Raiser
07-08-2004, 12:50 PM
My wife surprised me last month when she told me we were going to Vegas as a birthday/father's day present for me. So we dropped our 16 month old daughter off with the grandparents and headed out over the weekend of the 4th. She is also currently 7 months pregnant, so we had to take things pretty slowly. The heat was a lot for her to deal with. Anyways, happy reading.
July 1
We arrived in Vegas at 9:30 AM local time. We are staying at the Flamingo and have heard that check in lines can be insanely long so we were very pleased to see a registration desk at the airport by the baggage claim area. Our room wasn’t available when we were at the airport, but would be by the time we made it to the strip. My wife (Christy) is 7 months pregnant and was able to get a “good” room out of the check in lady. We’re on the 20th floor with a Bellagio view. That turned out to be very cool, since we could see the fountains from our room. We get our bags, hop on the shuttle, and sit in traffic for the 45 minutes it takes to travel 3 miles to our hotel. Time to gamble it up.
Christy has been practicing blackjack for a month and is excited to try it out so we sit down a $5 table. She loses her $50 buy in and I break even. Then we head over to the craps tables and I lose $50 in about 10 minutes. I’ve never played craps before, so I stick to the pass line bets with free odds. Unfortunately, the dice were cold. So I head over to the poker room while Christy heads up to the room for a nap. The Flamingo poker room has maybe 9 tables and spreads 2/4 and 4/8 hold’em (both games have with $1 and $2 blinds) and some stud. I sit down at the 4/8 table for a couple of hours. Nothing remarkable happens other than I get to see how bad live low limit players are in general. I’m an online player and am always shocked to see just how bad and reckless players can be in live games. One guy at the table thinks he can bluff you off the pot at the river with blind aggression. Unfortunately I get no cards and quit the session down $35. I decide to play some more blackjack and dump $200 in a half an hour while winning exactly 1 hand. Fun start to my Vegas trip. I’m already down $300 and only brought $500 to play with. I think I’m done playing for the day.
We have tickets to the 10:30 Mystere performance. After watching a grand total of 10 minutes of the show, I decide that I am a complete loser. These people are unbelievable. I am not half as good at anything as they are at what they do. Simply amazing. I would encourage anyone to see a Cirque show when in Vegas.
July 2
I wake up at 8 AM and am pumped to make up for yesterday. Christy is exhausted from the long day yesterday, so I head downstairs by myself. The poker room is empty, so I walk up the street to the Mirage and there are 2 games going, but both are full. So I sit down at a $5 blackjack table at the Barbary Coast (located right next door to the Flamingo). I lose $40 in 10 minutes. Hmm, maybe I should stop playing blackjack /images/graemlins/smile.gif When I get back to the Flamingo, there is a 2/4 game going and I sit down. This was the best game I played in all trip. There was Drunk Tom (DT), Loose Betty (LB), Grumpy Bob (GB) and a bunch of other bad calling station types. DT had been gaming for 30 straight hours, but was smart enough to keep himself awake by having a drink every time the cocktail waitress came by. I played with LB a lot on the trip. She liked to see every flop and would raise the flop if she caught any piece of it. GB was a stud player that “hated hold ‘em.” After GB hit 2 boats in a row I asked him if he still hated HE and he said that “hell yes I still hate it. I could walk over to a slot machine and hit a jackpot but I’d still hate the f’ers.” That was my last interaction with GB. Anyway, I build my stack up a little at a time and then get the hand of my trip. I get 77 in MP. I call along with the rest of the table and DT raises it in the SB. DT loves to raise. We all call. The flop is the beautiful A97r. DT bets out, EP raises and I 3-bet. 3 (THREE!!!) people call the 3-bet cold, DT calls, and EP calls. The turn is a blank. DT bets out again, call, I raise, 2 cold-callers, DT calls as does EP. At this point I’m starting to wonder if 99 is out against me??? The river is another blank. Checked to me, I bet, one LP calls, DT calls, and EP calls. I flip over my set and pull in a ~$150 pot. EP had something like AK, DT doesn’t show. I cash out soon after up $150 for the session.
