Football disgraces itself, again!

What is it about the World’s top footballers that seems to encourage them to believe that they can behave with total disregard for common standards of decency and the laws of the game?

Yesterday, Zinedine Zidane, arguably the finest player of his generation, managed to ensure that his memory will be forever tarnished in the eyes of football fans worldwide, by getting himself sent off for a bizarre head-butt in extra time of the World Cup Final.

This one act of madness will overshadow the memories that we all have of the genius that claimed two World Player of the Year titles, as well as scoring arguably the finest big-match goal of all time, in the Champions League Final for Real Madrid a few years back.

But then we might have known that this would happen.

Maradonna, who many people regard as the greatest player of all time, finished his career as a cocaine-addled cheat. Wayne Rooney is already well on his way to being hated in the game as a short-fused psychopath. David Beckham has repeatedly got in trouble for petulant behaviour, even though he hasn’t got the balls to actually kick anybody.

Even our own beloved Thierry Henry will return from the World Cup with his reputation for fair play slightly tarnished. (Although I am convinced that his reaction to the foul by Spain’s Carlos Puyol was an act of well-timed revenge for the kicking that Henry took from the Spanish thug at the Champions League Final.)

Anyway, I for one am delighted that the World Cup fizzled out in controversy and with an anti-climactic Final. The tournament got exactly the champions that it deserved, in the deathly-boring Italians. Thank goodness that the biggest non-event in World sport is now over for another four years.

On the poker front, my education at the table progressed on Sunday, and it didn’t cost me any money to learn a very important lesson, which is always good news.

It has finally sunk in that there are two ways to win money at poker. Either you can sit at any given table and wait for a run of good cards which you then turn into a profitable session, (assuming that you play the given game well enough to capitalise on your good hands). Alternatively, you can carefully select games where you hold a clear advantage in ability over at least some of the other players at the table, in which case you don’t need the best cards to win, you just need to pick the right moment to make the moves that ensure your success. (Actually, there is a third way to make money, which is to play loosely with poor cards and hope to get lucky. This works for some of the people, some of the time, but is a certain route to going broke in the long term.)

The above theory is not rocket science, but it has taken until this poker marathon for me to finally grasp the importance of good table selection.

The problem with putting this theory into practise is that you typically don’t get to choose your table in a casino. You add you name to a waiting list when you arrive at the game, and when your name reaches the top of the list, you are directed to the next available seat.

Prior to the last couple of days, I have always had in my mind a preset number of hours that I have intended to play, and I have always remained in my allocated seat for that period of time, and let the success or failure of the session be at least partly determined by the run of hands that I am dealt.

(This is actually not THAT bad a strategy. I am now a good enough player that I am extremely likely to emerge as a long term winner in this situation, as I do, as a rule, take good advantage of the decent cards when they arrive. However, I was at the mercy of the dreaded theory of variance, which means that there is always the potential that I will experience a much worse run of cards than average, that will ensure that any given session can turn out to be a losing one. Sometimes a big losing one.)

So, on Sunday, I spent the day sitting down for brief periods in a number of different games, none of which I liked the look of. So each time, I exercised my right to stand up, cash out, and move on. The difference in the quality of player in the Luxor NL game compared to the previous couple of days was astounding. I guess that all the drunken weekend crowd had left.

I actually finished the day $1 down overall, from four separate sessions totalling 5 hours, but I did get comped for the buffet at the Wynn, which is worth $35 and was absolutely exquisite!

On Monday morning, I had my usual swim and then headed to the Peppermill restaurant for breakfast, which is something of a Vegas institution. After this, I drove to the Gamblers General Store and bought a few odds and ends including Sklansky’s new NL book.

I then decided to try out the poker room at Treasure Island, and I am very glad that I did!

I sat in a short-handed 2/4 game and began to accumulate chips quite nicely. Soon the game filled up with an assortment of pretty weak players and I enjoyed my most profitable ever 2/4 session, cashing out after 2 hours with a healthy 3 figure win. As I was cashing out, I enquired about the comp balance on my MGM card, and I was kindly given a comp to the TI Buffet. This was not quite as spectacular as the Wynn buffet from the previous evening, but I must say that it was fantastic value at $16 for lunch. Of the all the buffets that I have seen recently in Vegas (Orleans, IP, Bellagio, Wynn, TI), this one is certainly the best value for money.

As this is my last night in Vegas on this trip, I decided to spend my winning from today on a ticket to see the brand new Beatles Cirque du Soleil show at the Mirage this evening, which opened last week to rave reviews.

Just time for a couple more poker sessions, before I head home tomorrow afternoon.