Gator
04-04-2005, 08:12 PM
100 hours in Vegas – 69 playing poker
Wednesday 3/30 through Sunday 4/3
Trip starts off with a very positive omen. Leaving Boston, I find myself standing next to Howard Lederer in the airport security line. He just finished a promo for the Mass Lottery’s new HoldEm scratch ticket and is back to Vegas to run another one of his poker fantasy camps (which happens to be taking place at the MGM – where I am staying). He’s nice enough – but it’s 6:45AM east coast time and I know he runs on a west coast poker player’s body clock – so I can tell he’s ready to catch some z’s on the plane.
I arrived in Vegas at 11:30 local time on Wednesday. I’m staying at the MGM. They have hotel check-in right at the airport which is super convenient. I’m checked in and have a room key before my bags come off the belt in the airport terminal. Traveling with four friends – I’m the lone poker addict – they’re in Vegas for golf and negative expected value table games!
We make the short drive from the airport to the MGM. I have my friends take my bag to the room and hoof it to the Aladdin for the 1PM NLHE tournament. $60 entry gets you 2000 in chips, 1 $40 rebuy gets another 1,000. 60 players in this tournament. I’m the only one at my table who takes the rebuy before the first deal – so, I’m the early chip leader! I play solid, tight poker – steal some blinds – and am treading water with 4,000 chips at level 7 (1K/2K blinds). There’s one caller in front of me and I’m in late position with A6 suited and decide to make a move. Get lucky when my dominated ace holds up against the AQ early caller.
Make it to the final table of ten holding about 10K chips (average is about 15K). Get no playable hands but have built to 12K with blinds now at 2K/4K. We are down to six players (six spots paid). I have to give up my big blind after a raise/reraise in front of me so I’m now at 8K. Good news is the early action on the previous hand takes out a player and I move into 5th. Next hand a MP player with about 10K goes all in. My small blind is 4K so it’s a pretty easy call for me – I have 4K left after posting, holding JT offsuit, for my remaining 4K. Unfortunately, the big blind also calls. MP had 99, BB had AK and after the board comes J A rag, rag, rag I finish in 5th place – good for $400 (less my $100 buyin). Too bad big blind had a hand or I would have cracked the pair of nines and had some chips to work with. First prize was $1,355. Aladdin runs nice, modest buy in tournaments. I looked for Photoc who deals at the Aladdin but Wednesday was his day off.
After the tournament, I head back to the MGM to play some $1/$2NLHE there. Get in about 3 hours of play and get adjusted to live NL play (I’ve logged maybe 12 hours of NL live play – mostly I play online NL SitNGo’s). I play mostly solid, but make the occasional overaggressive mistake that costs me big time (I think this comes from the SitNGo mentality where you have to make a move – in ring play patience and selective aggression really are the key). I manage to lose one and a half buy ins ($150) in the three hours. The MGM room is great. Spacious, I found the dealers to be very good. Very quick, cocktail service. At night, it does get very loud with Studio 54 nearby, but the eye candy more than compensates. The electronic shufflers are great and the electronic boards are a super way to know how long it will be for a table, what the wait is at each limit, etc. They’ll even give you a pager if the wait is long.
Take a three hour time-out from poker as I join my buddies for dinner. We go to Austin’s steak house (I think it’s in Texas station about ten minutes from the strip) and get an awesome steak. Get back to MGM around 9PM and start my first marathon session as I play through until 2AM. I net about $100 from this session of play and call it a night (after all, it’s 5AM East coast time and it’s my first day in Vegas). Including the Aladdin tournament, I’m up over $400 – this will turn out to be my high point for the trip.
Catch four hours of Z’s, back at the MGM tables at 6AM and play 3 hours – pick up a couple of hundred and decide to head back over the the Aladdin for the 1PM tournament. I meet Photoc – real good guy. It’s his day off, but the Aladdin allows dealers to play in their ring games and tournaments. Play an hour or so of uneventful $1/$2NL before the tournament starts. As fate would have it, Photoc and I are at the same table – we get it all in before the flop and my QQ cracks his aces when I flop a set! My luck doesn’t last and I finish in about 30th of about 70 spots.
Back at the MGM I meet my 3rd 2+2er (AsSeenOnTV) who deals at the MGM. Another stand up guy - but he dealt me unspectacular cards during the one push where we were together.
