the local time, and besides, I had just faced down the January jinx, and the games aren't going anywhere.
I would seek them out soon enough the next day.
To counteract the former possibility for this trip, I used frequent flyer miles, so if my flight were canceled, I was out exactly $5. To guard against the latter, I stuck to eateries I had survived repeatedly in the past or ones I could trust implicitly. For the rest, I trusted, as one does in Las Vegas, to chance.
Chance soon stepped forward.
I have been staying at the Golden Nugget in Downtown Las Vegas for the past several trips. I tried them for the first time in January 2004, when they sent me a postcard with ridiculously low rates ($39/$59) for a winter stay. For the chance to stay at the nicest property in Downtown, it was an absolute steal. A sidenote: Downtown Las Vegas sits above the Strip, and was the original site of both the town itself and its gambling halls. Downtown has long offered cheaper rooms, if in sometimes older and humbler lodgings, but for hardcore gamblers the table limits offer both cheaper prices and more liberal rules. Downtown has attempted to capture more tourism by adding the Fremont Street Experience lightshow and the Neonopolis neon museum, but the fact remains that between it and the Strip, you have to cross a run-down zone of cheap motels, drive-through wedding chapels, and slum apartments. This deters the casual visitor.
But once in your hotel, especially the Nugget, you are as safe as you would be anywhere on the Strip, and you will pay less for a decent room to boot. I enjoyed my first stay at the Nugget, which used to be part of the same family of properties as the Bellagio and the Mirage, and in my two subsequent visits I found it to be kept up just as nicely. One area, however, where the new owners have not upgraded the apparatus is in the reservation system.
When I arrived, I was told that their reservation computers were down. I could check my bags with the concierge if I wanted, and they anticipated having the system up in an hour or so. I also had to pick up a rental car from Dollar, theoretically based at the end of the reservation desk. This is when I found out that Dollar had left the Golden Nugget a week before my arrival — despite my getting a confirmation email from them the night before — to be replaced by Budget.
Okay. Neither glitch was insurmountable. I was, after all, in Las Vegas already. The hard part was over. I ditched my luggage with the concierge, and called Dollar's central office to scout out another location in town. Perhaps I was still in the system, and had only to go to that outlet.
Turns out the closest Dollar was at the Sahara, which is on the North Strip, not too far from Downtown. They volunteered to send someone from Dollar over to retrieve me. Fair enough. Fifteen minutes later, a Dollar-branded car pulled up to the Nugget's rear entrance, and I asked the driver if he was the one who would take me to the Sahara. He looked surprised, because he had been told that he was transporting someone to the airport. I assured him that I was going to the Sahara for a car that had been lined up for me, and he just shrugged, unlocked the trunk, and sped me on my way.
I ended up having a pleasant chat with the gent, a relocated Chicagoan, but I couldn't help wondering if there was some poor bastard standing at the front entrance of the Nugget, bags stacked next to him in the windy Vegas morning, wondering when his transport to the airport would arrive. The way I saw it, this Dollar driver showed up precisely where and when I had confirmed it with the dispatcher. To quibble over details would be to oppose the flow of the universe. And in Las Vegas, you don't bet against a rush.
By the time I got to the faux-Arabic Mob-funded Old Vegas icon that is the Sahara, the mild irritation I had felt over the double whammy of the hotel reservation and the car glitch had subsided. What would getting angry serve? Especially on vacation? There are tens of thousands of rooms and rental cars in town — and failing the latter, a flotilla of taxis that would make the Spanish Armada look like a poorly funded bathtub navy. I had options. And plastic. I would soon exercise both.
I tooled back to the Nugget in my rental Sebring (who names a car after a Manson victim?), only to find that the reservation computer was still down. A long line of suitcase-burdened vacationers filled the lobby, the mood distinctly un-Vegas. I called home to kill the time, and while I was talking, one of the Nugget employees announced the system was back up. Perfect. I said goodbye to my parents . . . and seconds later, the same employee sheepishly declared the system down again.
