Suitedjustice's Ongoing Mid-life Crisis

France while being quite famous for there bureaucracy getting a drivers license was 100% online. For the photo you can go to any photocopy place and they’ll do government photos and email you a pdf with your photos and a QR code and a number that you post to the online government site. Actually same thing for visas, residency cards etc.

I like the French for having put The Fear into their oligarchs. Of course, they got a little carried away with it.

Today I discovered a new—to me, probably not to others at the MGM—slot that can be played for profit under the right circumstances. This particular machine is notable for having a maximum bet option of $880 per spin.

Talk about variance...

I think the slot devs were too ambitious by far with that option. At that denomination, even a common, minor line pay that might hit once per minute or so, would result in the machine locking up and the player having to wait for a slot tech to show up with a hand pay and tax paperwork.

The $880 denom didn't show any evidence of having been played. There were zero built-up bonus markers on it.

Poker: 5 hours, +$231
Slots: 3 hours, +$178

i once found a dragon spin that was loaded up but at something like $280 a spin I figured I'd need at least 10k to chase it and even then would it be profitable after the tax deduction

i passed on it and knowing i was never going to go for it told an old lady in an asian syndicate and she hurriedly went off to look at it, saying she'd split it among the 10 or so members of the group

thought about asking for a piece but i've seen how long they camp sometimes, knowing it could tie me up for hours and then put myself in an awkward handshake agreement for big dollars against a group where i'm a clear outsider so just decided to bank the goodwill

got 86'd for card counting the next time i came so never got a chance to learn how they did as i only ever saw her at that one casino

also saw another syndicate lose 10k on a high dollar voodoo where they never double popped nor repopped and were forced to keep at it

Ugh dragon spin and voodoo, two of the most volatile games ever. Light n wonder is so into volatility that they will make some of the worst games possible that are close to unplayable and sit empty most of the time. But they also have two of the best new games out now with lemmings and new cash falls magic trio, that are so popular with recs that it’s hard to even get on them to check.

I am with you Suited, I hate machines with big bets on the main slot floor, are the game designers and casinos hoping someone misclicks $880 and then tilts off? Never makes sense to me, put the big denoms, dimes and over, in high limit areas and leave nickels and below on the main slot floor. Multiple times I have been playing a big $20+ moneyball or drums at the front of a casino, loading thousands in and there’s just random people walking by, with people stopping to railbird my play. That must be how almost every casino follow home robbery starts.

My nightmare scenario at Voodoo Jackpots is running both meters up to 20 free games. After that, you know that you're not adding any EV on subsequent spins, so you might even be in a -EV spot from that point on, but you can't leave without becoming a laughingstock amongst all the other slot grinders. Voodoo Jack can EAD.

This might be a good spot for a couple of security tips that I picked up from a podcast.

(1) If you get a handpay, you can ask to be paid out at a different location in the casino, rather than in front of the game with the big flashing YOU WON $16000 sign.

(2) Decoy wallet: this is intriguing; buy another wallet and fill it with a few singles and used green dot Visas and membership cards and whatnot that don't have your name on them. Someone holds you up; give them that wallet. They're not in a spot where they can inspect it too closely.

A quick note on population reads: 10-15 years ago, when a kid in his early 20s sat down at the table, you wouldn't be wrong to assume that he was a good TAG or LAG until proven otherwise. At the time, a lot of Internet whiz kids were transitioning to live poker thanks to Black Friday.

Nowadays, the opposite seems to the case, at least at the low stakes. This new cohort of kids play pretty poorly overall. It gives me hope for the game.

Poker: 4 hours, +$159
Slots: 5 hours, +$170

had a buddy go to colombia, while walking down the street a guy walked up to him with ketchup and mustard and just squeezed it all over his chest, he was so confused and disoriented by that happening that when his colleague then pulled out a knife and demanded his wallet he just gave it up immediately

said it was brilliant as he otherwise would have considered his options and ran but it happened while he was so distracted and confused that his brain just shut down and handed it over without considering options

If anyone were to PM me with a link or info on how to beat Buffalo Instant Hit, I'd be much obliged.

PM’d but you aren’t going to find plays on that game too often.

Thank you, good sir! You are a gentleman and a scholar.

Coming soon: my strangest hand breakdown ever.

MGM Springfield scans for weapons at the casino entrances, so I can't bring a knife; besides, even if I picked up a non-ferrous blade that would get through the scanners, I wouldn't know how to handle it and would probably have it taken away from me in a fight with someone who does. Mace spray, on the other hand...I had some in Las Vegas and came home drunk one night and accidentally maced my bedroom. A little of that stuff goes a long way.

That's just mean, ruining clothes on top of stealing money.

