The Mirage, The Venetian, and my first time playing at Aria
I'm not muh of a live poker player (used to play a ton online until black friday...) due to the fact that my friends only play for micro stakes which bores me, and the lack of finding a regular game in my city, which is why I was super excited to get a chance in Vegas to mostly play poker.
Flew in Thursday night and got up early due to being on west coast time. Staying at the Venetian, I walked across the street to the Mirage planning to play in their 11am $60 NL tournament. Got there around 9am to see one full table of 1/2NL and added myself to the waiting list, which ended up being about 10 minutes long. I bought in for $200 and thought the game was decently soft, but unfortunately there wasn't too much action- a lot of limpers who folded preflop raises and people who would call preflop raisers only to fold on a continuation bet. I don't really have any hands that stick out of my mind (except my boat that was beaten by quads (I had a pocket pair and the board had the set)), but by the time the 11am tournament is about to start, I notice I have about 270 sitting in front of me. So it looks like my sessions earned me a free buy in. I played a mostly nondescript tournament busting out like 27th of 58 runners. I really like the Mirage poker room. It seems well run, there is plenty of space and the people were pretty down to earth.
After my bust, I headed over to meat a buddy playing 2/5 over at Aria. I decided to play 1/3 and bought in for the max. Things were pretty busy at Aria but I was seated immediately but it took me forever to get my chips from the staff. I literally played my first hand without any chips in front of me. My first 40 minutes of play could not be categorized as anything other than pathetic. I don't know what was wrong for me (first time playing anything other than 1/2 might have something to do with it), but I was down $70 without ever really playing a hand. I finally was able to pull my head out of my ass and grinded my way back to about +$25 in the next 2 hours before I had to go to dinner.
After dinner, I didn't feel like going back to Aria, and played at the Venetian 1/2. I didn't play there for too long (you'll see why shortly) and bought in for $200. Here's the hand I'm wondering if I played correctly. After about an hour of not playing to much, I am down to $175 on the button and dealt 56s. After one limper calls, I decide to open my starting hands up a little since I have decent position. I raise to $10, SB calls, BB folds, limper calls. Pot is at $32. The flop comes 567 rainbow. "Hmmmmm...." I think, "I'm in a pretty good spot". It is checked around to me where I bet $30. SB calls and the limper raises all in (he was short stacked so $25 more to me). I call and so does SB. Turn comes Qd. With the pot at about $180, I think to myself what these people could have. I originally put either on a pocket pair or A-J or maybe even KQ. I am not sure what do do. I'm not much of a math person, but I calculate that I was ahead of about all but 38 possible hole card combinations. I felt pretty good about those odds and shove my remaining $105 in the pot. I am snap called by SB. River is Ac, and limper turns over A/K, I show my two pait, but SB turns over 8/9off. I was pretty stunned to be honest. I never expected to have the guy to my left call a preflop raise with 89off. But I guess that's poker. I decide to leave the table and go to bed. It was probably the best decision I made all day as I didn't want to play timid/pissed for the rest of the night. For those of you more experienced than me, how could I have played this differently? What was my main mistake?
The next morning I got up late, made some basketball bets at the Wynn and decided to play in the Aria 1pm $125 tournament. I will say that this was a really well run tournament and had a pretty good sized field with a total of 154 runners with 15 spots paid. My stile of poker is pretty agressive but I haven't played enough to truly find out if it's profitable for me. I ended up placing 12th in the field. I think the pivotal hand of the tournament was very early on. I had just under my starting stack with about 9800 chips. I am dealt QQ in middle position with a couple of limpers. With 25/50 blinds, I jump it up to $200. BB calls, two limpers call. BB, by the way, was the table leader having already taken out two players at my table, so he had about 30k in chips in front of him. The flop comes Q-7-2. BB raises to $600. I decide that right then and there that there is no difference coming in 149th place or 16th place and shove. Villian insta-calls so fast that I think I must have read the board wrong. Villain turns over 7-7 and is demoralized when I show Q-Q. I survive the showdown and have a healthy stack of 20k of chips with the average being 10500.
I play pretty tight agressive for the remaining tournament knocking a few people out along the way to 100k in chips with average being 60k. I finally found myself at one of the final two tables, and this being the biggest tournament I have played in (I usually only play the 60 dollar tournaments at the in the smaller Casinos) I am pretty happy with my play. After a while I was found myself in the money. I then went card dead and had about 75k chips with 130 being average. My table had the heavy stacks with the other table had the lower ones. I am dealt A/Jd UTG and decide that I could fold them and hope for a couple of the short staks to bust (blinds were 4k/8k with 1k ante) for a few money positions and a couple more hundreds of dollars or try to make something happen and get a chance at playing for the real money. I decide to shove, UTG +1 calls, everyone else folds. I show A-J, he shows A-Q and his Q holds. I am knocked out, receive $249 for 12th place and go on my merry way. I wish I would have last just a little long because I thought I was playing pretty well, but I can't be too disappointed outlasting 142 other people.
I will later do a room review for Aria, but I think this place is great. The dealers were great, the room is great (though a little small between tables), the chairs are super comfortable and there is a good amount of action and the cocktails were fantastic. My biggest complaint has to do with the breaks during the tournament. There 10 minute breaks every 3 levels (90 minutes) but no long break for dinner. After eating lunch around 1130am I was pretty hungry around 630 and wasn't knocked out until about 8. There isn't really a place around the poker room to get food and back to your seat in 10 minutes on a Saturday evening. Other than that, top notch.
Overall it was a great trip, and I am glad I finally upgraded places to play.
Very nice trip report, thanks for that..
As for your question, what could you have done differently and what was your mistake in that hand, maybe the answer is.....not much you could have done differently....mistake? Being shocked to see 8-9 calling your preflop raise.
I don't think that you made a mistake in the hand. You just happened to run into a bigger hand.
re:dinner break---you can have food delivered to you at the table.
GL
Hi, thanks for sharing your trip report. It sounds like you are already a good player and you're interested in improving your game. In response to your question about the 5/6 hand, one thing you didn't mention was the type of player who had called your pre-flop and post-flop bets and beat your two pair with the nut straight. It's a good practice to categorize the players when you first get to a table before getting involved in large pots. If you spend about 30 minutes watching the action and not getting involved, you can get some good reads on the players. Mainly watching to see how many hands they are playing per orbit and what kinds of hands they limp with, call raises with, 3-Bet with, 4-bet with, bluff with, etc. It's also important to determine if they slow play and/or check raise or make straight forward bets when they have a made hand and try to determine who is always showing nut hands at the river and who's going to the river with a pair. You can categorize the players as loose aggressive, tight aggressive, passive, maniacs and so forth. With this information, when you get involved you'll be better able to put them on a range of starting hands and you can more easily determine if the player has 89o in their range for calling your 5x pre-flop raise. I don't know if I would have played the hand any differently than you did without knowing the types of players in the hand and it's always difficult to play two small pair because they will often be the best hand at the turn then get beat at the river. If your all in bet was intended to make him fold off any potential draws, that was a reasonable play given the size of the pot.
I'll be in Vegas the third week in March and I'm looking forward to trying the game at Aria. Good luck at the tables!
Great trip report! Love that Mirage tournament as well.
Nice report. The 8-9 hand seems like a standard cooler. And yes, there are plenty of people who will look you up with any two cards in that spot. That's why reads are especially important in live low stakes, particularly as far as how people value their hands; learn who's only taking QQ or better postflop and who's snapping off shoves with 7-2.
The AJ hand was super standard as well; utg with <10 big blinds at what's probably a 6-handed table, you definitely need to mix it up or the blinds will devour you.