It’s been a while since I’ve done a tournament at Commerce so I decided to try their “Hold’em Series.” Their first of 17 tournaments was a multi-day $500,000 guaranteed one but I got there too late on the last day and it was sold out. They told me I could be an “alternate,” and would be able to get my money back if I decided the wait was too long.  My number was 600 something and after waiting for about an hour, it was only to 70 so I gave up and got my money back.

One thing new was they finally changed their player card to a thick credit card-like card instead of the thin paper-like card from before.  As before, they have a computerized system that prints out the player card with your name on it.  Nice technology they have there.

One new thing they added was an ID scanner called “SnapShell.” I tried to find out who makes these via google but was not able to find the manufacturer. There is a company in Santa Monica that OEMs them and sells the OCR software called Card Scanning Solutions. Basically, it’s a small device that has some type of scanner or digital camera with a light built into a  box as shown below. The user puts the ID right on the screen face down and an image of your ID is scanned into the computer. the OCR software then extracts the data right off of your ID. This software automatically recognizes IDs from all states and enters the extracted data into a database. When there are long lines of people waiting, this can save tons of time compared to an operator manually entering the data.

But I digress.

I returned the following week for another multi-day $400,000 guaranteed tournament but only lasted about 4 hours. Although the rounds are 40 minutes long, you start with only 3,000 in chips so one big mistake and you’re stack is low. I tried to make a move and got caught and lost half my stack. From there, it was a struggle and a slow death.  The lesson there is, when you are playing a small stack tournament, don’t’ try to get too tricky until you build up your stack.

After my disappointing performance at the last series of tournaments at the Bicycle Casino, I decided to keep trying at the Legends of Poker tournaments.

First, I tried the re-buy $300 tournament ($200k guarantee) with no luck.  The week after that, the Bike decided to change their rebuy tournament on August 14-15th 2009 to a no-rebuy tournament for some reason. It still a $200,000 guarantee, which made it a good one to try. The rounds are 40 minutes and started at 50-100 blinds.

Everybody gets one of these free baseball caps for entering the tournament, as well as a coupon for free dinner. Hey, they have to do something to make it seem like you’re getting your money’s worth.

Men “The Master” and his wife were there, as well as Lou Diamond Phillips, the actor slash poker player. On another table, Sam Simon (co-creator of the Simpson’s) was trying his luck.

Actually, both of these guys are fairly serious about their poker. Simon is famous for having a big home game in Los Angeles, which was featured on 60 minutes a while back.

Now, Simon has had a cable show called “Sam’s Game” on Playboy, since June 2009. Here’s a clip from their show below. You can tell that it’s more talking and BSing than poker. What little poker that is played is only good for showing people what NOT to do if you want to play properly. The only reason for watching is to see Playmates playing poker, but they have their clothes on so it’s not very interesting. However, I would watch this show if it was Simon playing strip poker against only Playmates at the table.  Now, that would be a real show to watch.

But I digress.

In the $500 buy-in tournament, I was doing fairly well when I got pocket Queens under the gun. The blinds were only $150-$300 but I raised to $1,500 because I was on a super high action table. As I suspected, I got 5 callers.  The flop was Jack high, no straight draw but a club flush draw possible.  After the big blind checked, I went all in for about $18,000.  I got one caller, who had an Ace high flush draw, and he got there on the river. He easily covered me and I was out.

So ends my Legends try. I’m not even going to try to win my way into the main event. Well, at least I got a free baseball cap.

Normandie exterior

It’s been a while since I’ve been to the Normandie but I was talking to a poker friend and was reminded of all the action they used to have on Saturday nights.  I don’t know if it’s still going on but it sure was fun back in the day.

There’s not much else going on at the Normandie as far as poker, but on Saturday nights, some of the people from Caribe (back in the day) go there for a $500+ no limit game.  Steve, his brother Mike, Dr. Laura, Mickey, and some new people are there for some crazy action.

For me, it’s a challenge because Steve uses every trick in the book to confuse and annoy the players.  Not only that but it’s pretty much like a private home game in that people will make deals during the hand, including asking another player if he wants half the action.  Cards are passed to other players for examination before more prop bets are taken.  Of course, showing one or both cards is nothing unusual at a game like this.  All things that would not be allowed in a casino are allowed.  Side bets and props are the norm.

On top of all this, there’s some crazy action, pre-flop and post-flop.  $3,000 pots can happen on an unraised pot.  This is no game for pussies, that’s for sure.  Sometimes new players will come in and will leave after a few hands because of all the craziness.  Other times, the craziness causes new players to go on tilt and give away all their money before they leave mumbling obscenities.

Since I didn’t win my way in to the 2009 WSOP main event this year (again), I decided to try the Stars and Stripes Championship event at the Bicycle Casino for $1070.  I waited until there were a couple of people sitting at my table before I sat down.  There was a young Internet guy in seat 3, and we chatted a little before the tournament.

While chatting, I noticed WSOP 2006 Main Event winner Jamie Gold sitting at table 6, seat 9 nearby.  Around the same time, I also observed Men “The Master” Nguyen buying in 2 of his “horses” apparently on credit. I’m not positive but I didn’t see Nguyen playing himself, but one of his horses came to my table later in the tournament. With all the controversy regarding Nguyen being accused of collusion, I’m glad he was not at my table.

