This was my annual trip to Las Vegas. My wife was supposed to come along this time, which would have greatly reduced my time at the tables since she would have expected me to see shows and go out to more lengthy dinners. As it turned out her schedule wouldn’t allow her to come, so my lucky nephew who is also a poker fanatic, got a trip to Las Vegas for the price of changing the name on the ticket.

I didn’t take notes, so I’m sure I won’t remember the sepcifics of exact flops on all of the relevant hands I might describe here, but I’ll share outcomes and decisions made as well as reads I tried to make on players.

Day 1
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We landed at about 2:30 Las Vegas time and due to the shortest cab line I’ve ever seen we were checked into our hotel and off to the strip by 3:15. We were staying in a regular room at the Flamingo. The room was nothing special, but we didn’t really see much of it so we didn’t care.

The plan was to show my nephew around the strip on the first night and help him get the lay of the land so that he could select the poker rooms and games where he was most comfortable for the remainder of the week. We weren’t planning on sticking together for the entire time since game selection is a very individual thing. I gave him a speech on the flight there about the importance of game selection in Vegas. Since there are so many poker rooms in such a small area, if you just aren’t feeling it or you don’t feel like you have an advantage on some of the players at your table…..move on.

We caught the monorail from Flamingo to MGM Grand. We were famished and it was nearly suppertime by our body clocks, so we grabbed a quick bite at the fast food Chinese place in the Studio Walk.

I walked him over to the poker room at MGM Grand, through New York-New York, and Excalibur. I was going to just take him up the strip hotel-by-hotel showing him all the poker rooms, but he was so amped up to get in a game that I relented and we headed back to MGM Grand to jump in a 1-2 no limit game. We played there for three hours and I just wasn’t feeling it. I ignored the speech I gave him on the plane about the importance of game selection in Las Vegas and continued to play even though I just wasn’t feeling it. The room was filled with very somber serious players and I really like to have more fun at the table. I honestly don’t remember anything about the session except that I lost my $200 buy-in. I stopped by my nephew’s table and told him that I was going to head back to the Flamingo, but he was welcome to continue playing if he wanted. He readily cashed out with about $300 profit using me as his excuse to hit and run. As we walked up the strip he informed me that he had gotten most of that money when he sucked out and hit a set of jacks on the river to best another player’s flopped pair of aces.

I didn’t bring a very big bankroll with me and had budgeted about $300 per day for gambling, so I was just going to chill the rest of the night and then play the 11:00 pm tourney at the Sahara. My nephew headed to the Flamingo poker room and I went up to the room to catch a quick nap so I would have the energy to stay alert for the tournament. My nephew called and woke me up about 8:00 and informed me that he was up another $300 most of it from turning a well-disguised wheel to win a sizeable pot. He offered to spring for dinner since he was up $600. We walked up to the Venetian and had a decent dinner at the Grand Lux Café.

We cabbed it to the Sahara and bought into the 11:00 pm tourney. I chipped up early with a decent run of cards and then coasted to the final table. I think there were 86 runners after late entries and re-entries. I don’t remember all the payouts, but first got $1,565. Everyone agreed to pay the bubble (10th place) their $65 buy-in out of the first place money. I went out in 7th place when I shoved with pocket fours on the button and the SB called me with pocket sevens. At that point we were about 5 minutes from moving up to $10,000-$20,000 blinds. The average chip stack was around $50,000 and I had about $40,000. I really just wanted the $15,000 in blinds to hopefully last a little deeper, but figured I actually had a decent starting hand with just the blinds left to act in case I got called. Cashed for $150 and tipped $15 more to the dealers and cabbed it back to Flamingo around 4:45 am.

