My plane landed at 8:30PM Wednesday night. I was only packing one small carry on bag and my back pack. I grabbed a cab and headed for the flamingo to drop off my bags and to get out of my work clothes.
The plan for the night was to meet my buddy J. at the Aladdin to try out their new room. I made my way over to the Aladdin by about 10:00PM to find J. hard at work on the 4-8 table. I said hi and before I knew it, I was sitting at the 1-2 NL game. The excitement of being in Vegas and already at a table was making my hands shake…. I looked down to find that my first hand was two black Aces. I figured that if I made a big raise on my first hand, that I would most likely get some callers. With $200 in my stack, I made it $45 to go and got 4 callers (all of this is mentioned in my Aladdin review). Either way, spiking an ace on the flop and making $135 on my first hand was nice.
The Aladdin poker room is nice, but there was something about it that I didn’t really like. I just didn’t like being there. Maybe it was the lighting… to bright?? As I was getting ready to get out of my seat, J. ended up hitting quad 8’s for a jackpot of $190 or so. I believe that the jackpot can be as high as $599 for quads and there is a chart on the wall showing the current payouts.
We left the Aladdin to check out the Bellagio poker room expansion. It seemed just as crowded as it ever was, with maybe twice the amount of tables. I signed up for 2-5 NL and singed J up for 4-8. While we waited, we checked out Phil Ivey tearing up the table in Bobby’s room. I also found out about the satellites for the next days $500 tournament.
The 2-5 NL game that I sat at was perfect. The players all seemed fairly fishy and ready to gamble. On about my second round of cards, I got asked by the floor-man to move to another table. Apparently they were running a couple of “must move” games. The new tables, I hated. The table had an average stack of about $1000. The players were extremely aggressive and one guy seemed to turn over the nuts hand after hand. I played the table for another 30 minutes and walked with $25 shy of what I started with.
J and I grabbed a cab and decided to try out the Binion’s 2:00AM tournament. The director said that there would be at least 40 players, but it ended up being only 14. Oh well. J played very aggressive, as I think he was hoping to get onto the live tables. I played solid, but ran into the top stacks flopped quad of 10’s to get out at 7th.
We jumped a cab back to the flamingo to try to get some sleep for the Bellagio satellites.

Thursday 10:00 AM
After some ok rest, we got some snacks at the Bellagio snack bar and I sat down to play the $130, top two win satellite. I played fairly solid and ended up being top stack with 3 players. The blinds were fairly high and the game was pretty volatile at this point. The second stack player went all in after 1 fold on the small blind. I looked down to find K9 suited on the big blind and made the call (based on his previous moves). My read was correct and he showed Q9 (this hand killed me a few times this week). The flop came down QQ3, with no help for me on the turn or river. The next hand I was forced all in on the small blind with an 83. No help and out in 3rd.

At this point I was a little frustrated, so I took a walk, while J played 4-8. I ran across the new WPT All-In Hold-Em table (near the black jack tables). I had read about this Sklansky invention online somewhere and had to give it a try.
The game is fairly straight forward. You place an ante of $5 to get your two cards. If you like your cards and want to play, you then place your bet on either the “raise” section or the “all-in” section. To play the raise, you must bet 5 times the initial ante and in order for the dealer to qualify, his/her cards must add up to at least 13. If the cards do not add up, you are only paid your ante (1 to 1) and get your raise back. If you play the all-in section, you must post 10 times your blind and the dealer has to qualify with at least a 17. You also have some side bets that can be played even if you fold the regular bets. You can place $5 on the blue circle for “whole card jackpots”; such as 2 red Aces pays 60-1 all the way down to suited pays 1-1. You can also play the red circle for “final hand jackpots”; 3 of a kind pays 2-1 while Quads pay 40-1. I ended up hitting the Quad sixes with an A6.
The game is fun and the strategy seems straight forward. When you have a good hand, bet the 5 times raise, when you have a junk hand bet the 10 times raise (or bluff) hoping that the dealer will not qualify.
Thursday 3:00PM
Up $300 on the WPT game and ready for the MGM. I grabbed my buddy J. and we hit the street. While at the WPT game, I started drinking and decided to convince my buddy that it was our drunk night. So at MGM we ended up played 3-6 limit. The game was slow and fun early in the day, but by about 8:00PM we had everyone drinking at the table. Some people came and went, but about 6 of us stayed at the table all night long; having a great time.
The MGM room is beautiful. The atmosphere is great as is the service. J claimed it as his favorite room in town (personally I like the wynn). We had a lot of fun with the dealers. They obviously accepted the fact that our table was there to drink and have fun. We also noticed a very lively game of horse going on at another table.
We played until 6:00 AM then back to the room for some room service and sleep.

