I was having a very good tournament and I was chip leader at my table with only two tables left. I was very deep and playing very aggressive against a weak table. In the hand of the night I was on the button and watching my opponents fold until a weak older woman flat called from the hijack position, The cutoff folded and I raised to five times the blind without looking at my cards. I figured my weak opponent would fold rather than commit half her stack. I was staring her down as I made the raise to read her reaction. She almost immediately moved all-in and I grabbed a stack of large denomination chips and set them in the middle of the table.

Everything seemed to be fine at this point. I took a quick glance at my hole cards for the first time and I was happy to see a KJ. The old woman tabled AQ and I turned up my KJ. About that very moent all hell broke loose.

The big blind had not mucked his hand and was now letting the dealer that he had not acted. With both hands tabled face up this seemed like a good time to call for a floor man. The dealer had counted the stack of the woman and had pared my over sized stack of chips to an equal amount. Of course the floor took forever to arrive at the table. By my own admission I was irritated and very upset with the whole mess.

I immediately made enemies with the staff as the dealer tried to tell an entirely different story of what had happened. The major sticking points of the argument was wether I called the all-in or actually had raised by putting so many chips into the pot. The fact that I put more than four times the amount of her all-in into the pot speaks for itself. The second was the fact that the dealer asked for the hands to be turned up. The dealer claimed he did not ask for both hands to be turned up. Needless to say I lost the argument.

My hand was dead, The all-in hand is still live. All the chips I put into the pot have to remain in the pot. The big blind has the option to call and of course does call with 10-7 offsuit scooping the side pot against my dead hand. I walked away to keep from going to jail. I still had chips but my mind was in a very bad place when I came back to the table.

I now have a new experience to add to my list of bad beats.

Because I grew up and lived in Crescent City before heading to college in Sacramento, I have spent most of my life in northern California. I moved to Fresno almost 11 years ago and now have a home base in the central valley of California. My early poker revolved around northern California and southern Oregon with the occasional Reno trip thrown into the mix. I have many fond memories of those Reno trips. I managed to play many small buy-in tournaments at the Peppermill and the Hilton. These were very good tournaments and the level of competition was pretty stiff for a small town boy.

My younger friends asked me about the poker player I was playing with in those days and I rattled off the names of quite a few old timers. Finally, the question of the best poker player from Reno came up. I thought about it quite a bit and hedged my answer the best I could. I really had three names I wanted to mention off the top of my head and that was without any research or discussion.
The first guy I brought up was Jack Fox. At one time Jack was playing tournament poker as well as anyone and I believe he was considering playing full time. Yes Jack was an attorney and had a full time job. I believe Jack won the best all-around at the Peppermill a couple times. I remember chatting with Jack at Binion’s one year during the World Series of Poker. I do not remember the year butt it was probably 97 or 98. I am not sure what happened to Jack and I do not know how many more tournaments he played. I just remember him being one of the best tournament players in Reno for a couple years.

The second guy is actually a GIRL. Jennifer Harman was born and raised in the Reno area and got her poker start in Reno before moving on to bigger and better games in California and Las Vegas. Jennifer plays in the biggest cash games in the world and is without a doubt one of the best female cash game players ever. Jennifer has not written the final chapters of her poker story and if her health holds up she will have many more years to polish that resume.

The third guy I mentioned and the one I unofficially anointed the greatest player ever to come from Reno is Hans “Tuna” Lund. Tuna was the greatest tournament player ever to come out of Reno. Tuna had a second and third place finish in the main event. Tuna is also the only man ever to lose the title on the river card. In a heads up hand with Mansour Matloubi, Tuna had him all-in and slightly covered. Tuna had made two pair on the turn aces and nines against Matloubi’s pocket tens. Matloubi had exactly two tens to draw to and a ten came on the river. Tuna played the Peppermill tournaments with us many times and he even made the trip to Casino Club in Redding for the End of the Rainbow tournament. Tuna took many years away from poker to be with his family and was away from the game for nearly a decade. Tuna won some big tournaments and actually won two WSOP bracelets. All told he had tournament wins of three million dollars. In 2006 he returned to poker and cashed in the main event in both 2006 and 2007. He also placed in two WPT events when he rejoined the poker scene. The old guy still had game. As is often the case, by the time I tried to look him up and see how he was doing I found out he had passed away in November 2009 at the age of 59. The Big Tuna was one hell of a player and is still the best ever to come from Reno.

