Went on my normal "Anniversary" trip to Vegas Jan 3-7th (wedding anniversary is Jan 6th). I've done this trip for the last three years. My wife and I stayed at the Excalibur - room rate was very cheap (turned out to be about 33 bucks per night). When I went in 2009, Excalibur had the electronic poker tables. They were OK - I played a couple tournaments and several cash games on them. Now the standard tables are back. I'm glad. Excalibur also managed to get most of their old dealers back - I remembered several of them from my 2008 trip. Very nice group of people. This year's trip was most notable because it was the first time my wife played live poker. She has been playing a little on line for play money, but she normally just plays slots when we go to Vegas. This year she decided to try the 2/4 limit game at Excalibur. For her first time, she did very well - and enjoyed it so much that she continued to play throughout the trip. Day by day breakdown:
Sunday - arrived at about 3:00 PM. I played 1/2 NL at Excalibur for a couple of hours. Game was tougher than I remember here - I lost about 12 bucks of my $60 buyin. Monday - entered the 9:00am tourney. Size was 4 almost full tables. Made final table - finished 8th. No payoff - had to be in top 4. After that played 1/2 NL for about two hours - lost my $60 buy-in. I made too many mistakes. My wife had started playing 2/4 limit while I was still at the 1/2 NL table - after I busted out of the NL game I decided to go over there and join that her table. It was a very fun game - enjoyable players and dealers. My wife did great - ended up up $28 on her $60 buyin. I bought in for only $20, ended up being up $24 after a couple of hours. Tuesday morning - walked over to Monte Carlo and played 2/4 limit there for the first time. I had a really good session there - bought in for $60 and doubled my money after a couple of hours. My wife didn't do quite as well there - lost her initial buyin and rebought - lost part of that, but she had fun and learned. Later that day, went back to Excalibur. I played for a couple of hours again - lost $20 of my $60 buyin. There were a couple of aggressive folks there who were raising almost every hand - usually with nothing, but they were successful in scaring people out of the hand most of the time. They both chattered like crazy - got kind of annoying. I lost the $20 bucks mainly because I was pretty card dead, and started playing some marginal hands. Won some of these, but lost a couple of big ones to bad beats (the biggest was a straight that I lost to a river full house from chatterbox number 1). Wednesday - Excalibur again - another winning session for me - almost doubled my buyin. Fun table again, and chatterboxes weren't around. Wife played - lost a little but showed some improvement. She's going to be good, I think, after she spends a little more time studying the game. Later in the day, we went over to Luxor to have dinner and see a show ("Menopause the Musical" - funny). I played 1/2 NL there for about 1/2 hour between dinner and the show - bought in for $60, cashed out at $68. Wish I could have stuck around a little longer - probably could have made a little money. Won two small hands, both semi bluffs. Thursday morning - after checkout and breakfast, we played one last session at Excalibur's 2/4 limit table. I bought in for $60 and cashed our with $110. Wife lost money again, but did pretty well. She lost out on a big hand where she had straight to 7 and somebody else had straight to 8. We left at 1:00 - partly because of the time and the drive we had to make to get back to LA, and partly because Chatterbox #1 showed up, and I just didn't want to deal with that nonsense again. Overall, very good trip, and good intro for my wife. Excalibur is a relaxing, fun place to play for people who are still learning. I don't have much live game experience myself (but play at least a couple hours every day online) - so this is about my speed at this point.