Is the name of a recent entry by cpk in the LiveJournal poker community about an unsuccessful attempt to move up limits and a re-thinking of his poker strategy. Link

This is a followup - for fantasy football enthusiasts - to my post from Wednesday about drafting Tampa Bay in the third round.

The first two comments I got back on that post were against my reasoning. CJ wrote

I think you over value defense. I think you'd be suprised if you went back and compared the preseason defensive rankings to the postseason rankings from year's past. It's a position that can flucuate greatly, especially depending on the opponents faced that year.

while Jim said

I tried the differential method a couple years ago and it bit me in the ass. It works great if everyone else in your league plays along, but if you draft a DT in round 3 and nobody else gets ones until the much later rounds no amount of differential is going to make up for you wasting a pick in round 3.

Reading the conventional wisdom out there, most of it is echoing CJ's comments: DT's are unpredictable, you can't be guaranteed of value, the value differences tend to be minimal anyway.

Well, I looked into this to be sure. Here are some factoids for you, based on the projections I compiled last year (from memory, mainly from KFFL, 4for4.com and footballguys.com) and our custom league scoring.

- 3 of the top 5 projected D's (Eagles, Bucs, Packers) finished in the top 5
- 3 of the top 5 projected RB's (Alexander, Tomlinson, Holmes) finished in the top 5
- Of the top 10 D's at season end, 5 had been projected below top 10
- Of the top 10 RB's at season end, 6 had been projected below top 10
- The top 3 D's were projected to outscore the next 3 D's by a total of 47 points; they ended up outscoring them by 161 points.
- The top 3 RB's were projected to outscore the next 3 RB's by a total of 191 points; they ended up underscoring them by 141 points.
- On a 1-by-1 basis, 5 of the top 10 D's ended up outscoring their projected next-pick value
- On a 1-by-1 basis, 2 of the top RB's ended up outscoring their project next-pick value
- The standard deviation of absolute difference between the top 10 D projections and their actuals was 27; for RB's it was 42
- The biggest disappointment for top 10 projected D's was the Bears: 16th lower than expected; for RB's, Anthony Thomas: 26th lower than expected.
- The biggest surprise for D's that made the top 10 was the Panthers: 26 ranks higher than expected; for RB's, Clinton Portis: 33 ranks higher than expected

So, based on last year's results, D's look significantly less volatile than RB picks. It would be interesting to compile similar results for previous years, but I don't have my projections from 2001, and no data at all from earlier than that.

I think these results reinforce my selection of TB as my 3rd pick, based on my projections. You can challenge my projections if you think they're wrong. And if you have data beyond last year, you can challenge the solidity of DT picks. But based on the projections I compiled, and the relative volatility of DT picks compared to RB picks based on 2002 data, I stick with the TB defense as a solid 3rd round pick.

If you are hardcore, you can see the stats comparison I built here.

The Bicycle Casino's press release about their "Legends of Poker" tournament is a great, enthusiastic release which manages to convey that the tournament will be a big public-interest event at the same time as giving all the relevant detail of the tournament.

If you missed last year's riveting event, you'll definitely want to be in the audience this time! The WPT's phenomenal success this year guarantees that this will be a "sold out" show, so The Bicycle Casino is setting up a live feed in their Grand Ballroom to allow more spectator viewing and will be hosting a low limit poker party!

Link

I've played in five tournaments at the Bicycle Casino -- all of them were well-managed, fun tournaments with good quality dealers.

There's a great article about Fantasy Football and the beginning of "the madness."

The game is part hobby, part office pool, part "I can't believe Hal in accounting's girlfriend beat me this week!"

Think Dungeons & Dragons on Miller Lite.

Link

I don't know about all that, but I do know that I love fantasy football.

I'm somewhat of a fantasy success story; two years ago, I had zero interest or knowledge in NFL when a co-worker invited me into his pool. I was reluctant, until he mentioned that there was money and math involved. I ended up coming second that year.

If you've never tried fantasy football, I strongly recommend it. It requires a fair amount of research and analysis into the numbers and stats, but really very little fundamental knowledge of NFL. And it somehow manages to be incredibly fun if you're into things involving numbers, odds, money and trash-talking. I suspect most people who read this site fit into that category.

For those of you who do know something about fantasy football, one of my leagues had our draft tonight. I was in position #1 of 10 teams, and I've gotten a little bit of flack for my third pick - the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (after LaDainian Tomlinson and Stephen Davis).

