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As I’ve now been back from Vegas for longer than it is until I go again (T-8!) I should probably lay to rest the stuff have from the last trip that I haven’t talked about yet but would definitely have blogged if the crappy net access didn’t let me down.
I had two tournament cashes. I already wrote about the result at Binions, but I also hit a $964 payout at Caesars Palace. This was a 12-way chop that gave everyone remaining a prize just better than the third place money. Amazingly, only eleven accepted the deal to start with. Blinds were about to double (they skip some levels in the lunctime tournament to get it over with quicker than the evening one) leaving nobody with a stack much bigger than 10 big blings. He soon came round though, and I got to experience the bureaucratic nightmare that is a Harrah’s casino poker payout of $600 or more. Form-filling-tastic.
Somehow I’d lost my Total Rewards card (or at least I thought I had, it did turn up much later) whilst playing video poker at Caesars, resenting the downgrade from 9/6 Jacks or Better (99.5% payback) to a pathetic 7/5 paytable (96.1%). To get the payout from the cardroom, I needed to hand over both my ID and the players card. I tossed in my passport to let them get started on the paperwork and went hunting for the card, with paranoid visions of neither my passport nor my money being there when I got back. The card wasn’t where I thought I’d left it, so I had to beg the players club staff to give me a new one: at first they insisted I needed my passport to get it reprinted, but eventually they believed my story that I’d had to leave my ID in the poker room and just let me write my name on a piece of paper, found me on the system and asked me if the address on screen was correct. A peculiar security procedure to say the least, especially after nothing else I had on me was acceptable proof of ID – including a Visa card that has a photograph on it, that they wouldn’t even look at! I was pleased when I eventually found my old card however – it was a World Series of Poker edition card from the summer and these things matter! 🙂
I did meet another English player who’d cashed in that tournament who passed on some useful information on how to be an illegal immigrant. He’d been living there for some time now with his friends who play poker for a living. He, he insisted, was not that good yet but tagged along and still enjoyed some success. "How did you get a visa then", I obviously asked. "Don’t need one mate", he replied, going on to explain that as long as you leave the country every three months you can take full advantage of the visa waiver. Nobody at the airport pays attention to when you were last here, he insisted. As I’ve been a bit concerned about my return next weekend so soon after this trip, especialy travelling alone this time and almost certainly fitting some kind of profile, this was quite reassuring. "The only thing is", he advised, "if you get into any kind of trouble they’ll try to kick you out. But we know a guy. He’ll take you Mexico for $99, then next day you can come right back".
That was my largest win of the trip, and a good result at the right time really, putting me back into the black for the trip.
My only other win of note was a profitable session playing $1/$2 No Limit at the Golden Nugget. Apart from one session last summer playing $1/$3 in a local’s game, which didn’t help a great dea;, I was a complete noob to this game. I played almost nothing all night, and somehow ended up leaving with $129 more than I came with after nearly six hours. I’m still unsure whether loose no-limit games could suits me – I have a long way to go to be confident enough to take full advantage of the weaker players and the donators, but at least I could spot who they were. The bigger pots I won, if I recall correctly, came from a well-timed check-raise holding only second pair – which I felt very good about – and a bizarrely played ace-jack that I might still hold back for another entry in the future. All I can think looking back on that hand is that I played it like it was limit poker, and somehow it worked. I know I have much to learn.
The Nugget is actually now home to the coolest swimming pool in the world. That would be because it’s got a goddamn shark tank in the middle of it! And a water slide where you go right through the sharks! On a chilly evening in December – definitely not swimming weather – the Nugget opened its doors just to show this baby off as soon as they’d finished building it. And quite rightly so. Best pool ever.
I must also mention that we finally went to see Wayne Newton. I’d heard that his voice isn’t what it used to be, and they weren’t kidding. His orchestra and backing singers did a fairly good job of making just enough volume that you couldn’t quite tell how badly he was choking. There were plenty of talky bits for recovery time between musical numbers and he was also professional enough to always cough and splutter away from the microphone. It was a very odd experience to be in the presence of greatness but have to imagine what the Wayne Newton experience is actually meant to be like. He is clearly a fantastic entertainer, and still puts on a decent show, but it looks like he was way past his best several years ago. Nonetheless, it’s something that had to be ticked off the "things to do in Vegas before I (or they) die (or get eaten by a tiger)" list.
So I think that’s it – that trip is finally put to bed. Until I remember something else, anyway.
Not long left to get your decorations down, and take all the snow and those cheesy little Christmas graphics off your web sites…
They didn’t hang around in Vegas. This is the huge Christmas Tree shaped structure on Fremont Street, on Christmas Eve…
…and at 7am on December 26th, Christmas is officially over.
