Just drove to Vegas from LA for a day since I got a promo at Luxor new tower room. Terrible room at Luxor, do yourself a favor and stay away from it. Terrible insulation, no view, uncomfortable bed.

I was trying to decide between bounty tourney @ Venetian or Headhunter @ TI. Glad I called V to find out that they don't have the bounty tourney anymore, only the regular $180 tourney. So, I went to try the headhunter @ TI since I read some good things about it. Wed 11am or F/Sat/Sun 7pm $125 gets you 5000 chips 30 mins lvl with $50 bounty on each head. The game I played at was actually pretty conservative, no all in left and right the first couple levels. Unfortunately, by 3rd lvl, an Asian pretty young girl had already knocked out 2 guys (pocketed $100). My stack dwindled down to about 3800, I finally looked down at the best hand for the last 1 and 1/2 hr of big slick (AK os) in early position, bumped it up to 3X BB of 450. My immediate left is a short stack pushed all in. Everyone folded to BB (Asian girl with huge stack), she called. I had a dilemma to make, call 600 more or push all in. I took the conservative route and called with 600 more. I don't want to give her incentive to knock out 2 players and get $100 bounty. Flop 2 8 J, she checked, I missed and instinctly checked. Turn blank, she fired 900. I still had 2 overpair so I called hoping to hit the river and double up thru her. River another blank, check check. She had 99 and won. I continued my card dead runs for the next 1/2 hr. Finally at lvl 4 ($100/$200), I looked down at the best hand all night and pushed all in of about 2200 with QQ. Got called by AK and the famous Barry Greenstein's Ace on the river sent me home.

The big bounty really defeats the purpose of 5000 chips and longer blind lvl (30 mins). You have to get lucky early enough to have chips. So, you really can't sit back and play some real poker as I thought in a 30 mins blind, 100X BB of 5000 starting chips. On top of that, it only pays top 4 no matter how many players. It seems like they average 40 ppl anyway, so the money is not even that great unless you knock off a few people. I wouldn't recommend playing at TI if you want some real poker.

Next day, I moved on to Venetian and played some cash game. Finally got some good cards but didn't get paid off. $1/2 NL, early position opened to $12, 3 callers. I pushed all in $100 with KK. Everyone folded =( Later flopped a trip 5 on a 5 way limped pot, I betted out $10 into a $10 pot on a flop A 5 8. Everyone folded!! +$42 in less than 1 hr (only $100 buy-in) Not bad, always love the room.

Thanks for reading this long post!