Annual Las Vegas trip: the X-ieth anniversary

And lo, did the Furdells and friends vacation to Las Vegas, on roughly the 10th anniversary of our first trip there in "fall" (all our memories are fuzzy, we don't remember exactly when) of 1999.

A lot has happened in those 10 years; for example, I used to watch football in standard def, and now I watch it in HD. But more significantly, Vegas is a kind of personal economic litmus test. It's a reflection of both my personal wealth and my willingness to assume risk, and both have changed a lot over a past decade.

James from 1999 probably took the MARTA bus from his dingy Atlanta apartment to the airport to save a few bucks; he stayed at Excalibur and shared a room with three other guys to make it affordable; he agonized over every red chip lost to the whims of the cards or the dice. 2009 James, by contrast, can afford to drop a few bucks on a taxi in the name of enjoying his vacation time more. 2009 James spends more on fancy dinners with friends and aromatherapy massages at the cushy casino spa, and can withstand a bad day at the tables because it's merely an annoyance. For 1999 James, losing was a seeming indication of my downward spiral toward homelessness and rail-car vagrancy.

I have a ton of great memories from the annual trips to Vegas. In 2000, we stayed at the Luxor in the pyramid for the first time, and one night had a terrific run at the craps table while visiting Excalibur. We celebrated with Krispy Kreme donuts (I wore the paper hat and drank banana milk), and danced giddily down the walkway back to the Luxor. One year, maybe 2003, I departed for the airport leaving Andrew in the middle of a poker tournament, only to find out I had been bumped from my flight. I took a first-class option for a later flight home, returned to the casino and watched Andrew chop first place in the tournament.

In 2004 I successfully petitioned us to adopt Pai Gow Poker, and in subsequent years we would find ourselves six-to-a-table at Paris, pushing almost every hand and drinking as much as possible. That was also the year a few of us tried a hike the mountains and wound up in a hailstorm and Andrew almost destroyed the Gun Store; oops.

Guy Behind Counter: "How can we help you fellas today?"

Andrew: "We'd like to shoot some guns."

GBC: "OK."

Heh.

I didn't think it would be possible to top last year, our first time staying at Mandalay Bay, which had been a long-held dream of mine. We, of course, saw Fake Prince at the House of Blues, and several Purple Rain drinks later, were extremely sick. (Mistakes were made, hotel fixtures were destroyed.) But it was awesome, and after nursing away a hangover at the wave pool on Monday, many of us declared 2008 the Best Vegas Trip Ever. (Or at least Andrew and I did. I think. It's kind of fuzzy.)

(Hey, that dude photo-bombed us.)

However, for me, 2009 will be hard to beat. I expect to lose some money in the long run when I gamble, but when everything turns into red ink immediately and I reach my maximum daily loss budget before noon, that's just not fun. I have previously experienced trips to Vegas where everything felt-top table I touched turned to disaster, and I wound up just walking around aimlessly, or watching my friends gamble while I licked my wounds.

This year was bizarre because I had the Midas touch. With a couple exceptions, every single table I sat down at turned a profit for me, and making the decision at the start of the trip to extend it an extra day with Andrew turned out to be even more lucrative.

I say it's bizarre for two reasons. There's the obvious: after exposing myself to the house edge for days, I was repeatedly finishing in the black, which is mathematically unusual, to say the least. More strange is the way winning affects me now: not much. 1999 James would get an adrenaline rush from walking away with a $40 profit at blackjack or craps. 2009 James walks away up $120 or so, and feels good about it, but it's not like winning or losing that amount of money is going to change my life significantly. The ambivalence is a nice feeling; I can sit at a table with my friends and drink and be social, and even if I lose my buy-in, it won't hurt too much. If I win, bonus, but not so exciting I'm skipping down the corridor like in 2000. These days I'm more excited about catching up with my friends, going to a nice dinner, or drinking by the pool, or getting a massage and a few hours to relax in the spa. I feel like I've seen every possible roll of the dice, every unusual back-door 21, every unexpected pai gow win or loss, every two-out hold-'em win on the river; at this point, the unexpected is the expected, and so maybe some of the thrill of the chase gone. Plus, living in Washington, where we have legal card rooms and plentiful Indian casinos, I can go gamble whenever I feel like it… which, lately, has been less and less.

(Here's the part where I start talking about poker, forever into infinity. You've been warned.)

This is not to stay there aren't still some thrills. These days they mostly come from paying no-limit Texas Hold-'em. One more notable difference in Vegas since 1999 has been the resurgence (and, maybe, fall again) of poker; when we first started learning how to play in the casino, they were more likely to be replacing poker tables with more slot machines. After ESPN starting showing the WSOP, Hold-'em became incredibly popular and casinos couldn't add tables fast enough. (Which is nice, although I miss playing seven-card stud once in a while. Mandalay used to offer both games, and stud has seemingly been retired there.) The advent of no-limit cash games in casinos has been remarkable; you can sit down with a $200 stack of chips and lose them all within a minute, on a single bet, to another player. Nothing will put my heart in my throat faster than going all-in and praying to the gods of probability that my Ace-King off-suit somehow holds up after the flop. Looking back through the blog I was surprised to see that the first time I played no-limit was just two years ago; I thought it was longer than that. Since then I've played a lot of $2-$40 spread at Club Hollywood in Shoreline, which is not no-limit but is similar in a lot of ways, so I feel like I'd developed the tight-aggressive strategy you need to be successful at that kind of a game.