Get in three more hours of uneventful NL play back at the MGM and then head to the Mirage with one of my friends to see Danny Gans. I stayed at the Mirage last March and loved their poker room, met Donna (the manager) and got to know some of the dealers, floor people, Michael in the cage, etc. It’s great to say hi to them. I only have time to play for an hour. Their baby NL game is $2/$5. I never felt comfortable at this table – partly because of the higher buy-in, partly because I know I only have an hour. Anyway, I drop $160, grab a quick dinner and then see Danny Gans who puts on a great show. Gans is amazing and I recommend the show highly.
After the show, we head over to Tangerine at TI. I have VIP passes, we drink some Vodka, check out the crowd, see the Sirens show from inside the bar and catch the monorail from Bally’s to get back to the MGM. By this time, my body is exhausted and I get in my only real stretch of sleep as I crash from 11PM to 8AM the next morning. I hit the spa for two hours and am back to the tables around 10AM. I play 12 straight hours and all different styles – Tight Aggressive during the day against a mix of multiple buy-in tourists and Vegas regulars, a little tipsy thanks to RedBull and Grey Goose and a final stretch of complete exhaustion where I can’t tell a straight from a flush. I have a stretch where I am seated next to the eccentric downtown Ron (or Downtown Jim or something or another). He’s a self proclaimed Vegas fixture (says he is an entrepreneur – his office is the Glitter Gulch) and he had some great stories. Fatigue has set in and I’m no longer able to keep track of wins/losses (in the end, I figure it out based on how much cash I have left when I leave town). Session got wild around 2AM in the morning when a six foot four serial killer looking guy sits down at the table. He had his name “Hamilton” tattooed down the inside of his arm – starting at the bicep with the N stopping just before his palms. Each letter was 1.5 X 1.5 inches. His first hand at the table, he goes all in for $100 and picks up one caller. Hamilton’s AA stands up against AT and Hamilton proceeds to bully the table with his double-up stack. A cute girl, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend wannabe end up moving to another table to get away from his bullying. I wait for the opportunity to take advantage. Finally, he raises $20 preflop, I push all in – he calls - and my pocket tens best his Ace 8 and I take him down. Earlier in the evening, I witnessed some very good poker psychology. An older gentleman, solid play, bit of a rock, builds his stack to about $250. He raises, pre-flop to $10. The button (a crafty player) reraises to twenty and oldtimer calls. Post flop, old timer bets $30 and the button pushes all in after flop of something like 3 9 J. Old timer folds, button turns over 2 6 offsuit. From that point on, old timer disintegrates and his remaining stack evaporates quickly. It’s an emotional game and this solid player just couldn’t take it anymore.
It’s now early Saturday morning and I’m about 18 hours into this 24 hour non stop stretch of poker. Seven of the ten seats at my table are now occupied by Howard Lederer campers. These are people that paid about $3,500 for Howard’s 3 day seminar. One gentleman is in town with his wife and is proud that she’s still alive in the camp tournament (more on her later). Most are wearing the camp name tags around their neck. One of the campers sits down and his hard bodied girl friend sits behind him He proceeds to explain strategy to her (what the button means, the value of position, etc.). They’re mostly decent players and play mostly tight aggressive. I’ve amassed a pretty good stack (about $550 which started accumulating once I took out the serial killer with my tens– considering max buyin is $100, I’ve caused several people to rebuy). I get involved in a pretty interesting hand with the guy who has his girlfriend watching. Having just joined the table, he has a stack of around $100 and raises $12 preflop. A small stack (maybe $30) calls him. I have pocket sevens and decide to call from late position. Flop comes Q, 5, 6. Camper bets $20, short stack calls all in. I’d generally be done with my small pockets after missing the set, but the big pot, a lack of sleep, runner runner for the straight, and Grey Goose winning the battle over the Red Bull lead me to call. The turn is a second Queen. I put camper on AK or maybe jacks – I then do some mental calculation that says even if the short stack has a queen, if I can push camper off this hand, the side pot will more than cover what I lose to the short stack that probably has a queen in his hand (pretty good logic on my part I think). I also think that camper will do everything possible to avoid losing his stack with his girlfriend watching. Camper studies me and studies me. I make a comment about putting on a reverse tell to counter everything he learned at Howard’s camp. He finally calls and turns over aces – short stack did have the queen and my stack starts its downward spiral from the $550 high point. When camper with the pocket Aces and an ace of a girlfriend left the table, he did pull me aside and tell me that I covered my mouth on that hand – and that tell led him to call me – I appreciated that – I’m trying to learn live play.
