High-Low Split: Dueling Perspectives on 40 Days at the WSOP - Part VI: "The Gold Coast"

JOE: If you can remember a few columns back, you'll recall that I mentioned that I was too chickenshit to sit down at any of the tables at The Rio. For a quick recap, the reason for that was that I saw the following happen to Scott on more than one occasion: Guy sits down next to him, at a $4-$8 table with about four racks of white ($400). He then proceeds to raise every pot, straddle-bet, and show down hands like As-Hoyle's Rules For Playing Poker because he's "waiting for a $50-$100 table." Interestingly enough, on my last trip to Vegas, I became that guy, and it's a lot of fun. And that's the difference - when you're just there for the weekend, you've got three days to lose $1,000. When you're there for the entire World Series of Poker, you've got to make it last.

SCOTT: The Gold Coast Hotel and Casino was situated dangerously close to our apartment. Of course, living just off the Strip meant that anything could be considered dangerously close. But let me put it this way, the Palms was only 100 yards past the Gold Coast, and on at least three occasions, I, Joe, Milo, and Story watched E! channel's Party at the Palms with wide eyes, while turning up the volume because the music from the actual Ghost Bar was drowning out the sound on our 12-inch sort-of-color TV. So, the Gold Coast. It was our backyard.

So the Rio was full to the brim with people who were "taking their shot," and "going for broke," and many of them did just that. I wasn't there to go broke. And unlike Scott, I wasn't even there to win. While I love playing poker, most of the time I'm just playing it so I can spend some quality time with Scott. He's kind of a social recluse and has a hard time going out into public alone. Now, I refuse to play poker and not drink, yet I also refuse to drink and drive. So meeting the parameters of walking distance and playing with people who were too poor to not care about the money they were losing left us with only one option: The Gold Coast Hotel and Casino. Not only did the people at the Gold Coast care about how much they lost, but they were playing for teeth money. That's right, money to buy teeth.

It had a crappy little poker room that spread $2-$4 and $4-$8 hold'em pretty much exclusively. One night we managed to get a $1-$2 blind no-limit game going there, but that's another story for another day. It was also home to some of the best low-limit side action in town, mostly because of the popular "Seatbelt Game." The "Seatbelt Game" was so named because it was more loose and wild than chickenheads at Lake Havasu. If you were a remotely tight player, tight being categorized by not calling $20 preflop with J-4 offsuit, then the game felt like you were playing against nine John Phans … on tilt. Joe and I, being the "tight-aggressive" players that we are, thought we could crush the game by playing smart. That didn't happen.

Even though the Gold Coast was full of hardened (toothless) Vegas locals and failed WSOP hopefuls trying to make back their stake money at the $2-$4 tables, miraculously, my first couple of trips to the Gold Coast worked out pretty well for me. I adopted a "When In Rome" attitude. This meant that I played any two cards, and had little or no problem drawing to one out - or fewer. Of course, if I was going to play like these people, I was going to have to act like these people. So, I started drinking heavily, throwing my cards at the dealer, and yelling "put some booze in it next time!" at the cocktail waitress, even if I was drinking beer.

For some inexplicable reason, Joe's "When in Rome" attitude seemed to be working, and that irritated me to no end. I was, and am, a better poker player than Joe. Yet he kept on winning and I kept on losing. Whenever I tried adopting the same style, I got thrown to the lions. He also fails to mention that "When In Rome" also included him perming his hair, and drunkenly bellowing "I am Spartacus!" whenever he sucked out on the river. Then there was the inevitable confusion that followed when Joe tried explaining that he was referring to the character played by Vladmir Vasilyev in the 1977 filming of the Khachaturian ballet "Spartukus." These types of high-culture references were totally lost on the mob in the "Seatbelt Game." As for me, the only thing Roman about my experience at the Gold Coast was that watching Joe get so lucky drove me straight to the vomitorium.

