All is forgiven

I am pleased to report that I am no longer persona non grata at MGM. After heavy, nationwide behind-the-scenes lobbying by the National Coalition for the Homeless, MGM finally succumbed and revoked its ban. In addition, I will be paid full restitution in the sum of $200. The latter amount does not include any compensation for my tarnished reputation which, to be fair, was already tarnished long before the incident.

I would like to thank Pete P. Peters for his generous offer of legal representation, and to the others who offered moral support.

Banned from all MGM properties

I've been banned from all MGM properties due to an incident at the Aria the other night. I was all-in pre-flop for $202 with 77 against a bigger stack's KK. Before the board was dealt, I asked my opponent if I could keep 2 chips for the valet should I lose, to which he agreed. Then, with everyone concentrating on the cards in the middle of the table, I quickly pocketed the 2 red stacks of $100 each and substituted them with 2 black chips.

The kings held up, I pushed the 2 $1 chips towards my opponent, but withheld the 2 black chips, saying that we agreed that these were for the valet. Needless to say, all hell broke loose, the floor was called and didn't buy my argument that we never specified the denomination of the 2 chips that I could keep. Also, it didn't help matters that I don't own a car.

I shall be taking this up with the Nevada Gaming Commission as soon as I can find suitable pro bono legal representation.

Vignette II

Bellagio 2/5

Once again the conversation at my table had dried up. There were long, uncomfortable bouts of silence and it was time for my schtick :

Me : My missus kicked me out after she caught me measuring my cock.

Dealer : Really?

Me : It just reaches the back of her sister’s throat!

Bummer

Unfortunately I won't be able to play in the $500,000 buy-in Aria Super High Roller Bowl on July 2, as it clashes with my porn slapper job interview. To say I'm peeved would be an understatement.

Vignette

From a Twitter exchange today :

Dealer's choice

I've often wondered what dealers really think about poker players. I just started following @MeanPokerDealer on Twitter, and present a sample of some of his tweets for your enjoyment :

Top 10 Bestselling Poker Books of 2014

Following is an infographic showing the top 10 bestselling poker books of 2014, according to Amazon, which I found here. You may recognize or have read some of them. Interesting, but not surprising, to see Sklansky's 27-year-old classic topping the list.

Happy 10th Birthday

Today marks the 10-year anniversary of this blog. I started this little adventure thanks to the prodding of the late Bob Lassiter, a friend from a past life.

The deck was stacked against my reaching 1 year, let alone 10. I've never owned a computer or had internet access, and have relied on the good graces of the Clark County public library system. It was no easy feat playing a 6-hour session of $0.05-$0.10 NLHE in the halcyon days of pre-UIGEA online poker, when the time limit per user was a ½ hour. I wish to thank all the shushing librarians who turned a blind eye to my frequent loud and obscene outbursts which inevitably accompanied a bad beat or felting.

Las Vegas is not an employment friendly city, especially if one has no connections. As you know by now, I have been struggling on this front for many years, and hopefully the New Year will see a turnaround.

I wish to express gratitude to my fellow bloggers for their support and encouragement, and to my faithful readers for having to put up with my constant tribulations.

Here's to poetic license and the next 10 years!

Job search update

The past week was devoted to some serious job hunting. I participated in no less than 14 interviews, justifying my rental of a cheap suit. Out of the 14, 3 expressed minimal interest, 9 showed complete disinterest, while 2 tore up my handwritten resume even before I had left the room.

I would get my resume prepared and typed by a professional, but there is a limit to what can be crafted with my checkered work history. And next time I'll rent a decent pair of shoes as well, rather than relying on the suit pants to cover up my worn out sandals.

Take me back

I have no recollection of what happened these past 10 weeks, only what I see posted in my blog, allegedly by me. The aliens must have wiped my mind clean just before depositing me back.

Once again, I'm pounding the pavement looking for work. The bastards at Panda Express did not believe my story and fired me promptly upon my return. Real pity, because my promotion prospects there were looking extremely promising.

Meanwhile last night, in an act of desperation, I returned to the very same spot where I was abducted, hoping I might get snatched away again.

Galactic game design

Since they have trouble playing any form of poker, except for open-face Chinese, I was commissioned to come up with variations of hold'em which they may find more entertaining. I proposed the following 3 :

1) "1-card" hold'em, in which each alien looks at 1 hole card only, with the option of looking at the second at any later stage during the hand.

2) "Surrogate" hold'em - the aliens cannot read our human minds, so each will appoint a human to look at the cards and play for them.