I’ll spare you the boring details of how I got knocked out, except to say that I had top pair on the flop, and the big stack went all-in with his open ended draw and got the straight on the river.

On a side note, Jamie Gold ended in 6th place in the tournament.

While playing at a tournament in LA, a guy told me to checkout the Hard Rock poker room.  So while I was in Vegas, I decided to check it out.

Before I even got to the poker room, I noticed some go-go dancers doing pole work in the Casino itself. They are the “Hard Rock Hell’s Belles” dancers doing their thing at the black jack tables.  And these girls are actually hot.  I really wanted to walk over and tip them but I decided to control myself.

When I got to the poker room, which is kind of hidden away in the back, the first thing I noticed was the good looking hostess that walks you over to the table.  However, that turned out to be nothing compared to 2 dealers they had there who were hotties.  I don’t mean hot for a female dealer.  I mean HOT!  One was named Bella, and the other was a blond who’s name I can’t remember right now.  Bella was wearing fishnet stockings, mini-skirt and 4 inch high heals.  No, I’m not joking.

When was the last time you saw a poker dealer wearing a mini-skirt?  When was the last time you saw a dealer you wanted to see in a mini-skirt?

Just so there’s no misunderstanding, I’m pretty used to looking at attractive females.  Your average wannabe Paris Hilton does nothing for me.  You have to be really hot for me to even take notice.  And Bella and the blond were both hotties.

So I’m playing and trying not to stare at the dealers, and up walks a stunning blond player.  WTF?  Yes, that’s right. Even the players looked good here.  Then a couple sits down, and they look like models.  I was clearly the ugliest player there.  No, the ugliest person there.

In any case, if you want to play around some really good looking people, this is the place to go. For more details on their strange “Hard Rock Straddle,” see my poker site.

While the World Series of Poker 2008 is going on at the Rio, Microsoft has put their Surface OS tables in the lounges there.  This video shows some “applications” for the Surface, iPhone-like operating system, like games and ways to pickup on the ladies, or vice versa.

Frankly, I’ve never seen attractive chicks like these playing video games, or even touching anything geeky, other than the iPhone.  Maybe the iPhone will finally bring in the good looking people into the world of gadgets and geeks.  One can dream.

In case you’re not familiar with the rewards program at the Hustler Casino, basically, they keep track of each hour of your play and you get points for rewards.  You can either get free food, a coupon for the in-casino store, or the Hustler Hollywood store.  Since the food is free at the $300+ tables, I never use my points.

Last year, for Christmas, I took all my Hustler Casino reward points (or whatever it’s called) and bought a bunch of presents at the Hustler Hollywood store.  But more recently, I’ve noticed signs and notices at the casino telling me that if I don’t use my points for 6 months, they go away.  Damn it.

They must have learned this trick from the airlines and cell phone companies.  Oh well.  No matter.  Since it’s half way into the year, I decided I’d better cash out my reward points before they expire.  I went to one of those kiosks and printed out my coupon for Hustler Hollywood.

By chance, they had their Hustler girl Hoodies on sale ($16 off regular price) so I decided to just load up on them and hold them until this coming Christmas.  That’s right boys and girls.  I’m doing my Christmas shopping in June.  Can you beat that?

Pokerstars.com is giving away free entries to the WSOP 2008 main event.  What’s the catch?  Well, you have to come in the top 50 out of 5,000 in your first level tournament.  The blinds go up every 5 minutes.  Once you do that, then you get to enter the next free tournament, where you must come in the top 2 to win your entry. Also, you can only enter once a week.

If you’re interested in this, login to your pokerstars account, click on “Events,” then “WSOP,” then click on one of the “WSOP $1M Giveaway: Round 1 Freeroll.”

If you don’t mind paying, there are other ways you can get in.  There’s a $33 entry tournament where they give away at least 1 WSOP entry.  The closest I got was heads-up where I was all-in with pocket Queens against AK .  The flop brought two with low cards, and you can guess the rest.  Damn!  So close.

So far, it doesn’t look like I’m going to make it to the WSOP this year.

The movie “21″ is based on the book, “Bringing Down the House,” by Ben Mezrich. The book is based on the events of the re-generated MIT blackjack team in the late 90’s and Jeff Ma’s experiences. Although I’ve not read the book, reports are that the movie basically changes everything except a few specific scenes.

First off, let me start by saying that I used to count cards in the 80’s but found it too much work. Meaning my brain power wasn’t good enough to do it for 12 hours straight. I’m still an avid gambler and play poker a lot. Generally, I love casino and gambling movies,  I loved “Rainman,” “Casino,” and of course, “Rounders.”

As for “21,” other than the correct explaination of how to use simple counting techniques for blackjack play, almost everything else seemed inaccurate or completely wrong to me.

For example, the team stayed at Hard Rock and were seen all going to the same suite. Then, they played at the Hard Rock casino. No blackjack team would ever do this, and certainly not the famed MIT team. They are seen together too often and too many times.  They know the casino has cameras everywhere.

