Wow nice kitchen.

+1. Lawyerwife money crushing the house game, congrats!

Bikeking19 hasn't posted a vlog in 25 days..I thought he might have given up vlogging..

Spike, I've enjoyed reading your stories. Hope things are going well with you, school, the new home, etc. A buddy and I are going to be in Vegas the week of 18 FEB, and are hoping to go to a VGK game. They play three times at home that week (Monday vs. Ducks, Wednesday vs. Flames, and Friday vs. Canucks, which is sub-optimal since one of us is a Flyers fan and the other a Penguins fan). I'm curious how attendance has been and how tough it is to get good seats. Any advice would be helpful.

Those looking for Spike updates. Check him out on the Vegas Squares Podcast Episode 14 and beyond on www.VegasSquares.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdPECK343_I

https://twitter.com/vegassquares

My buddy RJ has always been a guy that almost seems socially bi-polar - either he's out with people constantly and having a blast, or he's isolated at home and we don't see him for years at a time. I've known him since I moved to Vegas in 2006, but have probably seen him less than anyone else in my circle, and that includes people who moved out of town a decade ago. He's a programmer and nerdy like the rest of us, but he's into EDM, probably drugs, Burning Man, etc and so on. Gambling wasn't always his thing but he managed to pop by on card nights every so often. So he never really fit in with my group of degenerates. His big thing was swinging by our 4th of July adventures in Boulder City, usually unannounced until he was driving up and sent a text saying "Hey where are you?" On his last visit, he brought his new girlfriend, who promptly showed us her boobs and let Steve grab them. That was weird.

One day, back when I was dating Jamie, I posted on the old SomethingAwful thread we all used to plan meetups and said we'd be hanging out at the Cannery for a while. True to form, RJ showed up without warning and started talking about work. About a month before, he got a new job working for a website that was trying to connect patients to US-licensed doctors to get prescriptions, but order the actual prescriptions from Canada. Yeah, this is about 15 shades of illegal, but the owner of the site thought he had found a loophole that would keep the site above board.

Earlier that day, RJ and two co-workers went out to lunch and thought, as we all do, "Why should we just go eat at some boring restaurant when they serve food at strip clubs!?" RJ and his co-workers are getting lapdances and the whole nine yards before they realize they've been gone over three hours and it's time to get back to work. As they're walking back, they see guys in suits walking in a hurry. Then they see other guys in body armor and machine guns. With SWAT written on some, FBI written on others. Yup, the office was raided while they were out looking at titties. RJ and his perverted compatriots slink away and leave the scene without being noticed by the feds. Not sure if they would have actually gotten in trouble themselves, but I know they didn't want to have to answer any questions.

So there he was - Jamie and I are sitting at the Cannery cafe, eating some greasy spoon diner food, and the now-unemployed RJ is hanging out, all smiles, telling us about how boobs may have saved him from jail time. And then he stole one of my fries.

Wow it’s been almost a year, welcome back.

Great story. Never disappoints!

Without question, Spike is one of the best storytellers on this site.

I had an interesting tournament spot that I wanted to ask people about, since I haven't heard about happening to many other people. I don't think I wrote about this in this thread before, so my apologies if I have.

Running a weekly deepstack at Mirage. Top five pay and we've just gotten down to the final five. We're all more or less even but I'm barely chip leader when this hand happens. Aggressive player jams for about 15bb. I have 99 and think about it for probably longer than I should before I shove all in over the top. BB shoves for slightly less and shows AJ. Original jammer has AK. I'm upset about the K in the window, but my annoyance quickly dissipates when I see the other two nines behind the K, and my flopped quads holds up for a massive pot. I bully the other two players for a few minutes to build up an even bigger chip stack before we go on break. Here's the weird situation.

I come back from the men's room and the table has been cleared. Chips are in racks and the other two players are shaking hands. I know we never discussed a deal so I didn't get to agree to anything. I ask what the hell is going on, and the dealer just casually says "Oh yeah, these two decided to just give you first place and chop 2nd and 3rd between themselves. No one thought you'd object." And it's true I wouldn't object to that kind of a deal, but I've never seen a deal go down without all remaining players have a say. Am I off here? But hell, a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks. One of the few four-figure scores you can expect in low-level donkaments.

