I played too early to see them yesterday. I'll see them tonight.

Started up a new table and the overly-conscientious dealer was asking for ID from any player who looked under 40 years old. I was the only player he didn't card

No one at PH has hit a royal in 15 days, so that has triggered a special promo bonus where the room share is $500 per player if someone hits it.

One player who was next on the waiting list was offering anyone $10 if they would rack up. No one bit and he was subsequently knocked back to third on the list by two diamond card holders.

Last night I won exactly the amount that I'd lost the day before. I'll be back at it again tonight and hoping that no one has hit the royal.

In one hand, with the $5k payout in mind, I limped along with QJs on the button after several limps, where at any other time I would have bumped it to $15 or $17. Obviously not a good play there, but the royal fever has me in its clutches.

Planet Hollywood: 5 hours:
+$235

Nice a + sign and green font, can we get more of this.

Thanks Da_Nit!

Tonight I'm facing away from the PH dancers. Hopefully it doesn't put a crick in my neck.

One of the best young rock n' roll bands around.

.



I have a serious beef with the Planet Hollywood poker floor; will write about that tomorrow.

Single mothers! I love the PH dancers.

I'll have to quit supporting them, unfortunately, because I'm done with PH, after having barely gotten started there.

I was originally going to write a long, fiery post about it, and I still might--who knows--but today I'm sick, so we'll see how it goes. Earlier, I had the chills pretty bad, and on this morning it was a warm 78°F (26°C) in my room, and I spent most of it shivering like a newborn fawn, tucked away in bed underneath 3 blankets and wearing 3 layers of clothes along with a hoodie closed over my head Phil Laak style.

I spent the morning like this, fitfully dreaming that I was an evil Viceroy for a beloved Emperor, and my scheme was to eliminate my goody two-shoes rival: the Duke of something, by providing false but compelling evidence that he was trying to start an insurrection against the Emperor, the reveal scheduled to come right at the moment that the Emperor was at the palace hanging some Order of Merit award over the Duke's neck.

I don't remember my exact scheme, but it seemed pretty solid. But before I got the chance to pull off the deliciously evil denouement, I started sweating like a hog in Hell and I was forced to emerge, awake and unvictorious, from my many-layered thermal nest. And here I am. What was I talking about?

Planet Hollywood:

PH's freeroll requirements are 15 hours of play in a week, ending early on Sunday morning. I played 5 hours each on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Whenever I sit down, I check the little Bravo board next to the dealer to make sure that my seat is lit up, and I check again periodically throughout the session, but I don't always check my hours at the end of a given day, as there has never been a problem with my hours before.

After I finished late on Saturday night, I checked my hours and the woman behind the counter told me that I had 10, not 15. I checked my notes and told her exactly what times I had been there for the last 3 days, and she could not have cared less. She just smirked at me like I was a liar trying to get something over on her, and she told me that I'd have to take it up with the floor manager when he returned.

He came back 10 minutes later, and I stood there while he ignored me, and the counter woman did nothing to indicate to him that his assistance was needed from the guy standing in front of him; she just kept smirking at me and doing literally nothing else.

After saying 'excuse me' to him 3 times--and watching him trying to find something to pretend to do so that he could legitimately ignore me--I finally got his attention. He was absolutely the opposite of interested in helping me; told me right off the bat that there was nothing that they would do, having ripped me off for 5 hours.

I asked him on what day did they lose my 5 hours and he sighed and grudgingly checked the computer. It was Thursday on which they'd lost the hours. I remembered my seat being lit up the whole time on all 3 days, and if I hadn't been so incredulous at their attitude, and if the floor had extended any willingness to solve this problem, then I might have remembered to point out where I sat on Thursday and when, because I realize now that at the time I still remembered that information, and it might have been helpful to get to the bottom of this problem. But I didn't think to point it out at the time, as I was very much being shooshed away, even though there wasn't another customer who needed help at the time.

The freeroll is a standard $135 entry tournament, and that's free (or $5) for the regs who put in the 15 hours. So this was basically the equivalent of me cashing in a $500 rack of red chips and watching them giving me $365 for it, then having them ignoring my questions and telling me that I would only be getting $365 instead of $500 because I couldn't provide any proof that they had ripped me off, all the while treating me like I was the problem.

