Las Vegas Trip

[Tim]

Hey Guys,

I was intending to write a road trip report whilst in Vegas, but I'm not able to use my laptop (long story). I'm typing this on my phone - so I'll keep it brief.

This is my third full day in Vegas. I'm doing okay so far. Monday was great. I started with a rack in $2/$4 and after 6 or so hours I cashed out 4 full racks. That doesn't happen often in limit, certainly not for me anyway.

I then jumped into a small NLHE tourney. $70 buyin, only 11 runners. I chopped first place. That's the only tourney I've played so far.

As for NLHE cash, I've had mixed results so far. Up on Monday, down on Tuesday.

Anyway, gotta go.

[J_Verschueren]

Hey Guys,

I was intending to write a road trip report whilst in Vegas, but I'm not able to use my laptop (long story).

I'd love to hear that story some day as it seems to me some very unlikely things need to happen for that to be the case...

This is my third full day in Vegas. I'm doing okay so far. Monday was great. I started with a rack in $2/$4 and after 6 or so hours I cashed out 4 full racks. That doesn't happen often in limit, certainly not for me anyway.

That's a big win at limit indeed. Come on, spill the beans, you've playing for long enough to judge whether that was just rungood, a lack of awareness on the part of your opponents, or both.

I then jumped into a small NLHE tourney. $70 buyin, only 11 runners. I chopped first place. That's the only tourney I've played so far.

Nice. I wish there was regular action like that in casino's over here. Middelkerke does 50+7 Euro 18-man sit&go's from time to time, but they don't always fill and it's a long drive (by European standards) from where I live just to end up one or two players short. Never mind the rake...

As for NLHE cash, I've had mixed results so far. Up on Monday, down on Tuesday.

No-limit is naturally more "swingy". I feel there will be little to deduce from a "holiday" foray into live NLHE.

[Patrick 'paddyjim']

I wish I was in Vegas...

[Tim]

Since my last post I've played a lot more poker, mainly at my two favourite hangouts; the Flamingo and Harrahs. I also played a bit at a few other places such as the Orleans.

I've been enjoying the limit games, not so much the no-limit games. Its not because I'm way up in limit compared to just a little bit up in no-limit. Well, maybe it is.

I also played the same $70 tourney last night as I did on Monday. This time I bought in on the hour because the early phase is boring. I got it all-in good several times but busted out in 4th, eliminated by a real life cowboy (nice guy, but sucked at poker). I might play a few more of these and buyin late again. The standard is awful.

I've just had breakfast and will be heading to the Flamingo shortly to play limit. They have a high hand of the hour promotion and other high hand bonuses, so it's a good spot to play. Last night I got a straight flush, which was nice.

BTW I might post short updates on twitter so if you're on there then my twitter is @timryerson. I will of course do a full write up here when I can.

[Harald Zone]

When playing the ring games at the Flamingo or any other hotel, do they give priority on the wait list to hotel guests?

[TIME]

When playing the ring games at the Flamingo or any other hotel, do they give priority on the wait list to hotel guests?

No, it is first come, first served.

[TIME]

I did get to spend some TIME with the Quintessential Chopbuster while he was in Vegas. When Tim gets back home and starts sharing with the group I will only appear in the pool hall segments! I needed to get Tim out of the poker rooms for a bit.

[Tim]

Hi Guys,

Well, I’m back at home after 3 weeks away. It was nice to take a break and relax.

My trip away started when I flew to New York just over 3 weeks ago. I’ve been to New York many times and I love the city. I’d not visited since 2008 so it was great to go back and to spend time with my family, who live there. I stayed there for a few days before flying to Dallas to visit my cousin (who is originally from New York) and her husband. I stayed with them for the weekend, which was great fun. I then departed for Vegas.

I didn’t have a hotel booked until the day before my flight to Vegas because I wasn’t sure when I’d be arriving. All my internal flights within the US were standby flights, courtesy of my cousin’s husband, who works for Southwest Airlines – which is the reason they currently live in Dallas. I had decided prior to this trip that I didn’t want to stay at the Imperial Palace because I’d stayed there 3 or 4 times before. I booked in for a week at Harrahs instead. This was a bad decision, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

I arrived in Vegas late on Sunday night and after checking in and dumping my bag in the room I went downstairs and jumped into a $1/$2 NL cash game. I played for several hours, took a small loss, and went to bed.

I was woken up in the morning by telemarketers, who pestered me the entire trip. I had bought a t-mobile SIM card in New York for $50, which gave me free calls and unlimited internet access. They recycle the numbers and being harassed by these cretins was something I just had to put up with. The internet access was the most important thing because I had a problem with the WIFI functionality of my laptop. It needs new drivers or something like that. But for this trip it just stayed in my bag, in case of an emergency. Thankfully it wasn’t needed and I could use my phone for keeping up to date on things.

