Downtown Bob’s Las Vegas

‘Radio Fun’ may not be the most appropriate title for this post given the gravity of the situation, but nontheless I enjoy situations where my semi-unique sets of knowledge may come in handy.

Fairly recently, as most LV-blog readers are aware by now, a gentleman by the handle of ‘pokergump’ was illegally detained (according to his story, a likely-accurate one) at the Cannery, for taking pictures.

In one of his later posts, he made brief mention of how amusing it might be to have a ‘flash mob’ sort of event occur there, with a large number of picture-taking patrons suddenly doing the same, at the same moment, overwhelming the policy-enforcing security force’s ability to deal effectively with it. Within the text of this, he made mention also of how interesting it would be to listen in on the security radio transmissions during such an event. That’s where I come in.

Cannery isn’t listed in the Nevada Trunking database, so I will assume for the moment that their communications aren’t trunked. Therefore, it is no more than a matter of scanning the common business band frequencies from a nearby location to determine what frequency their security radios operate on. Even if they are trunked, I can get it, but the monitoring equipment would be significantly more expensive (though I have the gear and would do the recording from nearby if a flash-mob project is in the works, and post an mp3 of the results here… after all, if you broadcast it on the radio, it’s free for all to hear). They have to be working with enough power to cover the property, therefore a nearby truck with a funny antenna or two on certifiably public property should be quite able to receive it.

Wow. Just had to get online for a few minutes and say… Wow. There’s white stuff falling out of the sky. It’s pretty unique around here. Sounds like anybody and everybody that is out driving is doing pretty much nothing but running into each other. I’m doing a bit of net surfing right now at dinner (MSS buffet, good stuff) and figured I’d post here. I think I’ll go holler at Ipo (good host here) after dinner and see if I can have a room comp tonight. I really don’t feel like taking the truck out in this stuff. It is interesting, though. I heard something about a possible 6 inch snowfall… Makes me wonder what the load-bearing capacity of VivaVision is. Yet another reason to get a room off-canopy, huh?

It it comes down heavy enough I’ll run down and roll up a big snowman on the walkway between Neonopolis and the ‘Tez. I’d do the eyes/nose with chips, but I have a feeling somebody would snag ’em as soon as I walked off. Maybe beer-bottle-caps would be a better option.

-“Downtown” Bob

I’ve heard a few times that my rather stock installation of WordPress makes me look amateurish and cheap. Well, no big deal there I figured. After all, I’m pretty amateurish and cheap in general. Not only that, I’m pretty sure I’d break the whole thing if I tried to go and spruce it up.

Then I ran across something that made me take notice. The website/blog of John Chang, the guy who the “Micky Rosa” character from the “21” book/movie was based on. Not the actor, mind you, the real-deal team-counting mastermind himself.

And guess what his website is… yeah, that’s right… an unimproved basic WordPress installation! I KNEW there was something seriously cool about a no-frills approach to blogging.

MickeyRosa.com

Now all I have to do is go and make some obscenely huge amoung of money playing cards and become world-famous in the process, and I’ll be all caught up with him. No WordPress improvement necessary.

I just happened to run across an unintentional testimonial (I think) from the grave shift manager at South Point (way south of the Strip if you aren’t familiar with it) on the message boards at allvegaspoker.com (a great site if you haven’t visited).

“Downtown Vegas has a certain personality and charm that the strip can never take away. Some of the Casinos were around when the mob was running the city, and the rat pack was together. At around 10pm at night there is a festival atmosphere; live bands, street performers, food venders & the light show. I love it.”

You’re right on, “SouthPointPerry”. The Strip can’t take away downtown’s “personality and charm”… And for those with an open mind, they can’t even match it. Welcome to the club!

Just for that, I’m gonna make a point of dropping a few bucks worth of unleaded in the middle of the night to subject your valet staff to the adventures related to parking a 1972 Custom/10 with intermittent power brakes and patronize your poker room a bit. Got fish?

– Downtown Bob

Hey – I’ve finally figured out how to expand this blog-thing to include more pages like a real web site. Or at least I think I know how now. I’m gonna find out. Seems to me that there isn’t much online to guide a visitor specifically around downtown or around Henderson (well, there’s some for downtown, but you really gotta know what you’re looking for to learn about the smaller joints in Henderson, most of which are just great). So soon, look for the Downtown Bob Guide to Downtown (duh), and the Downtown Bob’s Guide to Henderson. Should be fun, maybe people will get something out of it.

