If no one is folding, then you shouldn't be semibluffing, although you can start betting and raising draws for value.

Ah I see. Makes sense. Orleans 8/16 still not great today though.

True, although you have to try to find out, right?

Made a bit of a comeback. Ended up down but not too much I think.

Try to find out what? I generally only bluff people once I have a read that they are bluffable. I never throw a bet out there to see what happens or to find out where I am at.

Very hungry, not quite enough to eat the plastic sushi.

Yeah, in the low stakes games that probably is a good default strategy. In the hands I'm thinking of, even a fairly oblivious villain should have had some inclination to fold. Whatevs.

I just had kind of a wild only in Vegas kind of experience. I'll try to write it up later, but cliffs are I either met and hung out with a whale type guy or got scammed by a grifter. Legit not sure at the moment.

Popped over to Orleans for a last orbit or two of flinging. Right into the 8/16 lhe.


Stopped at the sports books at both Paris and here to throw $20 on UW football to win the natty. Got 13:1 at Paris, 18:1 here.

This is the most intrigued I’ve even been by an LVL post

Details please.

Probably aliens.

So now that I've had a day to think about it, this might not be as intriguing as I first thought. Sorry if this doesn't live up to my post about it, but I'll try to give a good picture of what happened...

As I mentioned upthread, on Thursday I started out by putting a $50 ML bet on the Mariners at the Paris sportsbook. The girl at the counter gave me a couple drink tickets, up from the default one ticket, I'm sure because of my sparkling wit and amazing poker shirt (see pic upthread).

I pocketed the tickets and proceeded to Orleans, again as chronicled earlier. The only important part about that part of the day as relates to this story is that while at Orleans I took down like 5-6 Heinekens and stepped outside several times to hit my vape pen.

So I was pretty faded when I made my way back to Paris to meet up with my girlfriend after she was done with work. We hung out for a while, and after she went to bed I rallied a bit. Decided to head down to the sports book to cash my winning ticket (M's won that night) and drink my two freebies. Then either go upstairs and hit the hay or possibly over to the B for more 20/40.

Down in the Paris sportsbook bar it's very quiet. There's one bartender and an older, very tan, silver haired dude drinking a Stella, smoking, and talking with him. The older guy has some kind of euro accent and is little ways away from me, so I can't really hear what they are saying, but the vibe is that the older guy is a reg and the bartender is being friendly while trying to shut the place down for the night.

At some point all three of us start talking about sports, sports betting, etc., so the ice is broken between me and this guy. A group of folks wanders by and pops in to get a round of drinks, I think there were four or five of them. When the bartender serves them up, the old guy zips around the bar and pulls out an envelope full of drink tickets and pays for the randoms' drinks with his tickets.

I get my second Makers about now (a much better pour this time, maybe because I tipped on my first one or again because of my charming personality). The old guy and me get to talking and he's telling me about the five Italian restaurants he owns. How it used to be 11 but he sold some of them. About how much money they make, etc. He brags about the young Japanese chicks he takes around (at this point the bartender chimes in with a story about the old guy swinging through a bar with two young hotties under his arms).

Of course we talk about gambling. This guy bets horses. I'm interested in how that works so ask him some questions about it. He knows a lot of details about how the betting works, the commission, etc. When I mention I'm from Seattle, he says he makes it up here twice a year, when Emerald Downs opens and when it closes.

He asks me what I play. I tell him poker, said I'd be heading to the B for 20/40 later. He says he plays too and had been in that game a fair amount. Then he says that where he makes money is Pai Gow. According to him, blackjack, craps, all those are losing games but if you're smart you can make money at Pai Gow. He says he has a degree in math to back this up. He tells me he's had $20k hits, $50k hits, and caps it saying he won $112k last August.

Then he's like, "You know what? Come with me, let's play for a bit and I'll show you how to do it." I'm not sure, it's late and I'm kind of out of it, but in my head I'm like, **** it, I'm up on the trip, if I drop a couple hundo no biggie and this could be fun.

On the way to a Pai Gow table, I say to him that I don't really know how to play but when I do play in Seattle I just do "house way" to set my cards. He says his way is better than house way. Okay then, let's see.

At the table, it's clear the dealer and the floor standing there know the guy. They get some dudes who are sprawling all over the chairs to move so we can sit. Now this is the part where it gets sketchy. When we headed over, I figured each of us would buy in with our own money and he'd explain his winning strategy.

But what happened was he turns to me and asks for $300. Some flickers of unease through my alcohol and weed addled brain. I give him a look, and he's like come on, it's okay. So out come three benjies and off we go; $200 in quarters and $100 in nickels. Betting $75 a hand with $5 on the bonus. We didn't play very long. Won a hand, lost one, pushed a couple, then lost another one. I realized that "we" were down, there's no sign of him getting out his own money, and I don't really like Pai Gow.

Conveniently, my drink was empty, so I'm like come on, let's go back to the bar, my drink is out. Thankfully after a bit of back and forth, he agrees and we stand up. Also thankfully he gives me the chips back with no prompting. The whole way back to the bar, he's spinning a story about how we were down, but if we'd won the last hand, we'd be up! (Yes, of course, I'm thinking, that's gambling!)

