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peterbirksIt was nice to come back from Las Vegas in profit. I still haven't achieved the dream of paying for everything, but I came pretty close. I won $1,350. The holiday cost $880 (flight), $400 (spent), and $630 (hotel, including added gym and internet fees). So that's $560 spent for the entire two weeks. However, included in that is about $100 that I spent on clothes and stuff (I bought another $200-worth on my card). So that brings it down to $460. And if I had stayed at home I would have spent about $160 at Tesco and maybe $200 elsewhere. So the net cost of the fortnight, in a hotel, in Las Vegas, and most definitely not here, was $100. I'd take that deal.
However, I definitely ran good. I won $200 in bonuses the very first morning that I gamed the system. The $100 "high hand of the hour" award in the Flamingo runs from 8am, when there is often only one table, running, with a maximum of two tables. If there are 15 players in the room, that's an effective $6.50 an hour rakeback right there. Add to that the standard high hand bonus (probably worth a dollar), and the Total Rewards points (another dollar), and you are looking at about 90% rakeback -- given that it costs you an average of about $10 an hour to play.
All of this sits within volatility of maybe $40 an hour at $2-$4 limit and $70 an hour at $1-$2 No Limit. In other words, it's a very good deal.
People (dealers in particular) often wonder why players fuss about a dollar here and a dollar there when they will happily put $200 into the pot when they are 55:45 and then not even worry when they lose. That, of course, is why some people are dealers and some people are poker players. The Flamingo reintroduced a "no flop no drop" rule a few weeks ago (they had been taking a drop from hands that didn't reach a flop because so many of the NL hands were being played without a flop being seen). I told the poker room supervisor Michael that I would have proclaimed this change from the rooftops -- I would certainly have put up a big sign announcing it. However, most players probably didn't even care.
Indeed, many of the dealers didn't even know, while one of them said that he didn't know that it had been introduced in the first place, and that he had been dealing for 18 months without taking a drop unless there had been a flop.
I won one hand with a big 4-bet preflop and thought nothing until I heard the "klunk" of dollar chips falling into the box. I said to the dealer "no flop no drop", and the floor supervisor confirmed it. So I got my $4 back. Those small amounts quickly add up. As I said to the cocktail waitress as the situation developed "sorry, I'm just battling to win your tip and the dealer's tip".
I still tip dealers. This is aq controversial area among serious poker players, many of whom (including Neil Channing) do not tip, on the simple grounds that it works out in the end to be a very high tax on your winnings.
How high? Well, suppose my "true" rate in the poker room is $8 an hour after tips (and, let's be honest, that's about as much as I could hope for at $1-$2 NL plus gaming the bonuses). I would probably win two hands an hour and tip the dealer an average of $3. So, that works out as a $3 "tax" on $11 winnings -- $3 to the dealer and $8 to me.
I can just about accept this because I know that dealers rely on tips to live (although, with tips, they live rather well). I don't overtip, but I don't refuse so to do. But I can understand why some players do not tip.
+++++++
I met some interesting people in the two weeks that I was sitting at the felt. I also met some people whom I would happily not see again.
One of the more interesting encounters was between me and a Dutch guy who worked for Shell. He started off by calling $2-$4 limit "bingo poker", which I admit is a phrase that puts my back up. He then went on to explain to the local on his immediate left (a nice guy, and I was on his immediate left), that online poker was rigged and that no-one could win at it. And THEN he said that he (the Dutch guy) had come over with a group of friends and that they played tournaments, pooling their entry fees and pooling their prize money. After his comment on "bingo poker", this was just a bit too much. I explained that I didn't play tournaments in Vegas myself, partly because of the high rake and partly because there were too many teams working together.
He immediately said that, of course, there was no collusion "at the table", but by now I was flying, discussing the advantage of reduced volatility, lower exposure per entry than other players enabling you to play more aggressively, and the inevitability that at some point you would find yourself at the same table as someone who was playing with "your" money. He responded that people often swapped percentages of each other, to which I said that this was very different from playing with pooled money.
None of this is new, of course, Sailor Roberts, Doyle Brunson and Amarillo Slim played with pooled money as they travelled all over Texas. And I had the same opinion of that as I did of our Dutch friend.
The highlight came, however, when the following day he declined to join the "bingo poker" and came to sit at the NL table. I nodded hello, looked at his $50 in chips and said "it's a minimum $100 buy in". "Oh", he replied, "is it $2-$4 no limit?" "No", I said, "it's $1-$2". I swear that the bloke almost went chalk white. The mere thought of having to sit down with more than 25 big blinds was far too much for him, and he played just one orbit (without playing a hand) and left.