Christy is up now so we head out to the Forum Shops and the Mirage to look around. Eventually we make it to the poker room and I sit down at a 3/6 table. The Mirage has a very nice, quiet room. This game was a lot of fun, but I ended up down $99 when a lot of my good hands went down and my good draws didn’t hit. Had KK busted by As2s when he hit runner runner spades for a flush. The A2 guy called 3 cold pre-flop and 3 more cold on the flop. Amazing. Had an interesting exchange with a grumpy old German lady (GGL). I have A3s on the button and call after 4 others call. Flop is AT4. GGL is on my right and bets it. I raise to get it heads up and the rest fold. Turn is a blank. GGL checks, I bet, she calls. River is another 4. We check it through. She turns over A5 and we chop. Then I get a lecture. “Too bad the river paired… I was hoping to teach you a lesson about kickers” says GGL. This made me laugh out loud since her kicker was so incredible. After 3 hours at the table Christy and I eat at the Mirage buffet (Cravings). That is good eats. They specialized in seafood and it really hit the spot for me. We walked around for a while and head back to the room.
July 3
Today is Bellagio day. While Christy is getting ready I decide to head down to the sports book. I am definitely not a sports gambler, but I have to make a bet on my beloved Cardinals while I’m in town. Today they are playing the Mariners. The pitching matchup looks good so I put $10 down on the run line (-1.5 with a +130). Christy decides she wants to play some BJ, so we go next door to Barbary and sit at a $5 table. I finally got some decent cards and win $75 in an hour. Off to the Bellagio. I put my name on the 4/8 list which is already about 80 people long at 2:00. We decide to eat at the buffet while I wait for my seat. Unfortunately by the time I get back they are past my name. Not sure how that happened??? Anyway the list is now closer to 150 names long so I decide to pass on the Bellagio poker. I’ve seen the room and the games at the Flamingo are easy to get into and are good. We walk around for a while and come across the Festo al Lago II main event. I saw several poker studs (Howard Lederer, Amir Vahedi, Schotty Nguyen, Daniel Negreanu, Jennifer Harmen, Freddy Deeb, Dan Harrington, David Williams, David Grey, Erik Seidel, Men the Master, Barry G (the charity guy), David Singer, and Kathy Liebert). That was pretty cool. Jennifer Harmen smiled at me between hands /images/graemlins/smile.gif
We head back to the Flamingo. We have tickets to The Amazing Jonathan, so Christy needs to rest a bit before we go. While she’s resting I head down stairs and win $20 at craps and lose $35 at BJ. I see that the Cards won 8-1 so I collect my $23. The Amazing Jonathan is a prop comic/magician that we had seen on Comedy Central a while back. He was freaking hilarious on TV, so we thought we’d give it a go. Unfortunately his act was the same as what we had already seen and wasn’t nearly as good live. But, I’d still recommend him to those who haven’t seen his CC special.
July 4
Today is tournament day. I suck at NL tournaments, but I decided to play in the noon tourney at the Orleans just for fun. It’s a $50 (+$20 for re-buy) event. The $50 gets you 300 in chips and the rebuy (any time in the first hour) gets you another 600. You can also give $3 to the dealers and that gets you another 75 in chips. Everybody spent the full $73 up front so I did too. Things did not go well for me. I get Qs9s in the first hand on the button. Almost the entire table limps, so I do too. 2 spades on the flop and I get checked to. I bet 50 or so to pump up the pot. Only 1 player calls. The turn is a blank. Check, check. The river is another spade. Checked to me, I bet 150, he raises me to 300 and I call to see he has the nut flush. A few hands later I take a good sized pot off of a guy that flopped a set of kings but didn’t bet until the turn. I caught running spades to make a flush against him. I pushed into the pot of about 600 with the rest of my chips (~400). He almost called, but mucked his kings. I think I should have either check raised him or bet something like 150 to hopefully induce him to put me all in. I’m sitting pretty good at this point with about 1100 in chips. Then the hand that killed me. I get AK in MP and make it 100 to go (blinds were 15/30 at this point). I get one caller. The flop is AK9. Since it’s heads up, I decide to check it through on the flop to represent an underpair (I think this was a huge mistake, but would like to see what others think). Turn is a Q. I bet 250, the other guy pushes in. I need to call another 400 or so and decide that my hand is too good to lay down without a read on this guy. Of course he does have JT and I allowed him to draw to the nut straight. The river doesn’t help and now I’m very short stacked. I get AK in UTG and push in. The JT guy calls me with A3, but he flops a 3 and I’m done. I think I