My cash game exploits this time were few and far between but a net profit affair; despite a $140 loss on one hand, a lot of small wins made up for it. Andrew, whose poker game surely would lend itself to being profitable in no-limit, also took a big profit on the final day. But the real surprise was my tournament success.

I've always enjoyed playing in poker tournaments, since your loss liability is limited to the buy-in. I'd never finished in the money, but the guaranteed entertainment for my money made it seem a good buy. My venue of choice has historically been the $40 buy-in tourney, weekday mornings at 10 a.m. at Mandalay. Assuming I can wake up in time to register and grab a coffee, this one has always been my favorite and I never felt like I was throwing away too much money on it. In previous years, this tournament was limit for the first two rounds, then no-limit afterwards; now, with no-limit being the most popular tourney format, it is no-limit from the start (but you can re-buy until the end of Round 2, which those who bust out often do).

And so, Tuesday morning, I found myself in this tournament, along with Andrew, Eric, and John, whom we had somehow convinced to join us before they had to fly away. I was at Eric's table, and of course his unpredictability from playing in the $2-$4 game in 2007 (c.f.: "I an shivebadd") was foremost in my mind. Eric actually may have helped me win this thing in the end, believe it or not. He did his usual Eric thing on one hand in particular. My pocket cards were A3 diamonds, and I limped in pre-flop. So did Eric, but the player to his left raised it way up. A fourth player called, and I thought about calling, but I suspected a high pocket pair, which could be hard to beat, so I folded. Eric called too, and the flop came up mostly blanks, but with two diamonds. That fourth player made a big bet, Eric called, and the original raiser folded. The turn card was another diamond, so I would have made my flush, oh well. Another big bet, another call by Eric. At the showdown, sure enough, the fourth player had a high pocket pair, and Eric had… the 3 and 5 of diamonds!? He made his flush with those awful starting cards and took down the pot, leaving the player he beat shaking his head, and rightfully so. I would have made a better flush had I stayed in, and between him and me Eric only had seven unseen diamonds remaining to make his flush, but of course he did it, possibly a credit to his natural charisma. He is, as I said many times during the trip, the Best Of All Of Us.

Later, I raised all-in pre-flop with something like QQ, and Eric called with J2, perhaps out of friendship. My cards held up, giving me a lot of the chips he had taken earlier. That was one of the few times I actually saw a showdown in that tournament; most of the time I was winning pots because people were folding to my raises, even after we got to the phase of the tournament where an ante was required from all players before the deal so that there was a lot of money to take by being aggressive pre-flop. It was a happy ending for everyone, because Eric was able to make his flight, and I had enough chips to play it conservatively the rest of the way, mostly waiting for other players with small stacks to knock each other out. In the end, it was down to me and one other guy. I had never finished in the money before, as I mentioned, so I was pretty happy about chopping the 1st and 2nd place payouts with this guy and heading off to the pool. I didn't pay too much attention to our chip totals, but I thought they were roughly even; there was some dispute over that (John says I had more than he did). Either way the other player eventually agreed to the 50-50 chop, and I took a payout of $240.

Oh, but there was one thing I didn't realize, and this did make me a little bit jealous; there's a trophy for winning. Not really a trophy, but actually a large disc, with the Mandalay logo and "1st place" and a depiction of some lovely pocket aces. When you agree to split the top prize, they deal one final to determine who gets the trophy, and it was the other guy. Not that the money wasn't nice, but I wanted that trophy. It didn't help that Andrew kept mocking me for taking a deal. "No deals!" he would yell at me for the next several hours, laughing and pointing.

So there you go. For the first time, I had finished in the money in a tournament. The strange thing here is that I barely felt anything. Sure, I had the usual heart-in-the-throat moments during the tourney, pushing all-in in early position and hoping nobody would call. But even when I was close to the money, I wasn't experiencing the thrills or the adrenaline I thought I would. Maybe it helped that I had a comfy number of chips, or that I've played so much poker by now and seen so many goofy things happen that nothing fazes me. Again, as nice as the $240 was, it wasn't going to change my life. I was actually a little bit annoyed because I was not that excited. Where was all this largesse 10 years ago? 1999 James would have been jumping up and down and shouting like a fool to win that much cash in a couple hours. 2009 James was like, "Oh, that's nice." It almost didn't seem fair to 1999 James.