There may be players that came from Reno and I have overlooked them because I never had the opportunity to play with them. If so I apologize for any omission and I assure you no slight was intended.

“You’ve got to have the heart of a lion — play fearless, don’t be afraid and, when you roar, they better back up.” - Hans “Tuna” Lund.

I have written stories about how I made huge mistakes because I did not know all the details of promotions that were running in the casino. I basically told the story and detailed how I lost out on thousands of dollars because I did not know the details of the promotions. I am sure those stories are probably a little boring and everyone has the attitude that it could never happen to them,

Well this time the failure was not mine. I guess I failed to make my point with my coworkers and readers. So I will take a very small piece of the fault for this one. My co-worker made a trip to Las Vegas with his family and actually ended up jumping into a small no-limit game one night.

I run into the guy at work and he looks at me and says quite dramatically, “I got robbed in Vegas”. I looked at him and tried to find a little sympathy and yet I was wanting to hear the story behind how one of my co-workers managed to get himself into such a predicament.

“What happened?”

“I was robbed by the casino.”

I could not stand it; I had to hear this story. So I asked for the whole story so I could render a few words of wisdom and convince my young friend that the casinos are not robbing people. To the best of my ability here is the retelling of the story.

I jump into the $1-2 no limit game about three in the morning and we are playing six handed. I ask the dealer if they have a bad beat jackpot and he says no but they have high hands for quads or better with both hole cards playing. He pointed at a reader board with all the payouts scrolling by. After a few minutes I pick up pocket sixes in the small blind and throw in the additional dollar to see a flop of 966. There are two other players in the hand and I check to let them catch up. The hand checks around on the flop and turn. On the river I figure I already have the $500 bonus for the quads and I bet out $30 and both players fold. I throw over my hand to collect my $500. The floor man comes over and tells me there has to be at least $10 in the pot to qualify for the bonus.

My friend wants no part of hearing the rules. A binder is produced from the podium and he is shown the fine print of the promotion. He will not listen or be comforted and finally a casino manager is called to talk to him. In the end, my friend believes to this moment he was screwed.

I listened to the whole story and named the casino as soon as he was done with the story and confirmed that those are the rules. He was not screwed or cheated. In the end it was his responsibility to know the details of the promotion.

I will say it one more time; learn the lesson for free so you do not have to lose hundreds or thousands of dollars because you did not make the $2 bet you needed to make the pot a full ten bucks.

I wrote about the brazen robbery of the Bellagio craps table by a motorcycle helmet wearing bandit. The robber got away with a reported $1.5 million in chips. I wrote a detailed piece on the value of the chips being far less than face value.

The whole case went down approximately as I had detailed with the casino removing the $25,000 chips from circulation and notifying the world that they must be turned in to the casino within 90 days or they will become worthless. So the chances of doing anything with the $25,000 chips is close to zero and would bring unbelievable heat if anyone tried to cash one. My sympathies to any poor bastard out there that has one of those chips in his pocket from legitimate means.

The robber had been hanging out at the Bellagio and playing blackjack and losing close to $100,000 in the last couple of weeks. He could have easily been sliding in the small denomination chips like the hundreds. The casino keeps a pretty good track of players and all their losses and was probably already very suspicious of the young man and his never ending supply of chips. They comped him and kept him in the casino living large for a couple weeks as he drained his supply of low denomination chips.

I was never contacted in this case and my writing was purely for everyone’s amusement. I had mentioned that poker players have large denomination chips stashed in their safe deposit boxes at the Bellagio and they are probably the only people that could slip in a few $5,000 chips without taking heat. Well our fine young criminal got the message of how to get rid of the chips and the only problem he had was he did not know any high limit poker players. He went to the internet looking for high limit poker players to sell chips to. His ad was answered and a deal was set up to buy the chips at a discounted rate. His plan looked good right up to the point that the badges and hand cuffs came out.