was fifth out, but I’m not sure I played that badly??? I did win $40 at BJ while waiting for the tourney to start, so that took the sting off a bit. Later that night I sit down at the Flamingo’s 2/4 tables. Nothing too exciting. I ended up losing $3, mostly because I got way too loose at the end of the session. One thing I learned on this trip is that I might be turning into a bit of an action junkie. When playing 2-3 tables online it’s easy to sit back and play correctly pre-flop. But when you are playing live with bad slow players 47s starts to look pretty good on the button after you’ve folded the last 13 hands. I actually did call with 47s on the button once, flopped a flush draw, turned the flush, and ran into a guy with quad 8’s /images/graemlins/smile.gif
July 5
Today is exit day. Christy and I decide to take it nice and slow today. Our flight leaves at 9:30 PM so we have all day to do whatever. She wants to play some BJ, so we head to the Barbary $5 tables and I win $200. I was on fire. I know optimal strategy, but I’m obviously not a BJ expert. I kind of increased and decreased my bets based on nothing whatsoever. And I was a tipping machine. I estimated that I tipped in the neighborhood of $30 during this 1.5 hour session. But I was having fun, so who cares. After the morning BJ session, we ate at the Paris buffet. Say what you want about the French, but those guys know food. Very, very good buffet. After lunch we play BJ for another 3 hours. Christy has had kidney stones for the past 2 years or so and actually passed one while playing!!! I guarantee I’d be rolling around on the floor crying like a baby /images/graemlins/smile.gif
We head to the airport for the flight home. After arriving in the Twin Cities, I see a guy that I recognized from the Bellagio tournament. I go talk to him for a few minutes while we wait for our bags. He qualified through a satellite and placed 55th (top 27 got paid). He’s normally an online player during the week and sits in the 30/60 at Canterbury on the weekends. He had some interesting things to say about the tourney. The most interesting is what he thought of David Williams’ play. He was not impressed at all and realized that DW had to get very, very lucky to place 2nd at the WSOP. I told him that I hope ESPN doesn’t make Fossilman look like a lucky online qualifier and he agreed. Turns out this guy played in a NL ring game at the Bellagio with Fossilman and was very impressed with his play.
All in all, the trip was awesome. I ended up +41 for all gambling and +68 in the ring games. Christy was down 30, so we essentially broke even on the trip. Next time I head out will be when it’s not as hot and not as busy and I will play a lot more poker, but this was a great first trip to Vegas.
July 1
We arrived in Vegas at 9:30 AM local time. We are staying at the Flamingo and have heard that check in lines can be insanely long so we were very pleased to see a registration desk at the airport by the baggage claim area. Our room wasn’t available when we were at the airport, but would be by the time we made it to the strip. My wife (Christy) is 7 months pregnant and was able to get a “good” room out of the check in lady. We’re on the 20th floor with a Bellagio view. That turned out to be very cool, since we could see the fountains from our room. We get our bags, hop on the shuttle, and sit in traffic for the 45 minutes it takes to travel 3 miles to our hotel. Time to gamble it up.
Christy has been practicing blackjack for a month and is excited to try it out so we sit down a $5 table. She loses her $50 buy in and I break even. Then we head over to the craps tables and I lose $50 in about 10 minutes. I’ve never played craps before, so I stick to the pass line bets with free odds. Unfortunately, the dice were cold. So I head over to the poker room while Christy heads up to the room for a nap. The Flamingo poker room has maybe 9 tables and spreads 2/4 and 4/8 hold’em (both games have with $1 and $2 blinds) and some stud. I sit down at the 4/8 table for a couple of hours. Nothing remarkable happens other than I get to see how bad live low limit players are in general. I’m an online player and am always shocked to see just how bad and reckless players can be in live games. One guy at the table thinks he can bluff you off the pot at the river with blind aggression. Unfortunately I get no cards and quit the session down $35. I decide to play some more blackjack and dump $200 in a half an hour while winning exactly 1 hand. Fun start to my Vegas trip. I’m already down $300 and only brought $500 to play with. I think I’m done playing for the day.
We have tickets to the 10:30 Mystere performance. After watching a grand total of 10 minutes of the show, I decide that I am a complete loser. These people are unbelievable. I am not half as good at anything as they are at what they do. Simply amazing. I would encourage anyone to see a Cirque show when in Vegas.