After everyone finally left Tuesday, Andrew and I were paired up for some brotherly Vegas action. Andrew took three hugs pots playing in a cash game Tuesday evening that put him way up. Wednesday, we decided to give the morning tourney one more shot, with an added side bet for our enjoyment: whoever between us lasted longer in the tourney bought the other a sushi lunch. Which could potentially cost more than the $40 buy-in, but that's how I like it.

Immediately, on the very first hand, I doubled up. Normally I hate going all-in on the first hand because I hate being knocked out in less than five minutes, but this time I had the nut flush so I knew I was going to win the hand. I was actually in bad shape after the flop; I had limped in with A3 suited spades, and the flop came with another Ace, plus two more spades, one of which was a Jack. I bet a modest amount and was called by a player across from me. Another spade on the turn meant I had the flush. He checks, I bet, he calls. A blank on the river that did not pair the board, which was a good sign for me because that means no full house is possible, thus I have the best hand possible (Ace-high flush). The player across from me bets into me! I raise all-in. He has to think about it, but eventually calls with AJ, two pair, no good, and is friendly about it but clearly disgusted with himself. He may have misplayed it, though; in tournaments, I always try to be aggressive with high cards to remove the drawing hands from consideration if possible. A raise pre-flop might have gotten me away from those cards; I probably had to stay in after the flop because of the pair of Aces and four-flush, but as it turned out he was still the favorite, and I would have had to think hard about calling an all-in raise. He re-bought his way back into the tourney immediately, and I took more of his chips and knocked him out again later. Poor guy.

A second hand I remember helping me out was one of those few instances where I used a tell to help me out. A tell is when another player either involuntarily or unknowingly reveals whether he has a good hand. They can be subtle; my favorite one that has saved me in the past is to watch for new players' hands to be shaking when the place a bet, because it means they have a big hand. In this case, I did not have great starting cards: Q-10 of clubs. Could develop into something, and I think I just called in late-ish position, but I usually prefer to have more players in the pot to play a hand like that, and in this case there were only three. The flop didn't help me, but everyone checked so I got to see a free card. The turn card was a Queen, giving me top pair with an OK kicker. I put out a cautious bet hoping not to get raised, but instead I got called by the button, which could be even worse if he's hiding a monster hand. The river card was uninteresting; Queen was still the high card on the board, so I had a decent top pair. Just then the player on the button checked out of turn.

This was the clue I needed to let me know I probably had him beat. In no-limit poker, if you check on the river, it's probably a sign you don't have much. There is a move called the check-raise, where you raise the other player after you had previously checked, but this move doesn't make a whole lot of sense playing heads-up no-limit unless you have nothing and decide to make an impromptu bluff. I had thought about taking it slow with my Queens and maybe checking to hope for a free showdown, but instead, because I now was sure I had the better hand, I threw out a value bet. A value bet is a moderate sized bet, some modest percentage of the current pot, decided to be an attractive call for your opponent. You want them to call a value bet, because you think you have them beat and it would mean more chips for you. Too big a bet might mean they fold, which gains you no additional chips besides what's currently in the pot. My value bet worked; the button called and showed a low pair with an Ace, which he was probably hoping would pair up at some point. My Queens were good and I took down some extra chips to boot.

Memorable hand #3 was my favorite, because I beat Cranky Guy. There's always gotta be a Cranky Guy. Usually some old and/or foreign dude who's angry at the world and vaguely threatens other players because he doesn't like how they bet. Cranky Guy in this tournament was not at my starting table, but was at the final table when I made it there. I had seen him earlier barking at the dealer, I believe because he had hit his leg on the table's coin box, or something. Whatever it was, it had briefly caused a bit of commotion. Cranky Guy was older and wearing a Cal (as in Berkeley) hat, but was decidedly un-mellow, and we found ourselves in a showdown not too long after being seated at the final table.

I'm actually disappointed with how I played this hand. Like I mentioned before, you need good cards to win a tournament to cover your mistakes, and that happened here. I found myself playing a not-so-good unsuited Ace-8. The reason A8 is not so good is because if someone else plays an Ace with a better kicker and you both pair your Aces, you might be stuck betting on a losing hand with no easy way to suck out a win. That happened to me here. I limped in with my A8, and sure enough, the board came up an innocuous-looking A-7-6 rainbow. But because there had been no pre-flop raises I liked my Aces, and bet a moderate amount, about four times the small blind. Cranky Guy raised all in. Now I had a tough choice to make; call his all-in with my not-great 8 kicker, or fold and forfeit a decent number of chips.

I was pretty sure Cranky Guy had me beat. I wasn't inconceivable that he would limp in with AQ or AJ and wait to strike against a player with a worse Ace if it paired up. While making my decision, I even said out loud, "I think you have me out-kicked." This would be bad news for me; if that was the case, and it was (he actually had Ace-King), there weren't too many cards left to bail me out. An 8 and no further Kings would give me a win, but there were only three of those left and two cards left to reveal. Two more sequential cards around my 6-7-8 for a straight would also do it, and two more 7s or 8s in a row would give us a push with equally full houses, but those possibilities are barely worth mentioning. I was long shot at almost 5-to-1 if my hunch was right.

