Suitedjustice's Ongoing Mid-life Crisis

Thanks, Lionelhuttz, for some good advice on what to say to busybodies. I will take that aboard. The only stinkeye I've gotten so far from casino staff was at the two Mohegan high roller slot nooks, where they often have dedicated slot concierges standing around.

I'm sure those folks would much rather have the whales find the UX multipliers, as they're more likely to receive gratuities from them, and the whales will keep playing long after the EV has dried up.

Yeah there's a lot of bunching on similar machines. A few of the IGN models make a very loud and discordant blip noise every time you change a screen. I've turned the volume down on them as much as possible, but it's still loud enough to be heard over the din. Many times while I've been playing live poker, my ears have told me that there was a nearby AP checking the machines.

I've managed to cut down on the number of blips by scrolling through all the money denominations on each game type—which doesn't generate a sound—before moving on to the next type; but I'm still blipping around 24 times per machine.

On the other machines, the head panels blink on and off every time you change screens, and that can be seen for a country mile.

Yesterday, I racked up another bad day at the poker tables with -$310 over 3.5 hours, but as poor as I've been running at poker, I've been running golden on the slots. It's not like I've been finding a lot of plays on the floor—MGM is overrun with advantage players during the busy times—it's merely that I've been very lucky on the plays that I have found. Yesterday I went +$382 over 4 hours. That's not a sustainable rate by any means, but I'll take it.

A New Start: Week 3

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 19 hours
(-$551.00)
MGM Springfield Slots: 18 hours
+$1346.00

Running Poker Total: 53 hours, +$484.00
Running Slot Total: 52.5 hours, +$2320.00

Total All Weeks: 105.5 hours, +$2804.00

My recent swath of slot sunrunning was sundered today when some Rich Little Piggies popped a poor little payout: -$53 over 4 hours.

However, once again I found strength in diversity, winning $208 at the poker table over 4 hours.

Here's a possibly interesting hand. I'll give the reads and the action now, and follow up with results and my thinking tomorrow. As before, I welcome and respect anyone who'd like to chime in with their play in this spot.

The effective stack is around $252. SB and EP are the Villains. I've played with both of them several times and I'm confident of my reads: both of them are very loose and passive, playing around 75% of hands, and that's not an exaggeration. SB limps around 70%, open/raises 5%. EP limps around 65%, open/raises 10%.

Neither raises much at all post, preferring to check and call with a piece or a draw. When faced with a small flop bet, EP will occasionally minraise on dry and/or paired flops, sometimes for value, sometimes to see where he's at. I don't recall seeing SB raise postflop.

EP limps, MP limps, BTN limps, SB limps, I check in the BB with A♠4♦.

Pot ($10) - 5 players.

Flop: 2♠3♥5♣

SB bets $5, I raise to $15, EP 3-bets to $50, folds to SB who 4-bets to $100.

Pot ($175) - 3 players, Hero to act next.

haha so annoying when it goes from "oh my god how do I get as much money in as possible" to "oh, oh no"

I would probably call the $100 with the idea to just get it in, and trying to make sure to not scare either off, esp EP. I can understand the impulse to fold, that SB simply must have 64. Only you know if he would possibly ever have a set, 2 pair, or A4 also. It feels like most nits can/will still have these and be trying to defend against the straight coming.

Folding here to me is like folding KK pre, can be done, but you need a really rock solid lock read that the player's range can be one hand only.

On the previous hand you posted I would of also said that's a sigh call. You should have bet more OTT. Betting more pre like Sheep suggested sounds good also.
On that hand above I refuse to give my opinion cos if you lost money with it, you entirely deserve it for not raising pre. 🙂

Agree with everything Black Aces has said. Only one thing to add (and only you will know whether this applies to you, SJ): Sometimes, especially when Hero isn't in a position to accept the results of a high variance spot, it's ok to fold the second nuts (with zero chance of improving) and just move on to the next hand, accepting the loss of $15, rather than risking an additional $235.

I would worry about getting quartered before remembering it's Holdem and reshoving out of spite!

Vs loose and passive. I'll optimistically got with the loose part over passive. Also, not sure what one hopes to accomplish playing A4o and flopping a straight.

If one of them has 64, well, congratulations. I can't get my money in fast enough.

I need to be suited if I'm going to raise A4 from out of position pre after 4 limps. Stack sizes tend to be low, and I'm not good enough to play a bloated, multiway, low-SPR pot from OOP with Axo and little chance of making the nuts. I could have made it $25+ to go pre and I still would have ended up multiway at this table, but with the pot more bloated and SPR-poor the more I raised.

Here I got very lucky and made a vulnerable second nuts on the flop.

I made a bad play, but at the same time it was not egregiously bad if you follow my thinking at the time.

SB and EP can and will limp all 12 remaining combos of the 64, suited and non. I've seen enough of their showdowns to know this. There are 9 total set combos of 2s, 3s, and 5s that I'm ahead of, all of which have 10 outs twice to beat me. There are 9 combos of A4 that I chop with. So, 12 combos of getting crushed, 9 combos of chopping, and 9 combos of winning if I fade 10 outs twice. All of this spread out over 2 players who have 3 and 4-bet the flop; one whom I've never seen reraising post, and one whom I've never seen raising at all post.

Hero folds. EP calls $100.

Pot ($275) - heads up, hero is out

Turn 4♥

That cuts 64 to 8 remaining combos and the A4 to 6 combos. SB shoves $150 effective and EP calls.

Pot ($575) - heads up, hero is out

Spoiler

Show

SB shows JJ for an overpair and EP mucks.

Spoiler

Show

Work went well today. I won $200 at the poker table and $103 at the slots.