I actually think it was one of the best picks I made all draft, and here's why.

I drafted the Bucs in 21st position. ESPN's draft results shows that the Bucs have averaged 47th position. I felt 47th was outrageously low for the Bucs, and that they were bound to go before that -- backed up by the fact that the Eagles ended up going 30th. My next draft pick was not until 40th position.

The Bucs' stats are significantly above the other defenses. In fantasy, having "bonus points" in any roster spot is how you win. I estimate that the Bucs will have 15-40 points on the Dolphins and Eagles, and 50+ points on the rest of the field. That's better separation than exists in any other position: better than I expect LaDainian Tomlinson to have over the 4th-rated RB, Marvin Harrison over the 4th-rated WR, McNabb over the 4th-rated QB, and so on.

Data point: last year in my league the Bucs (#1 D) had 49 points more than the Eagles (#2 D). There's only one #1/#2 matchup that beat that: Priest Holmes' superhuman 70 points over Ricky Williams. But look at the other 2002 leaders: Gannon's 27 points over Culpepper, Harrison's 15 points over T.O., Heap's 11 points over Gonzalez, Feely's 5 points over Akers and hopefully you start to see the value of the Bucs when it comes to getting points into slots on your team.

The Bucs are a banner defense. Now let's look at who I could have picked up in 21st position instead of the Bucs, and a reasonable substitute who ended up going in 40th place or lower in my draft.

QB: Rich Gannon. Projected: 337. Substitute from 40th+: Aaron Brooks (43rd), projected: 302. Differential: 35.

RB: Tiki Barber, Corey Dillon, Fred Taylor. My average projection: 232. Substitute from 40th or lower: Trung Canidate (48th), projected: 173. Differential: 49. Bear in mind I already had 2 RB's at this point, so even if this was a massive difference it's unlikely I would have gone for it.

WR: Eric Moulds. Projected: 192. Substitute from 40th+: Chad Johnson (42nd), Laveraneus Coles (40th), average projected: 171. Differential: 21.

TE: Jeremy Shockey. Projected: 109. Substitute from 40th+: Tony Gonzalez (41st), projected: 106. Differential: 3.

So compared to these, the Bucs looked like:

DT: Bucs. Projected: 285. I predicted that both the Eagles and Dolphins would go within 20 picks of the Bucs, leaving a substitute of Carolina or Baltimore, average projected: 232. Differential: 53.

As it turned out, the Dolphins were still available at the 40th pick -- which I think was a mistake on the part of my fellow owners, given the separation that the Dolphins' D should show above the rest of the remaining pack (I estimate 20-30 points). Had I known for sure that the Dolphins were going to go that late, I would have picked up a QB or a WR, but when that type of value is on the table you can't let it pass. I still think it was one of the best draft moves I made.

Very funny Achewood comic (via No Treason):

A story went down the AP wire a while back about immigrants, mostly from China, who had high-profile jobs in their home countries but are now working entry-level casino jobs in Foxwoods Casino.

It's a good human interest story, but I found the original story, from the Norwich Bulletin, and was interested to find the article was somewhat more detailed than the AP version, and more notably left out this quote:

Instead, Wang moved to Norwich in August 2001, and began work at Mohegan Sun. But even as a cleaning attendant, his casino job pays more than his engineer job in China. He makes $300 per week at Mohegan, compared to $200 a month at home.

"I am so happy," he said of his job.

The shorter AP version left me less sure as to the attitudes of Wang and others. Even now, I'm not sure they all are so happy about their jobs, but this quote makes it seem that Wang, at least, is happy. Link to the original Norwich Bulletin story

For those of you who read the print edition of Card Player magazine, you no doubt have seen those full-page ads about the guy who paid for his $26,000 gastric bypass surgery through poker winnings. In what may be the first ever newspaper article about a Card Player ad, apparently that man - Ray Truelove - just won a fight with the county's insurance plan, getting them to cover the procedure.

The Center for Surgical Treatment of Obesity advertisement, which appeared in the magazine's July edition, touted the fact that Truelove used poker winnings to pay for his gastric bypass surgery.

But the statement will no longer be true. Last week, county commissioners voted to reimburse Truelove for the $26,000 procedure.

Link I wonder if they'll change the ads.

Time's September 1 issue has a short but enthusiastic piece about the World Series of Poker coverage on ESPN with yet more data on viewership for the WSOP and WPT.