We will see the power of distraction when I break down my craziest hand ever.

I mean, if it's +EV at 16/15, it's +EV at 20/20. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept once the numbers stop building at 20.

Really the 20 should be a Must Hit By number, anything else is

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I haven't seen the ending of The Boys yet, so no spoilers, please.

What rick described was similar to something the guide warned us to be heads-up for in Buenos Aires. Somebody bumps into you, or spills something on you. While they're apologizing and 'helping' you clean up, their compadre picks your pocket.

Had this happen to someone on the Antarctica trip. As soon as Bob got splashed, he set his camera down nearby. The instant he did, he realized what was going on.

Fortunately, he was able to chase down the accomplice, who got in a cab. Bob said he pounded on the roof. Driver apparently not in on it, did not take off. Bob's a pretty decent sized guy, and the thief was afraid enough to give the camera back.

That guy looks like SRK.

Bollywood giant Shah Rukh Khan? I had to Google that. Yeah, the hair and head shape look similar.

Our guy here was Éomer in LOTR, and he was also a very good Judge Dredd.

Oh for sure, I imagine that Mace spray probably exponentially >>>>> than a knife in a more urban USA context ; in my case, given that I was spending lots of time in very rural areas, the knife was primarily useful for camping/surviving purposes on top of given me self-confidence for self-defence Speaking of metal scanners, I wish they had more of them in MTT series in LATAM, as opposed to armed security guards with machine guns (in Rio).

The amount of pickpocketing going on in Buenos Aires in unfathomable ; I cannot count on one hand the number of times we got robbed, albeit not once directly (for me...) in the streets, thankfully (house got robbed, bicycle several times).

I have not checked out your thread recently goldog, but when did you go to BsAs?

You guys are not selling South America to me. Of course I would still go, but with your precautions in mind. Thanks for those.

Before I get to my Craziest Hand So Far, I had a little business with the slots yesterday. I was in the poker room checking video poker machines, and I was wearing a shirt with a front pocket, in which I usually put my slot ticket (poor security protocol; I know, but damn convenient.)

While checking a machine, I looked down and noticed that my ticket was missing from my shirt pocket. Frantically, I checked my other pockets, then I checked my wallet: nothing. Goddamnit, I'd left the ticket in the last machine I'd played, all the way at the other end of the casino.

I jumped up and ran through the teeming rainy day Memorial Day Sunday crowd, dodging and juking and eventually huffing and puffing. I got to the machine at the other end of the casino and found it cashed out.

Finally, it had happened. I'd lost a ticket. It was only for $111, but that's not nothing. That's a good chunk of a workday given away through carelessness.

But wait.

I remembered that for some reason I had put the ticket into the machine I had been checking in the poker room. I don't usually do that on the vp machines unless there's a play. But I had done so in this case.

Goddamnit. I jumped up and started to run back across the entire crowded casino floor, and I took a complete shitter, fell down and laid right out sprawled on the carpet and knocked off my glasses. And all I could think was how I looked to the Eye in the Sky, like some wacky Jerry Lewis routine.

I picked myself up and ran back to the poker room, now seriously huffing and puffing, and when I arrived my ticket was still in the machine.

there's been a few times i didn't realize until hitting a new bank that i left the ticket in the old one, always got it back, a few times had to verbally declare to someone eyeballing it that it was mine

once it took me a while to find another play and i realized what i'd done - this one was somewhat substantial at around 800 and at a very centrally located dragon spin that always had people playing or checking, so i jog over quickly, am horrified to see there's no ticket in the machine and figure best shot is to go to security and a sweet old lady degenning on -ev game in neighboring bank sees me approaching and quickly yells "hey this must be him" and a security guard turns around, hands me the ticket and walks away

couldn't believe no verification, nothing, the woman tells me "the machine kept beeping so i called a slot attendant thinking it was broken" and when i thanked her, i then learned that she didn't even understand it was a ticket of mine but rather thought i had done something wrong to gum it up and thought she was alerting the authorities to the culprit rather than helping me reclaim hundreds of dollars

scariest thing though was how effortlessly the guy just handed it to me

likewise, another time i misplaced a slot ticket that stuck to the back of a sportsbetting ticket so well that thumbing through the stack didn't reveal it (i never put them in there must have just mentally slipped hence the quick thumb through to check) and i couldn't believe the level of "there's nothing we can do" i was given by security - i was envisioning a system where they could look up the ticket barcode as it was linked to my card and void it and reprint a new one but no dice

also, another time, there was a really nice giveaway, someone had left their gift at a slot machine, i went to bring it to security and the guy was like "will you please do a favor and just walk out with it, i don't want to deal with that and once i take it i'll have to"

My Craziest Hand So Far

My poker day starts at a table where the player to my right is straddling on every hand except for the blinds. With the Mississippi straddle, that means that he gets to go last preflop on 6 of 8 hands at an 8-handed table, and it consequently puts me, to his left, under the gun minus 2 preflop on most hands.

