Summer Offers: Value Drops Again

[Alan Mendelson]

I am now getting emails from Total Rewards with my summer offers and the value has dropped again. In the previous three months the offers were valued at $400 and now they have a value of $300 for gift cards and free play.

I was asked today if I was going to Rincon this Friday for the free play offer and that is now $85 which is only a break-even amount with the price of gas what it is. So I'm not going.

$300 for a trip to Vegas is ridiculous.

Yes, I'm back to playing $40 poker tournaments at the Bicycle Casino near Commerce in Bell Gardens.

[redietz]

Nothing wrong with $40 poker tournaments.

Realistically, it looks as if the CET death spiral is accelerating. Who is responsible for the giant ferris wheel in LV anyway? That is the dumbest thing I have seen since I first visited LV in 1979 or thereabouts.

[Alan Mendelson]

Actually the High Roller would have been a cool attraction if there were a bar in each car or a blackjack table or a live host/hostess who told jokes as they pointed to the sites. For example, the hostess might say "there's the old Imperial Palace now known as the Quad. The original owners designed the building so it looked like a swastika from the air...."

[redietz]

They should have made each pod a themed bedroom with a bar. You ride by the hour.

[Alan Mendelson]

They should have made each pod a themed bedroom with a bar. You ride by the hour.

That would have led Caesars to open a second venue: helicopter views of the High Roller.

And then in the gift shop you could buy a video of your "High Roller Experience."

[jbjb]

...The original owners designed the building so it looked like a swastika from the air...."

Are you sure you're not thinking of the complex at the Naval Amphibious base at Coronado?

[regnis]

Nothing wrong with $40 poker tournaments.

Realistically, it looks as if the CET death spiral is accelerating. Who is responsible for the giant ferris wheel in LV anyway? That is the dumbest thing I have seen since I first visited LV in 1979 or thereabouts.

I thought instead of "back-rooming you" they force you into a pod and make you spin now.

[redietz]

That would have led Caesars to open a second venue: helicopter views of the High Roller.

And then in the gift shop you could buy a video of your "High Roller Experience."

That was good, Alan.

[Alan Mendelson]

The aerial view of the Imperial Palace. According to in-town gossip, extensions were added to the building to disguise the swastika design. A relative (who passed away) was on the Nevada Gaming Commission when the hotel was fined for having the Hitler birthday party.

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/ne...photo/56003175

[redietz]

I remember the Hitler birthday party. I was unaware of the swastika design. That's really something, whether by design or coincidence (I think Blondie sang, "Accidents Never Happen").

Hmmmmm, for a long time the Imperial Palace Auto Collection had a splendid display of Duesenbergs, manufactured in the US, but by two brothers born in Germany. I always wondered how the IP cornered such a great Duesenberg collection. I also wondered why.

[carolinajacket]

Alan, you sure you are not thinking about joining the mile high club?

[Alan Mendelson]

Carolina, I never kiss and tell. But when I was the business reporter at WTVJ in Miami and covered the airlines extensively (Eastern, Pan Am, Delta, Air Florida, Northeastern... and flew on the Concorde twice) I got to sit in the cockpits with the pilots, and I got to go into the galleys of L1011s with flight attendants. Those galleys were down an elevator into the belly of the jumbo jet.

[Dan Druff]

$40 poker tournaments are raked HORRIBLY and are likely unbeatable in the long run.

Also, the structures are terrible (blinds rise too fast), so there is too much luck. Even if you're a really good player, your edge isn't as high as you might think.

[Alan Mendelson]

I don't think anyone plays forty dollar tournaments to get rich. But it's a fun way to spend the day. I have only one $40 tournament win -- but it did pay a bit more than a thousand dollars. Do that once a week and its a nice side job.

But more importantly when I did play I made the final table often and that allowed me to win enough money to play several more tournaments.

[Rob.Singer]

Dan, I still want to see if some of us could have a friendly poker day with you some day. I've never been convinced that there's very many "pros" in that game who do very well outside of the occasional win sandwiched between many losses. There's a litany of "big names" now living on the Obama dole, and where are they when the top prize is given out at WSOP?

I watch the game on ESPN with all the math odds shown on screen and all the commentator reputation-building comments. They make it sound like the math calculations we see on the screen are known to the "top players" also, but that's not even close to being true. And there's no such thing as having "an edge" other than in the player's mind. It's all based on the cards that fall and how or if one knows how and/or when to bluff successfully. No more/no less.

