During a brief visit to Vegas, I managed to get some poker time.

Tuesday early evening six hour session at the Wynn: The Wynn resort looks very nice, as is the poker room. I had to wait 10 minutes for a seat at $1-2 NL holdem. Weak players and tourists were very few and far between. Most at the table were at least average. This is not a room for beginners. The Wynn has a no max buy-in for the NL games, which means you can sit down with a $100 at $1-2 NL and be up against a stack of $1K or more.

I didn't get any decent cards for a long time, but I got lucky when I flopped a quad when I was getting short stacked, and an early position player went all in on a bluff infront of me. Second half of the session I got better cards, and I managed to double my original buy-in of $100.

Wednesday, 1pm tourny at the Aladdin: The Aladdin is still my favorite poker room on the strip (I haven't visited new MGM or Bellagio yet though). The 1pm tourny is $60 buy-in for 2000 in chips, with a single rebuy for $40 in the first hour. They have recently changed to rebuy to be 2000 in chips rather than 1000, which I think makes for a better game. There were about 50 entrants total, with about 45% going for the rebuy.

I didn't get any great hands to double up early with, but managed to scrap my way to the final table. The top 6 get paid. The table wanted to make a save for 10th-7th places, but one person objected, which was kinda odd because they didn't have a big stack; ironically this player got knocked out in 10th a few hands later. The table made a save for 9th, 8th, and 7th places to get $100 back.

I was short stacked all the way, but managed to finish 5th.

Apart from the second place finisher, I couldn't spot any other really good players. Most at the final table were there by luck, rather than skill, judging by the way they played their hands.