Straight out of my playbook.

Just getting caught up on my listening. This is really remarkable, even for Band Maid.

Yeah they're the real deal. It was one of the founding girls who had the idea to dress up as maids, and I think that may have garnered them some early recognition at the expense of perceived musical credibility, sort of the same situation as the Hanson boys with their Mmmbop song. Apparently they're also a talented band, but I'll never listen to Hanson thanks to that blasted earworm.

Last night, the football game started at 8:15PM. I arrived around 7:15, and I popped up on the waiting list at #39.

Usually I'll get on the list somewhere in the teens or early twenties, and as it gets closer to the game, they'll open up tables and quickly knock down the list in 9-person chunks, but last night the Patriots were playing and the room was jam-packed, with no empty tables for the floor to open.

Also, it was Thursday night. Connecticut state workers are paid on Thursday--one reason why that night has always been a big party night at UCONN--with a lot of students working for the University, and therefore the state. I'm not sure about the state pay schedule in Massachusetts. In any case, the casino is busier on Thursdays than on Sundays or Mondays.

I went to the bar and nursed a beer for 40 minutes, and I watched the beginning of the game before returning to the list to find myself...35th on it. I turned around and headed home, but not before winning $10 on a Cashman Bingo game.

I also found a Regal Riches that had a side jackpot that was very close to +EV. It sat at 61 coins, where 63 is breakeven. I was tempted, sorely tempted, to try it, but this game has 3 side jackpots, and the other two were low on coins, so I would have made a -EV play there.

Discipline: I'll get my Prosperity Pearls/Regal Riches play eventually.

I saved the poker room phone# in my phone, as call-ins get priority. And by call-ins I mean that I can't text in or sign up online for a seat--I have to call. I've avoided this thus far because I spend a lot of time at work talking to strangers on the phone, and I don't want to do it on my own time, but it appears that it will be necessary, at least on days when the Patriots are playing.

Springfield MGM $1/$2 poker: 0 hours

Running Poker Total: 93 hours, +$3891.00

Springfield MGM Slots: 0.1 hours
+$10.30

Running Slot Total: 0.6 hours, +63.45

Grand Total: 93.6 hours, +$3954.45

Pair Thee Board


Last night I heard a verbal tell that was either the best poker angle I've ever witnessed, or an ill-advised outburst by a bored rich woman.

I wasn't involved in the hand, and I'll admit that I wasn't paying attention for most of it. I try hard to pay attention to the action when I'm not in hands, but I sometimes get bored or distracted and miss a hand or two.

I was watching the football game in this case, when I looked down and saw around $350 in the pot and 3 players involved. The turn had just been dealt, and the board read:

J2KT

My first thought was that if one player had AK and another had 98, then a Q river would give us straight flush over straight flush and a table share of the $100k bad beat jackpot.

Now for the players: SB and BB were standard middle-aged male $1/$2 punters. BTN was a lady of a certain age, speaking with what I took to be a French accent, dressed in expensive but not showy clothes, the kind of sturdy wear the rich will wear when they're working in the garden, or slumming it down at the local slot parlor.

The lady was waiting for the $2/$5 game to open, and seemed bored with our $1/$2 shenanigans. My initial read on her was that she was an action player and a bit of a station, but we hadn't been playing long by that point, and good sLAG players can also give off exactly that read early on.

Back to the action on the turn: the SB bet $100, the BB tanked for a while and called, and the lady on the BTN also tanked for a bit and called.

(Pot: $650) - three players

As the dealer drew the river, the lady shouted "Pair thee board!"

River: 2

Then she shouted, "YES!"

This put the SB on insta-tilt. He grumbled, and bitched, and swore, and moaned, and then he checked. The BB checked, and the lady bet $100 into the $650 pot.

Both the SB and the BB tanked forever, and both of them eventually folded, to a less than 1/6th pot bet! The SB--who went on monkey tilt for a few hands, and even followed the lady over to the $2/$5 table when she transferred--claimed to have folded the nut flush with AK, and the BB said he folded the nut straight with AQ.

