Trip Report - Low-Limit Vegas Oct 28 - 31

[g_scampy]

Hey everyone, just got back from my inaugural trip to Vegas and thought I'd share my experiences with you guys. I'm a bona-fide lurker in these forums and thought I'd add something for a change.

We stayed at the Imperial Palace, which is clean, relatively cheap, great location, but the food we had there was not good. Rather the food courts at the Venetian or Caesar's, or The Buffet at Bellagio. We ate at the Bellagio on Friday morning right at changeover time between breakfast and lunch, meaning we got their entire lunch buffet for the breakfast price, pretty good deal for a great lunch.

Poker-wise, I played at IP once in the Thursday 7pm $45+10 NL tourney (1 $25 rebuy or add-on in the first hour) right when we got there. 44 players started, top 10 pay. 15 minute blind raises translates into once about every 4-5 hands - much faster than your average online tourney and much faster than I'm used to. I had an unspectacular tournament and finished 15th or so. Across the road to the Mirage...

Played $3-6 at the Mirage at a pretty interesting table... there was a drunk guy named Terry in seat 9 playing no-fold 'em who rebought for about $600 in the 5 hours or so I was there... This guy was calling river raises after missing his gutshot with jack-high. The plots were generally 5-7 handed with 80% unraised preflop. unfortunately I was running very cold and, seeing as there was a showdown every hand, I was having a hard time winning many pots. I left the table up about $100 so I can't complain. It was an extremely friendly table and the dealers at the Mirage are great.

On friday I toured most of the day before heading to the Excalibur to play in the $100 min/max NL game ($1/$2 blinds) . I got there at about 9pm and played until very early in the morning. The table was tight early with 2-3 to a flop, but gradually loosened up as night turned into morning. Anyways, the game was fun but not terribly profitable, never really got much above the buy-in. After some bad drunken decisions I busted.
I really liked the room, with the bonus wheel for quads and cracked aces. I got to spin it once for each occasion.

Saturday after some more touring I decided to return to the Excalibur. Today would be different... I doubled through early in the session with KK flopped K, then busted the same gentleman on the very next hand again with AK on a k-high flop. About an hour later the following hand comes up:
I'm in the small blind with QJo. No raises preflop and I complete. Flop is K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 10 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] , giving me the (temporary) nuts.
I bet $6 from SB, a couple calls to button who makes it $80.
Here I have ~$300 and button has me covered. I push, button calls. He shows me K10 and doesn't improve, and it's a $650 pot to me.
Another hand of note occurred not long afterwards, when I folded 22 on the button to a $20 bet... flop A22 with lots of action post-flop. Took me a while to get over that one... B&M poker is so obviously rigged. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

The most fun I had though was that night back at the Mirage 3-6, I bounced from table to table until finally at about 4am three very intoxicated young kids sit down. I get the feeling that they knew how to play well, but were just out having a good time at a low-limit table. These guys are playing live straddles, raising in the dark, etc etc. At one point I'm in UTG+2, two of the friends in UTG and UTG+1 both post live straddles and are encouraging me to do so as well... now that would be $12 to me, anyhow long story short I folded Q4o that would have won with trip 4's on the flop. Needless to say it was another profitable evening regardless, +$200 with the majority of it in the final hour of play.

All in all, a fun trip, I wish I had stuck with poker instead of blowing most of my winnings on the craps tables but, [censored] happens.

-Dan