VEGAS IN LATE MARCH

This was my 4th trip in four years, but the first without Dude. I didn’t expect to go this year what with online poker going defunct and fewer opportunities for free rooms at the WSOP. Lucky for me Tricia had a conference in Vegas and bought me a ticket to tag along for my birthday.

TUE

If you have a torn meniscus and don’t mind the 50 degree weather, I learned that you can walk from the Luxor to the Venetian in about 40 minutes. I’ll admit that I did some of it as a hobblling limp, but the exercise felt good.

I sat down around 8:30am at the only game going 1-2 NL. It was populated with guys who had been playing since 4am or even overnight. Some of them had big stacks. I was particularly watching the guy three to my left that had around a $1000. He was entering a lot of pots and making a lot of plays on scare cards. I found my opportunity against him early on. With AKh one off the button I made the standard $15 preflop raise and he called. I flopped an ace and 1 heart and bet $20. I decided that $20 was an amount that might make him play back at me, but he just called. The turn brought the Jack of hearts and I intuitively decided that he would fold to my bet, but would probably bet if I checked so I checked. He bet. I decided to raise and he decided I had a hand.

About 2 hours in I had more than doubled my money and I went on a long card draught that ended sometime around lunch when I got AA. The flop brought KJ4 and I bet it out and got one caller. The turn brought a 7 and I bet again and got the same caller. I figured the worst I could be up against was two pair and prayed that the river would bring another 7 so that I could counterfeit the only hand that worried me. Then what do you know, the river brings another 7 and I bet $50 which he calls and turns over Q7. This nut called $20 on the flop with nothing. He called $30 on the turn with 3rd pair. And when he did get his trip 7s he didn’t even raise me on the end, calling station extraordinaire. That would be my luck with AA the rest of the week, losing to K7 and J9 before the week was over.

Sometime in the afternoon a guy sits down to my right that is so free with his chips that I only have to wait my time. He played every two cards and raised with any pair or face cards. What was great is that he overvalued everything he had. I limped behind him with KT after watching this madness. The flop brought a King and big bet from him. I knew my kicker was good and made a big re-raise to take it down. Instead he pushed me all in and turned over K2. I laughed like mad inside at how easy it was and then the turn and river brought 22. Was he so bad to think that K2 was good or was he just trying to bully me? Anyway, my day’s work ended in a shambles.

I decided to head over to the Mirage where I met a 30ish guy who told me he moved to Vegas a year ago so that he could play poker. By day he sells advertising in the paper, but the rest of his time is spent in NL games mostly at the Mirage. He made a comment that very few people in the game make good calls and then 20 minutes later was impressed that I read his bluff on the river and the made the tough call. After he left, I got into trouble with AA again this time to the aforementioned J9. Guys will play to the river if they hit any part of the flop out there.

Not 30 seconds after that beat, the announcement came for a $120 SIT N GO so I gladly joined to change my luck. Two guys were knocked out even before I could play a hand, but that hand was KK so I was off to the races. I knocked a guy out soon after when he made a play at my blind with his Kx and I pushed all-in with my Ax, the pot odds demanded a call even though he was caught, I suppose. The tourneys just pay 1st and 2nd - $700 and $300. I got down to heads up at a 5-2 chip disadvantage with each round costing me about ¼ of my chips. I decided to push with 78s hoping to get lucky, but she had A8 counterfeiting one of my cards. I won my money back from the AA debacle anyway.

WED

The next morning I decided to check out the MGM, not wanting to test the torn Meniscus all the way down the strip again. The MGM was a short walk, I had never seen there card room, and they had a $65 tourney at 11am if I wanted to play a few hours on the cheap. I arrived around 9am and I sat next to Emily, the cute and mature 23 year old and her nice and immature 23 year old boyfriend. It’s amazing that girls like us at that age. I remember how obnoxious and childish I could be and it was all brought back with this experience. He was wearing the backwards cap and kept repeating the same rap song over and over. She showed great patience. I needed patience too landing trips on my very first hand, but playing it slowly when Emily turned over the same trips with a better kicker. I couldn’t get away from the hand on the big blind and spent $40 before I knew it.

You never use to see girls at a poker table, once in a while the retired woman in Biloxi playing for her comped meal tickets and hoping for a jackpot hand, but never college girls. Emily was full of surprises. She was a math/physics major in college and became an electrician when she graduated. It’s not what she wants to do her whole life, but she makes good money in the construction business. The tough part is that she is allergic to latex which means she has to wear a mask when she’s working around all the painters. She said that the fumes alone will make her throat block up. She also said that such an allergy makes dating tough because the only alternative is polyurethane and they don’t make that in an extra large. So she was glad to have the permanent boyfriend that maybe partly explains her patience with his behavior.