This brings me to an important scientific loophole discovered by Scott and me. Now while Scott is able to write column after column about how to win at poker, I myself don't know a thing about that. I don't even know what the hand rankings are. But I do know how to turn a profit at the tables. This is something that's pretty much only possible at a $2-$4 limit table, and is even easier at a $1-$2 no-limit table. You don't have to walk away from the table with a single dollar in order to consider it a winning session. In fact, if you follow my approach, you probably won't. All you've got to do is drink. Here are the rules: 1) Start off playing tight. Not "Paris Hilton" tight. I'm talking "Jessica Simpson Pre-Nick Lachey" tight. Because if this works the way it should, you're eventually going to end up playing looser than Layne Flack on Ecstasy. 2) Whenever the cocktail waitress approaches, order a drink. No matter what. 3) Most places won't let you have more than one drink on the table at a time, but you've got to make sure you've always got a drink in front of you. The way to do this is, if the waitress is speedy, order liquor. Scott prefers Johnny Black on the rocks. I prefer something harder, like a Midori Sour. If she's slow, order beer. 4) Tip at least $1 per drink. If you're winning, and want to act like a big shot, you can tip more. I tip with $5 reds, but keep in mind these rules are meant for $1 tips. If you're not winning and you tip more, this formula won't work. If you do this right, you'll start getting what I like to call "poker beer goggles," and all your hands start looking better. You'd even let the Queen of Spades go down on you if she wanted. Even though your eventual double vision might make you think you're playing Omaha, looking down at your holecards with poker beer goggles can sometimes prove advantageous in a game like "The Seatbelt."

Here's how the formula works to have a winning session.
Profit = (number of drinks) x $5 drink price (x $1 tip) + (25 hands per hour/10 players x $6 binds per round x hours of play) - (amount you sat down with) + (amount you walk away with).
So let's say you sit down with $100, you drink eight Coronas, and play for four hours, and you end up leaving with $12 in cash. By my calculations, you've had $48 in drinks and tips, plus $60 in blinds, plus $12. Take away the original $100 and you've made a grand total of $120 in play and drinks.

That's four hours' worth of bar tabs. If you're from L.A. like Scott and I, a four-hour bar tab is typically around $180, and throw in the fact that in a poker game you were technically getting table service, and you're at well over $500. You do the math.

When this theory failed miserably, it was starting to look like I would not only lose money from the internship, but that I might end up owing money by the time I left. Something had to change, and it couldn't be my attitude about gambling. I just couldn't figure how to win. And I did. Holding J 10, I hit a six-card straight flush, 8 to the king. Unfortunately, the action was only heads up. My opponent did hit a set of nines, so he gave me almost all of his chips, but by this point I had downgraded to $2-$4 hold'em, as the "stay ahead of the rake by drinking" theory was turning out to be a losing prop in "The Seatbelt Game." The jackpot paid $50. A paltry sum considering the odds against hitting a straight flush. Nonetheless it gave me my first winning session since arriving in Vegas. Joe, on the other hand, was heading in the opposite direction. Right out to sea, trying to weather the storm in a rickety little ship registered in California known as "Costly Second Best Hands."

The deck hit me completely in the face. In my first three hands I had kings, queens, and kings. Each time the betting was capped preflop. The first time it happened, my mouth was literally watering. The second time, I felt sick to my stomach. The third time, I didn't have enough money to even raise when my king hit on the turn. Bad-beat stories are about as interesting as listening to someone tell you about his dreams, so I don't think I really need to go into detail here. Let's just say that I was busted for my entire hundo before my first beer arrived.

Nothing says "I've done my poker homework" better than hitting jackpots. The one measure that casinos can take that will guarantee that fish will still play poker even if all the TV coverage were to end tomorrow is the jackpot. Whether it's for a high hand or a bad beat, the jackpot attracts and encourages the worst kind of poker. All of a sudden 3-2 and 4-2 offsuit are "playable" hands because "I could make a straight flush with it. Don't you know how to play jackpot?" No I'm sorry, I don't know how to play "jackpot" and I don't really care. I came to play poker - not Egomaniac Bingo.