"I think you have me out-kicked… but I call." On this hand I was what we call "pot committed." (Note that this is different from being committed to pot.) Cranky Guy's all-in raise was not that much more than what I had originally bet; I think I had bet about 6,000 and he went all-in with about 9,500. With the blinds and all the antes and my original 6,000 bet in the pot, the additional 3,500 seemed worth it; a moderate risk for a big pot, and definitely worth it if I'm wrong and he doesn't have a better Ace.

Of course, he did have a better Ace and my hunch was correct. But the turn card was an 8! "Oh, there's my 8," I said, like it was the express bus I had expected to come along at any minute. Cranky Guy left, muttering, "Nothing you can do about that." No, there's not. The other players at the table did that poker player thing where they say "Great call," when in fact you have made a terrible call, and they just want to encourage you to do it again, for them, when they go all-in. But I knew I had gotten lucky, which was just what I needed. With any tournament you're not going to make every correct call and every correct move, and in order to beat a large number of people (in this case, about 30), the cards have to go your way at least once on a hand where you're a long shot to win.

This time, I didn't chop. I wound up playing heads-up for about 15 minutes or so. Despite possibly being behind to start, I came back and won by being maybe just a shade more patient than he was. In the end, I won, pocketed $450, and most importantly…

A sushi lunch from Andrew. Oh, and the trophy chip:

And now you know the rest of the story. I won two poker tournaments in two days. For the trip, I was in the black for at least $1,000, a new record.

A few more thoughts:

1. Blondie's, a restaurant in the mall attached to Planet Hollywood, is the nuts for watching NFL games on Sunday, and I wish to find myself there on all Vegas Sundays, now and forevermore.

2. The Pinball Hall of Fame, located about three miles east of the strip at Tropicana and Pecos, is fantastic and I'm happy that something like that exists. I got to play Pinball Circus, a stand-up prototype; only two were ever made. Simply that is amazing.

3. Fake Prince at the Hooters (guh) Casino was much raunchier this time around. According to Andrew, newly religious Real Prince probably doesn't play "Darling Nikki" live anymore. So in that respect, Fake Prince is better.

4. I've been going to the Mandalay Bay sports book since 1999, and I love it, but they need to put in High Definition screens, for football. We aren't cavemen, after all. HD in the rooms is a nice improvement, at least.

5. After someone at our Pai Gow table kicked the plug out of the floor, knocking out the shuffler and the bet minimum LCD screen, Andrew and I realized that every gaming table has a very unimpressive looking power strip balanced precariously on a cross beam underneath. Presumably this will play a factor in Ocean's 17.

6. Getting a massage and some solitary spa time is a great way to collect your thoughts and reflect on your life, and get a few Moments of Clarity. It's important to relax, celebrate, and also reflect on what you've done. While I had some time to devote a few synapses to quiet thinking, I decided that as much as I've enjoyed refereeing football over the years, it's time to give it up and do something else. (Of course, I said that before this season too, and then relapsed right back into it, but that's another story.) Assuming that decision sticks, I'll talk about it more after the season ends in a few weeks.

In conclusions, I. Love. The Vegas.

See you next year… in Seattle?

I an shivebadd.

It's a little belated, but I finally have time to write about the latest Vegas trip, which must be preserved for posterity. This time only the four original gangstas were able to go (me, Matt, Eric and John), but I think we did the place justice. Top five highlights:

5. Set it and forget it!

John and I couldn't resist playing the Ron Popeil video slot machine.

Really.

4. Blackjack Switch!

I wasn't able to convince anyone else to play Blackjack Switch with me at Casino Royale. This is a variation on blackjack in which you're dealt two hands side-by-side, and you can switch the last two cards dealt on each hand. This is a significant player advantage. The catch: you can switch into a blackjack and it wins automatically, but only pays 1-1 (not 3-2). The other catch: if the dealer draws to 22, all remaining player hands push.

Despite those rules, it's still a more favorable game to the player than regular blackjack, if you play basic strategy (you split and double less aggressively). I had hoped to make it this trip's Pai Gow Poker, but that didn't happen.

This Casino Royale is far less glamorous than James Bond's Casino Royale. In fact, it's downright crappy; I had an unfriendly dealer recently off the boat from some unidentifiable Eastern European country. I was especially tired, and at one point accidentally hit on A-8 (19). I tried to take it back, but he dealt me the card anyway. I drew the 2 for 21, but that's not the point; it's the principle of the thing. I won $200+ playing that, so the joke's on him (although some of the profit did go to Ron Popeil).

3. The new Planet Hollywood casino, aka "P-Ho"

It seems impossible to me that you could open a giant casino on the Strip and have it fail, but that's what happened to Aladdin, which opened just prior to 9/11 and suffered in the resulting drop in travel and tourism. It's been rebuilt and rebranded as "Planet Hollywood", with a movies/L.A. theme.