Also, SadTrombone.mp3 for the TI poker room. Look, I talked about that room a lot in this thread. I get it. That room was a lot of fun, the tournaments were super player-friendly with a good structure and starting stack. The dealers were mostly competent (except for one guy who was kind of an idiot). They were chosen as a guinea pig for a new Bravo product that kept the tournament structure clock on an LED screen on the table. It was a great room. But the tournaments were the only thing keeping that room afloat. The cash games barely ran, so the only ways they got the butts in seats was tournaments. And someone up the food chain decided to monkey with the ****ing tournaments. First, it was a re-done structure that cut the starting stack to big blind ratio in half, cutting out two or three early levels for more levels on the back end. It had an add-on for $10 but it could only be used on break, meaning anyone who busted early wouldn't throw that money in to the prize pool (and screwing over the other players). THEN, they ****ed around even more and made the tournaments infinitely worse. Starting stacks went from 17k to 5k, with add-ons and re-buys and some other bull****, with 15 minute levels instead of 20. Attendance plummeted. They got rid of the freeroll. They got rid of football squares for tournament players.

After a while of this crap, they went back to a semi-decent structure and tried to win back some players, but that didn't last long before they killed everything off again. They scrapped the semi-decent stuff for absolute garbage. I asked the floor what happened and he said the management wanted tournaments to last no longer than an hour and 45 minutes. "Management" in this case, I have heard, was the table games manager. The poker room never had a separate manager with the power to put in promos, fix tournaments, or whatever else. The table games manager tried to maximize profits by screwing over players and SURPRISE SURPRISE the players weren't a fan of it. Think about it - if you're signing up for a late night tournament, do you want to spend $50 for 5k chips, 15 minute levels, and a bad structure, or do you want to go to the Flamingo for their midnight (and maybe 9pm, I forget) where it's $60 or $65 for 20k chips, 15 minute levels, and a kinda bad structure? TI did no research into the tournaments around them and shot themselves in the foot in the process.

This was either abject stupidity or a deliberate attempt to kill attendance to move the team. I mean close the room. I just watched Major League.

For the Mirage chop it looks like 2nd and 3rd place where shaking on there agreement of a chop but I would think they where still going to wait for you to come back and agree to the chop before finalizing?

Edit you stated they cleared chips already, yeah that seems to be bad etiquette, it’s unlikely anyone would disagree to this but you still wait to until the other person comes back before clearing the table.

I would have demanded more for first place! I doubt that would have flew (flown? Flied?)

Also, I think I chopped a tournament like that at either the Flamingo or Bally's. Chip leader had us covered by 10x (at least), 2nd and 3rd were close to tied, and pretty short coming back from break with maybe 5 BB. Only 3 places paid. We decided to chop up 2/3 (split the difference) and give CL 1st. He was OK with that.

Anywho, I was ecstatic to see more stories from Spike. Thanks for posting!

Welcome back,
Can't expect more than 1st, unless they are so valuing their time... I mean you could play it out and potentialy get less than that, but not more. So 1st now is ez. So unless you want to hold them hostage, just smile and say thanks.

They didn't take anything away from your 1st place. But you're not off if you wanted the opportunity to possibly NOT get 1st

Only way I can think where it would POSSIBLY matter is if it's a bounty tourney. In this case, they arguably denied you of their two bounties.

They should have never cleaned up the table without three signatures.

You could have caused a huge commotion, had them go to the cameras and reset the stacks, wait around for a few hours, and get started again with everyone hating you. So taking the first place money and moving on is the best choice. It's all about choices and yours was a good one even though the house did make an error.

Good on ya, Spike!

The sick thing about the Mirage decision was I probably would have chopped for (slightly) less than first if they had just asked. I think I've talked about it in this thread before - I'm always going to be open to chops/bubble saves in daily tournaments. When the average stack is like 10bb, having a monstrous chip lead doesn't really mean anything. Variance can slap you in the face, and I'd rather take the money and move on than sit and argue with a few OMCs over a few dollars. If I were that interested in making good money consistently, I'd focus on cash games.

