Category Archives: i like gambling

AC – the long road to diamond status


Posted by avoque

It is finally over.

I’ve been going to Caesar’s AC in order to work my way up to diamond status in the Harrah’s rewards program for the better part of this year. Yesterday, I finally made it. What does this mean for me? No more waiting in the loser line at the buffet or at the cashier cage. Having diamond status means the pit boss immediately takes notice and won’t give you the run-around. Dealers make more of a point to learn your name, which really doesn’t affect me much since I have a unique enough name that dealers tend to remember, but is still nice. Sure there are some other cheesy benefits involved (probably some really good discounts too), but these are the most important to me.

This puts me in an exclusive club which boasts members that own nail salons all over the world, old men that have worked themselves to the bone so they can comfortably live out their final years hoping to make that final big score, aspiring rap stars perfecting their patented craps rolling style (“I snap my fingers twice at the end, ’cause that’s how we roll in my ‘hood”), and people who just have more money than they know what to do with.

In summary, I am now officially a degenerate gambler. In fact, I’m a card-carrying member.


AC Slater and Friends


Posted by avoque

Another abandoned post, this time definitely from April 29th.

Last weekend I returned to AC with a clusterfuck of friends. Nine people total celebrating the end of bachelorhood for a friend. This was my first bachelor party, ever. I’ve always found the idea of them to be odd. Really, if I’m going to be married I hope I can still go out with just my friends when I feel like it, not just one last time before the actual wedding ceremony. But whatever.

It was weird being in AC with a bunch of people that I know. It didn’t really affect how my weekend went, it just meant I had someone I knew to celebrate with whenever the roll was hot. I have to say, AC is a lot more fun when you are there with friends, which I already knew from previous trips, but it was reinforced this weekend. I got a bit out of control though. I was the only one that didn’t sleep at all. Instead I just stayed up all night playing craps and getting drinks from a waitress that my friends had previously insulted – awkwardo. I probably wouldn’t have been able to make it all night, but I lucked into a chair at the craps table, which makes all the difference in the world. Plus it makes you feel like a high roller too. Double cool.

I actually did play a little poker when I first got to the Borgata, but it wasn’t very significant since it was a 2/4 limit game and half the players were in my group. I introduced everyone to my secrets to getting drinks quickly; pretty simple really: always order when asked and if you are empty when she comes by ask if she has anything on the tray to get rid of. That’s my secret, I know, it sounds complicated but I think you can figure it out.

Probably the best part of going to AC this weekend was that we all drove together, so we got the chance to hang out during the drive rather than having to deal with the usual greyhound crowd. Plus Anthony’s 300m is a fucking sweet ass ride.

Overall, a good time was had by all.

My experience, in numbers:

24 = number of hours spent in AC
3 = number of meals I had during that time (it really must be some kind of record for me)
36 = number of hours I went without sleeping.
23 = number of drink I ordered from the waitress (I kept count this time)
30 = number of minutes I spent in our hotel room.
3 = number of hopped nines I hit in a row (someone introduce me to the concept of parlaying, please)
2 = changes of clothes I took with me
0 = number of times I changed clothes. Also, number of minutes it took after we left before I started plotting my next AC trip.


AC – the two day adventure


Posted by avoque

I should really put dates on these blog posts when I start writing them, because it always takes me so long to get them out of the phone and onto my blog because I completely forget about them for weeks. I believe I wrote this on Sunday April 22nd. I can’t be positive.

I was itching to go to AC this weekend, so when I was looking for a hotel room, Heather turned me on to ebaying timeshares in AC. The deal was unbelievable – 240 for the entire weekend. The free room upgrade was icing on the cake. I stayed in a 1-bedrom suite that was larger than my apartment and included a Jacuzzi in addition to the shower. It fucking rocked, I took three Jacuzzi baths in the roughly 8 hours I spent in my room over two days (yes, I am a degenerate). I spent most of mytime at Caesar’s, since they comp me well and the addition of smoke free craps play just makes me want to play more.Friday I completely stuck to the craps action and that’s where I met my 70 year old doppelganger. Anyone who has logged hours at the craps table with me knows how much I love the nines (six-three in particular). As a matter of fact, I always set the dice to six-three before each throw. The old guy I met always sets his dice to five-four. In the four hours we were playing together we almostalways asked the dealer for the same bets after each roll. This is significant because though I have a strategy, I constantly change it up based on my feeling at the time. Unfortunately when anyone at the table except for the two of us was rolling I got killed. It was a horrible beating. Doppelganger Gus was awesome though, he wasn’t like the rest of the 70 year old fucks cussing the table all night, he was there to get lit up and have a good time, well, as much of a good time as a 70 year old man can have.