And the boys gave it a thumbs up! It has an attractive layout, nice big sports book with a bar for watching football. We watched as my big bet on the Lions (+2.5 at Oakland) came in. The dealers were mostly friendly... we played craps with a knowledgeable bunch (I was trading film trivia tidbits with the stickman).

Speaking of craps... John Chan is the man. He walked away from one table with the much-coveted yellow chip. That's a G, people.

2. No-limit hold 'em!

I was the last one left in town on Tuesday and was feeling flush with profits, plus I had promised that I would play at least one session of high-ish stakes poker. I had played several boring rounds of $4-$8 limit in which I had generally broken even, and I had lost something like $80 to a drunk and unpredictable Eric Lipman while playing $2-$4. I had never played no limit in a cash game, so I decided to try that at Mandalay.

No limit is intimidating because your entire table stake is at risk the minute you sit down. Bluffing is a lot more likely to work because you can throw much more money than the pot is worth on the table; I definitely got bluffed out of a favorable hand at least once. I played very tight (only very good starting cards) and very aggressively when I thought I had a hand.

I started with $100, and after playing for five hours, only three hands had significantly affected my stake:

a) Having been basically blinded down to $75 after a few rounds, I was dealt KK, a very good starting hand in late position. Somebody raised the $1-$2 blinds to $10, and there was one caller. I pressed it up to $50; the original raiser raised me all-in. I called fearing I was up against AA, but it was only QQ, and my kings held up for the win, so I doubled up.

b) I limped in with a 5-4 of diamonds, and the flop was 2-3-6 for the straight! Unfortunately... they were all the same suit, and not my suit (spades). That means a flush beats me with no way for me to improve. I opened with a big bet ($25) in the hopes any four-flush draws would fold, but somebody raised me all-in. He might have been bluffing or semi-bluffing, but even a four-flush with two cards left to come is scary in that situation. With a lot of limpers in the pot (7-8 players), chances were good that one of them had one or two spades. I folded.

c) Towards the end I was back down to $85 or so. I was dealt JJ hand raised it up big pre-flop, to $25. I had two callers, and the flop was straight-friendly (something like 3-5-6). I opened with another big bet to chase out the draws, but was again raised to $50 (by the same guy who had beat me on the flush-friendly flop). The third player called. I went ahead and raised all-in because I had a feeling I was ahead at that moment (no overcards to my Jacks), and I was right; the original raiser folded, and the third player called with a straight draw and a low pair (6-4).

So, all my money was in the pot and I was ready to walk away if my opponent hit his straight for the win. Which he did on the turn; the 7 came to give him a better hand. I was halfway out of my seat when someone pointed out I still had a flush draw; there were three diamonds out there, and I had a J of diamonds. Another one came on the river to give me the flush! It was the super-rare double-reverse suck-out. And, for a change, I was happy for that river card instead of dreading it.

That was a big pot that gave me about $240, and that's what I walked away with. Not bad for getaway poker!

1. Eric's drunk text messaging

Eric's drunk unpredictability allowed him to take some $80 from me at the poker table on Saturday night, and also led to the funniest moment of the trip. While text messaging with his phone, Eric uses the "T9" feature, which attempts to predict which word you're typing by looking it up in a dictionary. If the phone guesses wrong, there's a key you can press to cycle through other possible words you were attempting to type. Eric, on principle, refuses to use the "cycle" key, meaning he gets stuck with whatever word the phone guessed first. Which is how he wound up sending this drunk text message:

He you were here wowl could totally rape me.
I an shivebadd.

What was he trying to actually say? We may never know. Needless to say, "I an shivebadd" became the Slogan of the Trip.

Honorable mention: Me winning $100 when Frank Gore was the first to score a TD in the Monday night game; Me winning $90+ on the Detroit Lions (?) after pressing my bet (?!); me kicking John's ass at three-puck air hockey, with a spectacular come-from-behind victory, at Gameworks; the one-hour deep tissue massage at Luxor; John buying the boys dinner with his craps winnings; eating Kobe beef burgers at the Burger Bar.

My own boycott

In the spirit of boycotting things, I'm boycotting pocket aces.

Seriously. They ought to win once a while. The went 0-for-2 for me last night. Ridiculous.

(Actually, my regular casino (Red Dragon) has a $50 bonus when pocket aces lose during certain hours of the day, so I'm just going to have to always play from 5-8 p.m. from now on. I would have been $100 happier right now.)

PAI GOW!!!

Uh-oh, LiAps wants to go a-gambling. Sounds good to me, but only if we expand our gambling horizons a bit further.

Remember how I convinced y'all to jam the Pai Gow Poker last time? Remember what a big hit it was? Well, Andrew has tasked me with taking it one... step... beyond. That's right...

Pai gow tiles.

That's right, I said it. Pai gow tiles, bitches. Take all the slow-roasted gambling goodness of pai gow poker, but add the mystique and pure bad-assedness of knowing how to play the tiles, thus allowing us to reach heights of coolness previously known only to Asians. (Pup need not apply, as he has already reached the maximum level of Asianness.)