Friday 10:00 AM
To the Rio Convention center for Event #2 of the WSOP. We both had planned on playing this tournament, but decided that we would be better off playing the live games instead. The line for the tourney was insane anyway.
We walked around this amazing room filled with 3000 plus poker players shuffling chips. I stopped by John Juanda’s table to watch him play a few rounds. I noticed when Doyle busted out and came to visit his pal TJ. Toby Maguire was still in, two hours into the game (he busted out shortly there after). You could pretty much see all of the pro’s playing without much of a problem getting near their table. After an hour or so, there was enough room for the Rio to start some of the live side action. J and I found our way onto a 2-5 NL table. We gave our buy-in to a floor-man and then proceeded to wait at least an hour for chips. The entire table had to wait, due to the fact that “some guy” had our money, but none of us knew who he was. We eventually figured out that they had ran out of $5 chips and where making their way back from the main cage with a new case of chips.
Our game finally started. My first set of 3’s was sucked out with a backdoor flush draw with 7 high and no pair…. Even with a stiff bet on each street. Need-less-to-say, this burned me up a bit. I took a walk.
While I was walking, I registered as a WSOP player then made my way to the “Second Chances” sign-up window. That night at 11 they held the second chances tournament. It was a $225 freeze-out, with an expected 300 players.
I made my way back to the NL game and managed to get my stack back into shape, before I had to leave for the tourney. J. decided to go back to the Aladdin and later ended up at the MGM.
The freeze out was insane. They were still admitting players in the second and third round. I got moved to 3 different tables before I even saw a big blind… though I never played a hand during that time. I was finally getting settled into table number 41. I managed to double up about 4 times in the first hour, due to my getting some really good cards (Aces 3 times, QQ with a set once). I was in good shape to at least make the money. I held back for a while, until this one hand.
I am on the big blind and everyone folds to the small blind. Small blind has 2800 and I have 4000. Now, before I tell you what happens, I need to say that this guy was a terrible players. He tried to bluff pots in a tournament that just wouldn’t allow it. In other words, if you are seeing a flop, 8 times out of 10 you are going all in. Its just the way it was going for our table. Anyway, the guy pushed all-in on the small blind and I looked down to see AQ hearts. It only took a second to get my chips in front of me. The guy turned over Q9…. Yes Q9 that dreaded hand that killed me in my bellagio satellite. He hit plenty of nines on that flop and I was down to 1200, facing a 300 small blind. I doubled up once more with my 3rd pocket rockets, then got moved yet again. They sat me down with about 1800 and two hands away from the big blind of 800… we went on the second break. During the break I ran into a couple guys from my home town card rooms (Lucky Chances etc.). There were probably about 39 players left in the game. Upon return, I got junk hands until I was in the big blind. Once I was on the big blind, I noticed that two other players were (almost forced) all in with short stacks, plus one bigger stack.. so it was now or never. I pushed my entire stack in without looking at my cards. It turns out that the big stack had A8 and managed to hit two pair. I looked down to find AJ suited, for my no-look. Pretty good, but not good enough. I was out in the 30-33 range.
I decided that I would jump a cab, back to MGM to play a few more hands with J before hitting the hay. On the way out I ran into Raymer waiting for his Toyota Camry in front of the Rio. He’s a nice guy, he really is…. But why would a millionaire be cruising in a Camry?
Back at MGM and exhausted. I sit in on the 2-5NL game to find several young book players. One kid would wince when he saw the flop, I was fairly certain when he did or did not hit a good hand. Another guy would grab chips (ready to bet) before it was even his turn. Plenty of poor play, going on at MGM late at night. This lasted only an hour before I was to tired to think. J and headed home for some much needed rest.

Saturday Morning 9:00AM
J. leaves for his flight back to NYC.

Saturday Morning 1:00PM
I finally wake up. I pack up my stuff and head straight to the Wynn. I check my back at the door and go directly to the poker room. The Wynn is nice. I have heard people talk about it a lot; on how it does not impress them, but I have to say that it looks and feels better than the Bellagio. Either way, I give the poker room a 9 out of 10 over Bellagio’s 7 out of 10. The place is great.
I sat in on a 1-2 NL game while I waited for the 1-5NL game. The fun thing about this place is that you can buy-in for any amount. Therefore you don’t have to work your chip stack up to be able to hold your own. I bought in for $400 at the 2-5 table and sat and watched for a while to get a feel for the table. I played some standard poker for the first few hours, taking in a pot here and there. Later that night (around 8 or 9pm), I started turning the aggression on with a stack of about $900. I tried to completely mix it up that day. I would bet aggressively on questionable hands/flops and check the monsters. This method seemed to work perfectly that night. If someone saw me check, they would be sure to put a big bet out to force me out. The player turnover was frequent enough that this method worked well all night. For the most part it was me and 4 other guys that stayed on the table, while we took turns picking off the new comers.
The new players typically would buy in for $200 and rebuy once or twice before leaving. I also noticed that most of the longer lasting players had stacked one hundred dollar bills behind their chips. At around midnight the average stack was around $1500.
The funny thing about this table was the balance of players. I was position in seat 8, right on the end. All 4 of the guys on my side were fairly young, but very solid players. All 4-5 players on the other side were older, seemingly locals playing more of a passive game. The younger more aggressive players were clearly dominating the table. The two young players from Jersey (Borgata players), went heads up at one point for an all-in battle. These two guys were best friends and managed to create a $3200 pot between the two of them. We heard about that hand all night long after the winner took it down. Anyway, the table was great and I am just rambling now. Read my review on the Wynn for a explanation of a very expensive miss-call by seat number 4.
At some point during this Wynn session Daniel N. and Barry Greenstien played their heads-up 500K match right behind us.
I played this table until it was time to head for the airport at 5:30 or so. I ended up cashing in 4 times my buy-in for this session.

This was a great trip to Vegas were we literally spent more time in a chair at a poker table than anything else (including sleeping).