I actually one time saw a guy berate Scott for folding a weak ace. Apparently you have to play any ace just in case three more of them happen to flop, and someone else might be holding a pocket pair. This kind of rationale makes me more frustrated and confused than a coked-up Lewis Black at the DMV. I suggested that the man might have more luck playing keno than poker, and then I ordered a drink. Before the man could reply, the waitress pointed out that I had been sitting there without any chips for nearly three hours, that she was going to cut me off, and that she suggested I go to my room to take a shower. Playing any ace! How embarrassing!

There is no mathematical, statistical, or scientific reason why you go on poker rushes. It just seems to happen. Not only was I on a rush, I was starting to defy the odds. Not something I was used to. The very next night, I hit another jackpot. This time I flopped a set of kings, and then turned quads. The pot totaled $14. That was just barely enough to make the $10 qualifying pot that all jackpots had to have.

Other life/poker lessons we learned at the Gold Coast:

1) When you're an off-duty floorman, you can do whatever you want as long as you are in your home casino. Example: After going all the way to the river with me, which brought a 9, an off-duty floorman from the Gold Coast, we'll call him Tracy - because that was his name - tells me my pocket tens are good, before flipping over a 5, matching one on the board, waiting three seconds, and then brandishing his second pair, nines, like a knife into my weak life force. This goes back to our analysis of names from last time. When you're a guy named Tracy, you'll do anything to prove your manhood. I believe they call it overcompensating.

2) Off-duty dealers apparently don't give a shit about the on-duty ones. I watched a 60-year-old dealer from the WSOP stroll into the Gold Coast and then proceed to chuck his cards at the dealer a good half dozen times. The coup de grâce occurred when said dealer said, "Three, all in," after the flop. When his flush hit on the turn, he reached into his pocket, pulled out more chips, and then check-raised me on the river. The floorman allowed it. I think his name might have been Tracy.

3) Old ladies don't like the word "pussy." Example: Joe and I enjoyed sitting at the same table with one another, if for no other reason than to give one another that knowing look only someone that actually understands poker can give you when someone hits the case ace on the river to crack your pocket kings. I also liked hitting two-outers on him. On a night where our theory about drinking to stay ahead of the rake was in full practice, a frail old woman decided to take a seat at our table, the one sandwiched right in between us. Joe claims not to be a particularly loud or belligerent drunk, but this poor woman sure thought so. Joe slowly built up from small curse words such as "shit" and "bitch," when his pocket pairs would get cracked by smaller pocket pairs. At that point the sweet old lady told us she was more appalled than the first time they showed a woman wearing a pantsuit at the picture shows. Then, after losing two mammoth pots to offsuit seven-gappers, Joe said the "p-word." About 11 times. And the rest of the story takes place in the ICU.

4) Old ladies who crack kings with off-suited seven-gappers shouldn't play like such pussies.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I very well may be the best limit player who ever lived. Sure, the choices of check, bet, or bluff while playing minuscule-limit poker have about as much intricacy as your average game of rock-paper-scissors: You've got to know when they're going to rock, so you can hit 'em with the ol' scissors. Or is that paper? I can't really remember. Regardless, Super Tecmo Bowl for Nintendo only had four plays to choose from, and I was a genius at that as well. The only area in which my game lacks even remotely is at winning jackpots. I'll have to read more books. Or maybe I'll write one.

Isn't it great when things go back to normal? The tide was starting to change. Joe was right back where he belonged, losing. I was right back to my winning ways, and only a couple hundred in the hole now. If this rush kept up, I could be even by week's end, and with a paycheck around the corner, I could up the stakes. Sometimes when your back is against the wall, the key is just to stay calm, and "learn how to play jackpot."