Perhaps most shocking of all, people are watching. According to Nielsen ratings, World Series (ESPN, Tuesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.) has averaged 1,248,000 viewers during its eight-week run, which ends with a grand finale at 8 p.m. Aug. 26 (watch for repeats in the fall). A year ago, the same time slot averaged 408,000 viewers. Series' two-hour rival, World Poker Tour, pulled in 844,000 viewers through July on the Travel Channel, nearly triple what the channel drew last year. Imagine how many people might have tuned in if they knew there was a Travel Channel.

Link

The New York Post has an article on the World Poker Tour. It's brief, but it mentions some good specifics on viewership:

Just how popular is the show? Well, the first-season reruns are actually cashing in more viewers than they did the first time around - over 900,000 viewers each night.

The "championship" game from the first season, which aired last June, drew over 1.1 million viewers - huge numbers for a niche cable network like The Travel Channel.

Link

There's a new in-depth AP article on Chris Moneymaker's journey to the WSOP crown. It has some new information, like the struggles that he had with hold'em and his other gambling endeavors:

Moneymaker was a Pokerstars regular, using the handle "Money800." As he struggled to learn the intricacies of no-limit Texas Hold 'em, he'd lost more than $15,000 in the past year.

In college, he'd been a sports gambling addict, winning and losing more than $50,000. His then-girlfriend, now wife, Kelly, finally delivered an ultimatum: sports betting or me.

Link

There's an interesting article in the LV Mercury about the denizens of Las Vegas' shady side.

"This is a place for predators who prey upon the weak," says professional poker player Mike Dickinson while seated at a medium-stakes Texas hold 'em game in the Bellagio poker room.

Link

In the past week, members of the Lederer family are now the #1 (Howard), #3 (Annie Duke), and #4 (Katy) searches that people who came here via Google were looking for? That's about 12.7% of the total searches that brought people here. If you came here via Google, the odds that you searched for one of the Lederer family is about the same as A♠A♥ being cracked by J♠5♦.

There's a new TV series debuting in September, set in a casino, to be shown on NBC in prime time, starring James Caan! It looks like this may be a successor to Lucky's seat as the best gambling drama on TV.

Premiering Sept. 22, "Las Vegas" stars James Caan as Big Ed Deline, the Montecito Resort & Casino's beleaguered surveillance chief who keeps everyone in line but his spirited daughter (Molly Sims).

Link

It didn't take long... Adrian McPherson (see here) has enrolled at Tennessee State, and appears to be readying for a bid for reinstatement and a chance to play on the TSU football program. The coach wants him, and the athletic director is at least ambivalent about it. Link

I guess it's not surprising that he's at TSU, a team that has at best shown moral ambivalence in the past, and at worst flagrantly violated NCAA rules and ethics.

I think the craziest thing through all of this is that the debate is solely around whether McPherson bet on his own games. This guy is an admitted felon who should be in jail but got off because of his semi-celebrity status. If I was running a school, I wouldn't want him at my school even if he wasn't going to play ball.

Jeffrey Trauman, the professional online sports gambler who got busted after he reported his winnings to the IRS (see previous entry), pleaded guilty last week. He was just given a $500 fine with a one-year deferred sentence. Link

Mark Morford claims that he has found his own little hell, and it's a bingo room in Reno. Very odd, dark, funny article.

This room, this mind-set, it is devoid of sunlight or beauty or nuanced thought, a breeding ground of catatonia and intellectual anesthesia and careening obesity and a weird sense of hopelessness, of defeat, and you want to shrug it all off and let it be and remember that just because it's not your thing doesn't mean it's necessarily evil or malevolent or karmically debilitating. But you can't. It just won't let you.

Link

Apparently the word is starting to get out about the film Stuey. This just in from the StueyMovie mailing list:

From: AWV <awvprod@bellsouth.net>
Subject: STUEY WEBSITE GOES CRAZY, SCREENING AT DGA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Perhaps it's the mini-documentary on Stu Ungar that's been running on ESPN, Card Player's feature articles on the film, the favorable reviews, sold-out festival screenings, or a combination of them all, but the hits on the STUEY website (www.stueymovie.com) have jumped to over 10,000 A DAY, recently causing the server to crash -- TWICE. "We can't answer all the emails fast enough," said writer/director A.W. Vidmer. "It's incredibly exciting." The STUEYMOVIE Yahoo group now boasts 76 members as well.