Finally, around noon on Saturday I end this 24 hour poker binger and catch five hours of sleep. I wake up around 4PM on Saturday. Before leaving for Vegas, I PM’d Kilgore Trout. Both of us were staying at the MGM and we made plans to get together and maybe head to downtown Vegas for some of the tournaments there on Saturday night. Unfortunately, I lost his number. After I woke up, there was a voice mail from Kilgore on my cell phone. I called and he was downstairs playing the $10/$20 game in the MGM room. We both found it to damn convenient to play right there so I never made it to Binions/Horseshoe/Nugget for those tournaments. I went down and introduced myself. He introduced me to noted poker author Jim Briar and I then proceeded to find a baby no limit game. I got in three hours of uneventful play before I met my friends for Dinner (Diego’s at the MGM – this was really only my second real meal in Vegas – all the time I spent evaluating restaurants, buffets, etc was wasted as the poker tables were always calling). After a quick dinner, I headed back to the MGM poker room for one last Marathon session before leaving Vegas.
This ran from 9PM Saturday night until 10AM Sunday morning. Remember the Howard Lederer camper that was there with his wife? Well, I had another stint playing with him – and his wife was at the table as well (having finished 10th in the camp tournament). She amassed a $1,400 stack which is pretty darn amazing considering the $100 buy-in. She had a great way of sweet talking some drunken guys out of their money – she could get them to check when she was on a draw and bet into her when she had the nuts. The deck was hitting her solid. I stayed out of her way, but she did all the damage on the table. Played with a good guy named JDM (who works at Full Tilt) and I gave him my stack when I pushed my 77 after the turn left the board with 5 6 Q 8 – he quickly called with his pocket queens and the river didn’t help me.
I ended the trip down about $300 after 69 hours of poker play. By my way of thinking, the rake, dealer tokes, and waitress tips cost me about $15/hour. So, that means I spent $1,000 plus on that – so I must have won about $700 to end up down $300. The thinking is convoluted in one sense – but for someone with little live play experience (and more experience at SitNGo’s than no limit ring play), I feel like I held my own.
I’d played solid for hours and then once every three hours or so, I’d make a ridiculous bet – pushing all in against a made hand – where a ½ pot size bet would have either won me the hand or told me everything I needed to get away from the hand.
Regrets: not playing more tournaments, not being able to play at a table with Kilgore and/or grabbing a drink with him and not playing more at the Mirage (where I love the staff)
This was a great poker binge for me. My totals over 4 days – 69 hours of poker, 21 hours of sleep, and 11 hours of other activity.
Wednesday 3/30 through Sunday 4/3
Trip starts off with a very positive omen. Leaving Boston, I find myself standing next to Howard Lederer in the airport security line. He just finished a promo for the Mass Lottery’s new HoldEm scratch ticket and is back to Vegas to run another one of his poker fantasy camps (which happens to be taking place at the MGM – where I am staying). He’s nice enough – but it’s 6:45AM east coast time and I know he runs on a west coast poker player’s body clock – so I can tell he’s ready to catch some z’s on the plane.
I arrived in Vegas at 11:30 local time on Wednesday. I’m staying at the MGM. They have hotel check-in right at the airport which is super convenient. I’m checked in and have a room key before my bags come off the belt in the airport terminal. Traveling with four friends – I’m the lone poker addict – they’re in Vegas for golf and negative expected value table games!
We make the short drive from the airport to the MGM. I have my friends take my bag to the room and hoof it to the Aladdin for the 1PM NLHE tournament. $60 entry gets you 2000 in chips, 1 $40 rebuy gets another 1,000. 60 players in this tournament. I’m the only one at my table who takes the rebuy before the first deal – so, I’m the early chip leader! I play solid, tight poker – steal some blinds – and am treading water with 4,000 chips at level 7 (1K/2K blinds). There’s one caller in front of me and I’m in late position with A6 suited and decide to make a move. Get lucky when my dominated ace holds up against the AQ early caller.
Make it to the final table of ten holding about 10K chips (average is about 15K). Get no playable hands but have built to 12K with blinds now at 2K/4K. We are down to six players (six spots paid). I have to give up my big blind after a raise/reraise in front of me so I’m now at 8K. Good news is the early action on the previous hand takes out a player and I move into 5th. Next hand a MP player with about 10K goes all in. My small blind is 4K so it’s a pretty easy call for me – I have 4K left after posting, holding JT offsuit, for my remaining 4K. Unfortunately, the big blind also calls. MP had 99, BB had AK and after the board comes J A rag, rag, rag I finish in 5th place – good for $400 (less my $100 buyin). Too bad big blind had a hand or I would have cracked the pair of nines and had some chips to work with. First prize was $1,355. Aladdin runs nice, modest buy in tournaments. I looked for Photoc who deals at the Aladdin but Wednesday was his day off.
