UWSWSOP Day 4 Part 1: Advanced Strategy
Dave Hill
bikini top.
"No." He sat stiff as a board, stone faced.
It was 7am on Sunday morning, and even after the fourth lapdance,
Peter still had not loosened up not even a little bit.
The rest of us slouched in our chairs, groggy eyed and dazed, more
weirded out than amused at our gag (Rob calls it the best deed we ever
did) and the fact that we were in the Spearmint Rhino early Sunday
morning at the end of a long night.
Which is exactly what I said it would be as the blackjack dealer tried
to smooth out Peter's two crumpled five dollar bills on the felt to
give him two red chips. "You see that right there?" I pointed to the
two crumpled bills. "That's called the end of a long night."
But it wasn't the end. Not even close.
Yesterday started out pretty uneventful, with me getting up just in
time to see the shuffling up and dealing of the WSOP. There were so
many people in the Horseshoe you couldn't even move. I don't know but
it seemed like the fire department would have been none too happy with
how many people were crammed in there. Lots of movie stars and poker
stars and television crews. Somebody gets knocked out in like 15
minutes and Matt Savage says on the PA "If you're the guy who just got
knocked out and you want to admit it, ESPN wants to do an interview
with you upstairs." BTW, I heard he slowplayed his Aces and let
somebody catch a set on the flop. A lesson kids, never slowplay ever
ever.
After sweating my $100 bet on the pistons (who covered the spread but
lost a heartbreaker) at the Bellagio sportsbook with John, my buddy
Adam from Albany, Rob and Mandy - oh thats right, Mandy is in town.
And she's been in town all of 6 hours that she has decided that she
would rather leave tomorrow than pay for another night in the hotel to
hang out with us. Typical. - I signed up for a game.
There were over 60 people on every list. 3 hour wait. Golden Nugget
was no better and neither was the Mirage (not that Id want to play
there anyway. The games seem to suck there compared to the Bellagio
this year) and the Horseshoe has no poker table going unused. So
instead we go join the rest of our group at the Outback Steakhouse for
dinner.
Every year we have a traditional dinner at The Steakhouse at Circus
Circus and we celebrate the new UWSWSOP winner. This year, though, we
have like 13 people with us when you add in Mandy, those two chicks
from California that Chonko wants to score with, and Peter's buddy
from high school they call "Pedophile Charile" (I don't know, and I
didn't ask). The Outback was more accomodating.
Peter set the Over/Under on the bill at $650, which at first I thought
was a good number and I took over. Then when I got three takers, I
realized I hadn't thought it through very well. There were three or
four vegetarians there who weren't eating at all. And people didn't
drink too much. In fact, Greg tried to let me out by giving me a
second O/U of $540, which I also took over on (mostly because he
wouldnt give me anything else) and the check came in at a startling
$340. Down $60 not including food. And everyone made me pay up on my
last longers, so I am officially 1-9 in proposition bets on this trip
(I bet Josh the WSOP would go over 2000).
After dinner we went back to Bellagio, where Brandon and I both got
into the 30-60 game at the same time and sat right next to each other.
After an hour or more of losing a few pots here and there, no major
offenses, the following situation came up.
I have AK in the big blind after just losing a big pot with AK under
the gun where Brandon suggested I limp with it in the future. He
raised me under the gun and it was folded around to me. I
contemplated folding rather than playing it heads up, but thought
better of it and called his raise.
Flop came Q-Q-J. I checked and he bet. Hmmm. Is he refusing to
check it down with me because I called his raise? Probably. Does he
have anything? Probably not. Only one way to find out.
I raised him. He stared at me and said "what are you trying to tell
me Dave?" I stared back and said "if you fold your hand I'll show you
mine."
He thought for a second and said "OK, I want to see your hand though"
and folded. I turned over AK and he said "You asshole! I can't
believe you tried to make a move on me."
I laughed and said "I think I did put a move on you man."
I noticed then that he was extremely pissed off about it, so I gave
him his $30 back and said "Sorry man, I didn't think we were soft
playing each other when you bet the flop."
He refused to take the money back, and later on he was over it. But
later that night I relayed the story to everyone else, and the looks
on their faces were telling. Everyone (except Rob, of course, who
would check raise his mother's last $8 all in if he thought he had her
beat) was horrified that I would do something so cruel to Brandon.
Josh said, predictably, "maybe if it was 3-6 that would be funny but
its 30-60." Greg was particularly offended that I tried to give the
money back.