As for me, I ran mostly card dead, except for a few hands where I made monsters and got paid for them, like KK vs 55 on a KK459 board (I checked back on the flop in position multiway in a rare--for me--slow play), and 66 vs 65, all-in on an A65 flop.

I also hit $300+ on a Cashman Bingo game. I still haven't found a play on the Regal Riches/Prosperity Pearls game, and the Ultimate X Poker plays seem to be drying up.

In any case, it was a good night, and the rich French lady put me in the mood to treat myself to something fancy, so I went to the good steakhouse at the MGM, the Chandler.





The total was around $150 after a generous tip for really excellent service, which wasn't bad for a good meal on a fancy night out.

A note on the slot machine tally: Previously, I was only counting the few minutes that I was playing on the slots as being the sum total of my playing time, but on further reflection I believe I should also count the time spent walking around and checking the machines as slot playing time. After all, I count the time spent sitting around waiting for poker hands as poker playing time.

On average, I spend a little less than 1 hour per visit walking around and checking the machines; add actual play time to that and I can estimate it as 1 hour per visit.

Springfield MGM $1/$2 poker: 5 hours
+$556.00

Running Poker Total: 98 hours, +$4447.00

Springfield MGM Slots: 1 hour
+$318.00

Running Slot Total: 4 hours, +381.45

Grand Total: 102 hours, +$4828.45

I assume that the board pair killed the French Lady's hand: smaller flush, maybe? Q9?

They never really want the board pair...

Maybe the French Fries were in honor of the French Lady?

No they generally don't want what they ask for, but when the guys voice it, they can't seem to purge the half-joking note: haha we're just having some fun here fellas aren't we?

The French lady sold it. Jaws dropped around the table. Speculation about her went on for a long time after she left.

Brava.

I like french fries. Other selections were vegetable medley, which is never great, squash: not a fan, roast potatoes, which are never great, and mashed, which can be good, but the menu titled them pureed, which reminded me of baby food. The french fries were called truffle frites, so...they were fancy.

Last night's session was a lackluster slog. The football game was a dud, up until the very end, when Tom Brady séanced some of his old late-fourth quarter magic.

For the third session in a row, my table whiffed on all of the promo payouts. This after I arrived to find that the casino had gutted 4 of their 8 Cashman Bingo machines, and then I hit bupkis on a few small Ultimate X Poker plays.

Not every night is going to sparkle.

I'll be back.

Springfield MGM $1/$2 poker: 3.5 hours
(-$182.00)

Running Poker Total: 101.5 hours, +$4265.00

Springfield MGM Slots: 1 hour
(-$9.25)

Running Slot Total: 5 hours, +372.20

Grand Total: 106.5 hours, +$4637.20

Last night I broke my 3 game streak of no promo payouts when our table was selected for a $75/player windfall, after the Rams' problematic journeyman quarterback Baker Mayfield drove 98 yards down the field inside of the 2 minute warning and threw the game-winning touchdown with no time left on the clock.

At the table, I like to pretend that I'm a superstitious punter who believes in totems and patterns, and their effects on streaks of luck and misfortune, rather than what I am: an amateur student of probability and a believer in the howling randomness of a material Universe.

The faux-superstitious act goes back to my blackjack card-counting days, when around the ever-vigilant pit bosses, it paid to sound more like a punter and less like a math professor.

So, right before the drawing for the final promo payout of the night, I raised the UTG limper from MP to $12 with 75s and loudly announced "Twelve dollars for table twelve to win!" I got a couple of grunts of approval from that, and CU said "I like this guy."

UTG called. The flop came out AK2r, UTG checked and I took it down with a $12 c-bet. Right after that, our table (#12) hit the promo.