He was actually arrested in his comp room at the Bellagio. He is probably lucky that the police found him as quickly as they did. There are far worse people hanging around Las Vegas looking for an easy way to make a buck and he could have easily been beaten and robbed if not killed.

Well young Anthony, if you hatched your plan from reading my blog, I guess I should have written something about you being a dumbass and not having the knowledge and patience to pull off this scam. You would have been better served to take the chips to a strip club and bought a lap dance from a strung out dancer that would have no memory of you in the morning. I guess you were both desperate and stupid.

My good friend, DJ MTM, asked me to write a piece for my blog. As he asked me to write the piece he believed I had already written a story about it in the past and he just wanted to read it to reinforce the ideas. I had him explain what he was looking for and decided I would crank out something fresh. Things change and I change and I enjoy writing the modern piece and going back and looking at what I wrote about the same thing years earlier.

The concept is simple enough. Why do winning poker player go broke? Most do and the reasons are many but they generally revolve around a few basic ideas and concepts. My primary focus has always been poor planning and budgeting. My second thought is generally a lack of self-discipline. I have a newer third reason and it centers on the person’s ability to say no. These seem to be the major problems for winning poker players who end up going broke.

Planning and budgeting seems simple enough at face value. The poker player has a life of some sort and if he or she plans correctly they could have a decent quality of life. The problem is that most people become professional poker players on a whim. One of the the things they love about poker is getting away from the day to day grind of a regular office job. In getting away from the day to day grind the poker player often forgets to make all the necessary plans to have a decent life. In my experience, insurance of all kinds was neglected and just forgotten about. Along with leaving my health insurance behind I also quit taking care myself through regular checkups. Before making the jump to full time poker player it is absolutely essential that you lay out a realistic monthly budget that includes everything you need to lead a long and happy life. The first time something unplanned and unbudgeted arises it usually sinks the ship.

Lack of self discipline really means drugs and alcohol along with the party lifestyle. I live the majority of my life in a pretty disciplined and squared away professional manner. I have no drug problems and I very rarely drink. But even I struggled with self discipline on the occasions I had major poker wins. I would take my friends out and we would party it up and drink too much and by the end of the night we would have blown through several thousand dollars of what had been a good win. The blackjack pit, sports book or the strip club could all be the weakness of the poker player. I am sure clothes, shoes, cars and food could be the downfall of many. You could win all the money in the world playing poker and still go broke if you lack self control.

Winning poker players are not much different from lottery winners these days. Poker players used to sneak around in the dark shadows of the back rooms of bars and nobody really had much understanding of what they did or how they did it. Today it seems there are 50 magazines and a dozen television shows on television all glamorizing poker. The internet is full of buzz about the latest young poker whiz kid. Well I promise you with the money comes all of the hangers on and scammers who are all right there leaching away the new found riches of the poker player who doesn’t know how to so say no.

I see all three of these as major pitfalls and traps for the winning poker player. When you see a guy winning thousands of dollars every month and he ends up broke do not be surprised. Making money is very tough but hanging onto it can be even more of a challenge.

In powerlifting today, the squat is the first lift of the meet. The squat is really the domain of very strong men. I was never a great squatter and I have never trained the squat enough to become a great squatter. That being said I have done thousands of heavy squats and I know just about everyone would benefit from doing more squats.

Squats are hard. Squats are very hard. In order to properly train the squat you have to put some weight on the bar. Men load that bar with some serious plates so that it is a very challenging lift. I mean nearly impossible. The body is so much stronger than you know and the only thing keeping you from putting a couple more plates on that bar is your own fear and self doubt.