This time, they tried to bribe folks with lunch at the buffet or coffee shop. I decided they had had their chance. I called Las Vegas information for the number of the Plaza, which as you can see in this map from CheapoVegas is right down the street at the head of Fremont Street. I got their reservation desk, was quoted a price on a room comparable to my still-in-limbo reservation at the Golden Nugget, accepted the quote, and told them I would be there in about 10 minutes.
As CheapoVegas notes at the head of their review, the front entry of The Plaza has been in a number of movies, but the camera usually stops there. The casino, despite a recent re-theming with the new logo and a touch of
Check-in at the Plaza was swift, and the room, up on the 16th floor, offered a great view of the Las Vegas Strip from the north — I looked forward to seeing it at night — as well as the mountains to the west of the city. The furniture was plain, with only a dresser, a nightstand, and a table with no writing desk, but the table was actually more usable than the ones in the Golden Nugget's rooms, because it came with a real chair, not a cushioned piece of furniture that can't be pulled up under a desk or table. Instantly I knew it would have been perfect for the laptop, but considering the change in venue, I would have been concerned about securing it in their vault. (The safe deposit boxes didn't look like they would hold a 17" PowerBook.) Still, it would be just right for scrawling notes for this very blog (some of which I have drawn upon as I've been going here).
By this time it was nearly 3 p.m., or 6 p.m. by my reckoning, so I didn't do anything all that elaborate for the rest of the day. I walked around the Plaza casino for a bit, resisted the urge to sign up for one of the nightly poker tournaments, wandered over to Binion's (where the World Series of Poker began and, until recently, was held each summer), and got a hero at the Subway downstairs. I wish I could tell you that I then proceeded to tear up the local rounders in a knives-bared no-limit hold'em match, but sadly, I returned to the room and wrote while eating. I don't like to dive right into gambling the first day I'm in Las Vegas. I'm tired from travel, acclimating myself to the local time, and besides, I had just faced down the January jinx, and the games aren't going anywhere.
I would seek them out soon enough the next day.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Las Vegas 1/06: Escape from the New York Area
FEW DAYS ARE AS difficult to jump-start as the first workday after a trip to Las Vegas. In my case, I failed. A night-arriving flight delayed by an hour, plus further waiting on the Garden State Parkway due to a single-lane construction obstruction, resulted in my arriving home from Newark Airport well past my normal bedtime. Factor in a three–time zone lag and you can see why I called in for another vacation day Wednesday morning. I went back to sleep and didn't arise until noon. It's just as well that I didn't remember any dreams, because they would have been of Las Vegas and thus plunge me further into a funk.
But you don't want to read about my grinding readjustment to 9-to-5 responsibility. So let's go back to Thursday, January 19. You are getting sleepy . . . you are heading to Newark in a limousine . . . the sun is edging over the Manhattan skyline . . . 99¢ shrimp cocktails are dancing in your head. . . .
Thursday morning began with a quick, bleary trip to the bagel store for Diet Cokes and one last classic Tri-State Area bagel before descending into the Vegas Valley. For a destination now known for fine dining and star chefs, it is damned tough to get decent bagels or pizza in Vegas. Bugsy Siegel and Sam Giancana are gettin' no props on those counts. Local food thus secured, I returned home and made a last check of my list before 5:30 rolled around, and with it the car from Air Brook.
My dad used to volunteer transport to and from Newark, but he is no longer comfortable on the roads that early, so I have been using the large local car service Air Brook. The cost is well worth avoiding the hassle of driving to, and parking at, the labyrinthine expanse of Newark Airport. Basically, my vacation starts the minute I walk out the door. And on occasion — including this one — it starts in a stretch limo. When you book with Air Brook, you usually get a driver with a Lincoln Town Car, which is plenty. Sometimes, though, the guy who catches the job has a stretch. Not that I had any objections. I just found it mildly ridiculous to be floating around in the back of this spacious sled. Hell, the driver was probably happy to have just some pudgy shlub with only two pieces of luggage instead of a gaggle of drunken prom-goers who might hurl cheap canapés and Popov all over the leather seats.