Day 1 poker total: -$130

Day 2
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Woke up about 10:30 and headed south on the strip to find a game. My nephew wanted to return to MGM Grand. I still had a sour taste in my mouth from the day before, but decided to give it another try. I still didn’t feel completely comfortable there, but had the most aggressive player on my immediate right, an Irishman named Cristy. He was splashing around quite a bit, but whenever he was forced to show he seemed to have the goods. I was involved in only one memorable hand. I called a $10 preflop raise with A9 of spades. Flop was A-4-9 rainbow. It’s checked to me, so I fire out a $25 bet, which was slightly more than half the pot since there were 4 players. All fold except my Irish friend on my right. Turn was a blank. Checked to me again and I push out $75. Irish guy check raises me all-in. Alarm bells were going off, but a weakness of my game is that I tend to see monsters under the bed a lot of times when they really aren’t real. I called and he didn’t immediately flip over his had which made me think I might have been good after all. The river was a beautiful third ace to fill me up. I turned over my hand and the Irishman immediately cursed and fired his hand into the muck. I had won a few small pots along the way, so that hand put me at just over $500. He later told me that he had slow played a set of fours. The trap worked perfectly I guess, but as they say…that’s poker. He rebought back up to $200, but was decidedly less splashy after that, so after a couple of orbits I racked up with my profits. I checked in with my nephew who was stuck about $300 and wanted to stay there feeling like he had the right table to get it back.

I headed up the strip to one of my favorite rooms on the strip at Planet Hollywood. I played there for probably two hours when my nephew texted me that he had given back all of his day 1 profits and was ready to go find something to eat. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything all day either and was suddenly very, very hungry. I cashed out my massive $15 profit and offered to spring for dinner this time. We decided we were in the mood for Mexican, so we walked up the strip to Isla at Treasure Island. My nephew didn’t see anything on the menu that tripped his trigger. We wound up grabbing sandwiches at Canter’s Deli. After that we both headed back to Planet Hollywood for some more poker.

The table I wound up at had a few fish with small stacks and a couple of obviously solid players. One of the solid players on the table was a dealer from the Cherokee in Oklahoma who told me he was dealing at the Orleans that week. He was a loud mouth table captain type trying to call out people’s hands when they mucked their winners and berating people when he thought they played badly. He loved to bluff people out of pots and then show down his junk. I had picked up what I thought was a pretty reliable tell in his bet sizing and the manner in which he pushed them into the middle which indicated when he was bluffing and when he wasn’t. I had him seated on my immediate right, so decided to just wait until I had a solid enough hand and wait for him to fire at it. I called his middle position raise with pocket nines and then called him all the way to the river. I don’t remember the exact board, but the only card higher than my nines was an ace. When I tabled my hand he angrily asked, “At any time did you even try to put me on a hand?” I told him that I had. When he demanded to know what I thought he had I said, “You sit here and berate the other players for their play and then you expect me to tell you something like that just for information sake?!?!? Yes I put you on a hand. No I’m not telling you what it was.” I hate to generalize here, but I’ve had more bad experiences with belligerent and abusive behavior from off duty dealers than any other type of player. Finished that session up about $300.

Day 2 results: +$600
Overall: +$470

Day 3
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Woke up about 10:30 again. I realized by the undisturbed second bed in our room that my nephew had pulled an all nighter. Called him on his cell phone and found that he was playing at O’Shea’s and was pleased to hear that he had won back most of his profit from day one. Decided to head straight to Planet Hollywood since that’s where I’d had the most success over the past two days. I played there from about noon until 5:00 pm or so and was up about $275. No really memorable hands, just a lot of small pots won and smaller pots lost to slowly build the stack over that time. It was a very chill table with lots of banter and drinks flowing. I had joined in the fun and drank my share of Jack and Cokes over the course of the day. Decided to head down to MGM Grand and grab something to eat. I had a decent meal at WolfGang Puck’s place there a couple years ago and decided to try it out again. I got a phone call from the nephew letting me know that he had just awoken from his nap. He opted not to join me for dinner. Wound up grabbing a sandwich at the Stage Deli. I hadn’t ever eaten there before and heard it was closing soon so wanted to give it a chance. Meh….I’ve had better. Donked off $200 again in the MGM poker room. I’ve decided I hate that place….won’t be back. I thought many of the dealers were kinda surly and the players there think they’re way better than they are. I got tired of listening to the bonus babies talk about how they only drink top shelf liquor and the diamond lounge at Caesars doesn’t even server Patron, blah, blah, blah. (Apparently the players there really are better than me I guess since results are what matters.)