Yesterday and today I was caught by two other Ultimate X grinders getting in there before them and scooping the machine plays. It's likely that I'm going to be getting into an arrival time levelling war with one or more of those regs in the near future, which is too bad, as I've been enjoying the current routine. But arrival time is part of the competition, and I need to do what I need to do.

I also found out that MGM is giving rakeback for poker hours this month. I was told that it's $100 for 50 hours in April, and $300 for 100 hours. I may have to extend my hours to hit that second stretch goal.

Yeah, I'm getting the money in.

Lots of over-pairs and sets in there.

Sorry to be that direct but that's just not the right way of thinking. You don't need to make the nuts or anything close to the nuts. By betting/raising you can win the pot by having the best hand or by your opponents folding. By calling/passive play you can only win by having the best hand.
By playing aggressively you can often make people fold better hands. Your hand above is a perfect example. Also think about the metagame. If your opponents get to see that you raise A4o or worse, you will also often by able to extract more value when you have something really good.
Anyways just my 2c, sorry for all the preaching, we just have different game philosophies I guess. Ofc there are also situations when aggressive play turns against you but the basic story is still, esp in 1/2, most players play way too passive, so you should do the opposite.

On arrival this morning I found it obvious that someone had been in to check the machines during the wee hours, and I'd been scooped. Upon further inspection, however, it appeared that they had left after checking half the machines, so I was able to salvage some plays and pick up some luck on the slot floor and come out ahead $77 after 3 hours.

I played well at the poker tables and won $136 over 4 hours.

There's a payout of $200 for 75 hours; that's the one I'm going to hit.

I'm with SJ on this one, all due respect. Playing bloated multiway pots out of position holding garbage that virtually never flops well against opponents who aren't folding pieces that they flop (see dude stacking off this hand for hundreds with something that doesn't beat JJ on 2345 board) is a recipe for buzzsawing through money.

what's you favorite machine these days?

what are your thoughts on the new ones? faux or real? i'm thinking that wjp one is a well designed ap trap because the spins are meaningless if you don't hit the multiplier which is an independent variable out of your control

MGM hasn't put in much new AP stuff. For about a week they had four machines that were a variant of Frankenstein, one that could hit the It's Alive feature on a left or a right column, then they got rid of them despite all four machines being occupied by players most of the time.

They must have a deal where they can have a free look at a new game for a short period of time, and then decide whether or not they want to buy the license or subscription or what have you.

Someone left a Wild+Bonus symbol on Dragon Lanterns on two separate days, and I hit both for good money, so I guess that's my current favorite.

I miss Cash Falls. I found your Seinfeldian A Game About Nothing Theory intriguing but didn't get a chance to try it out before they pulled them.

Are you getting out and playing these days? I thought you were back to the real world.

i'm back in the real world, grinding a work from home job

haven't had much time hitting the spots simply because everything is so far away that it's not worth the drive now that i don't depend on it for income and don't have the time to make the 2+ hour round trip worthwhile

there's a card room 20 min away though and been hitting that a bunch but poker in seattle blows despite that i'm doing well at it (high rake, low max buyins. huge promo drop, capped after 3 bets and no bet larger than 300 make it silly bad) - but luckily i can still table select like hell to maintain a strong winrate and i only play during promo hours and rack up the minute they stop hh hour

Sounds horrible! I remember peeps from Vancouver would drive down (not sure if it was to Seattle though...) to play cards back in 2006-2012 ; games in Vancouver were actually pretty darn good back then with a 5$ max rake, but things have gone completely downhill in the past decade, both in terms of rake and game quality 😊

Calgary and Edmonton are the best options, as far as that part of Western Canada goes.

You’re halfway through the month how many hours do you have at this point? That last 25 hours at $4 per hour is pretty juicy.

Yesterday i talked to a reg who is friends with the player who won last year's hourly promo. His buddy played around 320 hours in the month and earned the $5000 top prize. According to the reg, the guy lost money for the month because he was burnt out and playing really poorly towards the end, and he punted more than $5k.

I'm in the mid-40s right now in hours, and I've found a groove that has me more productive than I've been in years. I'm going to make 75 hours and not burn myself out.

Frankenstein Returns is a bummer IMO. Mohegan Sun removed all of its OG Frankenstein machines and installed the new version. Much harder to find plays on the new one. Now there is a "Bride of Frankenstein" too that seems to play the exact same as the sequel.

Thankfully we still have four banks of Cash Falls down here. Are you referring to spinning blank/reset screens on that game? That is something I have a lot of experience with.

😊😊😊
I might have messed up and referred to proprietary info that rickroll might not want aired in a public forum. I apologize if that's the csse.

iirc i asked the person who gave it to me if i could share with you and i think it's vague enough that it's fine - either way the person who gave it to me sometimes posts here so i'm sure we'll hear back if lines were crossed

from my experience it's massively volatile and usually found in the high denom - honestly have no idea idea if up or down on them because i'm either down several units or up quite a bit when it works out - also made me chase thinking "oh this is close enough" which i've learned the hard way is a slippery slope to wondering why a session that started in the positive has you deep in the hole

i would still do it, but needs perfect setup not "close enough" which is something i found myself falling to far too often

that's also why i no longer do wjp despite that i see aps constantly hovering and checking it - there's so much evidence that it's a strong play just from seeing the activity on it alone but i think it's too random to be trusted

one thing that really annoyed me is one local setup an entire row of that coin push thing, it was glorious for about a week, then everyone else figured it out and was bust, didn't mourn at all when they were all swapped out after a month - must have not passed the trial run simply because it was camped so hard you'd never find anything unless you were there at 4am