My first full day in Vegas was spent playing poker at the Flamingo. I started by playing $2/$4 limit hold’em and was sat in the same seat for over 6 hours. On previous trips to Vegas I played a bit of $2/$4, mainly for a couple of hours during the day to try and get Aces cracked (not for giggles, but because of the ‘Aces Cracked’ promos I used to play). I invariably lost and never really enjoyed or appreciated this variant of poker. This time around I was looking forward to playing limit because I’ve spent many hours playing it online this year, along with getting coaching from the great Lou Krieger. I know now why I almost always lost when playing limit on previous trips.

I couldn’t quite believe it, but after 6 hours of playing $2/$4, I cashed out 4 full racks. There is no denying that I ran well, hitting a stupid amount of flushes on the river, flopping sets or better, etc, but I also felt I played well and was in the zone.

A tournament was about to begin so I decided to give it a shot. It was only a small $70 tourney, with 11 runners. Only the top 2 would get paid, and when we were 3-handed I was the chip leader, 2nd place had a bit less than me, and there was a short stack who had about 5 big blinds and was ready to bust out at any moment. The guy in 2nd place asked “shall we give anything for third?” which I obviously declined. It was a bit frustrating because the 2nd place guy was giving up his small blind to the short stack with regularity, when he should have been shoving on him when I was out of the hand. It took longer than it should have, but eventually we got heads-up, which is when I offered to chop it.

After that I played in a $1/$2 NL cash game, and made a nice profit. It was a great day of poker.

Before going to bed I checked my email and received the very sad news that Lou Krieger had passed away. I knew that Lou was battling cancer but I was still shocked as I thought he was making progress, despite sounding unlike his usual self when I last spoke to him about a month ago. I was looking forward to talking to Lou once I got back from Vegas. He will be missed by many.

The next few days of my trip were up and down, but mostly down. I spent a lot of time playing limit during the day, and no-limit at night. I enjoyed the limit games during the day, particularly at the Flamingo due to their high-hand promotions. They pay out $100 for the highest hand of the hour (full house or better) in addition to payouts for quads or better. I never won the high-hand of the hour at the Flamingo despite being a contender a couple of times. Although I did win an extra $100 for a straight flush and $50 for quads, but these were during the early hours and their high-hand of the hour promotion finishes at 10pm.

The no-limit games were very swingy. I felt I was playing well most of the time, but I got crushed by a few coolers and bad beats. Here’s an example of my luck..... in one particular hand at Bally’s I flopped the nuts with T9 on a 78J board and I 4-bet all-in on the flop and get called by the guy who has 78 and knows he’s beat, yet sucks out and hits a boat. That kind of thing happened a few times towards the end of the first week. I was even banned from using the ATM because I’d gone over my daily withdrawal limit.

My worst luck was at Harrah’s. They have now moved the poker room onto the casino floor. I actually played the last hand in their old poker room, after which they kicked us out at 4am so they could rip up the tables and move to their new spot. Being out on the casino floor is much better, because you get drifters walking into the game and dumping money. But I just couldn’t win there. I’m sure I would long term because I didn’t feel I was playing badly. Nevertheless, I decided I would play elsewhere for the remainder of the trip.

Actually, I was getting pretty sick of Harrah’s in general. I mentioned earlier about being woken up on the first morning (Monday) by telemarketers. Well, that wasn’t their fault but on the Tuesday they decided 9am was a good time to test the fire alarm system. I like to be asleep at 9am when in Vegas, so I wasn’t very happy about that. Then on the Wednesday I was woken up in the morning by the window cleaner, and on the Thursday by noisy neighbours because of their paper-thin walls. I decided I wouldn’t be staying there for the 2nd week.

At the weekend I met up with my buddy Bill Rini and his wife Ked, who drove in from LA. I’ve known Bill for few years now and some of you may have read his poker blog, which is the one of the best around. I’ve linked to a number of times from the forum. It was really great to see them, almost a year to the day since I went to their wedding in Bangkok. We hung out and had a few beers. It was nice to take a break from playing poker.

The next day I met up with Bill at lunch time and we went to the Bellagio to watch the televised final of the World Poker Tour, 5 Diamond Event. Bill works for the WPT so he got me into the event so I could watch the action, before he and Ked drove back to LA. It was pretty cool to be there and see how they produce the show. “Any time we mention money, applaud” said the warm-up guy. Most of the people watching were railing someone they knew personally. Michael Phelps was railing his friend Esfandiari. The only other player I knew there was Lichtenberger. It was certainly interesting to be there and watch it being filmed, but after about an hour it gets rather boring as they take forever on each hand and it’s hard to follow the action. So I split.

