Wed thru Sat 5-16 thru 5-19. Stayed at Flamingo, played a lot there plus some other rooms. All poker content is $1/$2 NL and I buy in for max every session.

FLAMINGO: 1/2 300 Max NL. I like the room, dealers are all very good, good list mgmt., some autoshufflers, high hand & BBJP, one new dealer learning the ropes, nice enough older guy, a little slow, no problem. Very cute & friendly brunette girl Alexandra dealing afternoons, she's hot and is very fast. In fact she is hotter than any of the waitresses.

I played well here and didn't make any major mistakes, ground out steady but small profits here, anywhere between 50 - $150 per session. Sadly there's a lot of decent locals playing here, mostly the retirement crowd I found with a couple young gun dealers from other properties mixed in, nobody really giving money away while I was there. Even the tourists had a rudimentary knowledge of the game and were mostly sober. I was disappointed in the competition here, I was expecting a fishtank, not the case last week. I played a mixture of day & late night sessions and found the same players alot of the time.

HOOTERS: Thursday afternoon, 1 game, 5 handed, locals, tight, no money to be made. I was probably here at a bad time, this casino is VERY COOL, the dealers/tables/room/mgrs all very good. I want to go back here on a weekend night and try it.

BALLYS: The only positive things I can say about this place is the dealers are great, and the list mgmt is good. Otherwise I hated it. Too LOUD. Between the live band & the casino noise, I couldn't hear the players or the dealers speak. Seriously..it was like being at a rock concert. After 1.5 hours late Thursday night, I had a headache and left with $50 profit. If they put up some walls I will go back, otherwise forget it. From there I walked thru the connecting shopping mall to....

PARIS: Nice room connected to the sportsbook and a bar, quiet, cozy, good dealers and managers. Competition wise, there was a semi-drunk young uber-LAG guy there playing the John Phan style. He moved me off a big PP on the turn and showed me the J7os no pair or draw...fine. So I waited..& waited..& waited. Had to get in line with the other very frustrated players trying to stack him. I went dead for awhile, had to settle for KQo out of position on a board that completed a possible flush & str8 by the river. He shoved for $150 on it and I called but hated it. My pair of Qs was good. He rebought but the table was short at the time so they combined us with another short table...It was 3am by now, so I decided to take my profit next door to....

PLANET HOLLYWOOD: Oh....my.....GOD...what a COOL casino. Has to be the just the coolest damn casino on the strip now. It's like The Palms on steriods, very trendy with modern colors & styling, good selection of video poker,
Starbucks, PF Changs, and a very cool poker room. Only $200 max here though. It was late and the only game going was short & didn't last long. I'd go back though, this place is awesome. Very nice tables with black felt & wood racetrack, cupholders, lots of room, nice chairs. They need to raise the max buyin though.

HARRAH'S: The room has walls & glass, it's very quiet, so in that respect it's great. The dealers are avg. to good. The competition here at the time I was there was tough. Again..a lot of locals, on the younger but experienced side. I made a bad mistake here and got stacked for $250 by a str8. I didn't have a good baseline on the player yet, got involved in a hand too quickly after sitting down, and basically got married to one overpair on the button which I KNOW better not to do. In my defense though, my read & gut feeling at the time was that he was moving me off the hand, and I'm usually right. He was a good player, he was in the small blind and had called a $15 preflop raise so I just discounted the fact that he could have turned a double-gutter out of position. Oh well, that's poker. I rebought and soon after some drunk fish sat down, but I couldn't get anything going and basically stayed even on my second buyin before I cashed out. I'd go back to Harrah's, but there are better rooms in my opinion...such as the place next door.....

VENETIAN: Wow. Just wow. I mean HOLY **** this place is NICE. It's all been said before numerous times, so I won't go into much detail.

Suffice to say you need to play poker here at least once in your life. Dealers, mangers, waitstaff, tables, chairs, chips, cards, room, all TOP NOTCH. Competition? Well...again, I ran into a tough table and went dead. Let's start with the big stack guy, he had about $1700 in front of him at a $300max table. So basically, I just avoided him without the stone nuts...which I never had. The rest of the table was evenly matched stackwise. With 1 fish and one short stack which I busted for $75 then he left :( Then I made THE mistake. I raised PF with 66 in position to $12 (standard for the table). Standard solid female player re-raises out of the BB, I call. I had seen her raise with AK OOP and check it down when she missed, so when she checked the flop & turn on a 10,10,rag,rag board, I made the move with a pot bet on the river when she AGAIN checked, she CR'ed me and I stupidly called and she shows me KK. Again I had not really been there long enough to have a solid read. That was ballsy on her part though, I could have easily had A10, J10, or something like that in LP.

So that was it, 2 mistakes cost me all the profit I had built up over the 3 days and I come back home +$50 in poker for the trip, which sucks considering how much I played.

Summary:

1. Venetian, the CLASS of the Strip.

2. Planet Hollywood is the coolest, most HIP casino on the strip...needs to raise buyin and then it would be my must-go-to every trip.

3. Don't make THE mistake and you will be fine.