My status....

To those of you wondering, yes, I am still an unemployed bum, still waking up every morning with nowhere in particular go and nothing to contribute to society. At least I ain't sucking off the government's tit yet, though. No, in all seriousness, the job hunt is continuing. This week I applied for a position as an Information Technology Assistant at the Clark County Library. It's a pretty good paying job but I imagine I'm just one of dozens if not hundreds of people who applied. They stopped taking applications on Wednesday, so if they are interested in me I should be hearing something soon.

I also applied to be a software quality tester for MGM-Mirage. I have an application pre-screening with them next week.

And just for something completely random, I applied to be a poker room supervisor at the Stratosphere this week. Perhaps it speaks to my lack of sanity and disregard for money that this is actually the job I want the most. When I apply for computer related jobs out here I find myself asking myself why I left my job in New Hampshire and moved out here if I'm just going to get another computer job. If I really wanted to work w/ computers why didn't I just stay in the Granite State?

And now some pet peeves about job hunting:

• MGM-Mirage, which owns about half the hotel/casinos on the Strip, only lets you apply for one job at at time with them. This is not just one job at one hotel, it's one job at ALL of their places. The stupid part about this is you can apply for a job, wait for weeks with no response, only to find out that the job has already been taken and you could have applied for another job during the time that you were waiting. There was a job at the T.I. poker room that I applied to, but when I talked to an actual employee in the poker room last week I find out that someone was already in the process of being hired for the job but that the job stays on the website until the person is 100% hired. How do people have any way of knowing this? How many people apply for a job and then waste their time waiting for a response that never comes, only to have another job that they could have gotten slip away because they aren't allowed to apply to one while waiting to hear about another? Why not just let people apply for multiple jobs at once? Lame....
• Stations Casinos is a large company that owns a whole bunch of locals' casinos in the valley. They have a reputation as a very good company to work for and they are consistently in the Forbes Top 100 Companies To Work For list. My complaint about them -- you are only allowed to apply for 2 jobs with them in a 90 day period. So if you applied for 2 jobs and didn't get them because perhaps you applied to late, or perhaps you were just as qualified as somebody else but they had to pick somebody so they picked the other person, you are out of luck for 90 days. Lame....
• Websites that list job openings but give absolutely no description as to what the job entails. Over a month ago I applied for a job at the Palms as a database analyst. I have no idea what I would be doing as a database analyst but it sounded like something that might be up my alley, so I applied. I guess it doesn't matter anyway because I still haven't heard back.

Well that's enough bitching. For now.

Long Night at The Orleans

On Monday night I played the 8:00 PM $80 tournament at The Orleans. Just to clarify, the stereotype about players at the Orleans is pretty much true. It's basically a lot of old men, many of whom are grumpy. I saw a couple of players abuse dealers and act generally unpleasant. Late in the tournament an older woman got knocked out and actually threw her chips across the table at the player who had eliminated her. There were a few younger people in the tournament (i.e. under 50) and I think there were a couple people who were actually younger than me.

I got off to a great start when somebody who obviously didn't have a clue doubled me up. I limped into a multiway pot with 89. The flop came 56T and it was checked around. The turn brought a 7 which gave me the nuts. An early position player bet, I raised to 1200, and the player in the small blind when all in for about 4000. The original bettor folded and I of course called. Shockingly the other guy turned over JJ and he was drawing dead. I don't think it would have been possible for him to play the hand worse, but his ineptitude was my good fortune.

There was another pretty big hand I won but I don't remember the details. All I remember is that we started with 4000 chips and about 30 minutes into the tournament I was up to about 12,000. There were about 130 people in the tournament and if I wasn't the chip leader at that point I'd be surprised.

At one point a new player got moved to our table. He was wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket, he was from Jersey, and he was pretty brash. He started in on me right away. The conversation went like this:

Jersey: Are you a pro?
Me: No, I'm an amateur.
Jersey: All those chips you have would say you're a pro. You look like a pro.
Me: No, I just got lucky.

I was playing pretty tight at this point, and he must have noticed because next he comes at me with this.

Jersey: What are you waiting for?
Me: Aces. Or kings.
Jersey: Yeah, I bet you are.

What would happen on the very next hand is one of those great ironies that happens from time to time in life. Jersey-boy raises in early position which is actually pretty standard for the way he's been playing. I look down at two kings. There were two callers behind him so I put in a pretty big re-raise to 3000. It gets back to Jersey-boy and he goes all in. I have him covered and I call pretty much right away. The other two players were gone at this point. As the dealer is straightening the pot I ask him if he has aces, and he responds in the affirmative. The board gives me no help.... I double him up and now my massive stack has been cut down to a modest 4 or 5 thousand.

So I was honest when I said I was waiting for aces or kings.

I thought it would be downhill for me after this, but I eventually managed to chip my way back up to a pretty good sized stack. It seems like me and this guy from Jersey tangled in a lot of hands. He was playing really loose and aggressive, and I couldn't tell out if I was enjoying his presence or if he was just being a jerk. He was definitely arrogant, and he was making some comments to other players that bordered on being out of line, but he also seemed like he was just having fun at times. It's hard to tell with some people.

