Thursday night land at the Quad. I’ve stayed at the Imperial Palace at least 10 times, but this is my first time at the Quad. The casino layout is completely different. The cashier cage is probably the only thing in the same spot.
Head over to the Mirage for a corned beef sandwich – but they are closed for remodeling..Strike 1…felt like Clark Grizzwald without the metallic pea station wagon… ok – so ate a burger at the BLT place – it was good, not wonderful or anything. Standard way over priced burger in the casino – like BURGRZ, but not quite as good as Burger Brassier.

Went to play $1/$2 – bought in for $200 – lost a $5 on the wayto the table – never had that happen before. It either rolled out or the front desk shorted me….strike 2. Nothing fancy happened for awhile – was up maybe $30. Guy at my table has flopped numerous straights and is over $400. I get 68 of diamonds – 1 raiser to $15, 1 caller (mr. straight), so I called too – seemed like the thing to do at this table was to call decent sized raises and flop the world…flop came 579 – 7 and 9 were diamonds – I flopped the nut straight and open ended straight flush draw….Mr straight leads for $30, I call, original raiser goes all in for $150…mr straight goes all in….i call. 1 guy has 2 pair, Mr Straight has AQ of diamonds. Turn is a 10 of hearts, river is a 4 of diamonds.. DOH. Strike 3…

Friday – played in the 1 pm at Aria – which seems to be by far the best game in town. I ran into AA with JJ and lost.
After the tourney – I went to Excalibur – game played fairly tight – with average-to-bad players. I won $16 in an hour and left.

Friday night –played in the 7 pm at Aria – got to the final 50 or so – got knocked out by q2 of clubs. I had flopped top 2…bet the whole way – and got called down by an open ended straight draw and backdoor flush draw. Dirty…

Saturday – made some college football bets…pretty much broke even...went to Caesars to play in the 2 pm tournament – they had 8 PLAYERS! Are you kidding me? That poker room is dead. 8 players for a 2 PM tournament on a holiday weekend – just awful.

Saturday afternoon – I played at Flamingo – where I won $850 2 of the last 3 times playing $1/$2 here. I played awful and called an all-in with 2 pair vs. an obvious set. Lost $150.

Saturday night – played the Aria again – lost. I played with a guy who never played a hand – ever. I was at his table for at least 3 hours. I finally busted when my JJ lost to a set of 5’s on the flop.

Sunday morning – went to Mirage – played $1/$2 cash – Shawn from Boyz2Men was at my table. I’m pretty sure he is worth many millions of dollars, and I’m not, but there I was playing against him. Just further proof that at a $1/$2 game – you have no idea what $200 means to a person – it could be their last $200 or $200 that was stuck on the bottom of their shoe from their $100 bill carpeting! I won $200 mostly off a sweet old lady who wouldn’t fold any pair she hit for any price. Amazingly, she just wouldn’t bust out. She would go from $300 to $50 to $300 to $50.

Played in the 1 pm again at Aria after I collected a few NFL bets…played it to final table before getting the entire final table to take a chop based on chips. If we played it out, 9th place paid $268 and 1st was $3,900 but with the blinds at 4000/8000 with a $1000 ante- and the avg stack around $100,000 – it seemed to me to make sense to push for a chop. The table agreed and we were paid out by 9 pm. I have cashed at Aria one other time and the tournament director gave a pushy vibe to tip her and the dealers separately. I didn’t like it. This time, I didn’t get that at all. The tournament director was amazing the whole time and helped facilitate the chop process. He encouraged everyone to leave something for the dealers because he thinks they do a great job and deserve something – which I totally agreed with - and he never mentioned himself. I made sure to tip him separately.

Monday – I played a little cash back at Aria – won $115 and headed to the airport.

Most of the time I looked in at the poker room at the Quad it was fairly dead. 1-2 tables going.
The MGM poker room location now is terrible. They moved it to the side of the slots by a bunch of doors – it looks like it is getting pushed out the door – not roped off, not partitioned off… and the area where it used to be is now mostly a big hallway. Amazing how they ruined that room.

Meals – Hash House a Go Go – 2 times for breakfast – very good
Outback for dinner on Friday – inside the M&M/ Coke place by MGM – it was very good and not terribly priced.
Earl of Sandwich – 2 times – great soup.
Fifty 50 Pizza at Aria - very good - but be careful - a beer is $8!
Capriotti’s across from the Hard Rock– good as usual