I finally gave up and went to sleep around 8:30 in the morning, with a phone call from the front desk at 9:30 in the morning asking me if I would like to “participate in their timeshare survey”. A special side note for all of you that might ever stay in atimeshare – they will generally leave you alone if you say that you are married, but your spouse is not with you. They won’t bother trying to sell you anything because your spouse isn’t there. I lucked in to this information, but it’s good to know for the future too.

Saturday I tooled around the city for a while, walked around the boardwalk and enjoyed the first day of nice weather since I got back from Austin. I finally settled back in to the gambling around 5pm. I started with a little craps and then headed over to the poker room to get some $1-2 NL in. I had some of the weakest players at my table with really deep pockets and they were completely lucking out when I first got to the table. After playing for a few hours I was mentally ready for a change but the poker player in me knew I wasn’t getting up from this table until the three weakest players were completely broke. They eventually did go broke, but they also kept re-buying until 5 am. I was still there. Unfortunately I didn’t get any of their money.

I learned something new about myself this weekend; I hate it when people announce a “re-raise” when there is no raise in front of them. You fucking retards, it isn’t a “re-raise” when the only action in front of you is a bet. That’s what the fucking “re-” is for. How hard is this, really?

Stop – hammer time
The guy sitting in the eight seat and I started chitchatting a bit about the players at the other end of table, both of us waiting for a chance to destroy them and take all of their money. He also was aware of the magic of the hammer, so having someone around who appreciated it,I played 7-2o the next time it came to me. I threw out a raise in early position with four callers. The flop came 7-K-2 with two diamonds I bet 3/4 the pot and had one player (new player) push all-in behind me, he was relatively short stacked and I suspected he thought his top pair was good so I instacalled and before we turned over our cards I said, “Youregoing to hate this hand”. He flips over his KQd for top pair and the flush draw just as the dealer throws out the third diamond, but he’s still a little unsure of his hand. The obvious seven comes on the river and I say, “Now you’re really going to hate this hand.” and I flip over the hammer. Without really showing any emotion he says, “Wow, this is the second time that has happened to me today; I should have taken the hint and left the first time.” Indeed.

In the 43 hours I was in AC this weekend, I ate twice and slept for a total of 8 hours. I can’t even begin to count the number of drinks I had. We’ll just go with “a lot”.

The rest of the night was relatively uneventful for me. I actually busted twice on two bad reads, first I got stacked when my pocket deucesturned a wheel only to find out that another player was holding 7-8 for the flopped nuts. Ouch. The second was just a really bad read after the winning three hands in a row, with pocket tens I bet into a queen high board. Unfortunately I was betting into a guy with KQ, not a lower pocket pair as I had suspected. Such is life. Though I’ve now had two losing sessions at 1/2 NL, I really feel like Im starting to get the game under control. Next time I go I’m playing for real.


broccoli


Posted by avoque

I hate broccoli. I consider it to be one of the most disgusting food items. Unfortunately I have bad broccoli karma.

When my boss told me I was going to be moving desks to be closer to my group, I was excited. I would have left the company on the spot if he would have told me that the guy sitting next to me would be eating steamed broccoli at his desk multiple times a day. I secretly hoped the guy would be fired. And when I say ‘secretly’ I mean I loudly complained that it should be legal to fire people for having smelly food. Luckily for me, everything worked itself out when my group moved to its permanent home on the 20th floor.

As I type this my bad broccoli karma is striking again. Since Kat is out of town once again, I’m on my way to AC for the day. Getting on the crowded bus, I spot a seat next to an old lady. She’s thin and sitting in the aisle seat, so I opt to sit next to her. Before the bus even leaves the terminal, she opens the lid on a homemade concoction whose primary ingredient is cooked broccoli. It is too late for me to move now. All the seats are taken so I get to practice holding my breath for the next thirty minutes.

Eventually she finishes her meal and falls asleep, with her arm hanging over the armrest. I hope she dies, not just because of the broccoli or even the armrest (though those are good enough reasons), but because I have yet to watch anyone die and I’ve been living in New York for almost a year. I’ve watched enough Law and Order to know this is uncommon. Plus I’m looking for an interesting story to talk about in my comedy routine.

