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Gambling Thread

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Songbird, Oct 18, 2013.

  1. Captain_Kirk

    Captain_Kirk Well-Known Member

    Love Let It Ride.

    Hit two 4 of a kinds in my lifetime. One was a doozy:

    At the Flamingo, the entire table was a group of friends all together on a Vegas vacation. I'm in the fourth spot, and the guy in spot 5 decides he's getting lousy cards and decides to move to the open number one spot. So, now I'm getting his cards.

    The very next hand, I look down and see three 9s. Dealer turns up....a 9. Quads.
     
    MileHigh, playthrough and ChrisLong like this.
  2. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    I'm just getting into Let It Ride and trying to maximize strategy and minimize house edge. It's an oddly fascinating game.
     
  3. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    When my brother would get a small pair (less than 10s) in his hand, he would always Let It Ride. All of the dealers thought he was crazy, they always try to help and they told him he should have pulled the bet back. I told him. He stopped doing it.
    Question for Big Pern? What were you betting when you when you won $2,400? We always bet $5 in each circle for LIR, $10 in the three-card game and $1 in the bonus spot. I thought I figured it out, and a few dealers confirmed, that you have a better chance of winning the three-card bet than the main LIR game. That's why we bet more in the three-card game.
     
  4. tapintoamerica

    tapintoamerica Well-Known Member

    How does that work? Do you have to be within the jurisdiction of a state that has casino gambling? Asking for ... nobody, really. Just curious. Not smart enough or nimble enough to play poker.
     
  5. bigpern23

    bigpern23 Well-Known Member

    Not sure, honestly. My state doesn't specifically allow for online poker, but it doesn't specifically outlaw it, either. We do have legalized sports betting, which you need to be within the state borders to place bets, but I think it's a separate deal. There's no statute involving online poker in the gambling laws that have been passed within the past few years. I only deposited $100, so if I am not able to recover it, oh well.
     
  6. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    Collingwood! Aussie Aussie Aussie!
     
  7. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    I was a huge poker junkie 15-20 years ago, when many jumped on the boom after Chris Moneymaker. Read all the books, watched all the shows, played in a few casino tournaments and live games whenever I could. (One of the highlights of my Vegas bachelor party was getting a game for all the guys at then-Binion's Horseshoe, they'd run a private table if you had enough people and the room wasn't full.) But I never had the stones to play online. Just never completely trusted it from the financial standpoint (when people say they won $50,000, did they get paid?) and always thought it was very shark-infested in terms of players. If I went in now, my skills having long faded after having kids, I'd get annihilated.
     
  8. bigpern23

    bigpern23 Well-Known Member

    I think it was, and probably still is, very difficult to be profitable online. I played online briefly back during the poker boom, and found it very sketchy. It seemed like the other "player" always pulled an impossible card to beat me. It was also a lot of all-in or fold play, based largely on how people viewed poker being played on ESPN (which, obviously, only featured the most exciting hands).

    My experience so far since playing for the first time in 10-15 years is that people aren't pulling the impossible cards nearly as often, but big hands are still king. I'm not sure if it's just because I'm seeing so many more hands than I would at a live table, or if it's because the site's algorithms make them more likely because it's exciting and keeps players more engaged. Either way, if you think to yourself, "The only hand that can beat me is Hand X," it's somewhat likely the other guy has it.

    I'm playing $0.10-0.25 NL with a $25 buy-in and basically treading water. I've had sessions where I've been up $75, and others where I've lost $50 pretty rapidly. It's mostly to alleviate boredom when I have a small block of time while self-quarantined. It's also kind of helping me resharpen my skills (calculating odds, recognizing potential hands that can beat me, putting together the story that another player's betting is telling me, etc.) as I hope to play a bit more often in the casinos than I have in past eight years.
     
    playthrough likes this.
  9. bigpern23

    bigpern23 Well-Known Member

    I was the same way, getting into it during the Moneymaker boom. I was a shit player then, but had a buddy who was really good. Most of my friends avoided him, but I played him as much as I could and learned very rapidly. Super System 2, Play Poker Like the Pros, Harrington On Hold Em and Caro's Book of Poker Tells were all on my regular reading list, and helped immensely. Hellmuth's Play Poker Like the Pros was mostly garbage, but had a few tidbits. Caro's book was excellent. Super System 2 basically transformed the way I played and almost immediately paid dividends. I barely remember Harrington's book, so I can't say it was all that influential.

    I financed a vacation to Thailand, bought an expensive DSLR and basically supplemented my lousy journalist's paycheck by spending three or four nights a week at the tables. I still love to play, but rarely have six hours to myself to get in a proper 4-hour session (including travel time).
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2020
  10. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    So do people who bet that the XFL wouldn't play all their games collect? How do books handle something like this? Will they payoff on all the Under bets for NBA wins?
     
  11. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    All spring season-long futures will push. That actually hurts the books as they make a ton of futures.

    Aussie wins again. 5-0 on Turkish soccer and Aussie footie. All the time I spent losing in college football this year and I’m winning in two leagues I know nothing about.
     
  12. Webster

    Webster Well-Known Member

    When I was going to Vegas a lot for work, I got into the game. Had an awful experience playing it once at the Harrah’s in New Orleans. I flew in town on an early flight for a bachelor party and was killing time Friday morning before my hotel room nearby was ready/most of the rest of the guys showed up. I had been playing $10 per bet and was up around $75 or so. I decided to tip the dealer $5 and play the rest of my profits that hand, figuring I would pull back unless I had 10s or better on any bet. So, with $70 or so, I get a pair of jacks. 4th card comes and I have 3 jacks. Before the 5th card is turned, the pit boss comes and says that the hand doesn’t count because I made an unusually large bet. The other couple of players had pulled back their bets so they didn’t really care. I explained why I bet so much and said that my bet was within the table limit. Called his boss over and they refused to pay me. They walked me over to the cashier and gave me my money and told me that they didn’t want me coming back (despite the fact that they didn’t ask for my ID or anything). Lost out on a very good payday.
     
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