This trip report is a couple of months late, but since I’m going back to Las Vegas in two weeks, it seems like I should get this one out of the way. My job had me working in Los Angeles for 4 days at the beginning of December, so I arranged a three night layover in Las Vegas on my way home. I arrived Thursday night and took a cab to the IP, where I had booked three nights through my Harrah’s reward plan for $110.00, tax included. It was about 9:15 when I dumped my bags, so I headed straight to TI for their 10:00 tourney. It was a three table tournament and I built my stack fairly steadily throughout the early levels. There was only one memorable hand early, when I had 22 against AA. The flop was K-3-7, but the aces tried to get cute and didn’t bet the flop. I turned a set and wound up knocking him out. I was able to cruise from that point until we got down to 7 players (paid 6). Everyone was scared of the bubble, and I was able to take down 5 of the next 6 pots simply through aggression. (I was the chip leader). When I knocked out the short stack and everyone was in the money, the perfect storm hit. I got a run of great hole cards, and no one would respect my raises, since I’d been raising every pot. In succession, I got 99, AKs, AA, 39, KQc and QQ. This left me heads up, with a 4-1 chip advantage. I was dealt K-8, raised and my opponent shoved. He seemed shocked when I called, and he turned over J-4. No one paired and I took down the $744 first place price. After my $65 buy-in and $79 tip, I cleared $600. I know my tip was excessive, but I had watched 4 of the 5 money winners under-tip the dealers or stiff them completely and that aggravated me, so I tried to compensate. Afterwards, I played Let-it-ride for several hours, before crashing around 5:30.

I woke up about 11:00 in the morning, and played in the noon tournament at the Venetian. I managed to stay at, or slightly above, the average stack for most of the afternoon. I was card dead for most of the last two hours, and was slowly being blinded out. When I would get a marginal hand, like A-10, there was always a raise and a call, or re-raise, before me. It’s hard to call all your chips in that position with A-10. I was down to about 14,000 chips, with the blinds at 3000 – 6000, when I woke up with pocket Aces. The pot was raised to 12,000, I shoved and was called. He had AK, and I doubled up. One more round of blinds and ante’s left me with about 17,000, so I shoved it all in with 55. I lost the race to AK, and was out. Played for six hours and wound up going out in 21st place (Paid top 18). I liked this tournament (other than my finish). The room was nice and the dealers were professional. My only question, why do they not allow the cocktail waitresses to make change when you tip them?

After that, I signed up for the 8:00 tournament at Planet Hollywood. I didn’t like this tournament at all. I think this was primarily because it was very hot in the poker room and I hadn’t eaten in a day and a half. I got bored, and quickly donked off my chips in about an hour and a half. This actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I moved to the Let-it-ride table, where I hit quad 10’s for a 50-1 payout on my $30 bet. After this, I went to the Steakhouse at TI for dinner. Played Blackjack & Let-it-ride until about 2 in the morning, then called it a night.

The next morning, I was out early and dropped some money on table games. I went to Caesar’s to play in their 3:00 tourney, but got shut out. Instead, I played the 1-3 cash game for about 4 hours, finishing up $265. From there I went to TI and got into a 1-2 game. This is where my trouble started. I bought in for $300 and was UTG+2. On the very first hand, UTG went all-in blind for his last $33. I had AA and re-raised to $70. The guy on my left called his last $28 and everyone else folded. My Aces got cracked by a set of 4’s to my left. While I only lost $28 on the hand, it was a sign of things to come. The table was comprised mostly of people who would call anything. I raised to$15 pre-flop with KK & lost to two pair when someone called with 10-6 offsuit. Also lost with AA against 3-8 offsuit, after raising to $20 pre-flop. It was just one of those sessions. I will admit that alcohol had a lot to do with my unwillingness to cut my losses at this table and I ultimately dropped $500 on the session. After this, I went back to the blackjack & let-it-ride games for the evening while I sobered up a bit.

Sunday morning, I was leaving for the airport fairly early, so I only had a little time to kill. I opted to spend the time at Bill’s, playing let-it-ride. I had an amazing run of hands and wound up winning $510 in a little more than two hours. I really wanted to postpone my trip home, but I knew that wouldn’t go over well at the office. Besides, I knew I would be back at the end of February.

Overall, I had a great time. Las Vegas is about the only city where you can hang out by yourself for three days and never get bored.