I’ll take a window seat on the flight to hell please; and do you think there will be enough room in the overhead storage for my stuffed dog?


Y2K+7 in AC


Posted by avoque

A couple weeks ago we went to AC for a blogger happy hour, and also Kat’s first trip. Everything about this trip started off on the wrong foot. Everything was running late. First I had to work the morning, then that dragged out into the middle of the afternoon, then we had to wait for a bus that was going close to Caesar’s, and worst of all – we had a terrible bus driver. This was the first time I’ve ever had a problem with the driver. He was driving really slow the whole way and to add insult to injury, he stopped the bus at one of the tolls so he could use the bathroom. I understand that busdrivers are humans too, but you’re either too sick to drive or you drive for two hours straight. I don’t think I’m asking too much here.

After finally getting to AC, we caught up with Heather at the Borgata. I have to say, the Borgata is gorgeous casino. I still haven’t played there, but I now know why Heather raves about it. There are some negatives though. Unless you eat in the foodcourt, it’s going to be steep to eat there. We’re talking $40 a plate expensive. It is also far from civilization. But so is most everything in AC. The cab ride from Caesar’s was $12. To give you an idea. After passing on the expensive food, Kat, Heather, and I ate at the foodcourt and discussed the finer points of craps, of which there are many. By the time we finished dinner, we easily made the call to go to the Taj and roll some craps before the blogger happy hour.

I really need to emphasize that Heather is the greatest craps roller that ever lived. Not only did she hit multiple points, she hit a ton of numbers along the way. In a single roll, heather paid for my trip to AC by hitting a four with my maxed odds and $10 on the hop (who bets the hop anyway??? THIS GUY, that’s who). Fuck poker, craps is where it’s at.

Somewhere between the craps sessions we caught up with the bloggers at the Showboat. It was good to see everyone again, since I’ve missed a lot of the IHO tournaments with travel and such. Drink service was light at the Taj, so I opted for the double jack and sprite when we got to the bar. Two drinks later I could barely feel my nose and I knew it was time to hit the tables again. We caught up with the blogger crew at a Showboat craps table and proceeded to piss everyone off and lose a little money along the way. Since we weren’t feeling the Showboat, Kat, Heather, Soxlover, and I headed back to the Taj to recreate the magic there. It didn’t work. So after losing for an hour or so, we all went back to Caesar’s to play $10 craps, which is a level I’m more comfortable with than the $15 minimums they were running at the Taj. Soxlover continued his unlucky streak and decided to go back to the Borgata cursing the gods of craps the whole time. The second he walked away from the table it got insanely hot and we once again won a boatload of money. Soxlover is officially off my list of people that can role craps with us.

All night long we had been joking about Y2K+7, which if you aren’t familiar, was daylight savings this year. At the last minute, our trusted news organizations decided to make a big deal out of daylight savings moving up, because a number of computers were going to have to be updated manually. I was already alerted to the fact that it was a big deal because someone from my group actually had to be in the office on Sunday to make sure all of our applications started up properly after losing an hour. I’m glad that person wasn’t me, because I was much happier spending the evening drunk at a craps table proclaiming to everyone that the lights were going to go out and chaos would ensue once the clock struck 2am (or 3am? Eh, fuck who knows). But alas, just like Y2K, Y2K+7 proved to also be a letdown. Luckily for me, I won a lot more during Y2K+7 than I did during Y2K (which was my inagural trip to Vegas). Oh the joys of gambling.


so this is the (chinese) new year


Posted by avoque

In celebration of Chinese New Year I spent as much time as possible with as many Chinese people as I could. No, I didn’t go to the festivities in chinatown. It’s stinky down there and the only thing worse than being around a bunch of smelly Chinese people is being around a bunch of smelly Chinese fish markets. Yuck. I went to Atlantic City, where my mother assures me all the Chinese people will be, since they are all addicted to gambling.

Atlantic City knows that all of China is going to be there too, which is why all the AC hotel rooms were either already booked, or more expensive than I was willing to pay. Which is why I made this my first hit-and-run trip. No hotel, no luggage, just my jacket and the money in my pocket. In the end, it really wasn’t much different than normal, only instead of going back to my hotel room at 8am, I got something to eat and caught the bus out of there by 10:30am. I got just about the same amount of sleep on the bus that I would have gotten in the hotel, and when I woke up, I was almost home. Really not so bad. Though I do think I should start eating earlier. It seems that I get really caught up in the drinking and gambling and skip dinner every time I go. Maybe this is why I get uncontrollably drunk? Naw, it’s probably just all the Jack Daniels.


how stella got her groove back


Posted by avoque

I’ve had this post in my phone for a while, but apparently my grasp of technology is not yet good enough to actually get it back out in a timely fashion.