July 2
I wake up at 8 AM and am pumped to make up for yesterday. Christy is exhausted from the long day yesterday, so I head downstairs by myself. The poker room is empty, so I walk up the street to the Mirage and there are 2 games going, but both are full. So I sit down at a $5 blackjack table at the Barbary Coast (located right next door to the Flamingo). I lose $40 in 10 minutes. Hmm, maybe I should stop playing blackjack /images/graemlins/smile.gif When I get back to the Flamingo, there is a 2/4 game going and I sit down. This was the best game I played in all trip. There was Drunk Tom (DT), Loose Betty (LB), Grumpy Bob (GB) and a bunch of other bad calling station types. DT had been gaming for 30 straight hours, but was smart enough to keep himself awake by having a drink every time the cocktail waitress came by. I played with LB a lot on the trip. She liked to see every flop and would raise the flop if she caught any piece of it. GB was a stud player that “hated hold ‘em.” After GB hit 2 boats in a row I asked him if he still hated HE and he said that “hell yes I still hate it. I could walk over to a slot machine and hit a jackpot but I’d still hate the f’ers.” That was my last interaction with GB. Anyway, I build my stack up a little at a time and then get the hand of my trip. I get 77 in MP. I call along with the rest of the table and DT raises it in the SB. DT loves to raise. We all call. The flop is the beautiful A97r. DT bets out, EP raises and I 3-bet. 3 (THREE!!!) people call the 3-bet cold, DT calls, and EP calls. The turn is a blank. DT bets out again, call, I raise, 2 cold-callers, DT calls as does EP. At this point I’m starting to wonder if 99 is out against me??? The river is another blank. Checked to me, I bet, one LP calls, DT calls, and EP calls. I flip over my set and pull in a ~$150 pot. EP had something like AK, DT doesn’t show. I cash out soon after up $150 for the session.
Christy is up now so we head out to the Forum Shops and the Mirage to look around. Eventually we make it to the poker room and I sit down at a 3/6 table. The Mirage has a very nice, quiet room. This game was a lot of fun, but I ended up down $99 when a lot of my good hands went down and my good draws didn’t hit. Had KK busted by As2s when he hit runner runner spades for a flush. The A2 guy called 3 cold pre-flop and 3 more cold on the flop. Amazing. Had an interesting exchange with a grumpy old German lady (GGL). I have A3s on the button and call after 4 others call. Flop is AT4. GGL is on my right and bets it. I raise to get it heads up and the rest fold. Turn is a blank. GGL checks, I bet, she calls. River is another 4. We check it through. She turns over A5 and we chop. Then I get a lecture. “Too bad the river paired… I was hoping to teach you a lesson about kickers” says GGL. This made me laugh out loud since her kicker was so incredible. After 3 hours at the table Christy and I eat at the Mirage buffet (Cravings). That is good eats. They specialized in seafood and it really hit the spot for me. We walked around for a while and head back to the room.
July 3
Today is Bellagio day. While Christy is getting ready I decide to head down to the sports book. I am definitely not a sports gambler, but I have to make a bet on my beloved Cardinals while I’m in town. Today they are playing the Mariners. The pitching matchup looks good so I put $10 down on the run line (-1.5 with a +130). Christy decides she wants to play some BJ, so we go next door to Barbary and sit at a $5 table. I finally got some decent cards and win $75 in an hour. Off to the Bellagio. I put my name on the 4/8 list which is already about 80 people long at 2:00. We decide to eat at the buffet while I wait for my seat. Unfortunately by the time I get back they are past my name. Not sure how that happened??? Anyway the list is now closer to 150 names long so I decide to pass on the Bellagio poker. I’ve seen the room and the games at the Flamingo are easy to get into and are good. We walk around for a while and come across the Festo al Lago II main event. I saw several poker studs (Howard Lederer, Amir Vahedi, Schotty Nguyen, Daniel Negreanu, Jennifer Harmen, Freddy Deeb, Dan Harrington, David Williams, David Grey, Erik Seidel, Men the Master, Barry G (the charity guy), David Singer, and Kathy Liebert). That was pretty cool. Jennifer Harmen smiled at me between hands /images/graemlins/smile.gif
We head back to the Flamingo. We have tickets to The Amazing Jonathan, so Christy needs to rest a bit before we go. While she’s resting I head down stairs and win $20 at craps and lose $35 at BJ. I see that the Cards won 8-1 so I collect my $23. The Amazing Jonathan is a prop comic/magician that we had seen on Comedy Central a while back. He was freaking hilarious on TV, so we thought we’d give it a go. Unfortunately his act was the same as what we had already seen and wasn’t nearly as good live. But, I’d still recommend him to those who haven’t seen his CC special.