So, to cut this short, back at the bar, he pulls out his envelope again and gets me another Makers. The last interesting detail from this encounter: I notice that his watch has a big M on the face. I ask him if he's from Michigan and he says no, take a look at this. It's actually the M from U of Minnesota, and says University of Minnesota in small type on the face. He claims to have bought it off a guy who had worked 20 or 30 years at the university and got it as a service award or retirement present. The story is that they were playing poker, the guy busts, and sells this character his watch for $500. Supposedly it was gold and worth thousands?

Anyway, the guy takes my email address and effusively tells me he'd love to invite me to his box or whatever at Emerald Downs in the fall. He'll email me tomorrow, etc.

That's when I take my leave and bemusedly head upstairs and post in the thread.

I'm still not sure what the deal was. There are things that support the story about the guy being a whale, or at least a bigger fish/regular type. But some of the things I noticed don't necessarily mean the guy was legit. What really bugged me was when he wanted me to put him in the Pai Gow game. I know from experience that degens will do all kinds of strange stuff to get in action. The whole thing could have been a hustle.

I haven't heard from the guy. What do you guys think?

You gave him a freeroll. He might be a 'whale' but at the moment he had no cash available to him. So you were his only hope of getting unstuck.

And if you were in the frame of mind to give a random $300 to play with, you would have lost a lot more at 20/40 at Bellagio more than likely. So you actually finished the night cheaply!

Lmfao that wasn’t a whale. You got grifted but the damage was minimal. Vegas needs people like you

Ask the bartender today

Yeah, the loss on Pai Gow was about $70 or so, nbd. And in retrospect it was good that I didn't head over to the B. Getting up and getting checked out of the hotel before 11 was hard enough as it was.

Seems likely.

I would but I'm home now. You remind me though, after we got back to the bar it occurred to me to ask the bartender about the guy. When he went to the bathroom I had a chance but some customers came in so I missed it.

Oh well, fun story. If I ever hear from this guy I'll let you all know...

lol come on dude

that's not too far removed from Nigerian prince territory

Whaaa? How did you know about my Nigerian pen pal? All I do is send him a check occasionally and he writes me the nicest letters.

Maybe if I write up some of my experiences it will distract you guys from making fun of me.

Poker rooms
Bellagio: Probably most people in this thread will be familiar with the B. They have a reputation for rude, corrupt floors and crowded conditions to go along with Bobby's Room and the high-limit area. But my experience was just fine. The floors were pleasant enough (although I did tip the main dude whose name starts with a B a redbird and he got nicer after that), and it's not really crowded in the area they have the limit games.

Poker purists should love this room. No funky promos or bad beat jackpots. And at $6 a half hour time charge, it's the best bargain in poker that I know of. I can't say that the games themselves were that good though. Often I was the only one with a drink in front of me and people were playing pretty tight. The 40 game looked even worse, with most of the players watching their phones/iPads. (Note to Vegas regs: if you want your games to prosper, try making them a little more appealing to the tourists.)

Orleans: This room is in one way the opposite of Bellagio: instead of no promos, they have a head-spinning array of different ones for different games, days, times, etc. All that and a bad beat jackpot. Of course it's funded with a fairly steep jackpot drop at the tables. As far as I can tell though from scanning Bravo and checking Dynasty's "State of Vegas Poker" report, it's the only place in town for solid small-stakes limit action.

I played more here so have a decent sense of what the room is like. The first thing I'd mention is that it seemed like every game had several miserable POS regs who would whine, complain, and berate the dealers like you wouldn't believe. (To the Orleans regs: see note above.) And again, there were times when I was the only one drinking at my table. Maybe my mid-week, mid-day sessions were the culprit there though.

Overall had a good time playing in spite of all that. Player skill level varied from terrible to standard OMC nit-TAG. The floors and dealers were friendly and ran the games well. There were plenty of games so one could move around pretty easily. Would recommend for low-stakes limit.

Lyft insights
This came up in the Rec Weed thread, but I confirmed some stuff from one of my drivers. He said that, yes, in addition to strip clubs, dispensaries also give kickbacks to drivers. He said dispensaries give $10 per person, strip clubs around $40. He had some free drink tickets in his cupholders for some of the big well-known clubs. He also said there is a website that lists which places do kickbacks for drivers. The king of kickbacks though is the massage place. He had a funny story about how he learned about that--it involved a couple Chinese businessmen and girls coming out and giving him $200 (!) for each guy. Apparently as long as the marks sign the credit card slip the driver gets paid. More evidence, as if it's needed, that the massage places are scams to be avoided.

By that logic, I should avoid strip clubs and dispensaries

Give me a break man, I assumed everyone in here knows this:

Beware of Clip Joints (and other Vegas scams)

At least at the dispensaries you get what you pay for.

I’m on the mariners large today. Fingers crossed. You inspired me

GL dude. They're hot (won 12 of their last 15) and are first in the AL West, but Felix has been shaky this year. He'll probably need some run support to get the W.

You're welcome. *

* Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Ha. They gave me a sweat but came through!

Nice find, pope. I had not heard of such a thing.