Found great deals for airfare and the Bellagio, wo the Mrs. and I were off to Vegas for our annual visit to the Holy Land and a break from the Michigan winter. We got off to a good start scoring exit row seats (a must for a plane trip of about 4 1/2 hours) and getting an early check in at the hotel. It was the start of the Chinese New Year, so the garden was beautifully set up and there were more folks of the Asian persuasian than usual. I played 1-2 NL with mixed results, and no significant losses or gains at Bellagio, Caesar's Planet Hollywood and Bally's. All had more or less the same composition of players: a few generally competent tourists and mostly locals of general competence, with absolute fish being few and far between. I don't know whether this was because of the economy (not a lot of hopeless touristas) or the fact that we were there during the week days and I pretty much stayed on Detroit time, playing mostly in the morning and early evening. Most mornings I spent at Harrah's which has a "breakfast club" promo, where you get $10 an hour for play betweeen 8:00 a.m. and noon, max of $30, redeemable for play of equal length in the next 24 hours, as well as the typical $1.00 pre hour Total Rewards promo of other Harrha's properties. On to the poker:
the first session I played pretty tight and was card dead until I decided to make a modest raise from the button on 4s-2s, which fetched two callers. I eventually rivered the wheel and when I exposed my cards I felt the bulging eyes of others at the table who might not have played that combination as strongly as I did ($20 on the flop of three clubs and $50 on the turn of Ad). Advertising this dog got me plenty of action later when I picked up some real hands and got paid off, up $450 after four hours.
The next day I did about the same over 4 1/2 hours, primarily on a hand where I called a modest raise from the button with 6d-5d, caught a flop of A-5-5, and two opponents couldn't get away from A-Q. The next day I did even better starting when my 9-9 caught a flop of 9-7-4 against 4-4 amd my set over set picked up a juicy pot. My favorite hand: against the biggest stack at the table (about $800), who plays only premium hands and plays them aggressively), my stack of 700 finds A-A on the button and the Villain raises to $22 pre-flop, a big raise at 1-2, the level I played. I smooth called, hoping to hide the strength of my hand in hopes of a big scorfe. I get a great flop A-5-4 and Villain bets 50 which I again smooth call. The turn is another 4, the Villain bets 100 and I min-raise to 200 which he calls. I figure he must have A-K. The river is another 4, and both of us know the other hasn't been playing a 4 this strongly. He checks and I decide to bet only 200 to assure a call (which I got). I probably could have shoved and gotten called but I wasn;t greedy (Snort, Snort). Had a great time mostly because I was on the right side of a few "cooler" hands. Good luck all