My own strategy was, in fact, an extended version of this -- I played with 60 big blinds rather than 100 or the maximum sit-down of 150 big blinds. If I doubled through and I thought the game was good, I would stay. However, I have little practice playing deep stack, and many of the players there were good at deepstack. It would be stupid for me to play at such a disadvantage until I got comfortable with the game. And, in Vegas, you can always leave and sit down again in another casino with 60 big blinds.
But, back to my run-good. The morning after I won $200, I won another $200. And I won a $100 bonus sometime in the evening. I was also winning the coin flips, and hitting sets. I was also getting better at getting paid off. It was three days of "I can do no wrong" and that was quite enough to put me four figures up, even at low stakes.
+++++++++++++
And so, back to England, and rain, and work.
I also won about $1,350 online this year -- pathetic compared to the $25,000-odd that I chalked up in 2009, but rather better than the $10 or thereabouts that I achieved in 2011.
I can tell you precisely when the wheels started to came off -- it was in October 2009 in France. My monitor blew up, so I started playing cascading rather than tiled. I won money, so I decided that I might as well 10-table cascade rather than eight-table tile. This soon became 12-table cascade and at times was up to 14-table cascading at $1-$2 NL. I was also running well.
This continued until March 2010 (by which time I was $10k up for 2010), and from that point on all that I did was break even. And that was only due to the fact that I was a Supernova and was therefore getting superb rakeback. When you are paying $28 an hour in rake and getting about half of it back, breaking even in open play doesn't seem an unattractive prospect.
But this is a dangerous path down which to travel, and I leapt onto it with doom-laden enthusiasm. I stopped winning in open play -- then I was losing more than I was getting back in rakeback. Then I HAD to keep playing cascading tables, because otherwise I would lose the high level of rakeback.
I broke even in the last nine months of 2010 and sank to $2,000 down in the first few months of 2011. Of course this was peanuts compared to the nearly $100k that I had taken out of the game since 2000, but it was still irritating, and something needed to be done. I came back down in stakes; I went back to eight-tabling (tiled). I stopped the rot, but I couldn't win. I crawled back to just better than level for the year.
I started 2012 badly as well, sinking to $1,000 down. So, I re-evaluated again. I decided that perhaps I would play better with 60 big blinds rather than 100 big blinds. The technical arguments behind this are rather tedious, but as a strategy it worked. I worked my way back up to $1,300 up by the end of the year, despite playing at stakes only one quarter of what I was playing in 2009 and 2010, and despite only playing about 150,000 hands rather than 450,000 hands. In other words, the profit was coming at the table rather than just from rakeback.
In 2012 I also did some work on badugi and 2-7 triple draw. I quickly got good enough to beat the main (low-stakes) games, but I never got round to moving up. I like both games, -- they offer strategic opportunities not available in NL and, of course, I played limit rather than NL. The so-called "bingo" option, but in fact a much harder game than NL 2-7 or NL badugi.
For this year in poker? I've actually set myself some targets in terms of hands played, in an attempt to stop myself hitting and running. The reemergence of Full Tilt could mean the end of my interst in Party Poker (I've said this before, I know, but the software is, by modern standards, total shite. I've long suspected collusion there, without being able to prove it, and the liquidity has fallen off a cliff. It recently merged its player base with bwin, but I think that they are just milking it for what they can, which means no money for R&D and rather pathetic rakeback. All of their adverts are for tournaments.
Away from poker, I hope to go to more shows and to more restaurants. I know that many people consider it vulgar to talk about money (even in poker, which is basically about money), but the fact remains that I can no longer consider myself poor. And I have been poor in the past, which is what makes it hard for me to spend money on "fripperies". I'm afraid that people who money goes through like water will never be on my wavelength, and I will never be on theirs. Unlike them, I do not believe that "something will turn up" or that "there's always more where that came from". The good times can end as quickly as they began.
On the other hand, one does not want to carry on saving and then to die without ever having lived. This, as it were, is the biggest gamble of them all -- timing it so that you spend your last dime with your last breath.
___________________
However, I definitely ran good. I won $200 in bonuses the very first morning that I gamed the system. The $100 "high hand of the hour" award in the Flamingo runs from 8am, when there is often only one table, running, with a maximum of two tables. If there are 15 players in the room, that's an effective $6.50 an hour rakeback right there. Add to that the standard high hand bonus (probably worth a dollar), and the Total Rewards points (another dollar), and you are looking at about 90% rakeback -- given that it costs you an average of about $10 an hour to play.
All of this sits within volatility of maybe $40 an hour at $2-$4 limit and $70 an hour at $1-$2 No Limit. In other words, it's a very good deal.