STUEY has also been invited to screen for distributors and DGA members at the Film Finders series at the Director's Guild of America on October 3rd, following screenings at the Boston and San Diego Film Festivals.

For more information, trailers, and reviews:

http://www.stueymovie.com/

I caught the "mini-documentary" on ESPN over the weekend. It was a 15-minute piece on SportsCenter about Stu Ungar's life and death. As expected they spent more time on his life off the table than on, but it still came across as a pretty balanced account of his life. They included quotes from Nolan Dalla and Mike Sexton, and talked about Dalla's upcoming book on Ungar, but didn't mention the movie.

Now if only Stuey would get picked up and run in Austin...

Wired has an article about a new very high-tech card-counter-detection system that should send a chill down the spine of every aspiring card counter.

MindPlay works by placing a set of 14 digital cameras around a specially built blackjack table tray. The optical equipment registers every card in play by reading special invisible ink printed on them.

But that isn't the only trick up MindPlay's sleeve. It can recognize the differences between a player's drink, a napkin, an ashtray, a stack of chips being held by a player and a pile of chips in play, Soltys said. And it tracks the location and value of chips by comparing 3-D models of them in a database to all objects on the table.

Link (via Slashdot)

If it's not apparent from the technologies talked about in this article, card counting will be all but impossible within a few years, anywhere in the world. It's already extremely difficult to make more than a few thousand a year as a card counter in the U.S.

If anything it's good news for poker, which should continue to have a sunny future as a casino game where it's possible to have a positive expectation.

The New York Times ran a fairly well-written article this weekend on the bookies who populate Costa Rica and some of their recent woes with American anti-gambling laws.

Betting operations are now among San Jose's most lucrative and visible enterprises, and their success has transformed the city. One prominent suburban landmark is an office building occupied by an outfit called BETonSPORTS.com. Throughout its nine floors, 1,500 Costa Ricans are employed (in mostly clerical positions) and offered amenities like on-site day care and classes to improve their English.

Link

The NYC NPR affiliate interviewed Katy Lederer (author of Poker Face, currently 24th on the poker bestsellers list) last week. The full 15-minute audio of the interview is online. She talks primarily about her childhood and the family's interest in games and competition. I am looking forward to reading her book; she mentioned that no less than 100 pages of the book cover Howard's genesis into a professional poker player. Link

One of the smaller offenders in the large Iowa sports betting bust from a few months ago is a tire dealer, and has capitalized on his arrest by using it in ads for his tire company.

The local ad includes his police mug shot and phrases such as "Don't gamble . . . with your tires" and "Bet you $20 you won't come in for a new set of tires."

He claims business has been up $10,000 a month since the bust. Link

"Kung Pao Chicken" or "Ten Card Chicken" is a poker variant invented by the author over at Famous and Nonfamous Strangers. Definitely a candidate for all you crazy game lovers out there. Link

If you play poker, and don't have a method for memorizing your hole cards, you should start using one. No matter what limit you play at, peeking at your hole cards during the game can be a significant tell. The safest way to avoid giving anything away is to memorize your hole cards.

This skill fits in the category of "important skills you'll never pick up playing online poker". I also think it's a skill that you need to have a standardized process for to avoid giving away tells -- especially at mid-upper limits and in tournaments.

When I'm playing hold'em, I wait until it's my turn to act to look at my cards. Some people prefer looking right when they're dealt, but the problem with this is that you miss other people's peeks and reactions. It also maximizes the time between you seeing your cards and your action, which in turn maximizes the time you're exposed to making common tells such as anxiously looking at your chip stack, or readying your cards to muck.

Before I look at my cards, I also look at the people yet to act. Usually at least half of them have already looked at their cards, and this can give valuable information. Most notably, people usually don't care about giving away tells if they are intending to fold their hand. They'll have their cards pulled up from the felt ready to toss, or not have their regular $1 chip on their cards, or sometimes even be showing their cards much more than normal. This can be really useful info if you're attempting a steal. One tournament I played in I looked around in middle position and it appeared that everyone left to act was intending to fold. I raised with my absolute trash hand, and sure enough took the blinds.

When I do look at my cards, I peek at them for a fixed amount of time, every time, about 2 seconds. I also think it's important to keep this ritual fixed every hand. A hand like 2 black aces doesn't take as long to memorize as QhTc; keeping the amount of time you stare at your cards fixed will help to minimize any tells here too.

