I'll blog about my recent Vegas trip on here if it's OK with y'all (I say like anyone actually still reads this) :)
I arrived in Sin City last Thursday night after three long, exhausting sightseeing days in New York so was quite happy to follow through with my family-friendly-holiday plan of relaxing by the pool with a selection of poker and golf magazines for the first couple of days. It wasn't until Sunday morning that I decided to sit at a poker table.
On walking back to our room after breakfast, I overheard a dealer explain the rules / betting for $3/$6 Limit Hold'Em. I wandered closer to the rail to take notes (peeking over shoulders was easy as Seats 1 and 8 were empty); there were two loud-ish women in Seats 2 and 3 who seemed to be conferring with each other (showing each other the hands they were folding etc.) and generally ruling the table chat. The two guys behind them were giving them and their bets too much respect (serial limp > folders). Two European gents in Seats 6 and 7 looked to be involved in every hand and constantly asking / being corrected about their bet sizing, and the older Asian man in Seat 9 seemed to be raising on every flop regardless of how many people were in the pot and taking a large majority of them down with ease. Seat 1 was starting to look very attractive ...
And it was! I don't normally play Limit games but at 3/6, this just looked too good to miss. Within 30 mins (about 15 hands), I had spun $100 up to $232 and had almost single handedly taken out the two European guys and had seriously dented the stack of the Asian guy to my right by playing ultra-aggressive with complete air on all dry boards. Early on with 77 I was raising the arse out of the pot when I hit trips but only won around $30. The chat was friendly so I showed - and I'm sure this turned out to my best decision yet. My biggest wins were with AQo, AKs and 44, none of which hit in any way but which I bet to the hilt on each street, just as I had with the 7s. It was a strangely awesome feeling to get such bets through. Being so used to No Limit I was betting and raising rivers thinking that these guys HAD to call $6 more (surely they're priced in) ... but luckily for me, they were quite happy to fold top pair, weak kickers / 2nd top pair type hands to my relentless re-raises.
After almost two hours, still hovering around the $230 mark, I went on a run of coolers against a couple of the new faces at the table - I flopped top 2 pair v flopped trips, turned a straight only to be beaten by a rivered 8 high flush (seriously!) and ran a Q high flush into a nut flush during a pretty bad period of tilt. All of these took care of the $130-odd profit quicker than I had made it. When Julia and Scott arrived on the rail I was happy to go with them to the Games Arcade having had my first 'poker fix' of the holiday.
My second venture to the tables was to play the 7pm $150 Bounty Game at Treasure Island as recommended by The Duke. I arrived to see three cash-game tables up and running and around 6 others loitering, registering / waiting for the tourney to start. Or so I assumed. The 'tourney' ran with only 7 (yeah, seven) players. Needless to say I was less than impressed. On AllVegasPoker.com they state that this game attracts an average of 35 players and with it being a Sunday night, I expected it to get fairly close to that - the cardroom manager appeared to too. I didn't particularly want to be pulling a late-nighter but I didn't want to be home before 11pm either. With a fair mix of standards but with 5 'regulars', I had a loose idiot regular to my left in Seat 7, a regular who called all Seat 7's donkiness in Seat 1 knowing that K high was good enough 80% of the time, two tight aggressive players in seats 2 and 3, and two floaters / calling stations in Seats 4 and 5.
Predictably Seat 7 left us first after limping into a pot from UTG holding J2s. His stack of 15BBs goes in on the J high flop and Seat 4 holding JKo calls to rake them in. I couldn't get going and finished in 5th after having only seen around a dozen flops in total. Overall I was disappointed to find myself in a $150 SnG - not even a full one at that.
On Tuesday I met up with Kenny at the cardroom at MGM for a walk down to Caesars for their Noon, $85 + $15 game. With only a dozen or so players in the room at 11:30, we decided to walk the extra in the 116degree sunshine to The Venetian which we both knew to be busier and more popular. Their Noon, $150, $7k starting stack game ran with 71 players, with Kenny and I going out within 10 mins of each other (me first around 40th during Level 6). Neither of us could get it going, my best hand in the first three levels being A8o. Kenny got AKo on his first hand and "absolute shite" from then on.
My table was rife with older generation 'regulars' and drunk holiday-maker Americans who clearly hadn't played much before their trip. With the loose idiots on my left I took the tight trappy approach and against the limp>foldy Americans on my right I stepped up the aggression. In one hand early on, having flopped the nut flush with K9s on the button and with 6 players having limped into the pot, I called the 3/4 pot bet of the 60+yo lady in middle position. BB also called (check>called). A brick on the turn, BB checks, Mrs Doubtfire bets out 800 (around half-pot this time), I re-raise to 1800, BB folds and she calls the 1000 more. River bricks again and she checks it to me. If she has a hand worth calling me with on the flop, she's surely gonna call around 2200 more but, feeling as transparent as I was, I tried to give the impression I was uncomfortable pushing my 2.5k value bet over the line. She insta-calls and looks genuinely surprised that her 95spades has been beaten, saying, "I thought you just had an Ace". Cue a few funny looks and sly sniggering. Cue my disbelief that $150 tourneys in The Venetian are really attracting players who limp and are willing to go (nearly) broke with 95s.
After a few failed steal attempts with TJo, KJo and 55 from late positions - having folded to All-In shoves from the two players to my immediate left - my exit hand was with around 5k and blinds at 200/400/25 - a pretty standard JJ v KK.
On the way home I get to thinking; although NY and Vegas was an enjoyable enough family holiday, I would really only look forward to returning to Vegas if it was for a poker holiday first and foremost. There are so many things that are good and bad about Vegas and it's mainly because everything is taken to the extreme. It sounds weird I know, but it's great that it's a busy place but it's just bonkers busy at weekends. The strip is 11 lanes wide but the traffic is stand-still at the weekends. Casinos are great but the constant ding-dinging of slot machines drive me daft pretty quickly. The heat is great (116degrees is actually surprisingly bearable / enjoyable / theraputic even) but ... well, it's still 116!
I arrived back home on Thursday morning with a couple of work issues to sort out and to a day or two of jet-lag. I had suspected I was over it but a sleepless night last night and still being wide awake at 22:30 tonight might prove me wrong.
More than ever, I'm really looking forward to the four days of Poker at DTD at the end of August.