There are several scenes where the movie teaches how simple counting is done.  I say “simple” because there are more complicated techniques.  My friend that I watched the movie with didn’t understand this section of the movie and I had to explain it more in detail to her after the movie.  So I’m not sure if this part of the movie was useful to anybody since it’s apparently too difficult to understand for the untrained, but boring for blackjack counters.  It’s hard to balance things like this in a movie. 

They also used typical signals to communicate with each other.  However, they used the same cross arm signals throughout the entire trip, and even on subsequent trips.  Good for audiences to understand what’s going on.  Bad for presenting reality.

When the player pretending to be a “whale” would come to the table, the “counter” would stay at the table. This makes no sense since the whale player was perfectly capable of keeping the count himself and the counter player was eating up cards that the whale player could be getting.  This, not to mention, having the counter and whale players at the same table increases the chances of the casino taking note of this weird coincidence.

Also, there’s another scene where the “whale” splits 10s.  I could be wrong but I think even if the count was very high, splitting 10s is a sure signal to the dealer that you are counting cards.

To illustrate, I was playing at the Riviera, back in the 80’s. It was a multi-deck shoe, and I was playing by myself at the table. I had been playing for a while, doing nothing too strange and winning good money. At one point, the count became abnormally large and I switched from betting $5 per hand to two hands for $50 each. I kept winning and I increased my bets to $150 each. Before the count got back down too low, the pit boss came over and told the dealer to re-shuffle.  They noticed me out of all the players in less than 15 minutes.

Instead of getting up, and basically admitting to counting, I decided to risk losing some money back in order to prevent them from tagging me. I stayed and kept playing, lowering my bets only down to $50. By pure luck, I started on a long winning streak at this point, so I raised my bets back up to two hands at $150 again. This time, the pit boss came over and changed the dealer. To make a long story short, they changed dealers one more time on me before I left with about $10,000. The pit boss stood next to the table the entire time I played.

Remember that this was back in the 80’s when they really did beat up counters and cheats. The movie apparently takes place in present time since they were talking about face recognition software. If so, I doubt any large corporation would be using tactics like beating people up anymore. You could argue that the security consultant did this on his own but it’s still a big risk for everyone including the casino.

On yet another occasion in Vegas, I was at the end of a long session and I was so tired, I thought I had a hard 16 against a face card and hit. Before I realized what I did, the dealer brought out a 4. I had accidentally hit on a hard 17 and made 21 with the 4. The dealer immediately called over the pit boss. He looked and told the dealer to keep dealing but watched me play for a few minutes.

These examples show how paranoid the casinos were, (and still are) about cheats and counters alike. I wasn’t even playing with $10,000 chips or anything crazy like in the “21″ movie and they kept checking up on me. This is why what happens in the movie is totally fiction. If they did what they did in the movie, they would have had the casino watching over them like hawks. No way, they could get away with it. I’m sure the book is very different from this fictionalized version in the movie.

Enough mathmatics and gambling. What about sex. Well, other than a unrealistic romance between the protagonist and one of the female counters, their meeting place is a strip club. So as you can imagine, there are the required lap dance and pole dancing sequences. It’s not as nasty as I like, but it’s there. Let’s face it. This is a gambler’s movie. Not a horn dog movie.

All in all, there’s a lot of special effects showing the cards close up with sound effects making the cards sound like rocket ships. As gambling movies go, it’s not too bad. It’s not as good as the Vegas scenes from “Rainman,” but it’s okay. When the dealer peels off yet another card to make 21, while all the players are shouting for “Monkey,” a picture card, your heart will pump a little harder if you’re any type of real backjack player.

Summary
So what’s the bottom line?  If you’re a gambler but can’t leave town and you need your Vegas fix, this might be one option.  Otherwise just wait for the DVD or Blu-ray.

During one tournament at the Hustler, early in the tournament, the guy to my left was a jokster type and when I was the small blind, said to me, “Let’s just limp in blind and check blind all the way.”  The blinds were still only 25-50 (I think) so I agreed.  No biggie.  2 people limped in and I called the big blind without looking at my cards.  The guy in the big blind checked without looking, and we both checked blind before the flop.

The flop was 4, 4, 5 with 2 clubs.  The other 2 guys also checked.  I blind checked the turn, as did the big blind guy.  The turn was a Queen.  The 2 guys also checked.  Me and the big blind once again blind checked the river.

The river was a small club, making a possible flush out there.  The first of the 2 guys checked.  Then the last guy bet 300 into a 200 pot.  Now, I tell the big blind guy that I have to look at my cards.  I take a peek and I have 4, 5.  I flopped a FULL HOUSE!

I think for a second, and I min raised to 600.  The big blind folds, and the other guy folds, and back to the original better.  He thinks for a bit and goes all in for about 5,000.  I insta-call and show my full house.  The guy rivered an Ace high club flush and decided to go crazy.

What a weird hand that turned out to be.  In hind sight, if I had looked at my hand, I don’t think the guy would have gone crazy like that.  I think the blind checking confused him when I finally came out raising him.  Whatever the reason, this influx of chips helped me get to 5th place in the tournament.