From the PH floor, this was absolute nut low ****-tier customer service through and through. I've lived here in Las Vegas for more than a year and I've played at every place except for the Venetian and South Point, and I've never had an experience as bad as this one.

I had just recently started planning on playing at PH regularly, so they had a solid chance at landing a steady 15-hours a week from a reg who is always nice to the tourists, but they had to be stupid, petty, cheap and lazy. I won't rake another nickel there.

Planet Hollywood: 5 hours:
(-$70)

I'm going to post some of this in LVL, in the promo nit crushing thread that was subsequently taken over by us promo nits.

This isn’t really the reality of the situation though. Although I sympathize with you that the customer service you were shown seems to be quite poor.

It’s your responsibility to check and track your hours just like a time card at another job. Yes, you make sure the light is lit up on the table but you ALWAYS check your hours at cash out. You never let someone who has no shits to give about your hours just log them without your checking them at the end of the session.

Why? Because that’s your only chance of having it corrected, right when it’s screwed up that day.

About 5 years ago I was in town doing some grinding and figured I’d hit the flamingo free roll for a shot at some free cash. At the time it was 12 hours to qualify at flamingo and 10 hours at Harrahs. On the completion of my second 6 hour session at Flamingo I check with the floor and he says I have 10 hours. 6 from yesterday and 4 that day. I asked him to check the logs and he says “oh you got checked in this morning then you logged back out for 2 hours but I saw you here playing.” So he corrected my hours. I’m confident that if I came back later or the next day I wouldn’t have been able to get it fixed.

It’s your hours, your money, you’re livelihood. Take the extras couple minutes going forward and make sure they logged the right hours when you leave for the night

Natamus, I know you're trying to help, but I know all that. It was the complete lack of customer service that was the point, and I'm not putting up with it.

This isn't the DMV; it's a Las Vegas casino, moreover it's a game that takes in a relatively low margin compared to the other games, and one that relies a lot on attracting and keeping players. It should have never gone down the way it did.

My point was you made the analogy that it was like you cashed in 500 in chips and they cashed you could 365 - but it’s more like you didn’t check your time card and when your check came you were short 5 hours. That’s all - obviously I’m with you on the customer service, it was poor and I concurred

Just don’t lose the lesson while you’re yelling at the outside of the building my man

Kind of with Nat here. Yeah PH sucks and this shouldn’t happen. However lesson learned, always track your hours after each session. Sucks that you have to do this.

If you want my opinion, probably you don't, but anyways. You know my background and all that, I'm not a pro player and probably never will be, but I know a few things about poker and making money.
Yes, this is terrible customer service of PH and I would eff them too esp with so many other options in town. But having kinda semifollowed your blog for a while, I think the main issue is really elsewhere and simply that you're placing way way too much emphasis on promos and freerolls and all that.
Let's face it, nobody ever got rich off of freerolls and promos and stuff like that, they are there to keep the customers happy but often lead to terrible games. I remember the Bally's game for example I played with you close to New Year's, that was a terrible game (I don't even remember the specifics, but they had some "good" promos going on).
No reason to ever play such a game at the 1/2 or 1/3 level, especially with so many other choices in town. I mean, I just played a couple of 5/5 games in my two stays in LA recently, pretty much all of them were way softer than that game. If I were to play professionally I would seek out the places where the peeps with more money than brains are. This certainly not Bally's and PH probably also not.
My small survey over my last two visits this year seems to confirm this, the best places to play were rooms like the Wynn and the Bellagio, this is where the peeps with money and no idea how to play this game go, think about it. This is def where I would place most of my valuable time if the goal is to make a living off it. I've not surveyed these much, but maybe Aria and Venetian also (I can understand if you don't want to play at the Venetian).
The important point is just this, having a good table is worth so much more in poker than any promo where maybe you have an extra equity of 10$/h or something, it won't get much better than 10$/h because then the rooms would venture into negative territory.
Anyway I'm kinda drunk and that's just my 2c. It's always difficult to tell other peeps when you think they are wrong and there are certainly many peeps who can do that better than me. I just spelled that out in detail because I like you and think you are a quite intelligent person, more so than me.

Fire, I know that you and Natamus have my back. Right now, my bankroll is not in the greatest of shape, so I'm taking the lower variance approach with the promos. If and when I run into an upswing, I will reassess and probably move upward and onward. I know that an argument can be made that a lower EV from a worse game causes higher variance, but I think that replacing maniacs with nits for opponents does help mitigate some of that. Maniacs are great for EV, but they cause a huge amount of variance.

