Whenever I run bad at poker, I remind myself that I've run embarrassingly good at life. My domestic partner and I were planning a midweek trip to Vegas in mid-June when she found out she was going to have to work and couldn't get out of it. So, without a second of hesitation, she cheerily suggested I go anyway and take one of my poker buddies! Why have I not proposed to this woman yet? But that's a different story; on to the gambling....

We live in Southern California, only about three hours from Vegas. It was a Monday evening, my friend was working late, and we figured we'd leave sometime the next day. But I found a discounted rate for the MGM and we figured, why not hit the road tonight? In retrospect, it was a bit foolish to arrive during the graveyard hours of a weekday morning just to squeeze in a few hands in games that are likely to suck. Not to mention I paid for a hotel room that we hardly set foot in until about 7 a.m. But what the hell, we're on vacation.

My friend and I are both limit hold'em enthusiasts, and we are apparently a dying breed in Las Vegas. But we still found a few good games to sit in, and we played a donkament for kicks. Following is a chronological, room-by-room report. I will spare you a lot of talk about my results, because who cares?

MGM GRAND: We stayed here because of the aforementioned deal, plus it's on the The Strip and I usually like the poker room. Fail. The poker room has been moved from its terrific former location near the sports book to a crappy corner near nothing. No one at the hotel seemed to know if this move was permanent or not. I hope it's not. The atmosphere sucks and the games are surely suffering for it.

MIRAGE: It was 3 a.m. Tuesday morning. We were tired and delirious. A perfect time to play poker! Not a single limit game going at our homebase, the MGM, so we called around and found a 3-6 at the Mirage. It was five-handed when we showed up, and somebody suggested we up the stakes to 4-8 with a full kill; everyone agreed. The game was somewhat aggressive and loose, about the best we could have hoped for at that hour.

RIO, WSOP: In the "morning" we headed over to the WSOP at the Rio. We were hoping to find an 8-16 or 10-20 limit game. Surely we'd be able to find any game we wanted, right? Wrong. The lowest limit hold'em game offered at the time (about 4 p.m.) was 20-40 — too rich for our blood. The regular poker room at the Rio didn't appear to be offering any limit games.

VENETIAN: I had played 4-8 at the Venetian before, so we made a quick call to make sure it was going, bitched about the heat as we walked to the car, and we were there in no time. The annoying thing about the Venetian 4-8 is that they usually have a main game and a must-move.

To me, entering the main game usually feels like a form of punishment. The must-move has a lot of soft money coming in constantly. A lot of the people who hang on long enough to get to the main game are tight enough not to lose all their money, and the bad players are usually running low on funds by the time they get there. Of course, this is not always the case; bad players can run hot and have tons of chips. But, all things being equal, I'd rather be sitting in the must-move. And regardless of which game is better, you can't choose which one to sit in. A must-move takes away one of the best weapons in a poker player's arsenal: game selection.

I also don't really care for the atmosphere at the Venetian. I like the hotel as a whole, but the poker room just feels too open to the casino and I don't like the lighting.

BELLAGIO: First time here. I caught a glimpse of a cowboy hat in the closed-off room where they play the Big Game; got a closer look and confirmed it was Doyle. I might sound like a fanboy, but I thought that was pretty cool.

The atmosphere is terrific, far superior to Venetian in my opinion, and the beautiful room made up for some drawbacks. The electronic waiting list system wasn't being used for 4-8. When we tried to sign up for our game in the front, the guy briskly cast us off to a different podium where a different guy took our names down on a clipboard. Not sure what the deal was with that. Also, they really should have cup-holders or more side tables. I saw a man's beer come dangerously close to tipping over onto the felt. I sat in a decent 4-8 game; two or three nitty locals and the rest were all tourists.

An interesting side note from my session here. I saw a woman fold pocket aces face up before the flop. Here's how it happened:

A very inexperienced player is running like God, and pretty soon he has about four racks sitting in front of him. He rakes in yet another massive pot, and as he's racking the last of his chips in his "tray" (as he calls it), he realizes that his cards were buried under all those chips. Problem is, the dealer has already dealt him two new cards for the next hand. Oops! The newbie looks down at four cards in front of him and says, "Oh, I'm sorry." An obnoxious, slightly drunk guy, the one who almost spilled his beer on the table, immediately mucks his hand and starts yelling "misdeal!"

The dealer (correctly, I think) says, "no misdeal." They switch decks each hand, so the newb's new cards came out of a different deck, so there is no misdeal, right? Slightly drunk guy is having none of it. "But there are still cards out there!" he yells. "Misdeal!"

Slightly drunk guy is much louder and more forceful than the dealer, and everyone at the table seems to start agreeing with the misdeal theory. Newb gets nervous and mucks all four of his cards at once. Meanwhile I'm two seats to newb's left and trying to convince these baboons that we're still playing a live hand, and that's when I see them: Pocket rockets, face up, hitting the felt. And it was her big blind. The table collectively groans, I fold my Queen-rag, everybody else folds and we go on to the next hand.