Headed back to Planet Hollywood again. (Seeing a trend here?) I played for several more hours there and cashed out about $300 bucks to the good. I was sitting in my favorite seat immediately to the right of the dealer and there was a very drunk girl on my right whose boyfriend was sweating her from a seat behind her. She was continuously slowing down the table because she was sitting facing mostly away from the table with her legs draped over his lap practically lying in my lap and wasn’t paying attention to the action. I got the feeling from some comments she made that she might be an off duty dealer from another room. There was one very drunk guy who had amassed about $1,200 in chips. According to some others at the table he was just playing very loose and catching. From under the gun he threw out two red chips. The two players to his left immediately folded and just as quickly he grabbed back the two red chips and threw out two whites. He said it was a mistake and he only meant to call the blinds. I believe that he wasn’t shooting an angle and it really was an honest mistake, but the dealer (correctly in my opinion) made the raise stand. The girl on my right said the dealer should probably call the floor. The dealer asked if she wanted her to call the floor. She said no and everyone moved on. Everyone folded around to the guy and he showed 2-3 off suit and collected the blinds. A little while later the girl yelled at one of the other dealers near the desk and asked if he was coming into our game soon because the current dealer sucked because she didn’t call the floor when she should have. I turned and looked at her incredulously. She cashed out soon after and I turned to the dealer and said, “I know you can’t say it, so I’ll say it for you. What a bitch!” Oh yeah…drunk big stack guy donked off all $1,200 in about 45 minutes feeling invulnerable and trying to bully/steal every pot and getting snapped off several times. Unfortunately I didn’t get much of it.

After the girl on my right left the OD took her seat. Discovered through the course of the conversation who he was. I agree with him that me might need to change his screen name to Yappiest Dave. I haven’t met Yappy Dave, but I can’t imagine he’s more talkative than OD. He gave me the bad news that Yappy had just busted out of the main event on the final hand of day 2B.

The only really memorable hand from that session went as follows. I straddled which is not the norm for my usually tight preflop play. In fact I’m not a fan of the straddle at all. I can’t really say why I did it. An older gentleman in seat 1 who seemed to be a pretty solid player popped it to 22. It folded to me and I looked down at KQ of clubs. I said, “Lets see a flop,” and called his raise. The flop came out king high with two spades. I raised to 30. The older guy reraised to 70. I had admittedly been playing pretty tight-passive for the session and I figured he may have just pegged me as a player he could push off the hand. I called the 70. The turn was a third spade. I checked to him. I know, I know….I relinquished control to him which is a horrible idea. He fired 100 into the pot. I asked the dealer how much he had left which turned out to be about $270. I had him covered by about $200. I can’t really put my finger on it, but I was almost sure my KQ was good. I started monologuing about how I didn’t think he’d hit a set. AK might have made sense and so on and so on. I finally looked at my own stack and said, “You know what? If I’m wrong I’ll still have most of my original buy-in. I’m all in.” The guy tanked forever and as he was considering his action OD was in my ear saying, “Just so you know that speech made it look like your hand is really strong.” The guy eventually folded, but I could tell he didn’t want to. He cashed out a few hands later.

Day 3 results: +375
Overall results: +845

Day 4
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Set an alarm to wake up by 11:00 AM after staying up until 6:00 AM. Answered the alarm and accidentally dismissed it instead of snoozing it. Woke up again about 1:00 PM. Damn…accidentally slept away most of my last day in Vegas! We figured we couldn’t be in town durin the main event without heading over at least for a little while. Watching live poker is way more boring than I thought it would be. We sat and watched Johnny Chan at the ESPN feature table for something like 45 minutes and didn’t see a single hand go all the way to the river. We saw a few recognizable people: Gus Hansen, Hevad Khan, Phil Hellmuth.