After the tournament, I head back to the MGM to play some $1/$2NLHE there. Get in about 3 hours of play and get adjusted to live NL play (I’ve logged maybe 12 hours of NL live play – mostly I play online NL SitNGo’s). I play mostly solid, but make the occasional overaggressive mistake that costs me big time (I think this comes from the SitNGo mentality where you have to make a move – in ring play patience and selective aggression really are the key). I manage to lose one and a half buy ins ($150) in the three hours. The MGM room is great. Spacious, I found the dealers to be very good. Very quick, cocktail service. At night, it does get very loud with Studio 54 nearby, but the eye candy more than compensates. The electronic shufflers are great and the electronic boards are a super way to know how long it will be for a table, what the wait is at each limit, etc. They’ll even give you a pager if the wait is long.
Take a three hour time-out from poker as I join my buddies for dinner. We go to Austin’s steak house (I think it’s in Texas station about ten minutes from the strip) and get an awesome steak. Get back to MGM around 9PM and start my first marathon session as I play through until 2AM. I net about $100 from this session of play and call it a night (after all, it’s 5AM East coast time and it’s my first day in Vegas). Including the Aladdin tournament, I’m up over $400 – this will turn out to be my high point for the trip.
Catch four hours of Z’s, back at the MGM tables at 6AM and play 3 hours – pick up a couple of hundred and decide to head back over the the Aladdin for the 1PM tournament. I meet Photoc – real good guy. It’s his day off, but the Aladdin allows dealers to play in their ring games and tournaments. Play an hour or so of uneventful $1/$2NL before the tournament starts. As fate would have it, Photoc and I are at the same table – we get it all in before the flop and my QQ cracks his aces when I flop a set! My luck doesn’t last and I finish in about 30th of about 70 spots.
Back at the MGM I meet my 3rd 2+2er (AsSeenOnTV) who deals at the MGM. Another stand up guy - but he dealt me unspectacular cards during the one push where we were together.
Get in three more hours of uneventful NL play back at the MGM and then head to the Mirage with one of my friends to see Danny Gans. I stayed at the Mirage last March and loved their poker room, met Donna (the manager) and got to know some of the dealers, floor people, Michael in the cage, etc. It’s great to say hi to them. I only have time to play for an hour. Their baby NL game is $2/$5. I never felt comfortable at this table – partly because of the higher buy-in, partly because I know I only have an hour. Anyway, I drop $160, grab a quick dinner and then see Danny Gans who puts on a great show. Gans is amazing and I recommend the show highly.
After the show, we head over to Tangerine at TI. I have VIP passes, we drink some Vodka, check out the crowd, see the Sirens show from inside the bar and catch the monorail from Bally’s to get back to the MGM. By this time, my body is exhausted and I get in my only real stretch of sleep as I crash from 11PM to 8AM the next morning. I hit the spa for two hours and am back to the tables around 10AM. I play 12 straight hours and all different styles – Tight Aggressive during the day against a mix of multiple buy-in tourists and Vegas regulars, a little tipsy thanks to RedBull and Grey Goose and a final stretch of complete exhaustion where I can’t tell a straight from a flush. I have a stretch where I am seated next to the eccentric downtown Ron (or Downtown Jim or something or another). He’s a self proclaimed Vegas fixture (says he is an entrepreneur – his office is the Glitter Gulch) and he had some great stories. Fatigue has set in and I’m no longer able to keep track of wins/losses (in the end, I figure it out based on how much cash I have left when I leave town). Session got wild around 2AM in the morning when a six foot four serial killer looking guy sits down at the table. He had his name “Hamilton” tattooed down the inside of his arm – starting at the bicep with the N stopping just before his palms. Each letter was 1.5 X 1.5 inches. His first hand at the table, he goes all in for $100 and picks up one caller. Hamilton’s AA stands up against AT and Hamilton proceeds to bully the table with his double-up stack. A cute girl, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend wannabe end up moving to another table to get away from his bullying. I wait for the opportunity to take advantage. Finally, he raises $20 preflop, I push all in – he calls - and my pocket tens best his Ace 8 and I take him down. Earlier in the evening, I witnessed some very good poker psychology. An older gentleman, solid play, bit of a rock, builds his stack to about $250. He raises, pre-flop to $10. The button (a crafty player) reraises to twenty and oldtimer calls. Post flop, old timer bets $30 and the button pushes all in after flop of something like 3 9 J. Old timer folds, button turns over 2 6 offsuit. From that point on, old timer disintegrates and his remaining stack evaporates quickly. It’s an emotional game and this solid player just couldn’t take it anymore.