I remember squatting in the power rack at Gold’s in Vacaville in the late eighties when Big Clint walked over to us and asked, “You boys done warming up?” I am sure we were screwing around with 185 or some other nominal amount. Clint jumped into the rotation and the workout took on a whole new level of intensity. The first set was two plates for six or eight reps. The next time through the rotation was three plates and everyone dunked it at least five reps. At 315, Clint had to yell at us to get some more depth as we tried to trim that first rep a little short. I had never really squatted 315 before but I was doing it. I felt like my head would explode every rep but I was doing the reps. Clint knocked out about ten really easy powerful reps with five plates or 495 and seemed to just be getting started. My next turn in the rotation, Clint called for just a quarter more this time. I dutifully got under 365 with Clint taking up a position right behind me. Clint and I went up and down with that weight for at least three or four reps after I thought my legs were shot. I crawled out of the power rack and puked in my gym bag. I had actually done a real squat workout for the first time.

My first competition squat was my third attempt at the Fudpucker meet at Del Norte High School. I was lifting in the meet with my father and I had trained about six weeks for the meet. I had not lifted for a couple years, so I was definitely not very strong. I dieted down from 278 to 242 in the 30 days prior to the meet. I had squatted five times prior to the meet and had hit a very deep 315 squat in my last training session. I was sure I could squat 315 so I opened with that. My 365 second attempt felt pretty maximal and made me see stars. I called for 405 on my third and when I got under the bar it felt crushing. I started down slowly and was not even sure I could control the weight on the way down. Directly in front of me were Leo Stern and Bill Pearl standing and screaming at the top of their lungs. Jack Barnes was the head judge and just to my left and behind me was Tommy Overholtzer. Many other powerlifting greats were in that gym and they were all focused on my squat. The great Pat Casey hollered in a way only a man of his size could, “Take it down!”. I made my mind up that I was taking it to the basement. I squatted deep and strong bottoming out and rebounding up a few inches. The weight slowed and my body shook and trembled. I stayed with it and slowly but surely I was able to rise ever so slowly to lockout. My body was shaking so badly that I could not settle the weight at the top and plates were clattering. Finally, Jack screamed out the rack command and I took a small step with my left foot as the monolift racks came back into position and the spotters put the bar safely away. I had completed my first heavy competition squat.

Squatting is not sexy and it sure as hell is not easy. I do believe that heavy squatting will make you into a man. People who perform deep heavy squats are just a tougher more rugged breed of people. I mean the kind of squats that blow blood vessels and make you puke. People who are willing to voluntarily subject themselves to that type of workout are just going to be tougher than the average Starbucks customer.

Victoria

Victoria became was the first ship to circumnavigate the world. Magellan was accompanied by four other ships. Victoria was the only ship to complete the voyage.

Lusitania

Lusitania was a British luxury ocean liner. Lusitania was sunk by the Germans during the Word War and was one of the reasons why the US joined the war. Lusitania was torpedoed in 1915 killing 1,198 of the people aboard.

Mayflower

The Mayflower transported the Pilgrims, from England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.

Niña

The Niña was one of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus in 1492.

Titanic

Probably, the world’s most famous ship is the Titanic which became more sensational through the film “Titanic”. During her maiden voyage, Titanic hit an iceberg, and sank resulting in the deaths of 1,517 people.

USS Arizona

This American battleship was destroyed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor with the loss of 1,177 lives.

USS Constitution

The oldest warship still in commission

Noah’s Ark

Noah’s Ark, from the Book of Genesis.

Bismarck

Bismarck, a German battleship, is the most famous warship of the Second World War British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued the order to “Sink the Bismarck”, spurring a relentless pursuit by the Royal Navy. In the ensuing battle Bismarck was heavily attacked for nearly three hours before sinking.

Queen Anne’s Revenge

Queen Anne’s Revenge was the name of Blackbeard’s flagship.
Blackbeard converted La Concorde into his flagship, probably adding guns and renaming her Queen Anne’s Revenge.

USS Enterprise

The ship from Star Trek makes it onto my list.

SS Emidio

An oil tanker sunk by the Japanese in the Second World War that ended up sinking in Crescent City.

Piece of the hull in Front Street Park.

Brother Jonathan

Probably my favorite ship and one that I wrote a full blog post about.

My list is far from complete but these are the ships that come to my mind.

My latest story that was published in The Cardroom

Tells-n-Lies

Stepping up in limits with Ira

By Victor Shaw

The game of poker is a fascinating game and Texas Hold’em seems so simple that even a novice can be fooled into thinking it is a simple game. The nuances and complexities of the game reveal themselves ever so slowly. Players tend to grow and learn because they want to win or at least avoid losing.