If you will allow me to bore you with more photos of the festive period in Las Vegas then read on…
Continue reading Twelfth Night
Binions are trying so hard to position themselves as the home of poker in Downtown Las Vegas, if not in the whole city, but it doesn’t appear to be working too well.
I played the 8pm tournament on 24/12 – way too tired after waking up at 3am on the first day there to be concentrating properly on poker, but I still made the final table and finished just out of the money. It attracted just 36 players. Sure, it’s Christmas Eve – most tourists won’t land for a few days (although you wouldn’t know it from the traffic, which you can be sure I’ll whinge about plenty) and the locals who play there regularly might easily have other commitments. I thought very litle of the poor turnout until I heard someone asking whether this was typical and the dealer replied that they’d normally run with about five tables. When I played the afternoon tournament later in the week, five tables was spot on. Seven spots were paid but the last eight made a deal, giving $400 to me and six others and $1000 to the massive chip leader.
In the summer, these games were regularly getting 100+ runners both afternoon and evening. I love the Binions card room and it’s not good to see it struggle, especially when the casino floor was busier than it’s been for quite a while. This may or may not be aided by the new carpet (yes they did have one before, but the replacement is definitely not before time), and the Binion Dollar Babes, who were as good at dancing around to Shania Twain CDs as anyone I’ve ever seen. These ladies are cunningly positioned right inside the main doors and visible from Fremont Street as you pass. Who needs fountains to get people to stop walking outside your casino?
They’ve already cut the buy-in on the weekend tournaments (used to be $125) so it’s $70, with a $40 rebuy, every day. They’re pushing a $29 poker room rate, a $4/$8 game with 5% rake and also trying to draw in bigger players with the Ultimate Poker Championship events. I did play one of these, buying in directly for $660 after I dumped out of a satellite. I’d already decided to buy into one, so I would play two if the satellite attempt worked.
This could very well be the best regular tournament in town – 10,000 starting chips and 40 minute levels, with the top seven coming back the next day to be filmed. Once again, numbers were down and i was amazed that only 32 took part. Four spots were paid, so three would to get their fifteen minutes on television without taking home a penny!
Those that bothered to show were mostly very tough players, and I was pleased to keep up with the pack until my KK ran into AA, with me getting it all in pre-flop and still wondering whether I could have avoided it. If you don’t want to hear the bad beat story, turn away now.
I raised first to act and, although just ahead of an average stack, did not have enough chips to put in a third raise of anything less than everything when he came over the top. The player has only been at the table about 20 minutes and I don’t have much information, but he’s seen me being my usual tight self. However, I still figure to be ahead more often than not here. QQ or AK are both possible, and although there’s a very good chance I’m only called if beaten, I move all-in for really no other reason than I can’t work out how to play it post-flop if I call out of position leaving myself with just one pot-sized bet. I can’t fold KK pre-flop to a single re-raise and I can’t check-fold any flop.
After the long walk home to the hotel next door, I scribbled some dirty maths and convinced myself the push was still +EV, even if we never expect him to have pocket jacks or worse. Fortunately I binned the notes so you don’t have to endure that right now, but I might have another go sometime.
That $400 chop was on the last night and I didn’t want to push my luck with any more tournaments, so I sat in a $2/$4 game until I could stay awake no longer. Things started rotten, with me flopping top two pair against bottom set in back-to-back hands. I swung down $150 and not winning a single pot for over two hours before finally dragging one down with a QQ that I played much too softly against TT on a low board. With confidence restored, a new beer on the way and having had plenty of time to work out that this table was, in fact, a great one I ran warm enough to claw it all back. In my last hour at the table I was red hot, making quad jacks and then shortly afterwards quad eights. There’s no high hand jackpot at Binions yet (so there’s only $4 taken from each pot, not $5) but you do get a shirt or a cap for hitting four of a kind or better. I had one of each 🙂
I ended the seven hour session with $5 more than I started with. Not the best hourly rate in the world ever, but a respectable recovery.
Back from Vegas. Mustn’t grumble – going back again in less than three weeks. 🙂
Ten days without blogging – I didn’t plan for that so I need to regain momentum now. When you land a hotel that only pretends to have internet access though, it’s kind of a problem. Sure, there was a decent wifi signal. It looked to be working great too, right up until I put in my credit card number. It accepted and told me to go surf. I tried. It got slow. It died. It never recovered. Still don’t know whether they actually charged me or, really, who the hell it was operated by. The hotspot name was Cheetah something or other (hah – not kidding), and I’ll find out more if they do actually think I’m going to pay for it.
So all my plans to write lots of random crap about Vegas at Christmas time were thwarted. I did say to Claire I should try to find some net access and at least put up a post to explain, but then she pointed out that my reader was also stuck in Vegas with no net access. Thanks.