AC – Round 2
After my first successful AC trip, I decided that going right back the following weekend would be a good idea. Once again, I pricelined the sheraton for a reasonable $100 Saturday night stay. This trip was going to be different though, I was determined to both visit different casinos and play some good poker.

Cue the violins
I’ve been a real funk with online poker, really since PartyPoker dumped their US customers. My game has been terrible: pushing with hands where I know I’m behind, straight calling with losers, ignoring starting hand value – you know the business. I was really in need of a pokertracker plugin that could just look at my stats and say, “gus, what the fuck? You used to be good at this. You’re terrible now, go do something else.”

Repeat performance
My second trip to AC was the first time in a long while that I have gotten up from the table feeling good about my play. Tight, aggressive, smart = money in my pocket. I played for two hours and was basically card dead for the majority of it. It didn’t distract me. I play three good hands and I capitalized on them as best I could for $100 in winnings. But more importantly, I left the table feeling like a good player again.

Other AC notes
Caesar’s is an awesome casino but their poker room sucked. The tables and dealers were fine, but the management left a little to be desired. My table was down to four players before the floor manager said anything about moving us to another table. And even then, immediately after he told us it was going to take time to move us, he seated a new player at the table we were waiting to join. Lame-o.

Resorts is a fucking terrible casino. They’re like the Delta Airlines of casinos. I will never set foot in that place again. I spent over half an hour getting a players card and the woman working not only spelled my name wrong, she got the order wrong too, and she did it all in just under 30 minutes. I should have known right then that it was time to go, but it apparently takes me too long to learn my lesson.

I headed to the poker “room”, which was really a roped off area in the main floor. In the middle of the afternoon there were only two tables running and no one there to seat me at any of them. I quickly gave up on that idea and headed to the craps table. That was my third and final mistake. It was either my dealer’s first day, or he is just an incompetent fuck. Either way, he tried to give my payouts to the people standing next to me and most times calculated the odds payout wrong. After 10 minutes of this I was ready to go. This is when I looked up and noticed the 45+ minute line waiting at the cashier. Resorts was having some stupid event and didn’t have enough employees working to deal with the crowds. I dumped the rest of my buy-in and left Resorts forever. I should have set my player card on fire outside the door. They would have never caught “Enriqe Gunzales”.


Incognito


Posted by avoque

Last weekend I finally made the inagural trip to the AC. Unfortunately my timing wasn’t spectacular because my ATM card had just expired and the new one the bank sent me didn’t work. If that’s not bad enough, my bank (a local bank in Austin) was closed due to Austin Blizzard 2007!, which meant I had no hope of getting my ATM card running in a reasonable amount of time. Instead I had to get an ATM card for the new account that Kat set up here.

All I had to do was go to the bank, present an ID and pick up a new ATM card. Easy enough. What was strange was the guy who took care of it for me. He looked at my driver’s license and said, “This is really you? It doesn’t even look like you.” Then he gave me my new ATM card and watched me take money out of the ATM to make sure it worked. I feel safe already.

Cash in hand, I made my way to Port Authority to catch the Greyhound to AC. The trip was rather uneventful and my bus contained a much smaller number of serial killers than I would have expected after my Greyhound trip to Foxwoods. AC reminds me a lot of Reno, only with more active development going on. It’s a smaller, more ghetto version of Vegas. The big difference at AC was that all the games were more expensive. You’re not going to find a table game for less than $25/hand, and I felt lucky to find a craps table that was running at a measley $10 minimum.

I had gone to AC fully intent on playing some poker, but as with all recent trips to the casino, I had a hard time pulling myself away from the craps table for long enough to find a poker room. And by “hard time” I mean “found it impossible”. That’s ok though. Now that I’ve been there and checked out the scene, I’ll be going back somewhat regularly. In fact, I’m about to leave to go there now.

There was one eventful moment on my way out. As I was waiting to catch the bus back to NYC, a homeless lady tried a new begging method that I hadn’t seen before. She walked up to me and said, “Hey, I bet you don’t have any money for me, do you?” Wow. She’s like some kind of genius. I bet her next line was going to be “I bet you are more disgusted by my smell than my looks.” Good show, good show.