What a blast! My wife and I were invited to a relative's wedding in Vegas during Final 4 week-end. While we stayed at the Sahara with the wedding party, I had the opportunity to try several poker rooms I had read about here (All Vegas Poker).

Friday was arrival day and the wedding, so it was off the agenda quickly. Sat morning brought a kitchen pass from the wife to go & play poker. I chose the Orleans as my first stop because of the good review and the fact that it was holding a Limit tournament as opposed to the NL I found everywhere else. I got there at 9:30 AM for the noon tourney and sat down at a 2/4 table to wait for the sign-up at 11:00. The first hand dealt after I sat down was a Royal Flush to one of the locals. He won a $25 pot and a free jacket, but no high hand cash. Pretty amazing & the first one I had ever seen.

The locals were pretty easy to read and would not chase better hands to the river, so most of my premium hands paid a modest amount. By 11:30, I was up $50 which was the entry fee for the tournament. I cashed out and took my seat with 114 other players at noon. The $53 buy-in gets you 300 chips plus 75 chips for the dealer $3 pool money. During the first hour, you can buy-in an additional $20 for 600 more chips which everyone did.

I must admit that playing in my first tourny was very intimidating and tightened up my game considerably during the first few rounds. Eventually, I got into a few pots and always seemed to keep my chip stack just above the posted average. After the first break, the blinds began to take a toll on the short stacks and I eliminated 2 players who all-in'ed against my poket Kings. You get a $5 cash bounty for each player you eliminate.

With 55 people left, I did catch one good hand when my AQh made the nut flush on the turn with a lot of action. A smaller flush and a set paid me on the river. I then dropped into a VERY tight gear and rode out the blinds until there were only 20 left (the tourny paid the final table). At this point, I knew I needed to win one more hand to survive to the final table. Three hands after this thought, I finally caught a solid AQ off and raised the bet. SB folds, BB re-raised, limper folds and I call all-in. BB had A5 off!! so my Q ended up being good when no 5 came. 15 minutes later, I'm at the final table and in the money for my first tourny. I'm about 6th by chip count and every time someone went out, the locals started talking about chopping. When there are only 6 left, we did agree to chop the $5K six ways. My share was $745 for a 4 way tie for 3rd as the 2 chip leaders took a little more. What a rush! 5 hours of tournament poker, $745, and I free-rolled in!

Sunday found me taking the monorail from the Sahara to MGM to try the new room. This will definitely be the place to play in a few mmonths when the kinks are out of the system. The dealers need to learn that obnoxiuos drunks should be tolerated when they donate to the pot so freely and stupidly. Unfortunately, I was getting very cold cards for the 3+ hours I had to play. I did get 2 good hands when my nut flush was re-raised heads up 7 times!!! and my big slick caught the Aces full against an A high flush. Those 2 hands (the only 2 I won) netted a $50 profit for the session. I will definitely play here again.

Monday found me in the Sahara poker room against a mix of locals and WSOP wanna-bes. My cold cards warmed up enough to have the 2nd best hand 4-5 times. I was down $100, but grinded back to only down $40 when I left to go home. I enjoyed the Sahara better than the Orleans, but not as much as the MGM. Next time I'm going back to the MGM and will probably try the Aladdin.