Vegas Trip Report (Possibly long and boring)

Got back from Las Vegas yesterday morning, actually had a pretty decent trip this time. Vegas is getting better for me now that I know where to go to get in the games I like and avoid the never ending procession of douchebags.

We got in early and after sleeping off the plane ride decided to head over to Venetian to play $1/2. I sat down and got mauled early for my first buy-in. I limped with 77, 5 to the flop. Q-10-7 two diamonds. SB makes it $10. BB pops it to $25. I shove $200 in. Button says "I KNOW you have a set, I'm here to gamble" and shoves his money in. Folds around and he flips up A8d. Turn? Flush of course and brick on the river.

Played some more Venetian and was stuck about $600 and pretty frustrated when I decided to take another shot at the $1/2. I sit down at a very tight table full of nits who are limping every pot and check calling. I get A-8 in the cutoff and pop it to $10. One caller. Flop 8-6-3 rainbow. Caller checks, I toss in $20. He calls. Turn 2. He leads into me for $25. I can't imagine he has a set, he certainly would've checked and tried to induce more betting from me. What could the 2 have done for him? Not much. I decide to test him and pop it to $80. He tanks for a minute and then shoves. I can't figure out what he's on so I call and he tables 9-9. Hurf! Rebuy! I muck and tell him nice hand and he starts acting like a dick, telling me I'm an idiot who overplayed my AK. I slowly run my stack back up to about $300 when I get 8-8 in mid position. I limp and Asshole there makes it $12. I call and the flop comes K-8-4. I check and he fires out $25. I pop it to $60 and he gets mad, slamming his chips on the table and yelling at me "Do you really think I'm bluffing?! ALL IN!". I call. Turn a 4 and I fill up. River a blank, eh rolls over AK like he just won the lottery. "Boat" I say, tabling my 8s. He blows a fuse as he counts out my $300. A few hands later I get KK and raise to $10. Same guy calls. Flop A-3-2. He checks, I look at him and am sure he has an Ace by how he's sitting. I check behind. Turn Ks (two spades now). He checks, I fire out $25. He just calls. River 3s. He checks again, I fire out $60. He snap-shoves all-in. I call and he flips up AQs for the flush. He's pleased as punch until I say "Boat." again and turn over my KK. He goes beserk, screaming about how I was so dominated on the flop blah blah. He ships the rest of his chips and continues to berate me. I tell him "You know what, sir? Your chips and I are leaving". I rack up and cash out +$444 as the table begins to give the guy shit for driving me away.

I decide to go play some .05¢ video poker to kill time while I waited for Kirsten to finish her game. I had a $25 voucher I put in, and I meant to bet 4 nickels but I fat fingered the machine and bet 6 or 7. I tried to cancel out but it wouldn't let me. I decided to run it up to the 100 bet max and try to get it roll back over to 1 but it didn't. Now stuck, I just decided to blow the $5 and deal. I drew two deuces on the deal. OK, cool, trips is break even so I won't lose any money. I keep the deuces and draw, WHAM! Two more deuces. I win 20,000 nickels. I decided to go ahead and cash out the $1000 and leave while I was ahead. This was my best day so far.

I played a lot of limit at Mirage in between, killing time and keeping my variance low. When I was stuck bad I played a 13 hour session and made $13, but getting all those hands in helped to keep my head straight and profit is profit. I played in the $150 mega stack tournament at Harrah's on Wednesday and was completely unimpressed. First off, the payouts are top heavy and they pay too few spots. Secondly, the Harrah's floor staff is loaded with assholes. I caught two Brits colluding with each other in a hand. One raised, the other calls. They bet at each other on the flop. On the turn, the first one bets half his friend's stack and gets called. On the river, they both check and one rolls over the dead nuts, an Ace high flush. I called them out on it, asking if they had a deal to soft play each other. I made a stink about it but nothing happened to them and the dealer mucked the hand so we couldn't get the floor involved. Then there was a spot where I had $100 in the SB and tossed a $500 chip on top as a raise to $600. The dealer said "Call" and I stopped him, saying I had raised because there were two chips in. He replies "No, that's a single oversize chip. It's a call". I argued that it was two chips, but the floor agreed with the dealer and ruled it a call, and then rolled out the WSOP rule book to show me the rule. I busted to one of the cheaters when I flopped top set, check raised him all in and he bit with QQ and caught running spades to flush.

I played a lot at Flamingo after that and got into the hand of my trip there. I was playing a pretty tight table and had $545 in front of me when I limped in with K2h from the button. BB is a tight/solid player with a $900 stack who hasn't been in many pots. He makes it $15. UTG calls, he's an idiot who's been in every hand, he has $180 behind. Flop is 4-5-7 with two hearts. BB checks. UTG leads out for $30. I call, BB shoves in $130 on a check raise. UTG flat calls. Now there's $330 in there and I have to call $100 for the next call. I flat call. Turn is a 3, giving me the open ender and the flush draw. BB open shoves. So, now I have to call off $415 into a pot of $845ish. I tank and finally call, river is another 4. BB rolls over 7's full and I am stuck $500. I don't regret my call, I didn't read him as being that strong. I put him on a big pair, and was wrong.

We played at Binion's for the next two nights, not much happened there except for me dropping another few buyins and finally giving up, finishing my trip at the $1 video blackjack while Kirsten played out. I will note that Binion's is really trying to get more players in - they are offering $2/hr comps (double what everyone else is doing) and a 10% max $3 rake (+$1 for high hand jackpots). Kirsten hit two different high hands while there (quad Jacks for $50 and a straight flush for $150). She also won two seats to their Playboy giveaway tournament which she sold for $22 each.

All told I finished -$800 for the week but had fun and was generally satisfied with my play. We're thinking of doing a CardPlayer cruise next year, can't wait to see. Until then, back to the home game grind.