Headed back to Planet Hollywood and landed on a really fun table. I was in the seat immediately to the dealer’s right again. There was a very loose-aggressive player on my immediate right who worked for the Grizzlies in some capacity. I never really mixed it up with him. There was another player there who I’m pretty sure had just arrived in town that day. He was pounding Long Island iced teas and was getting sloppy drunk. I had gone on a little mini-rush of cards and had won several hands without having to show down a hand. I looked down at pocket 8s and made it 12 to go….the standard preflop raise for this table. Drunk guy makes it 25. I was the only caller. The flop came out ace high rainbow. Drunk guy made some speech about not wanting to play that hand against me because I was a good player. I was like, “Me? Really? Thanks I guess.” He bet out $20. I’m certain he has an ace at this point, but I said, “I’ll show you what a bad player I am. I’ll call.” You guessed it….the turn was an eight. He bet 20. I told him, “I think I just caught up. Make it 60.” He called which only left him with about 40. I don’t remember what the river was, but he was about to check to me when he said, “Just don’t take it all, okay?” I said, “Tell you what. You bet what you’re willing to lose.” He bet 20. I almost reraised him all in, but he was already on semi-tilt from an earlier hand where the loose-aggressive guy had tricked him into a bad call with some table talk. I was afraid if I did that he might turn over the table or something, so I just called. Turned out he didn’t just have an ace, but had caught two pair on the flop. He quickly busted and made some comment about how he needed to go anyway because his wife wanted to go to the M&M store. It reminded me of Frank the Tank talking about Home Depot and Bed, Bath, and Beyond in Old School.

A few hands later I raised with both black aces to 16 from under the gun. A young kid who seemed like a good tight-aggressive player called the raise along with one other player. The flop contained an ace and two diamonds. I decided I wanted action, so I only bet 10 at it. First guy called and the young loose-aggressive kid raised to 40. Now I’m thinking he hit the last remaining ace or is on a flush draw, so I reraised to 100 and they both folded. I sat by him later in the tourney and he told me he was on a flush draw.

The very next hand I look down at pocket jacks. It limps around to me in the big blind. I make it 16 total to go again. A young Asian kid reraised to 37. I was the only caller. The flop was a beautiful jack high. I’m pretty sure from the way he’s staring me down that he thinks I’ve been stealing all day. I checked my set and he pushed all in. I insta-called and as soon as I did he said, “You’ve got it.” The turn was another jack and I got $187 for the quad jacks high hand jackpot. I toked the dealer $25 and cashed out a few hands later with about $600 in profits. My nephew said he was interested in playing the 7:00 PM tourney at Planet Hollywood and since I had just had one of my best sessions ever I offered to pay both our buy-ins. I went out early when my AQ got reraised all in preflop by 77. The flop had a queen in the window, but a 7 lurking just behind it and I was out. My nephew lasted much longer, but didn’t cash. I played several more hours that night and lost $400 mostly through a couple of bad beats. I won’t detail those though cause I hate them. Suffice it to say that I went on a pretty good tilt, which is out of character for me. I’m usually a pretty level headed player.

Day 4 results: +40
Overall results: +885

I lost about $250 playing table games and another $100 or so on slots and video poker. Since my nephew was having a rough week at the poker tables I sprung for food a couple of times and I spent a little more on bottles of soda, snacks, and other stuff. Overall I came home with about $400 more than I brought with me. I consider any Vegas trip where I turn a profit a success, especially since I started with a relatively paltry bankroll and day 1 had me feeling like it was going to be a long and grueling trip.

In summary, the Planet Hollywood poker room is still my absolute favorite on the strip. The dealers there are all very chill and I just love the vibe in the poker room. The waitresses were very attractive and quick. I could do without the awful karaoke in the bar next door, but that’s a minor annoyance. I made sure that the little bit of money I ran through the slots and video poker was on my Planet Hollywood player’s card. I know it wasn’t a large amount, but hopefully it will get me some room specials sent my way for my next trip to Vegas.

One other thing….I don’t know if it’s the economy or if I just look more desperate than on previous trips, but I got propositioned by more hookers this trip than any other and they were very aggressive. I had one in a very nice white Lexus follow me up the strip from Paris almost all the way to the corner of LVB and Flamingo all the while yelling, “Hey, baby!” out the window.

Congratulations if you lasted through my novel. Hope you found it somewhat entertaining and/or informatonal.