I'll try to construct a layman's field guide on how to play. It... um... may take a while. Really I just wanted to prepare all our readers for their transcendence into Asian levels of awesomeness. In the meantime, the Wizard of Odds can fill in the blanks, as usual.

Time to win some looneys

Looks like we're headed to Lethbridge, Alberta for some games of chance. My plan is to play blackjack for hours, and then ask the pit boss if they'll comp me some citizenship.

Bad luck and valuable lessons

Vegas was fun, and there was no terrorism, unless you count all those blackjack dealers who kept pulling out a 21 from a 5 up-card. And also:

- Our friend Mr. Big Pinzur couldn't escape Miami because of the hurricane.
- The flight Kimberly and I were on was delayed due to a Vegas visit by President Retardo-brain. I mean Bush. President Bush.
- Four of us went to a hike, and on the way back got caught in a very cold hailstorm.

So yeah, scheduling a Vegas trip over the Friday-the-13th weekend was maybe not the best idea. But still, we had a lot of fun, and learned some valuable lessons.

1) Pai gow poker is the nuts.

As I predicted, pai gow poker was a big hit with our entourage. Unlike blackjack and craps, which would sap our money away at an accelerated rate, pai gow poker was a much, muuuuch sloooooowwwwer way to lose money. Even at a $10 table, you can stay halfway to forever under normal circumstances. Seemingly three out of four hands resulted in a push, and even with only two or three people at a table, each game takes at least two or three minutes to deal and pay out. And that means much, much more time to down tons of free drinks. What a steal.

Pai gow has the added fun of letting you play as the banker, and potentially taking money from your friends (or maybe giving yours to them). Andrew did this sucessfully a few times against us, and it made for some of the most fun trash talking sessions you could possibly have in a casino. "Ace-queen no good, beeyotch!"

The downside: although it's a fairly easy game to learn, that didn't prevent me from screwing up a couple of times and incurring the mockery of my brother. (Even though I did help him play a straight correctly once. What an ass!)

P.S. Everything was "the nuts" on this trip. Normally this a phrase used to describe the best possible hand in hold'em poker, but also how we would describe anything cool. E.g. "This buffet is the nuts." This was occasionally followed by a "boi-oi-oING!" sound effect, to mimic the ESPN poker coverage, using a goofy announcer voice. ("On this edition of 'The Nuts...' [boi-oi-OING!]")

2) Regular poker players can be the most miserable people on earth.

Andrew and I played at the Orleans on Sunday night, because he wanted to get in an Omaha Hi-Lo game. I stayed at a stud table, and played against four crazy characters for several hours just for the hell of it.

The craziest was an old guy who had to be nearing 90 years old. I learned that he was a regular at the Orleans poker room, and apparently a jeweler (he wore a giant, apparently self-fashioned ring filled with tiny diamonds). He kept getting into arguments with people about the strangest things and making cryptic threats... e.g., "Don't mess with me, you know what you're going to get." (What could you possibly do, old man, smear me with Icy Hot?)

At one point, I must have gotten on his bad side. I would bet into him aggressively at times with nothing to see if I could get him to fold, which aggravated the old jeweler as he tried for his flush draws. He called me "meshuggeneh," which I'm going to assume is bad.

Later, he complained that the dealer was taking the casino's rake out of the pot too early, which didn't make a whole lot of sense. The dealer was doing it correctly, as the jeweler's own nephew (also at the table), himself a poker dealer, pointed out to him.

Even later, there are three of us in the pot, including the jeweler to my left. On fifth street, the man to my right (wearing a "retired and proud of it" trucker hat) bet $3, and I raised to $6 with a pair of kings. The jeweler called, and the retiree re-raised to $9. I expected a better hand in there than mine, so I folded. The jeweler called all the way, and wound up losing to three-of-a-kind eights. But the best part was, he blamed me for his loss. I couldn't help but crack up at that.

"But I folded!" I said while laughing. "Nobody forced you to call his raise!" Still, he somehow blamed me for costing him the hand. Priceless.

Play continued late into the night. No fewer than three consecutive dealers, when their turn to deal was over, left the table muttering an exasperated "Aye aye aye" at having to deal with the jeweler (in exactly the same tone, which cracked me up some more). I was laughing more and more at the jeweler, and he got more belligerent the more he lost. "I know exactly how you're going to play!" he insisted in a thick Eastern European accent. "I just have to follow the cards! I know exactly what you have!" he said as he called my bet on a four-flush that would be successfully filled. Whatever that meant, it was hilarious. The retiree kept mimicking that fateful line... "Follow the cards."

The jeweler lost the $60 in front of him. Then bought in for another $40. Then lost that. Then bought in for another $60, and almost lost all of that before coming back. My stack stayed roughly the same, and the $15 or so I wound up losing over four hours could probably be attributed to tips and the rake. But that's got the be the best $15 on entertainment I've gotten in a while.