To learn and grow while you are winning is very difficult. I have detailed this concept several times and discussed my difficulties in moving up to the $10/20 game. Stepping up to the next level of play is very difficult and often very humbling.

I was recently reminded of my young protégé Ira and our adventures of poker. Ira had learned to play poker very well and was a solid winning player at the hometown hero level. Ira made thousands of dollars in Crescent City playing $3/6 limit and $1/2 no-limit.

I believe at one point Ira had a 20-session winning streak over a six week period and every win was for over $100, with the big wins being eight or nine hundred. By most people’s observation, including mine, Ira was playing as well as his teacher.

Because Ira was under 21 years old his options for playing poker were limited to Indian casinos and private games.

Ira was itching to play against some better competition and we planned to make a short road trip to Grants Pass to play in a $10/20 limit game at Rocky and Tina’s place. Most nights the game is $4/8 and Ira can beat that game. The $10/20 was a special game held only twice a month.

As you would suspect, the bigger game brought out the better players from around the region. I had played in the game several times and was beating the game fairly easily. I felt I was one of the best players in the $10/20 game. I really believed Ira was going to be able to beat the game. Ira and I took his newly acquired bankroll and headed for Grants Pass.

Ira’s first $10/20 game was a bloodbath. I honestly thought that Ira was on a good swing of luck going into this game. This night the odds caught up with him and it was brutal. Ira ran badly and the cards were truly evil. I saw pocket aces get trounced at least four times on fairly innocuous boards. “Of course you had to be in there with 5-3. It was suited and it was only $30 to go. You had nothing on the flop. I guess you had the runner-runner draw.” Ira, like me, is not shy and a bit outspoken at the table. You want opponents playing that bad, just not making their hands every single time, all night long.

The game was fast and the added aggression was new for Ira and particularly punishing when running bad. Ira laid down a couple of winners when he had hands like pocket jacks and the board was 10-8-5-3-A with three hearts and it was raised and re-raised on the river. He was into the hand about $90 and was going to have to put another $60 into the pot with an under pair. The $500 pot just slipped away.

The opponents were playing badly and they were doing it with flair, aggression and some real imagination. Once Ira started losing and feeling down they started playing at him just because he was running bad.

Ira and I took a break and I could see his confidence was shaken and the magnitude of the loss was taking a toll on him. I should have pulled him from the game and we could have packed up and headed home. I did what I thought was the right thing and encouraged him to suck it up and play his game. I knew he could climb back if the cards would just turn a little bit. Unfortunately on this night it was not to be. I think the final score was a $1,190 hit. Ira had paid a very steep price to step up in limit.

To this day Ira is a very good poker player and I would bet he has never lost over $1,000 in any session since that night. Thanks to my good friend Ira for letting me tell this nightmare story from his past.

By now, most everyone should have heard that a motorcycle helmet wearing bandit walked into the Bellagio and held up a craps table. Beyond the question of where was security during this whole fiasco, I have been asked many questions about this robbery and was a little surprised by peoples lack of knowledge concerning the casino industry.

I will start with the questions about security. At four in the morning on a weekday there really are not that many customers in the casino and even fewer security guards than you might think. A property the size of Bellagio could have a dozen security guards on duty and it would still be difficult to find one. The second thing I was asked about was the man entering the casino wearing a helmet. Absolutely, security would make him take that helmet off as soon as they reached him. Nobody can enter a casino with their face covered and that extends as far as hooded sweatshirts at most casinos. The guy probably pulled up on the bike and just jumped off and made a beeline into the casino before anyone noticed him. Surely the first employee to notice him would have walked to the nearest phone and called security.