People (dealers in particular) often wonder why players fuss about a dollar here and a dollar there when they will happily put $200 into the pot when they are 55:45 and then not even worry when they lose. That, of course, is why some people are dealers and some people are poker players. The Flamingo reintroduced a "no flop no drop" rule a few weeks ago (they had been taking a drop from hands that didn't reach a flop because so many of the NL hands were being played without a flop being seen). I told the poker room supervisor Michael that I would have proclaimed this change from the rooftops -- I would certainly have put up a big sign announcing it. However, most players probably didn't even care.
Indeed, many of the dealers didn't even know, while one of them said that he didn't know that it had been introduced in the first place, and that he had been dealing for 18 months without taking a drop unless there had been a flop.
I won one hand with a big 4-bet preflop and thought nothing until I heard the "klunk" of dollar chips falling into the box. I said to the dealer "no flop no drop", and the floor supervisor confirmed it. So I got my $4 back. Those small amounts quickly add up. As I said to the cocktail waitress as the situation developed "sorry, I'm just battling to win your tip and the dealer's tip".
I still tip dealers. This is aq controversial area among serious poker players, many of whom (including Neil Channing) do not tip, on the simple grounds that it works out in the end to be a very high tax on your winnings.
How high? Well, suppose my "true" rate in the poker room is $8 an hour after tips (and, let's be honest, that's about as much as I could hope for at $1-$2 NL plus gaming the bonuses). I would probably win two hands an hour and tip the dealer an average of $3. So, that works out as a $3 "tax" on $11 winnings -- $3 to the dealer and $8 to me.
I can just about accept this because I know that dealers rely on tips to live (although, with tips, they live rather well). I don't overtip, but I don't refuse so to do. But I can understand why some players do not tip.
+++++++
I met some interesting people in the two weeks that I was sitting at the felt. I also met some people whom I would happily not see again.
One of the more interesting encounters was between me and a Dutch guy who worked for Shell. He started off by calling $2-$4 limit "bingo poker", which I admit is a phrase that puts my back up. He then went on to explain to the local on his immediate left (a nice guy, and I was on his immediate left), that online poker was rigged and that no-one could win at it. And THEN he said that he (the Dutch guy) had come over with a group of friends and that they played tournaments, pooling their entry fees and pooling their prize money. After his comment on "bingo poker", this was just a bit too much. I explained that I didn't play tournaments in Vegas myself, partly because of the high rake and partly because there were too many teams working together.
He immediately said that, of course, there was no collusion "at the table", but by now I was flying, discussing the advantage of reduced volatility, lower exposure per entry than other players enabling you to play more aggressively, and the inevitability that at some point you would find yourself at the same table as someone who was playing with "your" money. He responded that people often swapped percentages of each other, to which I said that this was very different from playing with pooled money.
None of this is new, of course, Sailor Roberts, Doyle Brunson and Amarillo Slim played with pooled money as they travelled all over Texas. And I had the same opinion of that as I did of our Dutch friend.
The highlight came, however, when the following day he declined to join the "bingo poker" and came to sit at the NL table. I nodded hello, looked at his $50 in chips and said "it's a minimum $100 buy in". "Oh", he replied, "is it $2-$4 no limit?" "No", I said, "it's $1-$2". I swear that the bloke almost went chalk white. The mere thought of having to sit down with more than 25 big blinds was far too much for him, and he played just one orbit (without playing a hand) and left.
My own strategy was, in fact, an extended version of this -- I played with 60 big blinds rather than 100 or the maximum sit-down of 150 big blinds. If I doubled through and I thought the game was good, I would stay. However, I have little practice playing deep stack, and many of the players there were good at deepstack. It would be stupid for me to play at such a disadvantage until I got comfortable with the game. And, in Vegas, you can always leave and sit down again in another casino with 60 big blinds.
But, back to my run-good. The morning after I won $200, I won another $200. And I won a $100 bonus sometime in the evening. I was also winning the coin flips, and hitting sets. I was also getting better at getting paid off. It was three days of "I can do no wrong" and that was quite enough to put me four figures up, even at low stakes.
+++++++++++++
And so, back to England, and rain, and work.
I also won about $1,350 online this year -- pathetic compared to the $25,000-odd that I chalked up in 2009, but rather better than the $10 or thereabouts that I achieved in 2011.
I can tell you precisely when the wheels started to came off -- it was in October 2009 in France. My monitor blew up, so I started playing cascading rather than tiled. I won money, so I decided that I might as well 10-table cascade rather than eight-table tile. This soon became 12-table cascade and at times was up to 14-table cascading at $1-$2 NL. I was also running well.