As for the rest of the night, I ran good, and I coolered a couple of players, but the hand I'm most proud of was a thin value spot on the river. I may post that later, though to some my thin value rants may have the same appeal as Yu-Gi-Oh collector painstakingly describing his stock.

Thanks to some creative slot play, my bankroll now sits north of $5k. It's time to think about where this may go. My plan, tentatively, is to switch to $2/$5 if the bankroll hits $10k. That will give me 10 buyins to play with. Then, after around 350 hours of $2/$5, I will take a look at my win rate, and decide at that time if I want to make any serious, but familiar life changes.

Springfield MGM $1/$2 poker: 4 hours
+$536.00

Running Poker Total: 105.5 hours, +$4801.00

Springfield MGM Slots: 1 hour
+0.25

Running Slot Total: 6 hours, +372.45

Grand Total: 111.5 hours, +$5173.45

I'm going to skip the live session today; we're getting our first accumulation of snow here for the season: it's only 1-3" (2-8cm), but the first snow is one of the more dangerous driving days of the year.

Snow driving doesn't seem to rank with bike riding as an easily recoverable skill. Even snow regs seem to need between a few minutes to an hour to pick it up again, and during that interim, they are dangerous.

In addition to that, some folks are in a car that they weren't driving last winter, and others have moved from areas that receive little snow or ice, and their cumulative snow driving hours are hung up in the single digits.

The route to the casino is already fraught under the best of conditions, with plenty of opportunities for bad Massachusetts driving, so I'll sit this one out and play some tournaments on ACR.

Last week I finally gave up on my 19c to $10k challenge on ACR, and I rebought for $200, as I was down to around $3 and sick of playing the 27c offerings. Gambelina was kind enough to get me into a couple of nice private freerolls, but I bricked both of them.

Back to the tables tomorrow night, hopefully.

Everybody likes french fries. But I thought this was our big chance to get a properly baked potato. Boston; I forgot; boiled dinners. The fact that they served something called Vegetable Medley tells the whole story.

An entire lifetime of observation confirms this. Even for myself -- God's Gift to Snow Driving. Sitting this out is probably the most +EV play posted on 2+2 this year.

Bad weather kept me away from playing last week. I played yesterday, keeping in mind that there will be only 4 more opportunities to play the football promotion before it ends.

When the promo is done I'll go back and calculate the hourly boost that it gave to my win rate. I think that it will be significant, though the football money stream has been thin of late for me. Last night was the 3rd out of the last 4 games where my table did not hit anything.

Last night, I built up a big stack early, then put all of my gains for grabs on a flip, after an aggro young $2/$5 reg--waiting for his table to open up--sat down at ours and started 3-bet bullying everyone as if we were an nl100 6-max table on Full Tilt circa 2009.

I open for $10 UTG with QQ, folds to young gun in the SB, he bumps it to $60, folds to me, I 4-bet to $160, and he shoves for $530 effective.

I am never folding to this player in this spot. Not in a million years. He has 5-bet bluffs in his range--hands like A5s and 87s--and likely a few too many combos of them for GTO purposes, given how often $1/$2 players will assure themselves that it's AA on the 5-bet...and they'll be right, except for when they're up against this guy.

He shows AKo, spikes the A and K on the runout, and goodbye chips. I ran into the same scenario at Harrah's Las Vegas around 2 years ago for $600 and change, only that time I had the AK and V had the QQ. That V spiked his Q on the flop, I hit a fruitless A on the turn, and goodbye chips. I still think about that hand from time to time; now I have a new hand to think about, though if I could go back and do them both again (assuming that I didn't know the runouts in advance), I would not play either of them differently.

Variance.

On the machine front: there's a slot reg who is very often on the floor grinding the Regal Riches/Prosperity Pearls machines, or at least monitoring them. I've seen him trudging around on the circuit on my last three visits. I don't know how successful he can be, as I haven't seen a single +EV play on these machines, nor have I seen him sitting down and playing one. But he is checking, always checking.