This is a -EV spot for the best poker players, and I'm not one of those. I put in for a transfer as soon as I'm eligible. I'll also accept a seat change to a spot on his right, where that will put me in the hijack or cutoff preflop on most hands, but those spots do not open up.

Someone at my table gets transferred before me and I start bitching to the floor about it.

(1) I thought that I had put in for a transfer before him, but I was off by a minute or so, and he was rightfully next on the list.

(2) I was so wrapped up in my own righteousness that I didn't notice that the transferer's spot was to the right of the serial straddler, and I could have just taken his advantageous seat instead of beefing to the floor.

With all of this recent grinding, I am slowly turning into a Sour Reg. I don't want to become that guy. I need to halt this progression toot sweet.

So, new table. I have an Albanian to my right, and his countryman friend two seats to my left.

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The Albanians don't have much experience. They seem to have played a few home games and not much more. They talk to each other in Albanian, before and after hands. The dealer does not enforce the English-only rule at the table rule, and I say nothing, because if they're cheating, they're doing a really awful job of it...and after a few orbits of careful observation, I don't suspect them in the least. And I've talked about not being a rules nit vs fun players, so enough said.

We are $500 effective. Villain covers me. EP opens for $12, Albanian to my right calls, and I make it $45 on the BTN with A♥Q♠. SB folds and the other Albanian in the BB makes it $90. Folds around to me. I look over and see that Villain in the BB has no stack left, so I call.

Pot: ($205) - Heads up. [strike]One player is all-in.[/strike]

But he isn't all-in. He had separated his stack and kept his remainder way to the left, next to another player. His actual remaining stack covers me.

I show my hand, stupidly, and the dealer reminds me that there is still action left.

Goddamn it. There goes my $90 through carelessness. I'm going to check behind or fold on most flops—even moderately favorable ones—what else can I do? I've screwed the pooch on this hand.

Villain shows his hand: T♣T♠

OMGWTFBBQ!!1 The table erupts. As does the dealer. "You cannot do that! You cannot show your hands!" she admonishes. I figure she'll call the floor, and they'll call the hand dead or something, but she does not.

Let's see a flop:

A♦7♥7♠

Villain checks. The dealer is still jawing about the hand and our egregious violations of it. I want the hand to be over and I want to take down the pot before she calls the floor. I bet $150. Let's end this now.

Villain calls. He calls!

Pot ($505) - Heads up

The table is going nuts at this point. I am freaking out. Is it me? Did I misread his hand? The board? Am I missing something? What the hell is going on?

Turn: 5♥

Brick city. Villain checks. I listen closely to the table talk. I have not misread his hand. He has TT. He has two outs. He needs to roll a natural 20 on a 20-sided die to beat me. Maybe he was calling out of spite on the flop. The dealer is still jawing. I want this pot. No floor, damn it. I shove for my remaining $260.

Villain calls. He calls! He calls!

Pot ($1025) - Heads up, One player is all-in.

I say to Villain, "You have some giant clanking balls sir. Hats off to you. If you get your ten, I will not even be mad." I am lying; I will be devastated if he gets his ten on the river. I know he is going to get it. I know it.

But this is not a story; this is the real world. The river is a brick.

Villain stacked off his remaining chips a few hands later and left, and after that the table started the postmortem of the hand. I figured that all the distraction from the prematurely revealed hands and whatnot had put him into a fey suicidal FU I Call mode, but his Albanian friend to my right had talked to him and said that he'd misread his hand. With his TT and the two 7s, he saw his two pair, and thought that with my A, I had only one pair, and he didn't understand that I had a higher two pair, which makes as much sense as anything.

Aw man, I deleted my Sunday results before I posted them. I know that I made $499 on the poker over 4 hours, because I store that on an app, and I made a hundred something or two hundred something on the slots. In any case I have the week's totals correct, and they were good for a short week, where I filled in at the old office for a day.

Week 9

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 17 hours
+$1127.00
MGM Springfield Slots: 16.5 hours
+$640.00

Running Poker Total: 153.5 hours, +$1864.00
Running Slot Total: 171 hours, +$6039.00

Total All Weeks: 324.5 hours, +$7903.00

Yeah, I like Bollywood movies sometimes. SRK seems to be quite famous outside India as well, but not in the US and most European countries, I think.

Go to Suriname. It's a lot closer than Argentina, and they speak Dutch there.

You weren't exaggerating. That is one hell of a donation.