This continued until March 2010 (by which time I was $10k up for 2010), and from that point on all that I did was break even. And that was only due to the fact that I was a Supernova and was therefore getting superb rakeback. When you are paying $28 an hour in rake and getting about half of it back, breaking even in open play doesn't seem an unattractive prospect.
But this is a dangerous path down which to travel, and I leapt onto it with doom-laden enthusiasm. I stopped winning in open play -- then I was losing more than I was getting back in rakeback. Then I HAD to keep playing cascading tables, because otherwise I would lose the high level of rakeback.
I broke even in the last nine months of 2010 and sank to $2,000 down in the first few months of 2011. Of course this was peanuts compared to the nearly $100k that I had taken out of the game since 2000, but it was still irritating, and something needed to be done. I came back down in stakes; I went back to eight-tabling (tiled). I stopped the rot, but I couldn't win. I crawled back to just better than level for the year.
I started 2012 badly as well, sinking to $1,000 down. So, I re-evaluated again. I decided that perhaps I would play better with 60 big blinds rather than 100 big blinds. The technical arguments behind this are rather tedious, but as a strategy it worked. I worked my way back up to $1,300 up by the end of the year, despite playing at stakes only one quarter of what I was playing in 2009 and 2010, and despite only playing about 150,000 hands rather than 450,000 hands. In other words, the profit was coming at the table rather than just from rakeback.
In 2012 I also did some work on badugi and 2-7 triple draw. I quickly got good enough to beat the main (low-stakes) games, but I never got round to moving up. I like both games, -- they offer strategic opportunities not available in NL and, of course, I played limit rather than NL. The so-called "bingo" option, but in fact a much harder game than NL 2-7 or NL badugi.
For this year in poker? I've actually set myself some targets in terms of hands played, in an attempt to stop myself hitting and running. The reemergence of Full Tilt could mean the end of my interst in Party Poker (I've said this before, I know, but the software is, by modern standards, total shite. I've long suspected collusion there, without being able to prove it, and the liquidity has fallen off a cliff. It recently merged its player base with bwin, but I think that they are just milking it for what they can, which means no money for R&D and rather pathetic rakeback. All of their adverts are for tournaments.
Away from poker, I hope to go to more shows and to more restaurants. I know that many people consider it vulgar to talk about money (even in poker, which is basically about money), but the fact remains that I can no longer consider myself poor. And I have been poor in the past, which is what makes it hard for me to spend money on "fripperies". I'm afraid that people who money goes through like water will never be on my wavelength, and I will never be on theirs. Unlike them, I do not believe that "something will turn up" or that "there's always more where that came from". The good times can end as quickly as they began.
On the other hand, one does not want to carry on saving and then to die without ever having lived. This, as it were, is the biggest gamble of them all -- timing it so that you spend your last dime with your last breath.
___________________
no subject
Date: 2013-01-04 11:51 pm (UTC)Glad to read about your latest Las Vegas trip and that it sounds like such a good one. Also impressive to see that you managed to live on US$400 for two weeks; the adage is that the expense of having to eat out regularly when you're on holiday is so much more costly than living at home and being able to cook for yourself, but Las Vegas might be one of the few places in the Western world where (not suggesting you have one here...) a not-too-adventurous English-language palate might want to do so. What was the best thing you ate?
I always liked, and still like, your self-accountable summary posts. Glad you had another up year and up in a good way, though I half-remember an LJ post of yours where you suggested you were going to get out while you were well up. You still can, if you want to!
Really liked your last couple of paragraphs as well. In poker parlance: must be nice... :-)
no subject
Date: 2013-01-05 12:03 am (UTC)Apart from that -- I accumulated so many Total Rewards Points that I effectively got a free breakfast every morning in the Tropical Breeze Café -- that could easily be my main meal of the day!
Apart from that I ate at the cheaper places -- slices of pizza, Food Courts, etc. I was happy with that, and that was one reason my expenses were low (that and no taxis). Restaurants are not fun places when you dine alone.
There was also my favourite burger place in the world, Fatburger, where you can stuff yourself silly for twelve bucks (locals discount applies, of course!). I got free coffees while I was playing cards and I had a coffee machine in my room. Snacks like chocolate bars could also be charged to my Rewards points.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2013-01-05 01:43 am (UTC)I hear a lot of good about In'n'Out Burger, which is a mainstay in the Western US and has locations in Vegas. (They also had a pop-up branch in Hendon for the 90 minutes or so that it took to sell 200 burgers, flown in from the US, last year.)
no subject
Date: 2013-01-05 07:50 pm (UTC)In'n'Out has a fine reputation. I should have driven to it the week that I had a car. You can't reach it from the strip by foot (well, not easily).
PJ
no subject
Date: 2013-01-22 12:24 am (UTC)