I played in that game a couple of hours and then moved onto the 11am freezeout tourney for $65. Blinds were 25/50 and a stack of 2000 to start. If I have any rule in a tourney it’s that I just don’t get involved early anymore. I’ll limp with some hands and re-raise with monsters, but I’d just as soon get trash for the first 2 or 3 levels. I have seen too many people get too involved early for $200 pots and it just doesn’t make sense in the long run. Since my online play is mostly single table tourneys and since the home game is almost all tourneys of 8-13 people, I have developed a knack of knowing when I’m ahead in these things unlike the cash game that use to be my mainstay.

Sometime after the first break Emily sat down two to my left. We exchange pleasantries like we’ve known each other for years. It turns out they are traveling with a third party, the dread locks guy who also plays in the tourney. She leaves for a moment to speak with him and the returns to explain that they’re all friends that traveled here together from Colorado, lest I think she is two-timing the boyfriend. I’ll admit that I didn’t immediately recognize her when she sat down. Earlier in morning she was wearing a Yankee cap borrowed from the boyfriend although she herself roots for the Bosox. Now she was wearing no cap and her hair down enough that it gave her face a different look. I saw her from a distance earlier in the tourney and didn’t put it together until she called me by name when she sat down and then deductive reasoning took it from there.

What I like about tourneys is when I listen to myself and pay attention to the externals, the hands seem to play automatically. It took about two hours this time to weed 63 people down to 2 tables and 11 people. I was sitting on the big blind with AKs, and so with 6 people at the table, the button raise was met with my automatic all-in which he reluctantly called with KTo. He has me by about 1000 chips and the moral of the story is sometimes the flop comes TT and you get knocked out. 11 of 63. The good news is that I never got into an all-in as the underdog and the early ones held up.

I moved onto a new NL game, this time a brand new table. I like the brand new table in that we all start with the same stack so I don’t feel that people can push me around and by the time someone does have a big stack I know how he got, aggressive play or lucky hands.

It was an interesting group of people and being a new table I was able to get to know a bunch of them. In seat one was the neo-hippy wearing his nazarine hair, zip up hooded sweatshirt logoed with Oregon, sandals and a friendly toke grin. He would later explain the positives of playing under the influence of smoke that makes you focus totally on one thing. He proved that reefer works with a big stack 4 hours later and a timely fold to my set during the middle of it.

In seat two sat the 30sish guy worked at CarMax. That story came out when he recognized a dealer as a former customer. He even remembered the make and color of the car although it had been nearly a year. You’d think the dealer that probably buys no more than a car every 4 or 5 years would recognize the salesman first, since the salesman probably sells 100 cars a year. The poker dealer never did remember him, but acknowledged the make and model of the car was right. I figured that good memory must have been good for his poker playing.

The car salesmen told us that he moved to Vegas a year and half ago to play poker and took the car job as something to pay this bills. That’s a very practical way to follow a dream and it’s no doubt true that a lot of people have that dream what with WPT, WSOP etc. showcasing underdog millionaires. The tough part about pursuing poker in a practical way is how tough it must be to maintain any kind realism about the value of money. How can you turn a $100 tourney into $2400 one afternoon and then spend three days trying to earn a $300 commission against your draw? Or how do you convince yourself to continue playing poker during a bad run when the commissions have been tough and the bad beats worse? You’d have to compartmentalize money which I was able to do by keeping my bankroll in Neteller where it seemed like play money anyway. But in Vegas it’s all just cash sitting in your jeans.

The car salesman made a really bad call against me that made my day a winner. I had AKs. The car man made a raise from early position. Seat 4, frustrated at no cards for an hour pushed all-in with about $35. I could have re-raised there and knocked the Car salesman out, but I decided to give him odds instead, because I figured that I was in a race with the all-in and would rather get paid a greater price by the car dealer hoping he had a weaker ace. He had already shown a willingness to raise with stuff like AJo. The flop brought AK3 and the Car man lead out with $25 which I smooth called. The turn brought another A and we both checked. I figured he’d call with a weaker ace, but a check might make him bet the river with anything. The river brought another K, Damn. Now I’m counterfeited. I had to take the chance he had a weak Ace and now that hand can’t be worth anything. His weak ace is now a full boat, and anything else isn’t worth playing. He checks. The correct play is to value bet and hope he makes a crying call with less than an Ace, but I decide I’m going to push all-in (around $130) just for the hell of it. He calls and I turn over the AK saying, well I would have been better betting the turn, huh? He turns over KT and says, oh you had an ace. Did he get a false read on me? It was my first push of the table. It was the only bad play I saw him make all day and he didn’t even shrug and then bought in for another $200. The frustrated guy who pushed preflop turned over 33, meaning he flopped a set and would have lost a ton if he had to ton to lose.