I have attempted to shadow him to see which other slot brands he's checking on, but I regret to report that he's on to me. He'll spot me skulking around behind him, and then he'll sit down at a random machine--not playing--until I go away.

Yesterday, I did spot him checking on Rich Little Piggies machines. I've done some very preliminary research on those, and had given them a pass thanks to what appears to be an extremely complex algorithm for determining their EV state, and I've also seen the arguments online about whether +EV plays on them are even feasible. But now that I've found my colleague checking on them, I may have to give them a second look.

Turnabout is fair play: last night the slot grinder saw me on a Cashman Bingo machine, and I appear to have piqued his interest in this title. I found a nice obvious low-level +EV play on one and picked up around $30 in two minutes, but on the same machine I found another, more questionable play on a higher denomination, and I was feeling lucky--a little winner's tilt--and I lost my $30 back plus another $12.

Springfield MGM $1/$2 poker: 4.5 hours
(-$21.00)

Running Poker Total: 110 hours, +$4780.00

Springfield MGM Slots: 1 hour
(-$12.20)

Running Slot Total: 7 hours, +360.25

Grand Total: 117 hours, +$5140.25

Feeling cute. May get stacked for it later.

Last night I picked up another goose egg on the football promo, and I ran fairly card dead for the night. I tried to make up for that with some aggressive preflop play in spots, but my image suffered for it, especially in the $5 straddled pots, where I was in there bumping it up to $30-$35 after several limps, several times.

Then a hand comes where the BTN straddles for $5 while giving me the stinkeye. From his straddle, action starts in the SB, who folds. BB calls the $5, EP calls $5, and I pick up AKo in MP. Glares are raining down on me from all around the table. I don't need to be a psychic to know that if I make it $30, it will go 5 or more ways this time.

I tell myself that 5-ways in a bloated, low SPR pot with AKo is not a disaster; I merely need to win the hand more than 20% of the time to make a profit over time. Don't bluff, don't c-bet light. Spike a hand and go with it, and expect to get called down light...and to occasionally get stacked by sets, stubborn draws and disjointed 2-pair holdings.

I call the $5.

CO calls, and BTN--the straddler--makes it $15. I've been hoping for that. BTN is just the type to make an undersized raise on his straddle with a wide range.

BB calls the $15, EP calls, and it's back to me.

Preflop ($56) - 5 players

I make it $75 to a chorus of groans. I really hope this doesn't backfire, as getting cute so often does. CO--who had limped the $5 on the first lap--now shoves for $130, and BTN goes into the tank.

It's obvious that BTN has a fun hand, but not a premium hand, and that he really, really wants to make a pure spite call here. But there is the matter of us having around $450 effective behind, and the implicit threat that it's going to cost him a lot more than another $115 to get past the flop with his speculative hand.

Finally, he folds. BB and EP fold, and I call the remaining $55.

Preflop ($306) - heads up, one player is all-in

CO flips over A5s vs my AKo and the runout is A9984 rainbow.

BTN is livid, as he had folded 98s after tanking forever.

On the slot front: my slot grinder colleague/rival was not around last night. I found a few machines that were achingly close to +EV, but I stayed disciplined and eschewed all questionable plays.

Springfield MGM $1/$2 poker: 4 hours
+$106.00

Running Poker Total: 114 hours, +$4886.00

Springfield MGM Slots: 1 hour
$0.00

Running Slot Total: 8 hours, +360.25

Grand Total: 122 hours, +$5246.25

My poker content ratio is getting a bit high...

Next up: the Blizzard of '93, and how a selfish move I made back then haunts me to this day.

Eschews all questionable plays itt.

I like that.

+1

This is so good. I would have trouble holding in my laughter. It sounds like a very nice and soft table, too.

Thanks, guys, for the kind words about the poker content! But you're getting the damn blizzard story just the same, sooner or later.