I remember my cards in fixed order: high card-low card-high card suit-low card suit. So if I'm dealt QhTc, I think "queen-ten-hearts-clubs". When I started doing this it only took me a few hours of live poker to get to the point where I never forgot my hand after that.

Some people use other systems. I saw a post a long time ago on rec.gambling.poker about someone who couldn't remember suits well, but developed mnemonics for the 12 ordered combinations of mixed suits - QhTd would be "queen-ten-hard drive" etc. I don't find this easier to remember but some people may.

I don't intend to write a lot of poker advice here, but this seemed like one important point that aspiring Chris Moneymakers should be aware of.

The cigar company Punch is running a poker tournament promotion at tobacconists nationwide. There are upcoming events in Virginia and Florida with apparently more to come. It doesn't sound like the tournaments involve much skill.

Free poker tournaments will take place at participating tobacconists. Participants will be bankrolled with $800 in chips, then play one round comprising three poker deals of five-card draw. After three hands, the player with the most money becomes a finalist and will play other round winners from the same event at the end of the night. All finalists win a box of 10 Punch Pitas and a pack of Punch playing cards. (No, winners can't cash in their chips.)

Link

I'd like to give a quick shout-out to the various authors who have stopped by this site recently.

Dave Schwarz
Gary Carson
Larry Phillips
Lynn Goya
Mason Malmuth

It's great to know that some of the real poker minds out there actually read this site from time to time.

Howard Lederer has a fantastic diary-style report of his World Series experience this year up over at The Gutshot Poker Collective. It's peppered with his typical understated, modest style.

I opened a lot of pots and won a lot of antes. When I got called, I usually flopped a good enough hand to bet, and I seldom got raised. I don't think I saw a river card after level 3 and I finished day 1 with about 30,000. Fewer than 400 players survived day 1. I was happy to be one of them. I also had accomplished one of my goals heading into the day. I hadn't burnt myself out. You can't sustain total concentration for five straight days. I skated through day 1 as planned and I hadn't left anything on the table. I felt fresh and ready to play all five days.

Link

Diversion of the day: Poker cartoons from The New Yorker. My favorite is the wife saying to her husband "Why do you keep raising me when you know I’m bluffing?" Link

I once played poker in London with a guy who had been banned for life from another English casino for getting into a fight over 10 years ago. There's a funny (fictional) little story over at What Green Tastes Like about getting banned from various casino games:

I'm not allowed to play roulette ever since the day I tried to win some serious cash by betting on a number right in front of me and, if my number didn't come up, I'd pull it off real quick before anyone noticed.

Well, the dealer noticed like... the first time. He told me not to take my money off because that's cheating.

"Cheat THIS!" I yelled at I threw a handful of chips in his face and then scooped up an armload of dealers chips. I ran off real quick like with probably 100,000 dollars in chips in my arms.

Link

Katy Lederer will be reading from Poker Face (currently 29th on the poker bestseller list) this Monday, August 18th in Cambridge, MA. Go check her out if you're up there! Link

There's a good article on Wired about Larry DeMar, a former pinball game designer who has recently moved over to the more-lucrative field of video poker design:

Companies like IGT value the arcade guys for their ability to devise clever concepts that stand out in a crowded market. Arcade veterans like DeMar, in turn, view casino gaming as a new and challenging arena with enormous profit potential. A top-selling game can reap more than $1 million per month in royalties for its creator. No wonder a half-dozen elite developers and artists have moved to casino machines over the past few years.

Link

For those of you in Austin, it looks like the Austin Poker Meetup group has finally achieved critical mass. The membership has gone from 10 or 20 to almost 70 in the past couple weeks, making it the 6th biggest US poker meetup, and I see a lot more people on the group interested in organizing games.

If you are in any city with a poker meetup and are interested in meeting new players, it's worth checking out. I went to the last one and there were only three other people there, but every one of them was interested in playing, and all of them have showed up to my game since then.

For next Tuesday's meetup, I plan on attending and getting a game together directly after the meetup back at my place.

Update: I attended the Tuesday (8/19/03) Meetup. There were 12 or 14 people there! A bunch came back to my place for a game, which lasted to about midnight. I'll probably start going to these every month to meet new players. Also, total membership is up to 87, making it the 4th largest poker meetup group in the US!

joshc over at LiveJournal posted some rather funny photos of a "mesh hat" poker night with his friends: Link

NOTE: the discussion on this site has been moved to the forums at Dopamine Agonist Help Center, please go there for continuing conversation.