I defended myself by saying it wasn't ok for me to be upset about all
the pots Brandon won that I was in, and vice versa. If you are going
to play at the same table, you have to play against each other
sometimes. And anyway, I gave him his measly bet back after the hand.
The only thing he had to really be upset about was that I tricked him
into folding a hand that otherwise would have won him a great deal
more of MY money, which he would not be upset about in the least.
The real problem, the way I see it, is that the $30 was too important
to him, because he is playing way above his head. And also that these
guys think that, because I play higher limits, that the $30 is
meaningless to me, so I should have let him out.
I'm not buying it though. If I play any game with my friends, I play
to compete. He says I took advantage of him because I knew he'd give
me respect. I say that's what I do in every poker game I ever play,
take advantage of what I know about my opponents.
I win.
After the game we met up with everyone at the Mirage where they were
playing blackjack and John was playing some weird game called "Crazy 4
Poker." I sat down with him and he and the other players explained to
me how you play. Basically you put like $40 on these various circles
on the layout that all have different payouts depending on your hand,
then you get five cards, and you have to make a 4 card hand that beats
the dealers best 4 card hand, and trips beats straights and flushes.
So what all that means is you put $40 down and the dealer takes it. I
played one hand, was dealt nothing, and had to fold. I looked at the
woman next to me and said "You know what the Crazy refers to? Us.
We're crazy for playing this stupid game."
I moved over to the Blackjack game where Josh and Peter were playing,
and I guess Josh was counting. He would "take a break" whenever the
count got low and would walk around talking to people, leaving me and
Peter to fend for ourselves. I took to asking the dealer for help on
how to play, and she would help us by saying "Basic strategy dictates
that you do so and so" or whatever. I was losing, and so was Peter,
and when she dealt him a pair of 2s against her 4 on his last $10, I
told him to split them. "Basic strategy dictates that you never split
2s."
"Look, lady. I know you are still playing Basic Strategy, but we have
moved up to Advanced strategy." She dealt him a 7 card 21 and a 19.
I busted of course, and she busted. We gave high fives all around.
For some reason the dealer was needling me, and every hand she was
rooting for me to lose. I stopped playing and she said "whats wrong,
are you scared?" and I said "yeah, I am. I'm not playing if the dealer
is against me. You broke my spirit."
"Broke your spirit? What about Advanced strategy?"
Well, lady, Advanced Strategy dictates that I go all-in. I pushed all
my money to the middle and said "here's a quick way to get out of
here." I won of course and Advanced Strategy lived.
The people at the table liked playing with us and were giving us money
to tip the dealers with. We were all laughing and having fun when one
of the women at the Crazy 4 Poker table we just left complained to the
floorman about the noise. The people at my table were so good about
it, they said "Lets be louder!" We started yelling and hollering and
the woman got up and left. Another Vegas tourist put on tilt by yours
truly.
There's much more, but I have to bail out. More later....
Dave Hill
downtown. Now, what we REALLY wanted to do was to take Peter to a
strip joint. Peter has never technically had any physical contact
with a naked woman so we had told him for years that one day we were
going to take him to a strip club to get him good and lapdanced.
Peter, you have to understand, is deeply religious and moralistic,
very shy and a little akward around girls, but also extremely easy to
manipulate. And it was thus that we were able to get him to agree
that he would enter a house of flesh in Vegas this year. Thus far, we
had yet to make him own up to his word. But there was a reason: Jim
Chonko had brought along a couple of girls.
Yes, thats right, girls. Two of 'em, even. And if you are keeping
score, this makes a total of 3 (three) girls that are now a part of
our ever-expanding group out here in the desert, wandering mindlessly
around vegas looking for something to entertain us.
Now, before the trip began we had quite an extensive discussion over
email about some ground rules, and here are the ones we came up with:
1. no girlfriends
2. no bad beat stories
3. no talking about politics or religion
4. no welching on proposition bets
5. winners of proposition bets must always give losers a chance to go
"double or nothing" (last longer bets don't count as proposition bets)
6. if mandy comes she has to give somebody a handjob
7. anyone coming to the wsop for the first time will get a stupid
nickname like "bonus bet"
8. no criticizing anybody's mathematically errant play
9. "what happens here, stays here" is total bullshit. everything that
happens in vegas may end up on the internet and will definetly be told
over and over again back home
10. no matter what he says or does, brandon is a pussy
11. if he is losing, no one is allowed to loan josh money to gamble
with
12. no shopping at the gambler's book club
13. no bringing books to dinner, bars, casinos, or anywhere outside of
the hotel ROOM
14. if there are reservations, you are not allowed to wait for your
blind
And after a slew of emails trying to add or change rules once they
were set, a rule 15. was added:
15. No additons or changes can be made to the rules.
Now, the rule that attracted the most discussion was of course rule
#1, because it originally said "No Girls," which aside from being just
flat out sexist and wrong, would also have prevented both Mandy from
joining us AND these two friends of Jim's, at least one of which he
promised would be pretty slutty. And so it was that we changed the
rule to just "No Girlfriends," since Wayne reasoned: "My vote would be
for no girls as it is a slippery
slope. Next my fiance wil be wondering why she can't come too. Then
it will be the upper west side series of expensive spa treatments,
dinner at 8 and keeping reasonable hours."
For once, Wayne had a point.
But here we were on Freemont Street at 4am Saturday night/Sunday
morning and there wasn't a soul out save for our group, a group of
three totally inebriated frat dudes with those beer footballs and some
kind of liquid all over their clothes, and a middle aged white couple
who was following us around asking us our ages and where we were from.
Downtown Las Vegas was, in a word, dead. And we couldnt find a good
$2 craps game to save our lives. And we were BORED out of our minds.
And everybody in the group really wanted to go to the strip joint, and
had wanted to go for hours, but were all whispering to one another
"but what about these girls?"
Eventually we told them we were tired and drove them home, and then
met up out behind their hotel to plan the rest of our secret
adventure. While I waited in the car behind the Stardust for the
other guys to show up, girl-less, I commented how weird it was that
we were scheming to ditch a couple of real live girls to go hang out
with fake ones who cost lots of money. But, it was now 7am and the
sun was coming up through the Vegas skyline, and it all seemed ok to
me in a weird-ass Vegas way.
None of us are really strip-club people. I've only really been to one
once before, and I think the average was probably less than 10 for
everyone if you didn't include Pedophile Charlie, who I suspect
doesn't go anywhere BUT strip clubs. We may have been a tad bit
weirded out by our first group outing to such a dirty place, but it
was nothing compared to the world of catholic guilt and virgin
nervousness that was welling up in Peter as we walked into that place
at 7am on a sunday morning (an hour before mass, no less). Josh was
too tired and broke and on tilt to come in with us so we left him
asleep in the backseat of the car.
I suggested that we all split up and find girls for Peter, and Peter
grabbed me petrified and said "But I don't want any lapdances!!!" "I
know, man, I know." I said and brushed him aside.
This joint was packed, seriously packed, on sunday morning. There was
nowhere to sit, and every one of the probably over 100 strippers in
that place were busy grinding on some dude except for the kinda
busted-looking ones, and they wandered around hustling dances from
guys. I basically spent the first 15 minutes just walking around
beating off busted strippers until I noticed that Charlie was sitting
next to Peter in the back room and some chick was with them and there
were things going on that were so dirty, I felt like I was going to
hell just for seeing them, let alone being party to arranging them. I
couldn't watch or even enjoy the fruit of our collective gag on Peter.
We had joked about getting Peter a lapdance for years, but now that I
was watching it I felt a little woozy. But that also may have been all
the coffee and lack of sleep.
We stumbled out of that place totally zonked, and hobbled over to the
car where we had left Josh asleep in the backseat. He was gone,
though. He had called us inside a few times to tell us he wanted to
go home, but we just ignored his pleas and told him to come inside.
Now he was gone. And he wasn't just gone from the car, he was GONE
man. As in he flew the coup. Josh got his shit and flew back to NYC
4 days early. He told me later the next day "I was just sick of
Vegas." Man, if only I saved all the emails he sent me for the two
months leading up to this trip, you'd have thought he was ready to
quit his job and MOVE to vegas. But being sick enough after 3 days to
change your ticket and fly back and go back to WORK? Thats tilt, man.
Josh had been up big early, and I guess lost it all back, and was
doing poorly at blackjack counting, too. I can only assume that
weighed heavy on his decision to get out of Vegas- to protect his
money- than anything else.
We piled in the car and headed back to the room to get enough sleep to
face yet another day in Vegas, this time Joshless, and filled with
uncertainty about the future of our trip, our bankrolls, and our
group.