Since my first night of staying in Vegas always sucks for sleeping, I woke up at 7am after a while 3.5 hours of rest. I always hate playing cash games earlier in the day. Playing against local rocks never seems like a whole lot of fun to me. I decided to hit up the 10am $60 tournament at Planet Hollywood. Before the tourney started I sat and played some low stakes pai gow. I played the $10 minimum and $1 on the bonus bet. I ran good but then lost the last two hands I played in a row and walked with a $15 profit.
The tournament ended up having 22 runners. You start with 4500 chips and 20 minute levels. On the 4th hand I have presto from the button and call a mp raise to 225 and the cutoff call. Flop comes A35dd. Hijack cbets 300 cutoff flats and i put in a raise to 900. Cutoff thinks and raises to 2000, cutoff gets out of the way and I go ahead and ship. He says "well if you have a set you have be but I can't fold, I'm all in." I call and he shows the AK. Turn bricks and he is drawing dead. River brings quads for fun and I get the early double.
After the double I pretty much stood steady the whole way to the final table. When the final table started I had dribbled down to around 8k and was around 7th in chips with the top four getting paid. We lost the first two people fairly quickly. 7th took quite a bit longer to bust. I think we played almost two levels before we were six handed. A bunch of shoves and no calls including two of my own were occurring. We finally lost 7th place and I was the short stack at the table.
Blinds were about to go to 1k/2k and I would have been left with 4bbs so I shoved the Q7 when it was folded to me in the sb. A decent stack woke up with A7 from the bb and I was out the door in 6th for nada. Too bad I couldn't get a double there and wait out another bust and try to at least get my money back for the bubble prize. Not to be though.
After the tournament I walked over to Caesars again for lunch. I ate at the same bbq joint as the day before (always my favorite) and while wandering down to check out City Center I shot a text to CK (thanks by the way) to see if they had 1/2 or 1/3. I hoped for 1/2 but was sad to hear that it was 1/3. The casino is impressive. Lots of dark wood throughout the casino. It actually made it look a little dark. The opposite end from which I walked in was the poker room. They had a ton of games going for 1pm on a Thursday. One thing I immediately noticed was the tv's. There were too few of them and they were WAY too small. They were mounted high up and when I was seated in the 2nd row of tables I could not read the score of the hockey game going on. This was the only complaint I had of the whole room.
After about 10 minutes I was able to get a seat in a 1/3 game. I ended up buying in for $140 and had another $60 in chips in my pocket in case I wanted to top off. At first glance it looked like the table was fairly tough. There were 2-3 stacks sitting in the $600 range and everyone else was between $100 and $300. It only took about a lap to figure out that this was a fairly passive table. The big stacks were not running the table and they likely built their stack from big hands running into one another.
I had a steady build until I had a hand in early position and limped the KQ. About 3-4 to the flop which came K,x,x. I lead for $15 and was called by an older guy in late position. Turn is a brick and I lead for $25 and get called again. River another brick and I check. He bets out $50 and I make the call. He says ace high and I show and take the pot. That was about it for interesting hands. I played for about 90 minutes and got up with $325 in front of me good for a $185 profit.
After that win I pretty much had a winning trip locked up. I walked back over to the Flamingo to play some more multi-hand video poker. I played for around a half hour or so and this time i will $0.06 weeeeeeee. Since I had an early flight Friday morning (6:30am) I wasn't going to stay out too late but i did want to get one more session in. Last time I was in town with Blaz we went and played at the Hard Rock. The play seemed horrendous at that time so I decided to drive over and give it a shot.
There were two 1/2 tables going and I was able to get an immediate seat. When I was about to sit down the floor person said it was an un-capped buy-in game. What? I looked at the table and the average stack was somewhere around $800 or so. After playing two hands I got up and asked for a table change to the other 1/2 game. My request was granted almost right away. That game had a $300 capped buy-in. The average stack on that table was around $200, much better. This table was not afraid to get some chips in the middle. With just $100 in front of me chances were that it was probably going in pre-flop or on the flop.
The first big hand I played I raised to $10 with JJ and was re-raised to $30. I ended up shipping for my full $100 and the other guy tanked. he ended up flipping over QQ and said "I know you have AA or KK." He took about two minutes before he finally called and his hand held and it was time to re-buy. Not too long after that I had AK and raised pre and got one caller. Flop comes Kxx rainbow and I bet $15. My opponent raised to $40 and I shipped the rest of my chips and he took a long time before calling. I was pretty sure he had KQ in that spot and after the board rolled out my hand was good. Back to even. I ended up dropping a little before I left with a $55 loss. That would be the end of the trip for me.
I will have one more wrap post and a great story from the Hard Rock about "European Style."
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