Eventually we were down to 3 tables Jersey-boy still had a pretty good sized stack while i was hovering right around the 10 BB area. I got dealt AQ and limped, and he raised about 3x the BB. I called as did one other player. The flop came Qxx and I immediately went all in for my last 10,000 or so. He sat and thought about it for almost two minutes before finally folding reluctantly. He revealed that he had KQ and I kicked myself for playing the hand so strong. If i had check raised him I probably would have doubled up. For the next hour or so he kept asking me what I had and was having fun denying him the information. It seemed like he was going to lose sleep over it, so I told him that as soon as he or I got knocked out I'd tell him what I had. He got eliminated later doing a stupid bluff and stormed off before I could tell him. I hope he didn't lose sleep.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, we eventually got down to two tables and I was in all-in mode, just waiting for an ace, a pair, or even a good king. Eventually I get dealt A9 and go all in. The guy behind me goes all in, AND the big blind goes all in. Great....... They turn over JJ and AK, so I'm basically hoping the flop comes A9x or 99x. I actually caught an ace on the flop but could not hit my 3 outer and the AK held up. I was gone in 20th place. Only the top 10 paid.......

A quote

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances -- it was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at the time, or it was so then, and another day would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Vermont to arrest Bush/Cheney?

I think Bush and Cheney suck just as much as the next guy, but this is just STUPID:

BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont.

The Brattleboro Select Board voted 3-2 Friday to put the controversial item on the Town Meeting Day warning.

According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy, organizers of the Bush-Cheney issue gathered enough signatures, and it was up to the Select Board whether Brattleboro voters would consider the issue in March. (more...)

Monte Carlo on fire.....

I'm sure everybody has heard about this by now. The good news is nobody was hurt.

The bad news is the whole place is still shut down while repairs are made. MGM-Mirage has now instituted a hiring freeze for all new employees. Sucks for me because I just applied for a job at the Luxor last week! Hopefully it opens back up later this week (as they say it will) so current employees can return to work and new employees can continue to be hired. For MGM to institute a hiring freeze is a pretty big deal given that they own about half the f'ing places on the Strip.

I thought this was funny, from an article in the local paper.

Inside the Monte Carlo poker room, the gambling didn't stop even after a casino floor television came on with live footage of the fire, said Rich Vetterl, a 53-year-old chemist from North Carolina.

"It was strange playing poker and watching the building burn," he said. "It was almost like being on the Titanic as it was going down. It was surreal."

After several minutes, the dealer at the table waved her arms, stopped play and told everybody to evacuate. The poker players calmly stood up and left, with many taking time to cash out their chips, he said.

Good to know that people have their priorities straight.

Busted...

I decided to take a shot at the $100 + $25 buy-in Head Hunters tournament at Treasure Island tonight. In this tourny $50 goes to the prize pool and the other $50 is put on each player's head as a bounty. Anytime you knock a player out you collect their $50 bounty. Before the tourny started I bought a $5 cappuccino from Starbucks. Who are the bigger suckers, those playing the slots or people like me who spend $5 on coffee?

I started out pretty slow. I caught some decent hands pre flop and raised with them but pretty much missed when the flop came out and I check-folded or bet-folded after getting raised or check raised. Eventually I was down to about 2500 chips from a starting count of 5000. I finally won a decent pot when I turned a nut flush draw and open ended straight draw and went all in, forcing the other player in the hand to fold and scooping me a pot of about 2000. Nothing much happened until my last hand of the tournament....

We were in level 3 with blinds at 75-150 and I was in the big blind with about 3500 chips. I got dealt K2 and about 4 players saw a flop of K25 with two diamonds. I checked it and the next player bet 400. It was folded to me and I check raised to 1000. He went all in pretty much right away and I called. This player had been bitching for most of the tournament about how he was not getting dealt any hands and to his credit he was not playing the garbage he claimed to be getting dealt. He'd only played a few hands that I was aware of so when I c-raised him to 1000 I thought he had to have a high quality king, something like AK, KQ, or KJ. I had no intention of folding the hand at any point after I raised. I did not think this player would be able to get off of his king and I honestly thought that he would double me up.

I guess I was disappointed when he turned over A6 of diamonds. I was still a favorite but not as big a favorite as if he had had a king with another kicker. On the flop I was a 67% favorite.

The turn brought a non-diamond 4 which gave him three additional outs.

One of those outs came on the river, as a black 3 fell and I was sent packing.

I'm disappointed, yes, but what can I say.... I got all my chips in as the favorite and he got lucky. If people want to risk their tournament lives on a flush draw I certainly can't complain about that. Maybe he was counting 3 aces for outs too?

Fortune Cookie

When did God start showing up in fortune cookies?

I got this one at the Rio buffet on Friday night. Whatever happened to the separation of church and Chinese food? Ridiculous, I tell you.

Anyway, the Rio buffet was not bad. I'd give it a 7 on a scale of 1 - 10. The selection was enormous, but some of the food was of marginal quality. One major complaint was how tightly packed all of the tables were and how crowded it was. Definitely not a buffet for those who feel claustrophobic. So far my favorite buffet is still the Silverton. I do have to give the Rio credit for featuring an item I have yet to see at any other buffet in town: corn dogs. You won't find those at the Bellagio!