3) Yesterday's pop stars become today's fodder material for musicals.

There's Mamma Mia with the music of Abba. We Will Rock You featuring Queen. There's the Billy Joel-inspired Movin' Out and the forthcoming Wham! musical.

In news from 20 years from now, the White Stripes musical Goin' to Wichita! opened to rave reviews at the Wynn casino.

4) Andrew makes hilarious original song lyrics.

While riding up an escalator, he gave us this to the tune of "Love in an Elevator" by Aerosmith:

Love on an es-ca-la-torrrr! Really kind of awkward, because everyone can see...

That's the nuts.

5) Andrew should not shoot automatic weapons.

Read about his and Liaps' hilarious exploits at The Gun Store. Apparently the recoil got the best of Andrew, and he managed to virtually destroy the target range with the M-16. He may still be in hiding.

Until next time... I'm Dr. Vegas.

Purple chips rule

What a crazy weekend. First, I won a pinball tournament in Earlington, Pennsylvania. It was a lot of fun; I put up almost 2 billion points on Theater of Magic to take the top prize, and earlier had great scores on Whitewater and Addams Family to advance in the playoffs.

Then, I did unusually well gambling in Atlantic City., thanks in part to one of those bizarre Excalibur/Krispy Kreme Memorial Craps Runs that happen now and then. I hit seven or eight points in a row while shooting at a $10 table and walked away with a tidy profit. After some celebratory sushi, I decided to test a new frontier in hubris: the green chip ($25) blackjack table. And it worked out! I managed to walk away with my first-ever purple ($500) chip.

So, hooray for casino gambling, where you can always expect to win lots of money!

Blackjack plan of attack: picking the right table

As promised to a certain female Friend of the "Family" who may be joining us in Vegas, I'd like to talk today about the approved Furdell Blackjack Modus Operandi.

The first thing to learn is finding the right table.

One casino's game of blackjack can differ wildly from another's; there are literally hundreds of rule variations that can create billions of combinations, each one providing a different level of "house advantage" -- that is, the percentage of your bet the house can mathematically expect to win, on average, for each hand you play. Obviously, we want to find the tables with the combination of rules that create the lowest house advantage (while still having minimum bets low enough to keep us gambling all weekend).

Las Vegas is a great city for blackjack, because there's so much competition. Unlike Atlantic City, there are no laws governing what the casino must offer in terms of rules; thus, they differ wildly, and if you don't like the rules in one casino, it's easy to walk next door (or head downtown, or off-Strip, or whatever) to find a better game.

When you're touring casinos, here's generally what to look for and what to avoid:

"Dealer draws to 16 and Stands on all 17s." You'll want to look for this line of text on the table in front of the dealer, as opposed to "Dealer hits soft 17." Although it seems like a minor rule change, giving the dealer a chance to improve on his soft 17 is enough bump the house edge up a further 0.22% (that's nearly double in most cases). Oddly enough, the casinos where we hang out the most, Mandalay Bay and Luxor, offer both variations at different tables. However, Luxor usually only has a few stand-on-17 tables running, if any (and the drink service is glacial). Meanwhile, more than half of Mandalay's 55 six-deck tables offer the better stand-on-17s rule, one of the many reasons I always wind up walking down there instead.

The fewer decks, the better. Although the cards appear in the same ratio no matter how many decks there are, thanks to the laws of probability you actually have a better chance of pulling a blackjack at single deck than you do at 6-deck. And, since blackjacks benefit the player more than the dealer (thanks to the 3:2 payout), this is a Good Thing (? of Fine Young Cannibals).

(On the other hand, continuous shuffling machines actually help the player. Who knew?)

Speaking of blackjack payouts:

Avoid 6:5 tables like the plague. This is a new "innovation" we're seeing in Vegas: offer single-deck games, but change blackjack payouts to be 6:5 instead of 3:2 (i.e. 7.5:5). The fact that the game is single-deck doesn't nearly make up for the rule change; it's eight times worse than a 3:2 game. And yet, the more suckers who play it, the more they'll keep rolling it out at casinos. So very sad.

Surrender is a good thing. We debated this at length in an earlier thread so hotly that CNN called us asking us to take over for Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson (ha, yeah right... I think we get better ratings here). Ideological differences aside, if you do decide to use surrender, you give yourself an extra 0.07% advantage.

(That's right, I'm using % signs instead of "percent!" Suck on that, AP style!)