[Alan Mendelson]

Rob I think if you did play poker you would see that the "good players" tend to make the final 10% frequently, and more often than not, the good players are at the final table more than others.

One funny story: the Bicycle Casino had one of its big tournaments a few years back and the table assignments are all random. When I showed up at the table I was assigned to 7 of the nine seats were filled. I was #8. A couple of minutes later the final player for our table showed up who said, as he took his seat, "this looks like the final table at Crystal Park."

Crystal is a small casino in Compton which at the time had nightly tournaments, and ironically the 9 of us sitting at that table at the Bike were usually the 9 at the final table at Crystal.

Fortunately for us, our table "broke" early and we went to other tables so we didn't have to play each other. I made the final table at that tournament at the Bicycle. It was one of their "Wearing Of the Green" tournaments where final table members got a green jacket in addition to their cash. I wore that green jacket for years. LOL

[Rob.Singer]

Question: what constitutes a "good player"? I frequently hear and read that certain players (who think they're "good" I imagine) can't wait to play with this amateur or that weekend warrior or whatever. What makes these good players think they can get better cards than others or out-bluff and/or out-read their unknown opponents? Isn't it all really just a big pile of good luck combined with good old fashioned face-to-face recognition skills?

[Alan Mendelson]

A good player is someone who knows when to bet, when to check and when to fold. The rest is luck. But if you know when to bet, when to check and when to fold luck becomes an agent you can use.

A "lucky player" who gets Ace of Diamonds and Ace of Hearts and continues to bet when the flop comes 7 of spades, 8 of spades and 9 of spades and three other players before him are betting big is not a good player.

Here's my favorite story about being a good player but not being lucky.

I am at a $200 buy-in cash game at Hollywood Park. The big blind is $5. I am the first player to bet after the big blind and I am dealt AA. So I raise the big blind to $25. A couple of players fold and then a player raises to $50. After that two more players call the $50. So there is now $183 in the pot. The betting comes back to me and I go all-in with a little more than $200. The player who was first to raise me also goes all-in. Then the other two players who called the $50 raise also go all in. There is more than $800 in the pot and I am figuring it's all mine with my pocket aces. Then...

Then the player who raised me flashes his cards to me and says "can you beat this?" And he holds up KK. I look at him, smiling and nod yes. He mutters "you have Aces?" And I hold up my aces. Then the other two players who are also all in hold up their cards. They both have AK. No one is suited and I am saying to myself the risk of a flush is low and "the money is all mine!!"

Well, I was wrong. The dealer flops the first three cards -- and it still looked like the pot was all mine.
Then came the turn -- and it still looked like the pot was all mine.
And the river was a 7. Just a 7. And that made the board, with no flush: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Yes, a 7-high straight and all four of us chopped and took back our bets. Oh -- the $8 that the blinds put in? That went to the rake.

[redietz]

Dan's right in that the rake for $40 tournaments is ridiculous and I don't think you can really come out ahead unless you're part of one of those local cadres who semaphore their cards to each other with chip handling and body positioning. But nothing's more fun than a low-budget tournament at someplace like Planet Hollywood on a Saturday night with drunken youngsters and people getting pissed off and offers of liquid morphine and the like.

Rob, anybody who has played a little knows all the percentages for hold 'em pretty solidly. They aren't nearly as hard to learn as penalty card exceptions in vp. No limit is actually the easiest of the poker games, in my opinion. Everything else requires more thought and the occasional use of memory (seven-stud tournaments). I have no idea if that non-verbal stuff or the cold reading stuff is useful unless you're up against really inexperienced players.

[Rob.Singer]

OK thanks Alan & red. Alan, I'll ask about knowing when to fold. I submit that it's nothing more than a guess when you have any hand that makes you wonder. And red, the odds we see on the TV are in no way even close to being known by the players, since the TV knows what cards are in everyone else's hands and no player has that info. So there's absolutely no math going into anyone's play, even when holding those two Aces. If I held two of them I might even look at them as a curse, given all the bad beats you read about.

I'm not an experienced player at all. I've only played in a casino once and that was at a Rio tournament, and of 500 I finished something like 5th. That makes me believe I'd be a "good player" if I could stand being around those kind of egos while in casinos.