garden city 20/40 makes me real, real nervous

[swope]

look i always view conspiracy threads with a certain degree of skepticism so the last thing im going to do is take any directed at me on this subject personally.

i really debated just blowing off discussing it because ive seen people get eviscerated by mods in b&m for posting stuff like this, but ive received a few pm's and seen enough comments to something i said in the bay 101 20/40 thread to figure i should air my opinion and let the chips fall where they may.

that said, mods: please.. *please*.. if this rubs you the wrong way, just lock and delete it. i dont like spreading rumors, especially ones as slanderous as implying that a crew is working a casino with the collusion of employees, but i cant deny what ive seen and what my gut tells me, so here it goes.

background: ive been playing the 20/40 at GC for about a year and a half. to those who are familiar with the game, you know how it plays, loose wild and dangerous. baysian lags call it home and "bad" beats happen pretty regularly.

i spent tuesday night reading bg's "ace on the river", and he talks a lot about how crews *do* operate in casinos and if you feel youre catching some bad beats, perhaps its not just variance.

the next day i head over to gc to splash around the 20/40 game.

15 minutes after i sit down, one of the asian regulars almost ends up in a full on fist fight with H*, a well known regular. H*, a 6'3" middle aged white ex marine type was already flipping out because his flopped straight with two spades on the board got called down by a baysian regular who catches runner runner spades then tables ace high.. of spades. they both get 86'd about 10 minutes later, H disappears but baysian dude is back at his seat within 5 minutes.

moments later, another baysian regular sits to baysian regular #1's right, as Zheng sits down to deal with a new deck. Zheng makes me nervous; he looks like an asian william burroughs if he had been pickeled in fermaldehyde for 2000 years, and ive always regarded him as a fiscal angel of death. somehow, he always seems to put money in the regulars pockets.

this time, first hand, im the big blind and i call a raise with 84h from the new baysian regular (if youre familiar with the 20/40 at GC, this makes sense to you). flop is KT6, hearts. i bet, baysian calls, 2 other callers, i figure someone has a weak K and baysian has AhX, probably a KQJ.

turn is a J of spades. i bet, baysian raises, fold fold, i reraise, he repops, i call. river, obv, is a heart. he bets into me, i call, he tables AhQs.

so twice in 10 minutes or so we have 2 of the 3 baysian regulars at the table get four flushes on the river then table the nut ace each time.

Zheng departs soon after, a new dealer sits down, cracks open a new deck.

long story short; first hand: 4 spades on the board, last coming on the river, and the third baysian regular tables the ace of spades to crack a flopped set.


clift notes:

3 baysian regs at the table get dealt 4 flushes, each holds the respective ace, each time a new deck was used, each time very strong hands created massive pots, all within 30 minutes or so.

maybe im making a conspiracy out of absolutely nothing but a strange run of cards, i dont know, i really dont. all i know is that i really, *really* feel uncomfortable with what went down at that table, and i think its naive to rule out the possibility that someone would be motivated enough to organize some slimy crap thats been well documented as taking place all over the west coast at various casinos at various times.

also, its worth noting that GC has tremendous financial problems right now. they have outsourced all their meal services to aramark and the landlords are starting to make very public complaints about backrent being owed. for those of you who are familiar with the details of the legal problems GC had about 7 or 8 years ago, these are very relevant details as typically the employees are the first to suffer cash shortages in casinos and disgruntled casino employees are involved in the vast majority of these types of affairs.

so there you have it. you have carte blanche to mock me for my paranoia, i wont fault you for it, but i saw what i saw and i feel what i feel and frankly if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, more often than not you gotta duck on your hands...

[haakee]

When I played that game a couple nights a week 3-4 years ago I won regularly at a reasonable clip. Weird [censored] happens because people play wildly but I never had any reason to believe there was anything worse than implicit collusion (which is rampant in all the northern California casinos). I'll leave it to the people who play there now to address the current state of the game. If you don't like it go play across town at Bay 101.

[swope]

[ QUOTE ]
When I played that game a couple nights a week 3-4 years ago I won regularly at a reasonable clip. Weird [censored] happens because people play wildly but I never had any reason to believe there was anything worse than implicit collusion (which is rampant in all the northern California casinos). I'll leave it to the people who play there now to address the current state of the game. If you don't like it go play across town at Bay 101.

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah this wasnt the usual implicit collusion, which i agree is totally ubiquitous with west coast casinos, and you could definitely be correct that this was just a weird streak, i just wanted to get my opinion out there and let people reach their own conclusions and see if i was the only one who had suspicions.

i have pretty wretched results at bay 101, which seemed spectacularly nitty to me compared to GC, perhaps i should just concentrate on plugging holes and adapting to the game there.

regardless, thanks for a sane and measured response.

[ProfessorBen]

lol samplesizeaments
lol nohypothesisonhowthedealingwasshadyaments

Also, I feel OP has stated nothing of substance, but simply correlated his lack of comfort with playing with what he calls "baysian regulars". I don't know whether I'm offended or amused.

[ackid]

I think you should send in Chuck Norris and the Delta Force to infultrate Garden City and eradicate these so called "baysian regulars".

[pocketpared]

Autoshufflers or hand shuffled?

[Captain R]

Let's see...

Garden City is full of loose, wild players where there are like 8 people to a flop for 13 bets each. You see some runner-runner flushes.

Bay101 is full of nitty players where there are like 3 people to a flop, and you don't see any of these runner-runner hands.

Conclusion: GC must be full of cheaters!

Don't worry, I've gotten proportionally as many bad beats by old white ladies at GC as I have those damn baysians. So I'm thinking they're on it too.

[Captain R]

Question: when you guys say implicit collusion, are you talking about when two buddies get the pot heads-up they then just check it down?

[swope]

[ QUOTE ]
Question: when you guys say implicit collusion, are you talking about when two buddies get the pot heads-up they then just check it down?

[/ QUOTE ]

checking it down is part of it, regulars will often get into totally baseless reraise wars to chase people out of their pots or chase people off when a scare card hits.

example from a 15/30 game at joes; i get chased off a dumb end straight when a reraise war happens on the turn when a third diamond hits the board. 3 regulars were representing huge flushes so i figure one of them *has* to have it and fold. they proceed to check down as soon as i fold. one of them tables like KsTh for top pair, the other 2 muck quietly.

also my apologies if the term 'baysian regular' seems offensive or derogatory, its not meant to be either; it describes a particular type of player one comes into contact with in bay area casinos. he or she is typically chinese, filipino, or vietnamese, and is spectacularly gambly and aggressive. also, the vast majority of crews who work the bay area are asian (usually vietnamese but sometimes of mixed ethnicity). so its shouldnt be considered some sort of xenophobic jab at people of color as much as an attempt to describe an archetype. my apologies if this rubs anyone the wrong way, seriously.

also, the shufflemaster question is an extremely good one, i honestly dont remember if there was one on the table or not.

[daryn]

[ QUOTE ]
example from a 15/30 game at joes; i get chased off a dumb end straight when a reraise war happens on the turn when a third diamond hits the board. 3 regulars were representing huge flushes so i figure one of them *has* to have it and fold. they proceed to check down as soon as i fold. one of them tables like KsTh for top pair, the other 2 muck quietly.

[/ QUOTE ]

are you for real??