Another two curious characters were in seats 9 and 10. They were young Asians from UNLV that recently turned 21. They both bought in for $60 and played it tight. Seat 9 ran his stack to $300, while seat 10 had to re-buy twice and never got things going. Even though I didn’t follow the strategy, I think the low buy-in is a great idea when you’re trying to get your chops back. A $60 buy-in makes $100 profit seem more substantial and it makes it easier to push like a tourney anytime you think you have a positive EV. I saw seat 9 do it early twice and immediately recognized the strategy and value. Afterwards he played it more straight, but with other people’s money.

Earlier in the day, Emily with her math brain and cheerleader body was the representation of new poker, 2 hours into this game we were treated to Andrea, the roughly 22 year-old blonde from Finland, with little to no accent. She sat to my right. Her story was that she was a corporate pilot that was in Vegas because her charges were in town partying and when that happens she plays poker. How does one become a corporate pilot? Easy, just go to the same flight schools the terrorists go to. She said that the money was good but not great. The great thing is that she has all kinds of free time like this when she’s on the clock and can easily pursue her Masters Degree in the meantime. Now what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and that story kind of reeks of embellishment, especially from a young blonde girl. So I ask her what it was like living under the influence of the Soviet Union, because I had always understood Finland to be a quasi satellite. She said adamantly but nicely said that her country wasn’t a satellite to the point that they allied themselves with the Germans during World War II to escape the influence of the Soviets. Now this was for political purposes she said, and that they secretly funded organizations to help Jews escape from Germany. Now Finland has a female leader and has proved to be very progressive. I didn’t know enough about aviation to test that notion, but the way she anticipated criticism for Nazi collaboration and how she had a ready-made answer that defended her country’s actions made it highly unlikely she wasn’t Finish. When I got home I read about Finland and they were probably influenced by the Soviets more than she would admit, but she was right that they weren’t a true satellite. As far as funding anti-holocaust groups there was no mention of it in the regular histories, but it sounds like just the kind of thing you would teach kids in school to mitigate and soften the actions of your country in a tough time. I don’t know that anyone who didn’t actually get that explanation in Finland would think of adding it as a detail. So I’ll give her credit for both.

Now although she was the absolute little-sister type it mattered little to Trish who came to meet me at the game and saw this girl talking and smiling at me. Trish would say later that she was glad that I had time to eat dinner when I had been so occupied flirting with that blonde. I said that she would never guess where she was from and what she did. I told her and Tricia was unbelieving. Trish is up on all the things that demean women. When Imus calls those girls “Nappy headed hos” Trish is indignant that the media ignored the sexist part of that comment and centered on the racist part only. What I learned is that Trish is the defender of a demographic not individuals. What I thought would be interesting, a young girl with the drive to become a pilot in a man’s world, was negated by the fact that she smiled at me. Don’t be fooled, women are wives first and anything leftover and harmless can be spent on furthering the cause of women.

After poker, Tricia, Joanne and I went down the strip, ate fatburgers, and then hit casinos for cocktails and video blackjack. I learned that I can drink White Russians like Yoohoo if they keep coming and my throat is a little dry. I easily had 6 in a little under 2 hours playing at the Aladdin and then over at The Palms. When the boys and I first saw the Palms in 1994, I was impressed with how fresh and clean it looked, ditto to Treasure Island when Dude and I stayed there two years ago. This time, both casinos looked worn out enough to be 15 years old. Traffic means money, but it also ages these places prematurely. I kept telling Trish how much she’d like the wood floors at the Palms and then they looked scuffed up like a high school practice gym.

We retired around 10pm just as the night people started arriving in their skimpies. I had been dealing with allergies in Florida, spent 5 hours soaking up germs on the plane, and then I was met with cold weather in Vegas. By Wednesday night I was getting a bit ill. A fever came on during sleep and I had the all-night dream of traveling from casino to casino and being burdened with comps. No matter where we went they hand them to us as we entered, even if we were passing through. They were tangible papers and too valuable to throw away and yet to burdensome to carry. I winced when we neared a casino but couldn’t keep myself from coming in and then I would have no place to put the new comps.

