What can I say except thanks to Allvegaspoker.com, the reviews of other players helped me make my decision on where I was going to spend most of my playing time as a new player in town.

Arriving Saturday, I split off from the rest of our party to check out the Imperial's poker room. I had read the negatives of it being a roped off area and while I agree it's not a "room", it's also not part of the main casino. This gives it a fairly quiet atmosphere as opposed to Riviera or Sahara, where you basically have slots right next to the playing area.

I nervously played the part of rail bird for a while simply watching everyone at the tables. When I finally mustered the courage to go to the room manager's desk. I realized I didn't have a Player's Card yet and frankly, the $3.00 comp per hour of play was a big factor in my decision to play at Imperial (the cookies helped too!). The lady at the desk asked for my driver's license to get information for my Player's Card and she had me seated at the 2/4 Limit table while the card was being made. This surprised me as I honestly expected to be told where to go to pick it up myself!

I sat down to fill out a table. The first thing I noticed was the table was HUGE. Plenty of room, to the point the folks on the end could have problems reading cards if they didn't have 20/20 vision.

I played a tight game, not chasing anything even though it was obvious that about 75% of the table was doing exactly that. I managed to hold my own even though some of the people at the table were calling anything and everything all the way to the river. It was so bad, I had pocket aces which I raised pre-flop, about six callers. Flop comes, 2s 7c 9h, nothing that should really hurt me. Bets come around and I raise it again, a couple players fold. Turn is a 5h, I start to worry a little about a possible straight... I've seen some very strange hands played up to the point. Checks come around and I bet, everyone drops out except one player, a rather drunk individual who had been catching cards all night. He calls and we go to the river, 5c. I bet, he raises. At this point, I know I'm toast but I call him down anyway. Sure enough, he has been calling all of my raises with Ah-5d and absolutely nothing for a hand until the turn. I just looked at his friend who shook his head at the sheer luck of the draw. Welcome to Saturday night poker at the Imperial. I ended the night up about $40 and extremely tired from grinding that much out! Mr. Intoxicated ended up cleaning his buddies out and needing four racks to cart off his chips.

The next night, I'm placed next to the dealer which was nice as we were able to carry on conversations when the table was quiet. Unfortunately, the table being quiet didn't happen very often. On the other side of the dealer sat an individual who felt it was his sole responsibility to be the table comic/entertainment for the evening. He insisted on giving everyone nicknames and commenting on everything under the sun. He would drop an insult, apologize and then tip the dealer. An older gentleman to my left looked at me and said "forget this." grabbed his chips and walked. There is the lesson I wish I would have learned. While I was being stubborn, I managed to blow a huge stack trying to get into Mr. Microphone's chip stack but it never happened. Life lessons often are expensive that way.

My final session was 11/8 during the afternoon. I sat down at a table with some individuals which I recognized from previous evenings of play. Conversation was great as several of us had witnessed the "entertainment" the night before. It was almost like REAL poker as raises were respected once you established yourself after a couple of strong hands. I actually managed to buy a pot or two with nothing but rags as the entire table was playing pretty tight. This was the poker I had been looking for all week, unfortunately a dinner reservation for my birthday cut the session short. Even with that I managed to recover my losses from the previous night of wild play and finish my three days a little ahead. Not bad for my first time playing Limit at a live table.