– Downtown Bob

So I was reading my usual list of blog posts tonight, and one from David Schwartz (bigwig dude at UNLV) ran an old ad from the Silver Nugget advertising what at first glance appears to be “Bacteria Free MONDAY”. Heh. It’s a hoot, you should go over there and have a look. He does a good blog-thing, quite a bit more insightful than my stuff. And he’s made it big in academia, which is far more than I can say, having gotten kicket outta grad school for parking fines (yeah, it sounds silly, but I was REAL creative when it came to parking).

Anyway, give him a visit, and check out the “Bacteria Free MONDAY” ad. It’s funny as all get out. While you’re at it, google “Bacteria Free MONDAY” and follow the link that leads to his blog. I’ll be tickled pink if it ends up on google’s buzz-radar.

Bacteria Free MONDAY on Die is Cast

– Downtown Bob

I’ve just come across a new video-poker variant, if you want to call it that… It’s called “Find ‘Em”, brought to us by the same folks that brought us Quick Quads, Super Times Pay, and the like. Unlike the other variations, however, Find ‘Em is a unique game that defies standard strategy/paytable analysis to determine whether or not it may be a good game.

In essence, the game is based on one’s ability to find particular poker hands in a 2 dimensional table of ever-increasingly numerous keno-ball-looking cards. One’s high speed video poker skills of course are a major asset in such a game since locating a paying hand as fast as possible is key to success. The designers put a twist on it, though – one is looking for PARTICULAR hands, not just the best hands. I’ve played the game online a number of times, and can nearly always identify a straight flush or a royal or something right off the bat. However, choosing such a hand actually costs you points since the object of the game is to find particular combinations of cards (most challenging to the traditional VP player seem to be low pairs and straights).

It would appear, on first glance, that the game is intended to capitalize on the skills and/or ego of good video poker players, drawing them in by virtue of their pride in their ability to identify particular poker hands quickly. However, the time-based, odd-hand based nature of the game tends to equalize the playing field to a certain extent. At the current time, the game exists only in a point-scoring mode with no indication as to whether one’s perfomance might or might not be a paying level of skill on a casino floor. I look forward to seeing a credit-based model, and to see where I stand (as well as what traditional experts like Bob Dancer and Michael Shackleford have to say about it).

Is this a game intended to draw traditionally unprofiatable video poker players into an ego contest with the machine? The ability of the machine to vary the difficulty of achieving a good score has moved into the realm of time (there is a limit, could be varied to affect the level of skill necessary to profit from one’s play) and distribution of cards… Given the preponderance of things like striaight flushes in the playing field, it would seem that the use of keno-ball cards rather than card-looking cards may be an effort to overcome the requirement that a video likeness of something in the real gaming world must reflect the actual distribution of things in the real world. The ‘cards’ are not rectangular, and therefore do not accurately represent dealt cards… the are also given the value of cards, with suits, and are therefore not keno balls… Does this mean that a machine could be legally set to provide either easy-to-find combinations or obscure combinations, not based on random distribution? I rather think so.

Does this mean that Find ‘Em is a carnival game for the VP pro set? Of this, also, I rather think so. I am eager for this to come out in a credit based game so that I may see where I stand as a decent VP player. It is available online courtesy of Station Casinos via a link in their most recent newsletter/magazine (a decent sign that they may be an early adopter – for their sake I hope this goes over better than Guaranteed Play). I’m not a Stations regular, but I do recommend Boulder Station if you head out to one. The people there are great, though way out on Boulder Highway, it feels just a little bit like downtown (minus VivaVision, which I could do without anyway).

– Downtown Bob

There’s a thread on the Las Vegas Advisor’s message boards that I’ve been following for quite some time with a good deal of interest. Someone claiming to be (and judging by the dialogue I believe it) a casino executive has anonymously opened up a free-for-all Q&A session, answering just about anything reasonable the public would like to ask.

If you haven’t seen this before, I highly recommend that you give it a read – it’s pretty long, but it isn’t every day that you get to see this sort of honest input from the inside of the industry. For that matter, it’s in the free section of the LVA forums, so you can register and throw in your own $0.02.

CasinoBoss Thread on LVA

– Downtown Bob

My web guy says I can text this number and it’ll show up. So I’ll try it. Hi, folks, from the Fitz, gotta SF! Now I’ve gotta load o quarters to cash.