The wife and I are currently in Boston for the weekend. It's our three year wedding anniversary, plus the Knights are in town to play the Bruins so we have tickets for that game. I updated on Wednesday during my class with the hopes of getting another update with pictures on Thursday, but I ended up packing and taking care of errands all day instead of sitting at a computer. Here's a short list of things that happened while I was away:

- Golden Knights season (because holy **** what a season)
- Moved in to the new house
- Got semi-****ed by a neighbor
- Joined a new podcast (www.vegassquares.com)
- Took swimming lessons
- Got a puppy
- Played poker in LA for the first time while my wife was at a quilting conference
- My dad finally announced his retirement (at 72)
- Lots of poker with another WSOP daily cash
- 2.5 week cross-country road trip
- And whatever miscellaneous stories I can think of

I'm hoping I can get another post up by Friday/Saturday this week. Should be a decent amount of pictures and chip porn.

Need puppy pics or it didnt happen

Great Stories. Thanks for sharing. And I agree with the above. Let's see pics of that puppy!

Meet Schmidt:





Yes, he is named after Nate Schmidt from the Golden Knights. My wife has taken a liking to him that is borderline obsessive. We got a picture of me wearing a Schmidt shirt, with our dog named Schmidt, outside of Schmidty's, a gas station (chain?) owned by Schmidt's family in St. Paul, MN. #Schmidtception.

He's a good ol' fashioned mutt. We sprung for one of the doggie DNA tests they have on Amazon. We could tell he had German Shepherd but the rest was kind of a mystery. Some people said lab, some said beagle, maybe something else. We found out he's predominantly pit bull, then GSD, Samoyed, a couple kinds of herding dogs, Chow, mini-Schnauzer, and like 5% what they call "super mutt", which means traits of various breeds but they can't be pinpointed and have no real bearing on the physical characteristics of the dog.

Wife and I took a trip back to Boston this weekend. Made some $$ playing poker in Hampton Falls, NH (even with a massive mistake), then this happened:



Since this is a poker forum, I'll detail the mistake.

I bust from their $90 Friday tournament (which would be the best <$100 tournament if it were in Vegas) after I jam top pair + nut flush draw not noticing four to a straight on board. I take a seat at $1/$2 and buy in for my usual $200. Blinds are posted and seat 1 (villain, $600+) straddles for $5. Two players fold and I look down at red AA. I make it $15 to go. CO, BB and villain call. Flop comes K95r. BB checks, villain bets $25, I call, all others fold. Turn is A putting a second spade on board. Villain checks. He lifts his cards in front of his face like he bet the flop with 33 and was shocked I called. So he's looking like he wants to toss it away and the only way I can keep him in the hand is to check. I also know that there's a high hand of the hour that pays $300, and if the board pairs at all I'll take the lead with like 30 minutes to go. I know I have to check. He's screaming for me to check. My brain is screaming for me to check.

I bet $35.

He snap-folds KQ face up.

****.

Then says if I check behind he goes all in dark on the river.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuck.

The live tell of putting the cards in front of the face like a confused clown is just a weird, overly dramatic fold that I've seen a thousand times. I know this move all too well and it's a fold 100% of the time if the player is older than 25. Oh well. About two orbits later I have AA again. I 3-bet to $45 and the same villain from before shoves. I obviously snap call and he says "Don't ****ing tell me..." while showing AK. I hold.

Mutts rule!

Is that a $1000 win on the scratch off? Geez! How much was the thing?

**** just realized I never responded to this, even though it's a long time overdue. For those who haven't been to the games - it was usually 30-40% fans of the opposing team for a long time, until about the playoffs. After that, I'd say it dropped to about 10-15%. The team ran a deal for season ticket holders - if you don't sell any playoff tickets, you get 25% off each round. Sell any, and you're paying full price for the entire playoffs. Most people stuck with the cheaper option. Of course, this was less than ideal:



This season, there have been far more Vegas fans than not, and the place is rocking, even with a sub-par performance thus far. I took a lot of **** on Reddit during the season for pointing out faults in the Knights d-core, especially the pairing of Engelland and Theodore, but people are starting to see what a liability it can be to have one old man who can no longer skate and one inexperienced kid who thinks offense-first. I digress...