3) "1-card surrogate" hold'em, also made up of alien-human pairs, where the alien looks at 1 card only, the human at the second card, and then they are free to do whatever they like.

Can you guess which one is the most popular?

Still here

They are the only inhabitants of their planet. No other life form exists. They survive by breathing an atmospheric gaseous concoction not dissimilar to our own, and thankfully my respiratory apparatus is functional.

They do not communicate by speech, but rather by some form of telepathic interchange. There is full transparency, and no secrets can be withheld from each other.

This presents a problem when they wish to engage in recreational activities such as poker. Which brings me to the reason why I'm here...

Out of This World

I have no idea why and how they singled out my blog from all the millions in the blogosphere. By "they", I am referring to the aliens from the Messier 109 galaxy, who beamed me up into their waiting spaceship on the night of August 26th, while on my way home from another losing 1/3 session at the Aria.

They were very courteous, apologized profusely for the abrupt interruption in my life, assuring me that it was a matter of critical importance to the survival of their civilization. Their leader is called 助ជួយляйלعدة, which to earthlings would sound something like gohfzhmmb.

What am I doing here? When will I return? More in an upcoming post. And yes, they do have the technology to post to Blogger from 85 million light-years away, but if I told you how, they would cut off my 계란గుడ్లు.

Another milestone

There is a Las Vegas-based company, Love Cloud, that caters to those that want to join the Mile High Club (MHC). For $799, one can fly above Sin City in a specially outfitted Cessna 421 for 40 minutes.

Joining this exclusive club has always been a dream of mine. It took me 7 months of hard work to raise the required $799, and I am pleased to report that, as of this afternoon, I finally am a member of the MHC. I couldn't convince anyone to join me and took the flight by myself, but technically I still qualify.

Skill and luck

If you have a spare 50 minutes, please take the time to watch the keynote speech of Michael Mauboussin, Head of Global Financial Strategies at Credit Suisse, presented at the 17th Asian Investment Conference on the topic "The Success Equation - Untangling Skill and Luck".

Second promotion in as many weeks

After 2 weeks of bagging orders to go, I am now actually greeting and serving customers. It was only a matter of time before management finally recognized my great people skills.

In other news, I am entertaining the idea of a possible poker cruise sometime in 2015.

I've been dreaming of this for years now, and would be interested in hearing from readers who have any experience in stowing away on a ship.

Promotion at work

I knew my 6-week Mandarin language course would eventually pay dividends. My shift manager at Panda Express just informed me that effective today I am being promoted within the Service and Kitchen team to a customer-facing position. Till now I was restricted to the confines of the back kitchen with strict orders not to ever appear within sight of the public. Last week, however, one of the patrons heard me reciting a Hamlet soliloquy in Mandarin, which I sometimes resort to when steam frying the rice. Apparently he wrote to corporate headquarters lamenting the fact that such talent should not be wasted, and demanding an immediate promotion for the yet unseen and unknown employee he had been so impressed with.

In other news, I am now a little closer to the required entry fee for a $150 satellite to Event #55 ($1,500 No-Limit Hold'em), which I will be playing on my only day off for the month, June 28. As posted earlier, I am confident of a very deep run which in turn will provide the bankroll for my much anticipated trip to Macau. I can already picture the look on my shift manager's face when I hand in my immediate notice of resignation.

I turn on the WSOP live stream and who do I see?

At this time of year, I usually persuade the librarian in one of Clark County's public libraries to let me stay after closing so that I can enjoy the WSOP live stream, not to mention the airconditioning. As I sit here, there are 3 players left on the final table in the Seniors Event and one of them is none other than Memphis MOJO!!!

He is putting on a clinic and I hope he takes it down.

Update : MOJO finished in 3rd place for $279,412. Congratulations, great job and well deserved!!

John Grisham's statistical flub

I'm going through a John Grisham phase, having recently finished "The Last Juror" and "The Racketeer". I'm now reading his first work, "A Time to Kill", and like with all his books I just can't put it down once I start. His legal research, not surprisingly, is impeccable. However he appears to have made a mathematical error in Chapter 28 :

           "I hope you do the right thing, Joe Frank. I just hope
            they put you in that jury box. We need some people
            with some sense."

           "Wonder why they picked me?"

           "I heard they fixed up a hundred and fifty summonses.
            They're expectin' about a hundred to show up."

           "What're my chances of gettin' picked?"

           "One in a hundred," said Lela.

           "I feel better then. I really ain't got time to serve,
            what with my farmin' and all."


 There remains the small chance that it was intentional and meant to highlight Lela's lack of numeracy, but I doubt it.