I'm still sick. I hope to be back on the tables tomorrow.

I think FWWM is referring to another player type when he's talking about soft games. Maniacs don't make for soft games.

It's what I call rec fish. They chase for virtually any amount. They almost never bluff. They are passive. These player types offer the highest earn while also offering the lowest variance. These player types are NOT usually at the Caesars freeroll rooms.

I'm pretty sure I've asked you this before, about why do you spend so much time in horrible games and being forced to play in horrible games to qualify for the freeroll vs playing in higher earn soft straightforward games.

Maniacs while great for EV, also puts you in difficult spots often thus as you said, cause huge variance. These rec fish offer arguably the same high EV or more while being easy to play against.

I tell all my friends the number one thing you should look for is game selection. Nothing affects your win rate more than the quality of the game.

At least in Vegas these games you speak of are unicorns.

I live and grind here full time. While these rec fish aren’t plentiful like So Cal and AZ, they aren’t that rare. You just have to be willing to move around till you find them.

Hey SJ. Do you find your game being affected by the downswing? Or you find that you're riding the swing okay?

Conventions and the slot tourneys at the upper
End casinos help bring some in and are worth tracking to help find at V, MB. Wynn etc

Fire and URMeowed are largely on the same page here, and I appreciate the advice.

In answer, all I can say is that I've played at Bellagio and Aria and Encore, at least a few times at each, and on the whole they don't have a much larger qty of loose passives. Yes, they have a few more, but that effect can be mitigated by good table selection at the Caesar's properties. The only consistently awful game that I've run into so far was the Harrah's game a few months ago, but that's gotten a lot better.

Some of the promo regs are themselves loose passives. Again, I appreciate the advice, but I'm sticking with the promos for now. After a couple of good weeks, I may likely scroll back up and reconsider.

I look at my game and I try to get better. And there can be places where I'm changing my game but I shouldn't be, so I have to keep an eye out for spots where I change my usual approach that don't gel with what I've learned from various books and videos

Venetian is the top place for this. I'm hoping that Old Sheldon won't live forever, unless he really is pulling a Nosferatu and dialysizing the blood of the young ones. I certainly wouldn't put it past him.

Well, I've been a lot sicker than I originally imagined. Going out and getting tanked for the Patriots game last Thursday didn't help matters. It's still a pretty bad chest cold, but I'm going to make an effort to get out to Harrah's later today. Seven hours today and six hours tomorrow will get me into their Thursday freeroll.

Consume water and hot liquids, tylenol every 6 hours (keep it below 3,000 mg/day), and sleep plenty. Could try mucus thinners but they're meh and only work with lots of water which generally does its job alone anyway. Eat plenty. No alcohol with the tylenol. Repeat for one week. Vamo.

Thanks AF! Feeling better already.

I found a good game at the Flamingo last night, with no regs, plenty of loose passives and one maniac. Unfortunately I ran top two pair and trips into two rivered gutshot straights while betting all the way. I was up plenty of Sklansky bucks and down plenty of real bucks.

I also made a very loose call down vs the maniac. He'd been on my left for 3 hours, so I had a good chance to see his play. Really, I should have seat changed at some point and gotten position on him. In any case, he was barreling three streets heads up (and sometimes multiway) on any dry board, every time, and people were folding the river to him a lot.

Anyways, I picked up KQo in the SB and bumped it to $15 vs two limpers. Only the maniac called in the BB, as I knew he probably would. I then proceeded to check/call three streets on a T9363 busted flush board--yes, with K high. He had the T that time.

Maybe there's an argument for a check/raise at some point, but maniacs don't often fold top pair when people play back at them, especially on a board where all of the draws have whiffed.

Flamingo: 3 hours:
(-$309)

This answer was bullshit, and I apologize for slinging it. What I do after I've stuck my hand into the fire and been burned several times over is I shy away from sticking my hand back in that fire.

Things are coming to an inflection point. If I can't put in the hours over the course of the near future , I'll have to give up on this venture. I'm heading out for a few hours tonight.

@Flamingo: Guy on my left is sporting a Super Bowl XXXIV hat, and it looks brand new.

Good for you, nice revelation, just grind and focus my man. No worries, no stress if you take it seriously and it doesn’t work out.