Turkey Report

The last week (basically) I was home in Pennsylvania, basically just hanging out with my parents and marveling at how much things have changed over the past 10 years. I don't make it back there as much as I'd like, and every time I do I am amazed at some of the new developments. The primary one this time was the introduction of a great deal of gamble to my home state. My dad and I visited the Meadows Casino Saturday night, and I have to say that I was impressed with every aspect of the operation except (big surprise here) the actual games being spread in the poker room. The parking garage reminded me of Foxwoods. The casino floor itself made me feel comfortable, like I was somewhere on the strip in Vegas (except for all the people wearing massive winter coats). There were slot machines freaking everywhere. There were 4 craps tables going, two of them $10. Lots of blackjack and other table games were going, with higher minimums than I expected. The building itself was nice. There were bars everywhere, and a food court type thing just like you'd expect. The bowling alley was pretty nice, although we didn't get to bowl because there was an hour wait. And the poker room itself was very nice and seemingly well run; there was just the small matter of there being practically no action whatsoever. They had 26 tables, and my estimate of their usage was as follows (and it was 5:30 pm on a Saturday...not prime time but certainly not ghost shift either):

13 empty tables

4 tournament tables

3 two/four limt hold 'em games

5 one/two no limit hold 'em games

1 two/five no limit hold 'em game

They had interest lists for a lot of other games, but it was pretty clear that nothing above 3/6 limit or 2/5 no limit really ever ran. My dad got to watch me play a single orbit of 1/2 no limit before we booked it out of there (good grief 10 handed baby nl is probably the worst game you could ever play in a casino). All in all I give the casino high marks, but I fear they will never reasonably sized limit games going and that's just kind of a shame. Besides this little trip the whole time I was home I played only enough poker to get my last two days credit for iron man for the month (so something like 600 hands), which was actually relaxing, but perhaps a bit much as I'm finding myself having trouble getting back into it today. On a related note full tilt made some more changes to their rewards program, all of which are 100% just good for me and other customers (they added a 500 point per day level to ironman, adding ways to qualify for gold or iron in a month, and brought back ironman plus, where you get bonus medals for hitting 1000 or 2000 points in a day....both changes are something for nothing if I'm not mistaken).

While I was off eating turkey (and all other manner of tasty foods....somehow I weighed only 164 pounds this morning, proving that weight gain, like weight loss, really is an endurance event....no matter how bad you are, you simply can't gain much weight in a week. If you could, I would have just done it. Trust me) Bellatrix was busy in her nerdery running limit hold'em tournament simulations, the upshot of which you can check out on her blog (which the observant will note has been linked over on the left in the "Of Which I am a Fan" section for a while now). She is promising a several part series, interesting stuff IMO.

And in closing, apparently a friend of mine from back home invented the NeoCube, and a very good friend of mine is working with him to market/sell the suckers. I played with one while I was home and have to say it was pretty entertaining. Having one at a casino to keep your hands busy while playing poker might not be a bad use actually. For me for now it's back to the grind; I'm hoping to play 50K hands this month, but realistically there is a lot Holiday stuff going on and it's' gonna be tough.