I headed over to my favourite poker room at the Flamingo and sat down in a $2/$4 limit game. It was a Sunday evening and they had a promotion called ‘Splash the Pot’. What’s this I hear you ask? Well, there was an American football game on the TV and whenever a touchdown was scored they would pick a table at random and plonk $100 into the pot. A field goal (whatever that is) would yield $50 into the pot. There were only about 7 or 8 tables running at the time and my table was picked, almost immediately after I sat down. I got dealt Td8d. It doesn’t matter what you get dealt, you’re going to see a flop when there’s an extra $100 in the pot. The flop was KJ8, all clubs. I stayed in for a bet and peeled another 8 on the turn. The river was a 10, so I boated-up and scooped. Sweet!

I continued to play limit while they ran the ‘Splash the Pot’ promo, then switched to no-limit. I was running pretty well. But I had to leave before it got too late to go and find a new hotel for the next week. I decided to go back to the familiar surroundings of the Imperial Palace. It was dirt cheap, next door to Harrah’s – so it would be an easy move, and I knew what I was getting. It was a no-brainer really. The rooms are almost the same as those at Harrah’s and it’s comfortable enough. I don’t spend much time in the room and all I need is a place to sleep that’s convenient. It ticks all the boxes.

On the Monday I moved by things to the IP before meeting up with TIME. It had been over 2 years since we last met up, so I was looking forward to it. We went to the Las Vegas Cue Club to shoot some pool. It was very enjoyable, even though we were both very rusty. I’d not played pool in over a year and by the standard of his play, TIME hadn’t picked up a cue for two decades, LOL. No seriously, it was fairly even by the end of it. I think I got the better of 8-ball and TIME whipped me at 9-ball. It was a really nice start to my second week in Vegas.

The second week was much better than the first week. I wasn’t doing as well at $2/$4, but I was unlikely to repeat the 4-rack monster session of the first day. But I was doing much better at no-limit. Hands were holding up and I was even dishing out a few beats.

I also played in a great $3/$6 Omaha/8 game at Bally’s. It was one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played in. It was also very profitable. Unfortunately it didn’t last long enough as the game broke up after a couple of hours.

During the week I spent a fair amount of time playing at The Orleans, which to those who don’t know is off the strip. You can get the shuttle bus from outside Bill’s Gambling Hall. It’s well worth playing at The Orleans – which I think is one of the best poker rooms in Vegas. I ended up playing mostly $4/$8 limit, but they have a nice spread of games. They also have a good high-hand promotion and a bad beat jackpot. It’s a well-run room.

On the Friday I met up with TIME again. The original plan that we discussed on the Monday was to play some poker. However, I shooting pool seemed like more fun, so we decided to do that again. First though we went downtown and hung out at Binions for a bit. We played video poker – and I had already sunk a few dollars into these machines without success during this trip – but I had an expert at my side. From $20 I shot up to around $80 almost immediately. Fearful that TIME might want a cut of my winnings I proceeded to get down to zero. Yes, that’s how I roll on these machines. However, I was very close to hitting a Royal at Binions, with only one card required. TIME told me this was a 46-1 shot. Not bad when the payout is 4000-1. I missed.

We then spent some time at the bar in Binions and had a good chat and enjoyed some food, surrounded by cowboys who were watching the Rodeo. On the menu was something called ‘Queso Dip’......“Yeah, he’s such a dip” said TIME.

Later we headed back to the Las Vegas Cue Club – highly recommended if you’re in Vegas and want to shoot some pool. This time we played only 9-ball and I came out the winner, albeit a rather fortunate winner. My new Quesotar shows the final score

By the end of the trip I finished with a small profit, which after the bad run of the first week I was content with. Most importantly, it was enjoyable. I should have probably played a few more tournaments – and after winning the first one that was my plan. I only played two more after that, each of a similar buyin, but I should have played at least one decent tournament at the Venetian or somewhere, but I was enjoying the cash games during the second week, so I didn’t bother. Oh well, next time.

On Sunday I flew back to New York for a couple of nights before arriving home yesterday. I’ve now got a huge inbox of emails to sort through. That’s a small price to pay for having a great holiday.

[TIME]

Nice trip report, Tim. Goodbye to the Flat Stanley Quesotar (I don't want to make that mistake again) and hello to a constant meminder of you prevailing in 27 games of 9 ball. Let the record show that the last game I jawed the 9 for your easy tap in win. Also, I would like to go on record as NOT saying that Queso is such a dip although we did chuckle when we saw the menu item. It was great seeing you again my friend and next TIME we'll have to go to Mickey's Cues & Brews which is much nicer.

[Harald Zone]

Excellent report on Vegas Tim. The information on the Imperial Palace is timely for me since I am staying there soon and was worried if was ok or a bad dive. I was sort of surprised you did not play limit at the 6/12 level at least, just so you can beat the rake. Maybe the competion in Vegas is very tough although I have heard that Canterbury is tougher for limit players. Your report will go in my notes. Thank you!