October 15th, 2008, Today marks the tenth anniversary of the opening of Bellagio in Las Vegas. With the current economic hard times in the whole wide world and Las Vegas too; one wonders if the most recent “Golden Age” of Las Vegas is over.

Well, here is an article from the Las Vegas Sun from exactly ten years ago today. It’s a bit long, if you get the ‘picture’ before the end, might I suggest you skip down to the last line of the article. Is there a word “anti-prophetic”?

Las Vegas Sun
Gary Thompson
October 15, 1998

And so it begins: the latest, the greatest — and what many believe will be the last — tidal wave of new resort openings in Las Vegas.

Tonight’s unveiling of Bellagio, the most expensive hotel-casino ever built, begins a two-year binge of resort openings that will boost the Las Vegas-area hotel-room inventory 20.5 percent in the next 24 months.

The critical question: Will those $9 billion of new resorts stimulate enough visitor demand to fill — year-round — the 127,542 total rooms scheduled to be open in Las Vegas by 2001?

It won’t be solely up to Bellagio, the spectacular $1.6 billion, 3,005-room Mirage Resorts Inc. property boasting a $300 million art collection, 15 of the world’s top restaurants, the most costly production show ever staged and some of the highest-end retail shops found this side of Rodeo Drive.

The other new resorts opening over the next two years must be able to buttress Bellagio’s implicit promise — that the “new” Las Vegas offers something far more fulfilling than the slot machines, table games, $2 buffets and second-tier entertainers you can find at any almost casino in the country.

In addition to Bellagio, the new projects include Circus Circus Enterprises Inc.’s Mandalay Bay, Hilton Hotels Corp.’s Paris, Sheldon Adelson’s The Venetian, Jack Sommer’s Aladdin, the Resort at Summerlin and expansions at the MGM Grand and Rio.

It is common knowledge that the key to becoming a winning player at the crazy game we call Texas Hold’em is volume, and plenty of it. After all, there are 1,362 possible starting hand combinations (169 if you are not bothered about which order the suits are) and literally thousands of combinations that can fall on each street. For example, if two players held Ac Ad and Kc Kd respectively and both ended up all-in on a Tc 8d 7h flop, there are 990 possible results for this exact match up. For those of you who are interested, Ac Ad wins exactly 90% of the time here.

Obviously, this means that this AA combination would win 891 of the 990 encounters but would lose 99 of them if you run the hand an infinite number of times. Of course, the Poker Gods (amen) do not like to stick to these “rules” and we will often see KK win an “unfair” amount of the time. It seems unfair because we only remember the short-term and seem to forget that in order for AA to win 90% of the time.

The key to making the percentages we know to run true is to play plenty of hands but the downside to playing many hands is poker burnout. I have been suffering from this for the past month or so and as a result, I fell out of love with the game and started making sub-optimal decisions that ultimately cost me money. However, I think I have found the missing link that allows me to play a lot of hands and still enjoy them and to be honest, it is so simple it is untrue.

Unless you are super-human, you simply have to have interests outside of poker. Simple as that. I write about poker four to five times per week, help with the running of the forum at Raise The River everyday and then play poker at some point most days. It felt as if there was no getting away from poker and it was all I did.

Sessions, especially losing ones, blended into one and I started to hate poker, take beats personally and I let it start affecting my life away from the tables. Not good. However, over the past couple of weeks I have made a conscious effort to separate my poker life from my personal life. I have taken Step-Pud and Mrs P to various parks, gone on shopping trips, and even had non-poker days where I do nothing related to poker, well almost nothing, I still HAVE to check various forums, it’s in my blood!

Having this life away from the virtual felt has made me and those around me happier and my results have improved drastically. Beats no longer affect me and when I want to play I have been able to play decent sessions. Over the past couple of days I have managed to log 1,126 hands of NL20, but still managed to find time for family and non-poker related activities so I am still eager to play when I get the chance and I am not just playing because I can.

Since this is ultimately a poker blog I might as well give you my stats! I have played 1,126 hands of full ring NL20, running at 18.1/11.9/2.25 and winning at a rate of 16.25BB/100. Whilst this sample size is meaningless, I am happy with the way things are progressing despite the fact I was at more than double the profit just 200 hands ago, before I lost a couple of stacks.

My biggest pot won so far is from flopping a full house against a villain who had flopped trips. I also won a nice pot when I cracked the bullets of a player playing a similar style to what I do I thought about three-betting preflop but I did not want to find myself in a tricky spot by being four-bet on. By flat calling I get to play against all of his range, not just his four-bet range. Obviously, the flop is pretty good and I’m happy to get my money in here, especially against AA!

I am not sure I like my play that resulted in my biggest loss. The turn is a great card for me as it gives me a set but also competes a straight for JT. I never put him on JT despite him running at 74/16/1 over 31 hands. I guess that is poker.

Well, this post has turned into a monster so I will leave it there for now!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

A couple of weeks ago I received a poker e-mail in my inbox. As one of the four hundred poker e-mails I receive daily, I pretty much ignored it - until I noticed the words “win a share of £25k” in the title. Suddenly I was interested.

