Vegas trip report, part 1
It’s a bit overdue, as I got back from my first (legal) trip to Vegas last week, but I played some interesting poker there that is worth mentioning.
But first, I have to talk about bad beat of fucking Gary Loveman, Harr
ah’s CEO, owning a small interest in my beloved Boston Celtics. None of the Harrah’s places had the Celtics-Pistons games on the board. Wtf?
Anyway, I only managed to get two medium length sessions in during my stay. I visited the majority of the casinos on the strip and I have to say I wasn’t terribly impressed by the poker rooms. Maybe my expectations were too high, considering I’m used to having the choice of probably 30+ different 50max tables at any given time on Full Tilt, and the only times I played were on weekday afternoons. But still. It’s fucking Vegas.
My first session was an odd 1/3 game at Caesars. I got a free medallion from the Rewards card I got sucked into and used it as a card protector. I don’t think it intimidated anyone, unfortunately. For whatever reason, the max buy-in was $500 for the game. I took three stacks of red chips to the table and sat in one of the middle seats, maybe number 5 or 6. I think allowing close to 200bb deep max buy-ins for these tables is a dangerous trend for poker. The deeper the stacks, generally speaking, the bigger the advantage for the higher skilled players. Got to keep those fish coming back to the tables and holding on to their money slightly longer.
The guy in seat two had an absolute mountain of chips. I had never seen someone with this many chips in a small stakes game before. After taking two or three more stacks from people, he took three and a half racks of red chips off the table! Someday, someday. Seat one was a guy about my age who was reading Harrington on Cash Games during his folded hands. I wonder whether doing this made up for the information he was losing by not paying attention to so many hands. Maybe he could have pulled this off better if he had a magical live version of Poker Tracker.
Random tangent: Poker Tracker 3 is fucking sweet. It doesn’t actually do too much more than version 2, but the built in HUD is more user friendly than PokerAce and can give you 3bet stats, and the new graphs and winning sections of the database are fun. I guess you can also auto-import from different sites at the same time. I don’t usually play on both Stars and Tilt at the same time, so I don’t know if version 2 let you do this. Either way, the importing is done in real time, rather than once per minute, which is nice.
Back to the Caesars game… seats 7-9 were a moderately attractive 30-something woman sandwiched between two friendly Aussies. They were bragging to her about how they go to “poker school” back home. I was curious about this so-called poker school, but decided against dropping in on their seemingly hopeless tricky pickup attempt. One of the Aussies mentioned that at the end of their 25-hour long flight to Vegas, they had to wait on the runway for a while because someone had stolen the smoke detector out of the bathroom. Yikes.
One hand, Aussie A raised to $15 from UTG. I found AA in the hijack and repopped to $50. We both had about $200 to start the hand and I wanted to get it all in on the flop and cut down his implied odds. After studying me for a while, Aussie A asked, “Do you have Jacks or Aces?” In situations like this, I find that just telling the truth fucks with people a lot. “If you’re taking this long, you’re probably in trouble,” I said. After another minute he folded. He must have gotten away from his 88-TT or AK. Bastard.
The guy in seat 3 was a middle aged Indian guy who asked every dealer who came in if there was anywhere at Caesars he could find a chili dog. Maybe his wife at home doesn’t let him eat those or something. In Sin City, ANYTHING goes. But apparently not chili dog consumption, as none of the dealers could direct him towards one.
On my big hand of the session (i.e. the one that made it profitable), I raised behind a limper with AKo from the cutoff to $17. Aussie B, who was playing like an absolute rock, called from the SB, and the limper called. The flop came QsT4s, and Aussie B bet $15 into about $55. I think we both had about $150 behind. I think sometimes when playing live, people don’t realize exactly how much is in the pot. Getting almost 5-1, I floated the bet, thinking his range probably had a lot of flush draws and one pair hands. The turn came off a blank, and Aussie B bet $25 into $80. Again, I was almost getting odds to draw to the inside straight alone. I called. The river was the Ts, pairing the board and completing the flush draw. He checked. Beautiful. I bet $70 and Aussie B folded after thinking for about 15 seconds. Yayy!!! I was tempted to say something like “I bet they don’t teach you that in poker school, bitch” and show him the bluff, but thought the better of it.
“Yeah, that is probably a pretty safe fold,” Aussie A said. I love how in live poker, people actually pay attention to your table image. I hadn’t been playing too many hands on the session. In the 50max tables at least, I’ll fold 49 out of 50 hands, raise preflop, and get 3bet light time after time. I think people will adjust to aggressive players, but never to tight ones.
Part 2 and whatever I can recollect from my second session, at the Flamingo, coming soon!
Tags: Las Vegas, poker, travel
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