With no January weather extremes to fight, we arrived at Newark swiftly. I dropped my one piece of checked luggage off at the curb and cruised through the sparse security line with no trouble save keeping my beltless pants up — the belt, along with the keys and all other metal, was in a plastic bag in my backpack. I have flown eight round-trip flights since 9/11, and not once have I been detained for a more thorough search. I guess I just blend in. Or, I am able to read the sign that says, in effect, "Don't walk through the metal detector with metal, jackass," a feat somehow beyond quite a few of my fellow flyers. We've only been on Condition Vermillion or Chartreuse or whatever for four years, so I can see how some may only slowly be awakening to it.
Getting onboard was likewise trouble free. I spent most of the time before takeoff hoping I would have a row to myself. The January flights out to Las Vegas have tended to be sparsely filled. In this hope, I was rewarded — in fact, much of the back of the plane was empty, and the flight crew asked for volunteers to fill in some of the seats to redistribute the plane's weight for takeoff. I assume this means we would fly in circles if all of us suddenly moved to one side in midair, but I had no desire to test this bold aerodynamic theory. Once they relocated, we were shortly in the air.
A word on in-flight "entertainment." Not once have I sampled the movie offered during the flights I have taken. All of them have been craptacular, and that's even before the films are edited for content or length. The stock disclaimer they slap on the movies amuses me: "This film has been modified from its original version. It has been edited for content and length and reformatted for home viewing," or some such claptrap. If they really want me to view one of these offerings, the notice would read,
Fortunately, an iPod stuffed with downloaded WFMU programming and a backpack groaning with crossword puzzles and poker books helped me escape the film's clutches. The flight itself was uneventful and steady. As we descended below the cloud deck, I could feel my pulse accelerating. Soon, I knew we would cross the Grand Canyon, cast a shadow on the green-blue expanse of Lake Mead, traverse the last miles of scrub-dotted russet sandstone and desert, crest the mountains ringing the valley, and — as grids of recent housing developments gave way to the unmistakable backdrop that is the Las Vegas Strip — shudder to a rolling stop on the tarmac of McCarran Airport. This we did with merciful delicacy, and two minutes early to boot. I slid over to the window seat to watch the hotels glide by as we taxied: the gleaming Mandalay Bay, the ominous black-glass Luxor pyramid, the candylike fairytale towers of Excalibur . . . all the way to the white spire of the Stratosphere capping the Strip, and beyond, the low cluster of older properties guarding Fremont Street in Downtown Las Vegas. It was there that I was staying. It is there that we shall travel in our next post.
But you don't want to read about my grinding readjustment to 9-to-5 responsibility. So let's go back to Thursday, January 19. You are getting sleepy . . . you are heading to Newark in a limousine . . . the sun is edging over the Manhattan skyline . . . 99¢ shrimp cocktails are dancing in your head. . . .
Thursday morning began with a quick, bleary trip to the bagel store for Diet Cokes and one last classic Tri-State Area bagel before descending into the Vegas Valley. For a destination now known for fine dining and star chefs, it is damned tough to get decent bagels or pizza in Vegas. Bugsy Siegel and Sam Giancana are gettin' no props on those counts. Local food thus secured, I returned home and made a last check of my list before 5:30 rolled around, and with it the car from Air Brook.
My dad used to volunteer transport to and from Newark, but he is no longer comfortable on the roads that early, so I have been using the large local car service Air Brook. The cost is well worth avoiding the hassle of driving to, and parking at, the labyrinthine expanse of Newark Airport. Basically, my vacation starts the minute I walk out the door. And on occasion — including this one — it starts in a stretch limo. When you book with Air Brook, you usually get a driver with a Lincoln Town Car, which is plenty. Sometimes, though, the guy who catches the job has a stretch. Not that I had any objections. I just found it mildly ridiculous to be floating around in the back of this spacious sled. Hell, the driver was probably happy to have just some pudgy shlub with only two pieces of luggage instead of a gaggle of drunken prom-goers who might hurl cheap canapés and Popov all over the leather seats.