Damn right. He's actually an amazing pup. Graduated from obedience school early, is used as an interview dog for his doggy day care, has been great around kids and strangers. Really very fortunate to have picked up this guy. He's 8 months and 55 pounds now. Should pack on another 5-10 before it's all said and done.

The wife and I decided we wanted a dog a long time ago, but it was never the right time between her work and my schooling. Her big case finally went away and it was the right time. We wanted a puppy so it could be raised around the cats and not see them as prey. We found a shelter in Kingman, AZ who had a litter dropped off in the middle the night and the five pups were up for adoption. After an intense application process, we got a call that we were approved, and it just so happened to be on the day my wife called in sick. Except I didn't expect her to go to the shelter that day. Lo and behold, around lunchtime at work, I got a picture of her holding Schmidt on the drive home. It's been great ever since.

I bought three $5 tickets on the first morning and won $20. I bought two $10 tickets and the second one hit for $1000. It was over the limit to be cashed at most stores so I had to give it to my father to bring to a lottery central office to be cashed as the offices were all closed over the holiday weekend.

In February, the wife and I spent a few days in Pasadena, CA for Quiltcon. Yes, you read that right. A convention about quilting. The wife is actually extremely talented and does a lot of great work but these projects can take years. She did a huge Ron Swanson one that I wanted to show off but it's only on her Instagram and I can't ****ing figure out ****ing Instagram so I gave up. But here's one she did for my sister-in-law and her wife for their wedding:



Even though I bought a weekend pass for the convention, I really only spent half a day in the vendor area to see all the cool stuff that was being sold, and like half an hour in one of the display rooms. And it was a trip. It was about 90-10 split between non-vendor men and women to the surprise of absolutely no one. We saw the famous AIDS quilt and a bunch of stuff from professionals to kids to some that were over 100 years old. I didn't take any pictures (even if I did, not sure I'd post them here). While she was spending her time with the other crafty broads, I had to fend for myself. I spent one afternoon betting horses:




And bricking every single bet. To be fair I only ever bet exactas and trifectas but man that was a frustrating day.

Our last night in Pasadena, the wife goes to bed early and basically tosses my ass out of the hotel room since I wasn't tired at all, though I was reminded that we wanted to hit the road and drive back to Vegas by 10am the next morning. I check PokerAtlas and see that the Bicycle is only about 30 minutes away and there's a 10pm bounty tournament going that night. It's 9pm so I head on out.

I make it to the Bike with plenty of time, but I cannot, for the life of me, find the ****ing entrance to the parking area. I pull in front, that's all valet. I go around back where security told me to go and I somehow end up behind the parking lot. Another security guy sees me driving all around, he moves some cones and opens a gate and lets me in the back way into the lot. Thanks buddy!

I go back and forth between playing cash and running the tournament. I ask the floor how long they expect the tournament to run, and she says she expects to be completely wrapped by 1am. If the tournament was as it is listed on PokerAtlas now (I lost my notes from this trip), it's a $60 buy-in for 4k chips, $5 staff bonus for 1k, and at the first break you can do a $40 add-on for 5k. But here's the weird thing - it's $10 bounties. If you do the add-on at the first break, you get the chips and another bounty token. If you bust, you only have to cash in one token. So that means you're guaranteed to walk away with a bounty chip, so the add-on is really only $30. And somehow I was the only one at the table to notice this.

After hemming and hawing a bit and taking the time to get a player's card, I finally decide to run the tournament instead of cash and I register shortly after the first level.

Remember how the floor said she expected to be done by 1am? Yeah. Didn't ****ing happen. But we did hit the final table around 2:30am when a really strange exchange happened. There was an older guy playing. Not OMC but a pretty straight-forward ****reg local. Two plain clothes security have walked into the room and made their way to the podium. The floor taps the older guy at the table on the shoulder and says "Sir, after the hand would you mind stepping away for a word?" Guy agrees, and goes to talk to the trio for about three hands. When he comes back, we're all curious what happened, and he said something I never expected to hear at a poker table.

.

By 3am, the money bubble finally burst. There was some talk of a deal, but the Russian guy on my right either didn't understand or didn't want to understand deals, and insisted we keep playing. After a while, either me or the Russian end up busting the rest of the table and we agree to an even chop. Came to about $900 a piece, plus I had 10 bounties and he had like 18.