It was an invitation to a Betfair freeroll, where the top twenty players would win a seat at the WSOPE after-party event at the Empire, Leicester Square. So last Sunday night, I sat down in the living room with my laptop and tried to qualify. Four hundred players from all over Europe and me!

It started off swimmingly, and I built a nice stack - and then there were three hundred players left, then two hundred, and then a hundred. This was the stage where I actually began to think I might qualify, and it started to become exciting. I knew it was exciting, because when I become excited I start talking to the laptop - “yes, you beauty” - “ship it” - “fold, please fold”. This is also the stage that my wife starts giving me some strange looks from the other side of the room.

We were suddenly down to near the bubble - and I was on the bubble line. I looked down and saw I had Ace-King. My stack wasn’t huge, so I only had one option. I shoved….

And I got called. By a pair of eights. It’s a coin-flip for my tournament life.

“Ace or King” I shout as the flop comes down. No Ace, no King.

“Ace or King” I shout, my voice a little higher, as the turn card appears. No Ace, no King.

“Ace or King” I shout, my voice so high that I shatter three windows and a pack of dogs surround the house. The river card appears. No Ace, no King….

I had failed at the very last, one hand away from qualification.

My journey was over.

Or so I thought.

On Tuesday afternoon I received a phonecall. A rather attractive sounding female voice was on the other end of the line - so I immediately had it tagged as a wrong number, but no, it was a Betfair representative. Some players wouldn’t be able to make the live event, so I was asked if I’d like a seat. “Oh, go on then” I say, trying to sound cool, whilst doing a Peter Crouch-like robotic dance around the kitchen.

So now I’m all set and ready to go.

I have very little live experience, so my expectations aren’t particularly high, and any kind of result I have will be a huge bonus - but with the free food and drink on offer I know it’s going to be a very enjoyable day.

The game takes place this Saturday (18th October 2008), and I’ll be back with a full report after the event.

Read more Nick Cantwell on the wonderfully named hairygymnast.com

Chad
Johnson had his best game of the season last week against the Jets, which is
great news. Five receptions and 57 yards. Both are season highs. Start engraving
his name in that MVP trophy.

Chad also ranks 52nd in the league in receiving yards, placing him behind
such luminaries as Rashied Davis, Bobby Wade, and Greg Camarillo.

Would you like to know why? Obviously,
it’s because the Bengals don’t want him to succeed.

"I think (the trade demand) might be part of why my production is down this year," said Ocho
Cinco, who has just 19 receptions and one touchdown for the 0-6 Bengals. "To rant and rave in the offseason like that and to come back and expect to be productive or expect them to use me the same way they used me in the past is very unlikely. That’s like me talking about you guys in a negative way and then me expecting you all to be my No. 1 fan. I made my bed. I have to lay in it."

"I’ve apologized about it a million times to my team, my organization, my fans. … I wouldn’t say it’s somewhat of a punishment, but you open your mouth and this is what you get, and I understand that."

I like the theory. The Bengals are keeping Chad from reaching his potential.
Some might argue that it’s the other way around. Still, let’s not dismiss Chad’s
theory immediately.

One possibility is that Mike Brown, Marvin Lewis, offensive coordinator Bob
Bratkowski, Carson Palmer, and Ryan Fitzpatrick are all part of a conspiracy to
keep the ball out of Chad’s hands, as a punishment for things he said this
offseason, even if it means that the Bengals will start the season 0-6 and make
themselves laughingstocks of the sports world.

Another possibility is that the Bengals offense is just brutal, presents no
running game for opposing teams to worry about, and suffers from the loss of
Carson Palmer.

I don’t know. Both seem plausible.

Image: US Presswire

The curse of the Penn State running backs strikes again. Fox Sports Net’s J.C. Pearsen is reporting that the Kansas City Chiefs have suspended RB Larry Johnson for Sunday’s game against the Titans. This on the heels of Johnson’s third assault charge, stemming from an incident in February. (Yeah, we don’t understand the eight-month lag either. Something about an uncooperative witness, which is often code for ‘these charges will soon be dropped’. Judge for yourself.)

For a 1-4 team, the Chiefs are making an awful lot of headlines this week. First they don’t trade Tony Gonzalez and now they reportedly suspend their other lone offensive weapon. (Although, with the way Johnson has run this year, that weapon is more like a dulled spork.) 

The suspension might be good news for Johnson fantasy owners who now won’t have to grapple with the decision of whether to play the underperforming back against one of the league’s top defenses, only to see him rush 21 times for 47 yards. (Not that I’m a bitter LJ owner or anything.)

Update: Johnson will be deactivated for Sunday’s game, but Chiefs coach Herm Edwards said the assault charge filed against the running back last week was not a factor in the decision. Edwards will sit Johnson because of an unspecified violation of team rules. No suspension was handed down, which means that Johnson will get a paycheck for his forced Sunday no-show. 

Photo via Getty Images