---

Mirapex, a drug given to Parkinson's disease patients has been shown to cause compulsive gambling.

An unusually large number of patients taking Mirapex gambled themselves into debt, while patients taking other drugs did not, the team at the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Research Center in Phoenix, Arizona reported.

Link (thanks, Neil and Jules!)

Of 529 Mirapex patients studied, 9 developed compulsive gambling habits. None of them had any history of compulsive gambling. No patients studied who were not taking Mirapex became compulsive gamblers.

If they're able to trace the root cause of what caused the compulsive gambling, it could lead to some possible treatments for extreme problem gamblers, or at least a better understanding about chemical origins of behaviors like this. On the other hand, it could also lead to the overprescription of drugs for anyone who loses more than $100 in one sitting.

This weekend The Observor ran a relatively well-informed article about online poker, by a journalist who himself seems to enjoy it.

It's 2am in London and I'm facing a $250 raise at a the poker table in cyberspace. I can't see my opponent's face, let alone peer deep into the whites of his eyes, but I know he's sitting in Amarillo, Texas, using the (presumably) false name of FatMan, and has been playing pretty aggressively for the past three hours.

Link

Newsday has run a review of Poker Face, the autobiography by the sister of Annie Duke and Howard Lederer. The reviewer is obviously uninformed about the poker world, but the book nonetheless sounds like a good read. Link

Amarillo Slim was indicted on Friday, on charges that he assaulted a 12-year-old girl. Link

Mr. Helpful shares some of his recent success in the $5.50 buyin sit'n'go tournaments at Pokerstars.

My plan is to hit a certain number in my bankroll. Then I will move up to the next level of tournament ($11 buy ins) where the payouts double. I then have another number to hit in my bankroll before moving up to the next level and so on. There is a point where you can have the potential to make a tidy sum.

Link There is, however, also a point as buyins increase at which the level of play increases to where your hourly expectation is lower than at the lower buyins. I see significant differences in skill between the lowest buyin tables and second-lowest, both online and in brick-and-mortar rooms (for instance, the 8/16 games at the Bellagio tend to be tougher than the 4/8 tables).

The trick is finding your inflection point before you reach the level where you're losing money. In Vegas I play 15/30 hold'em, which is probably the optimum level for my abilities. I'm fairly certain my hourly expectation would decrease (and possibly go negative) if I moved to 30/60.

There's a somewhat entertaining bad beat story over at Stray Toaster:

Scene one. Darkened room, smoke hangs heavy in the air. The guns are checked behind the bar, but the audience has the feeling both cowboys are packing. The game is standard seven card stud. There is one card to go, Sucker has four hearts showing, whereas Jammeister has a pair.

Link Can you guess where it goes from here? Hint: the name "Sucker" may or may not be a tell.

Good news: the World Poker Tour has re-signed with the Travel Channel, in a deal that gives them season 2 and an option for five more seasons. Link

The Sands Casino in Atlantic City is making a serious bid to rebrand itself as the "Binionesque" casino of A.C., including offering 10x craps odds, single 0 roulette, and placing more emphasis on poker:

Like Binion's Horseshoe, Sands is making a poker a cornerstone of its business. The Showdown at the Sands, a poker tournament with a $1 million first prize, takes place Nov. 14-24. Seven-card stud tournaments take place Wednesdays through Sept. 24 and Texas Hold 'Em tournaments take place Fridays through Sept. 26.

For roulette players, single-zero tables are a big deal: 2.63% edge, which is half the typical 5.26%. Link

About Argentinian President Nestor Kirchner:

Kirchner plays his political cards like a poker player who has swallowed a bottle of amphetamines.

Now that's a funny image. Link

There's a great AP story on Tommy Glen Carmichael, who made his living for almost 20 years by inventing and using devices to force slot machines into paying out credits.

By about 1992, the device was defeating hoppers everywhere, and Carmichael was making thousands selling it to other slot cheats. Customers found Carmichael through word of mouth in the cheating underworld.

"It was overpowering," Criner said, claiming payoffs of $10,000 a day.

Link

24/7: Living It Up and Doubling Down in the New Las Vegas has burst onto the vegas bestseller list in 11th spot even though it's 4 years old, apparently due to it being reduced to $4.99. I threw it into my last order. It looks like an interesting story.