The next misconception is that the bandit got away with over a million dollars. This is far from the truth. The robber stole gaming chips off of the table and no actual money. The number of chips stolen remains a matter of some debate. He would have needed a backpack or duffle bag to get away with any number of chips. Loading them by hand requires a person to grab stacks of twenty chips one at a time and throw them into the bag. Even grabbing forty per second would take a full minute to load 2400 chips into the bag. This would be a decent amount in a regular backpack and just a decent guess at what could have been taken in a quick robbery. The denomination of chips was $100 to $25,000. A stack of twenty of the big ones would be a half million and he could have gotten a few stacks off the table. That would explain the rumors of $1,5 to $2 million in missing chips.

The biggest thing that needs to be cleared up is that the $100 black chips are worth more than the $25,000 chips. A hundred dollar chip could easily be brought into the casino and cashed at the cage. The $25,000 chip is worthless because it can never be cashed in for money. The casino will be on high alert for these high denomination chips and the larger the chip the tighter the inventory control. There are very few if any of these floating around in circulation and if anyone has some of them casino is well aware of who they are and how many they have. I would gladly buy the hundreds for $80 each and be able to cash them out at a later date. I would not touch the $25,000 chips for free. Most people would have no idea how to go about cashing anything larger than a hundred dollar chip. I could launder some slightly larger chips but I would only be interested at a hugely discounted price. A $100 chip could fetch $80 cash and a $500 chip could bring $200 cash. The $5000 chip would bring about the same $200 if not slightly less. The $5000 chip would bring maximum risk and may not be able to be liquidated ever. Once before when a casino was hit for a large number of chips they took the chips out of circulation and replaced them with a new design giving players 30 days to cash any chips they held. The MIT blackjack team famously used a whole herd of strippers to cash out all of there $500 chips at the time.

I guess I am sharing a little wisdom to let the world know that the robber was an idiot and the casino was not really hurt in this little fiasco. A little bad publicity will hurt the casino far more than losing a bunch of chips.

I currently have cars named Bertha, Lucy and Just Bad. But then again what is in a name anyway? I am not sure why some people name their cars and other people think it is the weirdest thing ever. When I hear people ranting about how strange it is that we name our cars I usually retort with something smart ass about how perfectly normal it is to name your genitals and yet naming your car is just weird. I guess if you name your four wheel drive truck The Big One you really do not have to worry about coming up with another name.

I grew up around cars with names and as I reached driving age there were all kinds of cars with names and they were usually the cool looking cars. I remember several of them from my teen years. A bright yellow truck named Ratsun that was painted by Rick Evans with a great mural on the tail gate. The Boss Hoss mustang with the name on the hood scoop was a car that only came out from time to time but was one of the first nitrous cars I remember. I remember Robbie Hughes had a car named the High Plains Drifter.

As I grew into adulthood I noticed that many people named their cars and they were not always the coolest cars. Everybody seems to have a car named Old Betsy. When going up a hill it is typical to hear, “Come on Old Betsy you can make it”. The other common thread for car names seems to be based upon the color of the car. There are certainly enough cars named Old Blue out there. My friend Jerry had a green truck that was named The Grinch.

Male and female are often used for vehicle names and at times it is just a name and other times the name is symbolic. Bertha is my big car and the name Bertha is often associated with big and many things have been named Big Bertha but I just named the car Bertha and let the big be implied for my Expedition. My car named Lucy is a burgundy Murano and it is named in reference to the most famous redhead of them all Lucy. I am sure some of the most famous of all cars are Kitt, Herbie and General Lee.

Some variant of the car model can be adapted into a car name. I know a couple famous Mustangs with names Pony Keg, Boss Hoss and Pony Express. A Cougar going by the name NASCAT which is a shortened version of Nasty Cat and a spin off of Nascar. At times the owner may even insert his own name in cars like Chadillac. Even the car we called MFP was named because it was a Mean F***ing Pontiac and the initials were prominently displayed on the car with the written words being in very fine print below. A name that deserves mention here is the Bossanova.

The other common source for names is the physical appearance of the vehicle which has given us names like Sitting Low and Sweet and Low. Many owners of convertibles have used variations of Topless in Under Six Seconds. Boyd Coddington built a car named Chezoom and the name was based on the appearance. The Heavy Sleeper and the Grocery Getter were named because of the cars rather demure appearance.

I would love to know if you have a name for your car and the reason you gave it the name.