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Very interesting story Bob had at the end.

Reinforces my leeriness when it comes to plunking myself down at a Casino poker room.

Quote: odiousgambit

Very interesting story Bob had at the end.

Richard Munchkin had a good comment on that after the show, which we plan to share next week. Basically, he said that this was not uncommon in poker tournaments and a dirty little secret about poker that doesn't get mentioned much.

We'll also ask Arnold Synder about it, who will be our guest.

When I was listing last night I knew right where the story was going. This happens all the time players will hand of chips to friends or keep them for another tourney. Also that is one of the worst formats for a poker tournament restarting every round.

The "dirty jeep girl" story reminded me of when I purchased my current ride. I purchased my Honda Civic from a private party on Auto Trader. The girl I bought it from must have thought she was good looking because her personalized license plate read "prfct10". She was in a hurry and wanted me to send the plates back to her when I got mine. Over the next few weeks you should have seen the looks of disappointment on all the men's faces as they pulled up next to me and looked in with anticipation.

A friend of mine suggested that I should add a bumper sticker next to it that just said "inches". Either way, false advertisement.

Near the beginning of this show, Wizard said that he was surprised that vpFREE2.com, the video poker database, did not list 9/6 JoB at Mandalay Bay for a very long time. He must not know that if vpFREE2 is not up to date, it's because users of the site aren't reporting changes that need to be made.

So if anyone sees something in vpFREE2.com that should be changed, please click on "Send Update" and let them know about it.

More information: vpFREE2 monitors aren't required to scout their casinos, but some do. They are required to make updates reported to vpFREE2 and mentioned on the vpFREE forums. For casinos without a monitor, the site owner makes the updates. See all the monitor duties here - only visible if you are NOT logged in:
http://www.vpfree2.com/casino/ballys-las-vegas/monitor

I not sure if "surprise" is the right word.

But Bob immediately followed up to state, more or less, the same thing you said about the reasons it's not up to date.

Quote: tes3355

Near the beginning of this show, Wizard said that he was surprised that vpFREE2.com, the video poker database, did not list 9/6 JoB at Mandalay Bay for a very long time. He must not know that if vpFREE2 is not up to date, it's because users of the site aren't reporting changes that need to be made.

To be honest, I was selfish on that one, and hoped they wouldn't publish that information. When combined with other promotions it was a good reliable advantage play. However, they had only so many 9-6 machines and I didn't want other pros monopolizing them or setting off red flags that they were paying too much.

Still, I felt whoever was supposed to monitor the MB did a very poor job of it, fortunately for me. They had the 9-6 machines for at least a year, and maybe two, before the information was added to vpfree2. These machines were not difficult to find either. There were several in the high-limit room, and later just outside of it.

That, I think, is the dilemma of vpfree2. It is a great resource, but those who use is it are not motivated to keep quiet about the good information. Much for the same reason people seldom post good advantage plays here. I wish they would, but doesn't surprise me that it doesn't happen often.

Thanks for your reply, Wizard. I understand the situation with the 9/6 JoB at MB.

You wrote: "Still, I felt whoever was supposed to monitor the MB did a very poor job of it, fortunately for me."

If by "whoever was supposed to monitor the MB" you mean that you think someone was supposed to scout the casino on a regular basis and update vpFREE2 with their findings, that isn't true. Monitors aren't required to scout their casinos. They are supposed to make updates submitted by users, so if users don't submit updates, vpFREE2 gets out of date.

Quote: tes3355

If by "whoever was supposed to monitor the MB" you mean that you think someone was supposed to scout the casino on a regular basis and update vpFREE2 with their findings, that isn't true. Monitors aren't required to scout their casinos. They are supposed to make updates submitted by users, so if users don't submit updates, vpFREE2 gets out of date.

I didn't know that. However, I think a good monitor should visit his/her casinos once in a while anyway.

Quote: Wizard

I didn't know that. However, I think a good monitor should visit his/her casinos once in a while anyway.

That would be wonderful if all vpFREE2 casino monitors would regularly scout their casinos. Unfortunately that's not happening and some casinos like Mandalay Bay don't even have a monitor. All that is why I encourage anyone using the site to report changes that need to be made.

(Of course I'm not advocating that users report games that they believe it's better not to publicize, either for their own benefit or for the video poker community as a whole.)

I love vpFREE2 and use it all the time on my phone. It helped me find the good paying machines at the Suncoast, where I stayed recently, and I played those exclusively. (There were way upstairs near the Bingo room). That said, their information for some places like Red Rock is woefully out of date. If I was a Las Vegas local I would volunteer to be a monitor.

Red Rock is out of date in vpFREE2? It looks OK to me. It was just updated a week ago. What needs to be changed? http://www.vpfree2.com/casino/red-rock-casino-resort-spa

I couldn't find any of the machines listed. To be fair, it is huge, and maybe I wasn't looking hard enough.

Regarding the possible cheating incedent....

First off, that's a terrible format. Multiple rounds are fine, but you should go to the next round with whatever chips you acquired during the previous round. Why should someone who slides in with one chip be rewarded and a real achiever be punished.

Normally, players retain the chips stacks. Often, players retain the actual chips. That is to say, at the end of the round, the chips are counted and individually bagged. When the next round starts, the player gets their bag back with the same chips in it.

With the exception of when the tournament director moves players to keep tables balanced, chips are never to be taken off the table. If they are, they are out of play.

OK. I assume the cheater, if he really cheated, knew these rules, which explains why Bob never noticed the chips being added to the stack, but saw the stack size was different.

Cheating in this manner is not a new concept. In fact, any tournament director with at any experience and at least half a brain has procedures to combat this.

Very simply, because of the format of not bagging the chips, at the end of each preliminary round, all the chips should be collected and counted. When the discrepancy is discovered, all the staff should be told to keep watch during the coming rounds.

So, should Bob have said something? YES! He should have quietly told the director or floorperson what he suspected.

Whether the alledged cheater swiped ships from the earlier round or got them some other way is irrelevant. As I understand it, it wasn't long after the player returned from his break that Bob noticed the change in the chip stack.

It would have been little effort for the surveilance people to check those few minutes of video recordings. They woiuld have loved the info about who to look at and for that short period, if there was a discrepancy in the chip count....



For the record, I read a story in Poker Player Newspaper a few years back about a woman who was making a rukkus at the cage when they wouldn't cash her $!00 chip. It turns out she was a "profesional" and had been paid for her "services" with a black tournament chip.

Yeo, she got screwed twoce.