As a belated 40th Bday present to myself, I decided to take off for 5 days in Vegas. As I am a regular reader of AVP, I greatly appreciated all the up to date info on the Vegas poker scene. Hopefully, I can contribute something back with this report and my room reviews.

Day 1 (+500) - Landed Wed (1/11/06) morning and dropped the stuff at the Flamingo, my home base. Its a pretty tired older hotel, but perfectly located in the middle of the strip. Plus, I am a huge Buffet fan, so a cheeseburger in paradise was definitely on the schedule.

First stop was the Aladdin for the 1:00 PM tourney. $60 + $40 re-buy with 45-50 entrants. T3,500 chips with 20 minute levels allowed for some play, but half the table was too conservative and ended up short stacked in about 1 hour. I picked my spots and slowly accumulated chips until I had enough to push around the short stacks and trap with premium hands. Got to the final table (7 places paid) and took a hit when my 2 pr lost to a rivered straight. Luckily, 2 hands later I have QQ and push the chip leader’s button blind steal. He calls and the flop is Q, Q, 9 – good times! Next orbit I find AA and bust out the 5th place finisher. 3 of the 4 left are open to a chop, but not the chip leader. After his refusal to chop, in 2 hands he was gone in 4th alone! My second holding of AA did him in. Now, with 3 left, we quickly chopped 3 ways for $650 each. I’m plus $500 after tips and entry fee. A good start & sign of things to come.

Didn’t play any more that evening as jet lag set in and I wanted to play another AM tourney on Thursday.

Day 2 (+250) I woke up refreshed and ready to go. This day was the most anticipated as I decided to take a shot at the Wynn $330 tourney. I got there 2 hours early, signed up, and decided to play a little 4/8 to pick up a feel for the room as the only 1/3 NL game had over $5-6K on the table (there is no cap to the buy-in at the Wynn). In spite of several trip reports, my sober table could not have played much worse. With only decent cards & a few position turn bets, I picked up $250 of the $330 buy-in in just over 1 hour. A LAG to my right and lots of fish made for a great $$ table.

At noon, I took my seat with 79 other players for the best structured & run tourney I have ever played. You got T3,000 with no re-buys, add-ons, or buy-backs. A true freeze-out. Blinds started at 25/50 and levels were a wonderful 45 minutes. Finally, a chance to play live tourney poker. There was a downside – within 2 orbits, I knew that 3 of the 9 players at my table were better, more experienced players that me. Unfortunately for me, one was to my immediate left. Anyway, for the first 3 hours, I picked my spots and opponents carefully and steadily grew my chip stack. I was put all-in by one of the sharks pre-flop when I held AA – good times as they held up. Later I held A 9 off in the BB with 4 limpers. Flop comes A-9-rag rainbow. SB checks, I check, MP bets, button raises to ½ my stack (big over-bet trying to steal in my opinion) and I push all-in. He very reluctantly calls with 88 and MHIG (my hand is good). After 5.5 hours, we are down to 14. 9 places pay and 9th is $1K. First is $7.5K. I am starting to dwindle and the two remaining solid players (yes, the 3 of us were together for the entire time) are starting to prey on the weak tight limpers trying to limp into the $$. I am looking for my spot. UTG I catch AQs & raise to T2,400 when the BB is T600. Folds to the SB who pushes all in for T10,000 or so. I have T14,000 left and go into the tank. I put him on JJ-99 or possibly AK as he is a pretty conservative player and had not made any bluffs. If he held AA-QQ or possibly AK he would have called looking for action. Finally, I decided that he held JJ and I had an ok coin-flip. If I won, I would have over T25,000 or more than 10% of the chips in the tournament and could take a shot at winning. If I lost, I was short stacked with the BB coming next. If I folded, I was truly afraid that the sharks would lean on me constantly for being weak/tight and folding. I called. He had JJ. Flop has A,K,Q – yee-haa! Turn is a J – oh, I just got kicked in the nuts! NOTE – this is not a bad beat as he had the best of it when he pushed, just a bad call on my part (given my reads) and a painful torture flop/turn from the poker gods. Anyway, I was out shortly thereafter when my ATs push was called by QQ. Far and away the best tourney I have ever played and will definitely do it again next time in Vegas.

That evening, I go to Caesar’s to check out the new room. It was fantastic (see my room review for the details). My poker nuts were still sore from that morning’s kick so I decided to play limit. The 6/12 game was very loose and fishy and I finished up $325 or so after 3-4 hours of play until the table broke up at 3:00 AM.

Day 3 (+250) I go down the monorail to the old Sahara for their morning tourney. T2,000 for $42 plus a $20 re-buy for 1,000 more and 25/50 blinds that double every 20 minutes. This is one of the best low buy-in events in Vegas. My initial table wasn’t too strong, and I was lucky at the right time. I hold QQ and raise with 3 callers. Flop brings a Q, and I get two players all-in. The turn – another Q!! Lucky Queens for me in tourneys! Not too many other memorable hands as I generally played big stack poker by picking on the smaller blinds to keep my chip lead. At the final table, I was crippled when my AK ran into KK. Ended up finishing 7th for $150 or so.

Later that evening I play a little 3/6 LHE at the Flamingo to earn a room discount. Not a bad room, but really poor players. I was card dead for most of the 3 hours and ended up leaving up $100.

Day 4 (+$700) I entered the Caesar’s Palace noon tourney for $130. T4,500 and 30 minute blinds once again allowed for decent play. This field was a pretty even mix of good/bad players. Out of 110 entrants, I finished ~34th or so when I came over the top of the chip leader’s raise with AK only to find AA. Oh well, that’s poker.

Later that evening with the NFL play-offs in full gear, I walked over to Bally’s for my first venture at NL. The 1/2 $200 max table was everything this site reported – drunk and loose. $15 was the standard pre-flop raise with usually 3-4 callers. I waited for almost 2 hours for a good spot to tangle with the drunk & lucky deep stack. He had over $1,000 on the table. Anyway, he raises to $15 UTG and there are 3-4 callers as usual. I have 6-6 and decide to call on the button. The flop is 6-3-3. Our villain makes it $75 to go and I come over the top for my whole stack of $150 or so. He calls and his 9-9 is second best! Four hands later, I have AA UTG and make it $45 to go, figuring our hero would call out of curiosity. He doesn’t, he re-raises all–in! WTF? I insta-call and beat him into the pot with my $400 and he turns over AT offsuit with a look of pure disbelief that I will never forget. Net result, up $850 on a $200 buy-in.

For the trip, I was up $1,700 but did my best to blow it on food, shows, and stuff for the family. One restaurant recommendation – have the bone-in rib eye at the Eiffel Tower restaurant – carni-heaven!