We collect our cash around 4:30am and as I'm walking out I hear the older guy with the gun and his kid loud-talking like "He won the tournament! Let's jump him!" I turn around expecting an actual fight but when I see who it is I joke about needing this guy and his gun to escort me to my car. They were good people and I'm glad they were in the tournament. Made a long ****ing night that much more enjoyable.

Between the drive back to the hotel, parking, grabbing some doughnuts for breakfast, I think I fell asleep around 6am and woke up at 9 to shower and pack for the drive back. Not my brightest moment, I'll say. But I definitely want to get back to LA at some point for more poker. Especially those late night bounties at the Bike. I think they're pretty well run and well structured, so I can see that being a good value if I decide to run that more often.

Picture dump incoming.

From my post about the Mirage tournament that chopped before I could agree - there were about 750k chips in play. Here's a pic I took after I flopped quads but before I bullied the other two players before the break:



These next two pics will be followed by a story:




They were taken on the night of the Knights' last pre-season game in 2017 - October 1, to be exact. The game got out around 7:45. After a not so quick walk to my spot in the MGM garage (what a mistake that was), I drove home. The wife went to bed and I was meeting Joboo at TI to run the 10pm tournament. It didn't go, so we went and hung out on the roof of the parking garage for a few before heading to our respective homes. I saw some confusing posts on social media about Las Vegas, and got tagged by a friend of mine in Pahrump to check in and make sure I was okay. That prompted me to turn on the TV and see what was going on. And it was a lot.

I share these two pics because it was kind of a sense of normalcy before absolute chaos and misery, followed by what can only be described as an overwhelmingly positive response to the events of that day. When the Knights came back home on October 10 to play their first home game, it was surreal. They removed all the ads on the boards to be replaced with "Vegas Strong":



And if you've followed this team at all, you'd see that giving up any advertising time or space is not in their nature.

The introduction of each player was followed by an introduction of a 1 October hero. The Coyotes skated behind both the Knights and the heroes for a moment of silence that was an actual moment of silence. I'm sure you've all seen it. A big arena or stadium has called for a moment of silence and some jackass in the back screams "Woo!" or "(other team) SUCKS!". But at this game, in this moment, it was truly silent. For 58 seconds, one for each victim of 1 October, the arena was silent. Not gonna lie, it definitely brought a tear to my eye. It was moving.

In less depressing events, they had a big NHL history exhibit in front of the arena prior to that game. I forgot this team existed!



My wife grew up Quaker so I kinda want to grab one of these reproductions sometime.

Shot from the roof of the South Point garage:



Was waiting for a random Santa Fe station tournament to start one Saturday and decided to sit at a video poker machine right outside the poker room:



Binions poker room is a sad story. What they claim to essentially be the birthplace of Vegas poker has been relegated to a few tables off the end of the pit. The long-time poker room, the nice separated space away from the casino floor, is now home to a bunch of machines and slots. They still run (ran?) nightly tournaments. I believe it was a $65 buy-in for like 20k in chips, but holy **** is this structure clownish. I know most <$100 tournaments are going to be somewhere between awful and semi-bad, but I had hoped with 20k in chips it would fall towards semi-bad. Nope. Just pure **** you mode, all turbo garbage that is absolutely not worth playing.



I love Vegas. I do. But there are some things we don't do well here. And our reaction to stand up comedy is probably amongst our weakest traits. I've seen a bunch of comics with hardcore fans around here, like Doug Stanhope, Jim Norton, and Colin Kane, and none of them got the reaction they should have.



Norton's show was especially telling. Room was about 70% sold so they moved all of us from the back closer to the front. Jim started talking to some lady in the front row who is on some reality show about building fish tanks (???). Jim was doing his usual shtick and his act was great, but for someone who has fans as psychotic as Norton, the response just wasn't there. It was very odd.

Some lady in my office REALLY likes Halloween:



Anyone remember Doug Mirabelli? He was the backup catcher on the Red Sox for a number of years, and caught Tim Wakefield's knuckle ball. He's actually from Vegas, and I found this hanging in a pizza shop not too far from my new house:



Speaking of the house, two stories coming up about that. Gonna put that in a new post so this one isn't so huge.