Before that, though, I'd like to make some remarks about:

The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones

The question of who was the better band was a running meme throughout the 70's and 80's, and it was a debate that couldn't have been dismissed as merely comparing apples to oranges, as both bands were part of the British Invasion, both hailed from the same working class roots, both were very young to start with, and both bands took their early inspiration from Black American blues and rock n' roll legends.

So it was more like comparing oranges to tangerines, or perhaps tangelos.

I first became interested in, and then enamored of rock music around the time that John Lennon was killed. When that happened, the world knew for sure that the Beatles were never getting back together, at least in this world. And the world responded with a prolonged wave of Beatlemania. The Beatles were all over the airwaves for several years. And that's when I fell in love with them.

Hell, the #1 radio hit of the summer of '81 was a Dutch novelty act doing a medley of (mostly) Beatles songs to a disco beat.



As I got older, I moved on to the next wave of British invaders, with Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as my holy triumvirate, but I've always kept a place in my heart for the Beatles.

Not so for the Stones. I didn't dislike them; they had some good songs: Paint it Black, Satisfaction, Gimme Shelter. I put them in the same category as Cream, Queen, Bruce Springsteen, The Eagles and the like: good classic bands with a ton of hits, who didn't catch my serious attention for whatever reason.

Flash forward to a few months ago, when it occurred to me that--thanks to the app that blocks ads on YouTube--I could find and listen without interruption to almost any rock 'n roll album of any consequence ever made.

I decided to do a complete dive through every studio album, in chronological order, made by my favorite bands. I started with the Beatles, which was a course that was difficult to navigate early on, because distributors in different countries (mainly the UK and US) were making early Beatles "albums" by randomly slapping together various existing singles released separately over the course of several months to several years, so there was a lot of repetition in their first 6 or 7 albums.

I moved on to Pink Floyd, then Black Sabbath--though only those albums featuring Ozzy or Dio as singers, as I didn't want to hear Sabbath being fronted by anyone else. Next was the consistently great Led Zeppelin, then Tool, then Pearl Jam.

I want to mention that the later Pearl Jam albums are very good, but they get essentially zero airplay. Part of that, I think, is because the songs are prejudged as being no longer compatible with modern pop sensibilities, and they're also too new to make it onto the classic rock stations. I think that the latter format should make an exception and play at least some late-period, post-2010 Pearl Jam.

Just a few days ago, I decided to give the Rolling Stones a chance, even though I've never been a fan. It was out of respect for them having a huge number of hit albums, and having been around consistently for 60 years.

Now let me jump back and describe--honestly describe--some of The Beatles' early stuff, their songs from '63-'65. They pressed a few thin, attenuated blues covers, along with one decent version of Twist and Shout, and--let's face it--the rest of it from that period was twee pop-sugar boy band fare.

I Want to Hold Your Hand? Please Please Me? Love Me Do? Come on, man.

The Stones, on the other hand, jumped out of the gate with a spate of sleazy, fuzzy, harmonica slamming Chicago blues ripoffs--really good ripoffs. They were nasty-good from the very beginning, and I missed out on that for all of these years.




So, my answer to a great debate that died down around 40 years ago: Beatles or Stones?

Stones: 1963-65
Beatles: 1966-70

The Beatles dropped acid in the summer of '66, or thereabouts, and they proceeded to change the course of western culture. The Stones dropped acid a bit after that, and then came out with Their Satanic Majesties Request, after which the band shrugged their shoulders, moved on to coke and heroin, and went back to playing really good bluesy rock n' roll.

I'm only two Stones albums in so far, out of dozens, and I'm looking forward to the remainder of the journey.

Maybe it’s a pretty standard access menu but I agree 100% with what you posted here.

Me too! Same boat, always thought the Stones were OK, but the Beatles were great. Maybe I need to look deeper too.

I'm not even a big fan of the Beatles, but they are comfortably in front of the Stones.

Played a bit of guitar back in the day, the Beatles used always the most fancy chords.

I love early Beatles. "Love Me Do", "I Saw Her Standing There", "She Loves You", etc.