With no January weather extremes to fight, we arrived at Newark swiftly. I dropped my one piece of checked luggage off at the curb and cruised through the sparse security line with no trouble save keeping my beltless pants up — the belt, along with the keys and all other metal, was in a plastic bag in my backpack. I have flown eight round-trip flights since 9/11, and not once have I been detained for a more thorough search. I guess I just blend in. Or, I am able to read the sign that says, in effect, "Don't walk through the metal detector with metal, jackass," a feat somehow beyond quite a few of my fellow flyers. We've only been on Condition Vermillion or Chartreuse or whatever for four years, so I can see how some may only slowly be awakening to it.
Getting onboard was likewise trouble free. I spent most of the time before takeoff hoping I would have a row to myself. The January flights out to Las Vegas have tended to be sparsely filled. In this hope, I was rewarded — in fact, much of the back of the plane was empty, and the flight crew asked for volunteers to fill in some of the seats to redistribute the plane's weight for takeoff. I assume this means we would fly in circles if all of us suddenly moved to one side in midair, but I had no desire to test this bold aerodynamic theory. Once they relocated, we were shortly in the air.
A word on in-flight "entertainment." Not once have I sampled the movie offered during the flights I have taken. All of them have been craptacular, and that's even before the films are edited for content or length. The stock disclaimer they slap on the movies amuses me: "This film has been modified from its original version. It has been edited for content and length and reformatted for home viewing," or some such claptrap. If they really want me to view one of these offerings, the notice would read,
This film has been modified from its original version. To this threadbare romantic comedy, we have added three lightsaber duels, a dinosaur fight, a clown chasing coeds with a chainsaw, TV's Peter Griffin, and Dracula. In addition, the groovy granny and the wisdom-laden-minority characters will now be played by Lenny and Carl from The Simpsons. The soundtrack will feature "Yakity Sax" from the Benny Hill Show during car chases — of which there are seven — "Powerhouse" by Raymond Scott, and various college fight songs performed on kazoo. Thank you for flying Continental, where we hate light romantic comedies too.Now you're talking. The film offered this time, In Her Shoes — which sounds like either where Imelda Marcos sank most of her pin money or where a foot fetishist might do his dirty sinful business — featured the Joker-like Cameron Diaz, New Age retread Shirley MacLaine, and one of the aforementioned groovy grannies who, inexplicably, was wearing a World Poker Tour baseball cap. This communicates to me that the only way an cinematic senior can be relevant to a 20- or 30-something cast (and viewership) is if she adopts their trends, fashions, and obsessions, rather than being valuable for their decades of wisdom or experience. Not sure about your grandmothers, but my maternal grandmother would have excoriated this depiction with several zesty four-letter words, then disappeared for bingo at the K of C in a cloud of Benson & Hedges smoke. I don't know how director Curtis Hanson goes from L.A. Confidential to this crap, short of owing the Mob a large sum of 'scarole, but such is Hollowwood.
Fortunately, an iPod stuffed with downloaded WFMU programming and a backpack groaning with crossword puzzles and poker books helped me escape the film's clutches. The flight itself was uneventful and steady. As we descended below the cloud deck, I could feel my pulse accelerating. Soon, I knew we would cross the Grand Canyon, cast a shadow on the green-blue expanse of Lake Mead, traverse the last miles of scrub-dotted russet sandstone and desert, crest the mountains ringing the valley, and — as grids of recent housing developments gave way to the unmistakable backdrop that is the Las Vegas Strip — shudder to a rolling stop on the tarmac of McCarran Airport. This we did with merciful delicacy, and two minutes early to boot. I slid over to the window seat to watch the hotels glide by as we taxied: the gleaming Mandalay Bay, the ominous black-glass Luxor pyramid, the candylike fairytale towers of Excalibur . . . all the way to the white spire of the Stratosphere capping the Strip, and beyond, the low cluster of older properties guarding Fremont Street in Downtown Las Vegas. It was there that I was staying. It is there that we shall travel in our next post.
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