July 4
Today is tournament day. I suck at NL tournaments, but I decided to play in the noon tourney at the Orleans just for fun. It’s a $50 (+$20 for re-buy) event. The $50 gets you 300 in chips and the rebuy (any time in the first hour) gets you another 600. You can also give $3 to the dealers and that gets you another 75 in chips. Everybody spent the full $73 up front so I did too. Things did not go well for me. I get Qs9s in the first hand on the button. Almost the entire table limps, so I do too. 2 spades on the flop and I get checked to. I bet 50 or so to pump up the pot. Only 1 player calls. The turn is a blank. Check, check. The river is another spade. Checked to me, I bet 150, he raises me to 300 and I call to see he has the nut flush. A few hands later I take a good sized pot off of a guy that flopped a set of kings but didn’t bet until the turn. I caught running spades to make a flush against him. I pushed into the pot of about 600 with the rest of my chips (~400). He almost called, but mucked his kings. I think I should have either check raised him or bet something like 150 to hopefully induce him to put me all in. I’m sitting pretty good at this point with about 1100 in chips. Then the hand that killed me. I get AK in MP and make it 100 to go (blinds were 15/30 at this point). I get one caller. The flop is AK9. Since it’s heads up, I decide to check it through on the flop to represent an underpair (I think this was a huge mistake, but would like to see what others think). Turn is a Q. I bet 250, the other guy pushes in. I need to call another 400 or so and decide that my hand is too good to lay down without a read on this guy. Of course he does have JT and I allowed him to draw to the nut straight. The river doesn’t help and now I’m very short stacked. I get AK in UTG and push in. The JT guy calls me with A3, but he flops a 3 and I’m done. I think I was fifth out, but I’m not sure I played that badly??? I did win $40 at BJ while waiting for the tourney to start, so that took the sting off a bit. Later that night I sit down at the Flamingo’s 2/4 tables. Nothing too exciting. I ended up losing $3, mostly because I got way too loose at the end of the session. One thing I learned on this trip is that I might be turning into a bit of an action junkie. When playing 2-3 tables online it’s easy to sit back and play correctly pre-flop. But when you are playing live with bad slow players 47s starts to look pretty good on the button after you’ve folded the last 13 hands. I actually did call with 47s on the button once, flopped a flush draw, turned the flush, and ran into a guy with quad 8’s /images/graemlins/smile.gif
July 5
Today is exit day. Christy and I decide to take it nice and slow today. Our flight leaves at 9:30 PM so we have all day to do whatever. She wants to play some BJ, so we head to the Barbary $5 tables and I win $200. I was on fire. I know optimal strategy, but I’m obviously not a BJ expert. I kind of increased and decreased my bets based on nothing whatsoever. And I was a tipping machine. I estimated that I tipped in the neighborhood of $30 during this 1.5 hour session. But I was having fun, so who cares. After the morning BJ session, we ate at the Paris buffet. Say what you want about the French, but those guys know food. Very, very good buffet. After lunch we play BJ for another 3 hours. Christy has had kidney stones for the past 2 years or so and actually passed one while playing!!! I guarantee I’d be rolling around on the floor crying like a baby /images/graemlins/smile.gif
We head to the airport for the flight home. After arriving in the Twin Cities, I see a guy that I recognized from the Bellagio tournament. I go talk to him for a few minutes while we wait for our bags. He qualified through a satellite and placed 55th (top 27 got paid). He’s normally an online player during the week and sits in the 30/60 at Canterbury on the weekends. He had some interesting things to say about the tourney. The most interesting is what he thought of David Williams’ play. He was not impressed at all and realized that DW had to get very, very lucky to place 2nd at the WSOP. I told him that I hope ESPN doesn’t make Fossilman look like a lucky online qualifier and he agreed. Turns out this guy played in a NL ring game at the Bellagio with Fossilman and was very impressed with his play.
All in all, the trip was awesome. I ended up +41 for all gambling and +68 in the ring games. Christy was down 30, so we essentially broke even on the trip. Next time I head out will be when it’s not as hot and not as busy and I will play a lot more poker, but this was a great first trip to Vegas.