Monthly Archives: September 2007

Craps for poker players


Posted by avoque

I play a lot of craps. If I start playing craps and I’m winning (or within a reasonable amount of losses) I’d rather keep playing than change games to get some poker in.

The Borgata is currently holding a big poker tournament (WPT Poker Open). To catch some of the action walking out of the poker room, the forward-thinking staff at the Borgata added an extra craps table in the secret smoke-free craps table spot outside the poker room.

That would be fine, I like to play poker, so having more poker players at my table shouldn’t be an issue, right? Wrong. I hate most poker players, and I didn’t even realize it. But it is definitely clear to me now

Craps rules for poker players

  1. No one wants to hear your bad beat stories. Most of the time they aren’t even bad beats. Some guy calling your all-in with a set of aces against your inside straight draw isn’t a bad beat, no matter where you are in the casino.
  2. Stop using “I don’t know how to play this game, I’m a poker player!” as your excuse for fucking up over and over again. You may think you are insulting craps for being -EV, but what you are really doing is making poker players look like jackasses to people that don’t play poker. Making a mistake is acceptable, consistently making a mistake is jackassery.
  3. Don’t talk about what constitutes a loss while the game is going on. To put it in poker terms, it’s like shouting for an ace when your friend is all-in with a pair of queens against AK. Craps is a superstitious game and we don’t need your retarded attitude fucking up the table mojo.
  4. Don’t argue with the dealers. Just like with every other game in the casino (including poker, fuck-o) dealers have no incentive to make you lose. In fact, they’re all hoping you win because that’s generally the only way you’ll tip them.
  5. Tip your dealers! Especially if you are too fucked up to understand how the game works, these people are helping you more than the waitress is. I’m not saying you have to tip a lot, but at a minimum, throw them a couple bucks when you cash out.
  6. Don’t walk away with an active bet on the table. I’m not sure why this happens all the time, because it seems like it should be common knowledge. 
  7. Color up when you leave the table. you’ll notice there are no chip racks at the craps table. When you are finished playing, tell the dealer you want to “color up”, he will instruct you to set your money down, the boxman will count it and give you larger denomination chips so you don’t have to walk around with 100 $5 chips.  This is true for almost every table game in the casino.

That’s it.  Good luck and I’ll see you at the tables (but if I do, please follow these rules or kill yourself, either is acceptable for me).


Labor Day


Posted by avoque

Balki came out to NY for the long weekend for no other reason than to hang out and drink. And that boy can drink; he put my 30 year old liver to the test.

The weekend consisted of a lot of walking, drinking, and being hungover. We set the bar high on Thursday when he showed up by going to my local afterwork bar for a going away party and a birthday party. We rolled out of there at 3:30am and I still managed to make it through a full day of work, while Balki hated life on the couch all day. We did it two more days in a row. After three nights in a row of staying out until bar close, I really thought I was starting to get used to 4am bar close, which has been alluding me for the past year. Not true.

Sunday we a cold reminder that I can’t make it. 4am bar close is something that my body just cant figure out. Once it hits 2am, Im ready to eat some pizza and pass the hell out.

It didn’t help that I started the day with a tequila hangover, but the one meal I ate also probably contributed to my inability to last to 4am. After our meal of the day we settled into Rudy’s, my favorite dive bar located in hell’s kitchen. The $9 pitchers and free hotdogs can’t be beat. I only had one of the free hotdogs though. Instead, Balki and I just went through five pitchers of cheap beer. On an empty stomach it was a recipe for disaster. We then proceeded to go to the nicest bar I’ve been to since I moved toNY. On the 20th floor with spectacular open air views of the empire state building, this place paid their outrageous rent with outrageous drink prices. We went from drinking $9 pitchers to drinking $9 beers. The irony is not lost on me. All the alcohol proved to be too much for me and had to call it a night before 3am.We stumbled back to my neighborhood (walking instead of in a cab in case I had an unfortunate incident), ate some pizza and I somehow managed to keep the contents of my stomach intact.

By Monday, neither of us had the energy to go out another night. Instead we hit Coney Island to eat Nathan’s hotdogs, ride the cyclone, and people watch. We walked out to the pier where I saw this:



Coney Island gambling!

Yes, it’s illegal gambling. I have never actually seen this game played before. Itsvery simple, like roulette, pick a number and the de are rolled, if it adds up to your number it pays 2 to 1. The house edge is phenomenal: pay 2x with a 1 in 6 chance of winning, unless my math is mistaken, that’s a 66% house edge. Yikes! I love it.



Coney Island – Labor Day 2007

After hitting up the New York culture all day, we topped it off with a visit to UCB Theatre where we got to see Aziz Ansari, Paul Sheer, and Demetri Martin perform FOR FREE. Now that’s something you don’t get to see just anywhere.

It’s Friday now and I still feel like I’m recovering from last weekend. Were on our way to AC though, that always makes me feel sober. Kind of. One week to ACL, I’ll see you all there.


three zero, the birthday


Posted by avoque

I had the best birthday party that I’ve ever had in my entire life, no doubt. Super-extra special thanks to Kat for planning all of it. Outside of the date and the quiz, everything else was Kat. Also thanks to everyone that helped Kat get everything together: McP, Miranda, Eric, Amanda, and everyone else involved, the party would not have happened without you guys. And thanks to Amanda for driving me around and sitting through the excruciating lost luggage scene with me.

We overcame a lot of adversity to make it to the party; some people had flight delays, others had long drives to make, and Balki even got hit by a car. We only had one casualty; a co-worker of mine from New York (John) had planned on coming to Austin with me for the party. After 8+ hours at the airport it was clear that only one of us was going to make it. He forced the person working the ticket counter to wait while he ran over to get me to make sure I got to Austin. It took him 5 days to get his luggage back from JetBlue.

If you haven’t heard my story yet, I’ll spare you the gory details. It was fucking miserable. At the end of it all, I spent 14 hours at JFK, getting about an hour of sleep total and I arrived to Austin 13 hours later than expected. And even that almost didn’t happen. I was inches away from having to fly into Houston at 11am and drive for three hours to make it to the party. But I would have done it without skipping a beat. There was no way I was going to miss this party.

Once I finally did get to Austin, my luggage was lost. This is the fourth time in a row and the third time in a row on JetBlue going to Austin. Fucking miserable. So I did my regular routine, buy some new clothes and new toiletries. This time I did something smarter than in the past, I let the toiletries at Jason’s house. That way they’ll be waiting for me next time Jetblue loses my bags.

I loved the roast. Thanks to everyone who spoke. I’m really serious when I say I have the best friends in the world. I’m glad everyone enjoyed the quiz, but don’t feel bad if you didn’t get any right. Julianna had the best score with 60% correct and she was guessing on many of them. Even Jim, who has known me longer than anyone, only got 5 right. I’ll eventually put the quiz online so you can test your memory and see if you can improve your score.

Thanks to all of you for coming out. I know you have many options for Saturday evening activities and I’m glad you chose to spend it with me.