In other book news, I'm about halfway through Suburban Xanadu. It is a very good book, which tells a really interesting story about the building of Las Vegas. I'll post a full review when I'm done. The most interesting aspect of it is how different the story here is from my previous understanding of the history of Las Vegas, which admittedly was gleaned largely from films, novels and short newspaper articles.

SongMonk wrote this entry about getting his second hold'em royal flush in less than two months. Quite a run!

This is hard for even me to believe, but I have never hit a royal flush in hold'em. I've been playing hold'em since 1995. After I ran some numbers, I'm also surprised that I've only played about 30,000-45,000 hands of hold'em.

A royal flush in holdem is expected to occur once every 30,940 hands, which means that I'm not a total aberration, although I am expected to have seen one so far.

Want to estimate how many royal flushes you should have received by now? Playing in an average cardroom or home game where you get about 35 hands per hour, you should see one royal flush every 884 hours of poker.

In the post about SongMonk's first royal flush, tall_man compared a hole-in-one in golf to a royal flush in 5 cards (1 in 649,470). That sounded high to me. In fact, according to this article in Golf Today Magazine, the odds of a hole in one are between 1 in 20,000 and 1 in 33,000. While these odds are much more dependent on skill than the pure chance of getting dealt a royal flush in poker, you can see that the odds of getting a hole-in-one are roughly equivalent to getting a royal flush in hold'em.

The irony here is that I've played 30,000-45,000 hands of hold'em and have never hit a royal flush, whereas I've played maybe two dozen rounds of golf in my life and got a hole-in-one the second time I ever played.

The Florida poker expansion bill became law today, allowing poker games to go to the "high stakes" of $1-$2, max 3 raises per round. Good news for Florida poker players. Jeb Bush neither vetoed nor signed the bill by the deadline of midnight last night, which caused it to become law. Link

Update: if you're looking for information on Florida poker room locations, the best info I have is here.

On Friday, Nevada state tax on beer and liquor increased by 75%. A side effect of this tax increase is the hit that Nevada casinos will take on free drinks they give out. Link (via about.com)

Station casinos estimate the tax will cost them $500,000 more per year. I wonder how much more tax the casinos will be willing to bear before ceasing their free drinks policy? Hopefully quite a bit more!

The Texas Lottery Commission voted to join the Mega Millions lottery, rather than Powerball, on Tuesday. Link (via Casino [ptz])

Remember, just because the jackpots are bigger doesn't mean your odds are any better. I still don't understand why a $250m jackpot is so much more appealling to people than a $10m jackpot. Either one of them would be enough for me to retire on. And either one of them gives me a highly negative expected value.

For a humorous flight of fancy, there's been an ongoing debate over at The Links on how to stage a fair Ultimate Animal Fighting Championship. Link (via The End of The Bench)

Example of the ideas being batted around:

Here's some possible matchups:
-- A man with a stick Vs a deer
-- A kangaroo Vs a puma - in a match made for the old school sneaker freaks
-- A horse Vs a zebra -- This falls under the "when continents collide" category, where I tried to pair up animals on oppostie sides of the world who I thought to be equivalents. Another matchup in this category could be the battle of popular worldwide roadkill: the deer Vs the kangaroo.
-- A kodiak bear Vs a lion- I really think bears would clean up in the UAFC.
-- Aligator Vs Crocodile- due to their own inabilities to survive in the others' environment, they'd have to fight in a white room with no water.

Not the pinnacle of practicality, or humane treatment of animals, but certainly a fun mental exercise for any handicappers out there.

Over at poker-images.com is a cool library of poker-themed photographs. Link

The UNLV Gaming Studies Research Center has a nice online exhibition covering the history of the World Series of Poker. It features a great image gallery which includes some terrific shots of Doyle Brunson, Johnny Moss and Amarillo Slim from the 70's. Link

There's a restaurant in Australia that serves a dish called "King Doo Spiced Pork Ribs". I'd like to go there just to order it. Link

As there doesn't seem to be any serious literature about this on the web, I probably need to explain a little more for anyone who hasn't played poker in California.

"King Doo" is my favorite mispronounced hold'em hand -- a.k.a. King-Deuce.

Usage: "You play king doo! And you heet the runnah-runnah! You--so--laaahky!"

Coincidentally, in Tibeton Astrology there is a Demon King Doo-gyay, who is a war god worshipped when engaging in "wrathful activities and defeating enemies". I suppose that includes hitting a runner-runner straight flush with the doo in your king-doo offsuit?

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