So, knowing all those things, out of the nearly 100 casinos in Vegas offering usually three or four different rules variations each, which ones offer what we're looking for?

casino loc tbls edge dks pen min max rules
Mandalay Bay, south Strip.
Mandlay Strip 3 .28 2 0.8 25 5000 h17,ds,ls,rsa,sc
Mandlay Strip 7 .44 5 4.7 10 2000 h17,ds,ls,rsa,csm
Mandlay Strip 29 .26 6 1.5 10 10000 s17,ds,ls,rsa
Mandlay Strip 26 .46 6 1.5 10 5000 h17,ds,ls,rsa
Mandlay Strip 10 .49 8 1.8 25 2000 h17,ds,ls,rsa

Las Vegas Club (Barrick)
LV Club DT 9 .18 1 0.5 3 500 h17
LV Club DT 2 1.26 8 6.5 5 200 h17,ds,d4,ls,rsa,21e,21s,6,fak2

Source: bj21.com May 2004 newsletter

I've underlined my two favorite games: the stand-on-17s tables at Mandalay, which have a 0.26% house edge, and the single-deck tables at Las Vegas Club, which have a 0.18% house edge. Besides offering some of the best odds in town, these games have low enough minimums for me to stomach ($5-$10), and there are so many tables that finding an open one is fairly easy, except at the busiest times.

Mandalay has a lot of other advantages that we like (great poker room and sports book, champagne brunch, talented/attentive waitresses). Plus, I've found that if 3-5 of us manage to stay alive at a table for a couple hours, and Andrew provides enough entertainment for the dealers and pit boss, we can usually parlay that into a meal comp (even betting at $10/hand, which they usually ignore).

And, while LVC is admittedly trashy, it's also less claustrophobic and is more spread out than some of its downtown cousins. According to my "contact" at the Las Vegas Sun, a new craps table at LVC has knocked out some of those single-deck tables, but it sounds like there are still a good seven or eight of them operating at busy times. So, for a nice change of pace, you can expect to find me there at some point during the weekend. (Just keep me away from that nasty Royal Match.)

Now, granted, you could make the argument that I'm focusing too much on fairly small percentages. But when you consider just how much gambling we put in on a typical Vegas vacation, those numbers can add up. I like to take any edge I can to embiggen my chances of winning; think of it as comparison shopping. I want to find the best combination of casino experience and gambling odds as possible, and then spend several hours there drinking many, many tasty beverages.

In closing: it's all good on the south end of the Strip and the north end of Fremont Street. Plus, now when you find yourself wandering around Vegas and itching for some 'jack, now you have a better idea what to look for. Now, go start studying those basic strategy charts, post haste!

Rising to new challenges

The Grand Furdell Las Vegas Trip, Mark VIII or so, is fast approaching. Friends and family will converge on the Luxor Casino and Hotel in August for a full long weekend of debauchery, eating, drinking, and, of course, games of chance.

Speaking of games of chance... I've promised a friend of the family (and lady LAW-YHERR) that I would review our blackjack plan of attack. That's coming soon, as soon as a reporter from the Las Vegas Sun replies to my e-mail about the single-deck situation downtown. Really! The word on the street... "Internet Boulevard"... is that the single-deck game is, sadly, rapidly deteriorating.

But more on that later. In the meantime, we Furdells and our friends need to take up the challenge of new gambling frontiers. We must move past the ingrained familiarity of our blackjack, our craps, our poker, and into the uncharted terrority. We must pick up the gauntlet and rush face-first into a game known as...

Pai Gow Poker.

That's right, I said it. Pai Gow Poker, bitches.

Really, it's not as incomprehensible as you might think. Don't confuse this with the dominoes version of the game Pai Gow, which is, indeed, completely indecipherable to non-Asians (and, I'm sure, to many for-real Asians as well). The poker version of the game is actually fairly easy to learn, and since many hands result in a push, chances are you can play it for a while without busting out.

You can peep the rules at The Wizard of Odds, a must-read website if you're interested in the mathematics behind any gambling game. It's always good to know what you're up against.

Basically, each player is given seven cards, with which to make two poker hands: one five-card hand and one two-card hand. The usual poker rankings apply to the five-card hand, with the exception that the "bicycle" straight (A2345) is the second-highest straight. The two-card hand can either be a pair or two individual cards. There is one Joker included in the deck, which can either act as an ace, or complete a straight or a flush. One important caveat: the two-card hand may not be stronger than the five-card hand; otherwise it's a "foul" and you automatically lose.

After the player arranges the cards, the banker draws seven cards and arranges them according to a predetermined "house way," and compares those hands to the player's. In case of a tie, which is not too likely, the banker wins. But if the player wins, there's also a 5 percent commission on the win; so, you're betting $20 to win $19.

There's one feature to this game that allows a player to occasionally act as banker, if he can cover all the other players' potential winning bets. This is advantageous to the player, even though the house still gets 5 percent on winnings. I'm not sure whether this is in effect at Luxor, but I don't remember seeing it happen while I was watching. Clearly, more field research must be done on the matter.

So who's with me? Anyone?

Hello?

Public service announcement

Looks like I'll be in the neighborhood of beautiful Atlantic City this weekend.

Folks, if you're going to play blackjack, please do it responsibly. By bringing a cheat sheet with you if necessary. I get so sad when I see people hitting 15 against a 4, or something else ridiculous. At least give yourself a chance to win by playing good basic strategery.