THU

It was my last day to play and I wasn’t going to stay in the room ill or not. I decided I would find the closest game and then leave if playing became too much. For whatever reason, I decided Bailey’s and Coffee would be my medicine, and either I got better on my own or that combination is a miracle.

The Luxor game is horrible so the closest real game was at the Excalibur. While most casinos have begun card rooms or improved their rooms, Excalibur has taken a step backwards. The old card room is now the luxury sports book and poker is now played in the middle of an old slots area. Still present is the spinning wheel where you win money for quads, straight flushes or when guys play K7 against your AA and win as what happened to me. It was pretty early and the guy who beat me did play any two cards, but he also made some big gambles pushing all-in with less than top pair more than once. I was able to win the money back in an hour or so when I rivered a full boat during a multi-way pot.

The Bailey and Java was a miracle of sorts so about 10:30 I decided to venture over to MGM and play the $65 tourney again, mostly because it was 2 hours of action for $65. I was able to get in before the last 5 slots closed and since they took alternates, the entire tournament consisted of 72 people.

During the second level I received AA under the gun. There wasn’t any thought of raising. Why build a pot and give all these people odds to draw out on me? At this point a 4x raise would get at least two callers. I decided that I would hope for a raise and re-raise to get heads up. Instead, we get limpers to the flop which comes 822. I decide to lead out 200 to see if I can take it down. I get two callers and decide to give up the hand. On the turn, the first caller bets to my check and I let the other guy chase him to the river. He turns over 88, oh how I was destined to get knocked there with a preflop raise. Playing the “correct” way would have resulted in my ouster.

I get lucky in the next round when I have AA again in late position and face a raise from mid-position. I push back. He pushes all-in and turns over KQ. I was knocked out in the same position last year at the Venetian, but this time it holds up.

A short time later I play one of those hands that makes me feel great inside. Just watching the tournament play I notice something in a guy three to my right. I don’t know what it is. He makes a big raise after a series of folds into my big blind. I have A6o, I decide immediately that I’m ahead and follow the advice of Eric Lindgren who preaches positive EV. I push all-in and he groaned, but he was priced into the call. He turns over a weak King. Why did you play back at me with that, he asked. I figured I was ahead, I said. You hoped you were ahead, he said, frustrated that he was caught. I figured, I said.

The play didn’t take any thought. Something in my brain said I was ahead and told me to push back. It was the same way in all three tourneys I played. I always had a sense of where I was, unlike the cash game where I felt lost all week. Somewhere along the lines, probably with all the tourneys I play in the home games, coupled with Tampa and SitNGos, I have inadvertently become a tourney player.

This is good in that tourneys have a definite end and you play them like football pushing toward the goal line. My Cash Game play saw me up at least $100 5 of the 6 sessions and yet I just didn’t know when to skedaddle.

The bad thing about tourneys is that you can do everything right again and again and run into a cold streak where everyone draws out on you. I was lucky on this trip that the tourneys made up for all the ring games, but I won’t always be that lucky.

I was fortunate in this tourney, making the final table third in chips. I had around 25,000 with the two leaders at 32,000 and 27,000. The bad news was that they were both to my direct left and the tourney only paid 6 places. Even with that much money, the blinds were up to 1000-2000 with a 200 ante, or 3800 a round.

The tourney director came over to explain that we could chop 9 ways and each take 4th place money, $390. Or we could all play on for a chance at the $1500 first prize. You knew where the shortstack’s hearts were, but everyone else was kind of quiet. The chop represented a recoup of all my bad losses and a little more so I spoke up. I said that I had a good stack and I thought the chop was a good idea. Wouldn’t we all feel like fools to get knocked out 7th? And hey 6th and 5th don’t even pay as good as the chop. The only reluctant one was the chip leader who had position on the two biggest stacks, but the chip leader had played next to me at the penultimate table and we became chummy, and I saw him get pretty lucky with two all-ins that would have been his demise. He didn’t really expect to be as far as he was, so although he wanted to play for the win, I think he realized that his luck might have been over especially after a table change. He finally relented and all my mistakes at the cash game were redeemed.

I was up after the tourney about $50 total, but once you enter in the video poker and the video blackjack, I came home around $45 to the negative. It was a lot of fun though.

That night I went out to dinner with Trish at her favorite hotel, the Venetian, we bought some cold medicine, and saw LOVE at the Mirage. We flew home Friday and I spent the weekend like a sailor sleeping off a drunk.

For the most part my poker playing is going wind down except for the home game that has become almost extinct and a trip here or there. The online game was a great way to spend time and build a bankroll and its absence has left a void.