The woman, a seemingly halfway-competent tourist, mumbled something about how nobody was doing anything and she thought the hand was dead. I really don't know who's to blame for all of this. Obviously the dealer should have gotten those cards back in the first place, but mistakes happen. He also could have been a little more forceful in stating that there was no misdeal. Certainly some blame rests on the shoulders of semi-drunk guy for loudly proclaiming things that are completely wrong. And lastly, the woman is to blame for succumbing to moronic group-think and releasing her hand before she knew for sure that it was dead.

A possible consequence of this is that the newb left soon after. He didn't say anything, but I think he was rattled by the whole ordeal and thought it was all his fault. This was disastrous. A very bad poker player happened to be sitting just two seats to my right, and if you understand the concept of absolute position, you know that's a good thing. Thanks to this farce with the aces (I think) he got up and walked away -- taking four "trays" of chips with him.

So, now that I write all this down, I'm thinking that I didn't like Bellagio for any real poker reasons. But the atmosphere was so good that I will definitely be back.

ARIA: Didn't play here; just stopped by to check the place out. Very swanky atmosphere, and the room was packed at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday. A bunch of NL hold'em, of course. I think there may have been some PLO going as well. Is it always this packed midweek, or was this due to the WSOP? I don't know.

SOUTH POINT: We decided to have a little fun and enter the 2 p.m. $60 tournament at South Point on Wednesday, our final day. There were two tables, and new players were allowed to buy in for the first hour, so we ended up with about 25 entrants. I know I said I wouldn't talk much about my results, but kindly allow me this one brag: I won the tournament!

I have played probably less than 30 hours of live no-limit cash games in my entire life, plus three tournaments, and I am not comfortable with the game at all. Thinking about bet sizing and stack-to-pot-ratio and commitment lines and losing my whole stack in one hand makes me a tad queesy. But here's the thing: I am a winner, albeit a small one, in NL cash games, and I cashed in two of those three tournaments (including this win). You're probably scoffing at that meager sample size; clearly I am just running good. But the competition is definitely soft, soft, soft.

I've been trying to figure out why limit hold'em is drying up in Vegas while it's still alive and well in California. Obviously tourists comprise a larger portion of the Vegas player pool. It's certainly not news that tourists want to play no-limit hold'em; it's been that way for years now. But limit survived for a while because there were still enough locals who were keeping the games going. But those local rocks don't want to play against each other, and I think they've gradually either quit or realized that the only way they're going to make any money from tourists is to nut-peddle in NL games. As a quasi-local myself, I'm thinking I ought to join them (except I will hopefully be more than a nut-peddler).

Meanwhile, California card barns keep spreading limit games, and bad players keep flocking to them. Even when a California game is 100% percent regulars, it can still be very good. For some reason, our local regulars down here are much looser and fishier than the Vegas regs. We just have a culture of gamble-it-up poker in California. I don't really know why.

As for the tournament, I think I just ran good. There were some players in this game who were clearly better at donkaments than me, but sooner or later they all busted out and I was headsup with the perfect opponent. He was super-duper passive, didn't seem to adjust his play for the situation and seemed to always act out of turn. This gave me a lot of extra information when he had position on me, allowing me to bluff after he checked into me, even though the button was sitting right in front of his face. I ran over him despite that fact that he had about a 4-1 chip lead when we started headsup play. When the bludgeoning was over and we got our cash, he started talking about how the money had "almost" made up for the pounding he'd been taking in the 1-2 NL cash game, and he immediately bought chips with his winnings and signed up for that same 1-2 game. Some people really should not be gambling.

GREEN VALLEY RANCH: One final detour on the way back to Cali. This is a nice-looking room with plenty of low-limit poker, but the games suck. The room was pretty full on a Wednesday night, with multiple tables of 3-6 and 2-4, but the crowd was very local and very mature (both bad signs if you want loose action). My friend and I are both 35, and we were by far the youngest people at our table, possibly the youngest people in the entire room. As you would expect, the game was weak-tight. You can do a little more stealing in a game like this, but I'd much rather sit in a loose game where I can get paid off with big hands. We played for about an hour and hit the road. Goodbye, Nevada, we hardly knew ye.

CLIFF NOTES:
--I am now a South Point Wednesday Afternoon $60 Tournament Champion. No word yet on whether they'll put my portrait on the wall.

--I saw someone fold pocket aces face up before the flop in a limit cash game. (See Bellagio section.)

--If you like soft limit hold'em action at all limits, you are better off playing in California, even during the WSOP. (See the South Point section for my thoughts on this.)

--Must-moves are lame. (See Venetian section).

--My girlfriend is the nuts. Or she's just nuts.