It’s now early Saturday morning and I’m about 18 hours into this 24 hour non stop stretch of poker. Seven of the ten seats at my table are now occupied by Howard Lederer campers. These are people that paid about $3,500 for Howard’s 3 day seminar. One gentleman is in town with his wife and is proud that she’s still alive in the camp tournament (more on her later). Most are wearing the camp name tags around their neck. One of the campers sits down and his hard bodied girl friend sits behind him He proceeds to explain strategy to her (what the button means, the value of position, etc.). They’re mostly decent players and play mostly tight aggressive. I’ve amassed a pretty good stack (about $550 which started accumulating once I took out the serial killer with my tens– considering max buyin is $100, I’ve caused several people to rebuy). I get involved in a pretty interesting hand with the guy who has his girlfriend watching. Having just joined the table, he has a stack of around $100 and raises $12 preflop. A small stack (maybe $30) calls him. I have pocket sevens and decide to call from late position. Flop comes Q, 5, 6. Camper bets $20, short stack calls all in. I’d generally be done with my small pockets after missing the set, but the big pot, a lack of sleep, runner runner for the straight, and Grey Goose winning the battle over the Red Bull lead me to call. The turn is a second Queen. I put camper on AK or maybe jacks – I then do some mental calculation that says even if the short stack has a queen, if I can push camper off this hand, the side pot will more than cover what I lose to the short stack that probably has a queen in his hand (pretty good logic on my part I think). I also think that camper will do everything possible to avoid losing his stack with his girlfriend watching. Camper studies me and studies me. I make a comment about putting on a reverse tell to counter everything he learned at Howard’s camp. He finally calls and turns over aces – short stack did have the queen and my stack starts its downward spiral from the $550 high point. When camper with the pocket Aces and an ace of a girlfriend left the table, he did pull me aside and tell me that I covered my mouth on that hand – and that tell led him to call me – I appreciated that – I’m trying to learn live play.
Finally, around noon on Saturday I end this 24 hour poker binger and catch five hours of sleep. I wake up around 4PM on Saturday. Before leaving for Vegas, I PM’d Kilgore Trout. Both of us were staying at the MGM and we made plans to get together and maybe head to downtown Vegas for some of the tournaments there on Saturday night. Unfortunately, I lost his number. After I woke up, there was a voice mail from Kilgore on my cell phone. I called and he was downstairs playing the $10/$20 game in the MGM room. We both found it to damn convenient to play right there so I never made it to Binions/Horseshoe/Nugget for those tournaments. I went down and introduced myself. He introduced me to noted poker author Jim Briar and I then proceeded to find a baby no limit game. I got in three hours of uneventful play before I met my friends for Dinner (Diego’s at the MGM – this was really only my second real meal in Vegas – all the time I spent evaluating restaurants, buffets, etc was wasted as the poker tables were always calling). After a quick dinner, I headed back to the MGM poker room for one last Marathon session before leaving Vegas.
This ran from 9PM Saturday night until 10AM Sunday morning. Remember the Howard Lederer camper that was there with his wife? Well, I had another stint playing with him – and his wife was at the table as well (having finished 10th in the camp tournament). She amassed a $1,400 stack which is pretty darn amazing considering the $100 buy-in. She had a great way of sweet talking some drunken guys out of their money – she could get them to check when she was on a draw and bet into her when she had the nuts. The deck was hitting her solid. I stayed out of her way, but she did all the damage on the table. Played with a good guy named JDM (who works at Full Tilt) and I gave him my stack when I pushed my 77 after the turn left the board with 5 6 Q 8 – he quickly called with his pocket queens and the river didn’t help me.
I ended the trip down about $300 after 69 hours of poker play. By my way of thinking, the rake, dealer tokes, and waitress tips cost me about $15/hour. So, that means I spent $1,000 plus on that – so I must have won about $700 to end up down $300. The thinking is convoluted in one sense – but for someone with little live play experience (and more experience at SitNGo’s than no limit ring play), I feel like I held my own.
I’d played solid for hours and then once every three hours or so, I’d make a ridiculous bet – pushing all in against a made hand – where a ½ pot size bet would have either won me the hand or told me everything I needed to get away from the hand.
Regrets: not playing more tournaments, not being able to play at a table with Kilgore and/or grabbing a drink with him and not playing more at the Mirage (where I love the staff)
This was a great poker binge for me. My totals over 4 days – 69 hours of poker, 21 hours of sleep, and 11 hours of other activity.