I do have a notebook with a few scribbles and a few hundred photos to sort through as soon as I’m a bit more awake to do that so there’ll be some retrospective holiday cheer to come. Before Twelfth Night too, with any luck. Here’s a very quick summary, with elaborations to follow:
Two final tables, two cashes and two bustouts with pocket kings – which I’ll try to argue I couldn’t avoid – from 7 tournaments. Christmas lunch is just dinner with a couple more turkeys served at lunchtime. Wayne Newton is still a Vegas legend, but it would be nice if he could still actually sing.
I found a link to the fireworks we missed here: http://tinyurl.com/swega. Bear with the commercial – it’s worth watching. My New Years Eve was celebrated with the pilot reading out the most pathetic countdown you ever heard and a plane half-full of passengers mumbling a bit. Nobody dared sing Auld Lang Syne, or lift up their top. Happy New Year.
Because for once we arrive in Vegas on a Saturday (T minus 5, by the way) we’ll be able to spend Sunday camped out in a sportsbook watching ten NFL games simultaneously. I’ve also somehow managed to convince Claire that this is a great way to spend Christmas Eve. The obvious choice of venue is the Las Vegas Hilton Superbook. It’s huge, self-proclaimed World’s Largest, of course, and more impressively boasts the "largest sports ticker in Nevada". I’m quite fond of scrolling LED signs. It’s also enclosed by several banks of video poker machines that have pretty good paytables (or at least did the last time we were there) in case having multiple giant screens just isn’t enough to make up for not being able to spin through the commercials on Sky+.
It’s several years since we sat in a Vegas sportsbook to watch anything of note. In 2002, we were on a two week romp along the West Coast. Las Vegas was the last stop and, in retrospect, it would have made a better place to start. Two jetlagged English folk didn’t find a whole lot to do, waknig up at 4am in San Francisco. The venue we’d chosen for Game 7 of the NBA Western Conference Playoffs between the LA Lakers and Sacramento Kings was Monte Carlo. We’d arrived early enough to grab a good seat and brought a huge pizza for sustinence, which impressed those sitting next to us, although you could tell they wish they’d thought of it too. The atmosphere was amazing and the game was pretty damn good too. 19 changes of lead, 16 ties (obviously I had to look this up, nobody’s going to believe I remembered it) and an eventual overtime win for the Lakers.
My memories of exactly where we went on that holiday are sketchy, I think there were 8 hotels in 15 nights. However, in a "do you remember where you were when Kennedy was shot" kind of way, I do remember quite clearly a dingy motel room in Torrence, California which we’d chosen because of it’s proximity to the Del Amo Fashion Center – the mall where the money swap goes down from several different points of view in Jackie Brown. That Days Inn was, oddly, also home to the first Indian restaurant we’d seen in the USA. I’d turned on the TV to catch the last quarter of a previous Lakers/Kings game in that series, which featured possibly the single coolest moment in sports I ever saw.
OK, I know you didn’t click the link, so here goes. The Lakers are down 2-1 in the best-of-seven series and by two points in the game. Seconds to go. Superstar Kobe drives in to try to take the game to overtime… no good. Superstar Shaq has a crack… denied. The ball falls into the hands of Robert Horry standing behind the 3-point arc who apparently doesn’t know the meaning of the word pressure. He launches and nails it as the buzzer sounds, and the Lakers win 100-99.
Since then, we’ve always seemed to be in Vegas at the wrong time to catch any sport worth watching on TV (yeah, it’s usually baseball season) or flown on two Sundays when there’s football to be missed. Now we’re going to be in town for Week 16, when almost all the games are going to matter.
I’m ready for some parlay card action, and probably another large pizza.
I’d already decided the next hand would be my last.
It’s KK, as I almost knew it would be. I raise under the gun and end up losing a tiny pot to 97o. She hits 2 pair, bets the flop but decides that’s enough money when I raise the flop, and I get a very cheap showdown with an ace on board. And with that final reminder of just how great the $2/$4 games are, I’m done.
The air was almost cool as I walked back to the car. Almost. The strip traffic looked bearable so I took the slow way home, listening to Frank Sinatra having the world on a string as the last of the great neon signs wished me to please come again.
I’m sure I will. 🙂
Four way chop – $467 to me in the Caesars 11pm $70 tournament.
I’d actually planned only to play this tournament if I’d been eliminated from the 7pm ($220) instead, but Claire mentioned the word “curry” and so we ran off to Tamba in the Hawaiian Marketplace for a taste of England’s favourite food. My vindaloo was cracking, although like a little girl I asked for it medium hot. I’m sure that’s allowed in the Curry Code, if you can’t have any beer when you’re driving…
Finally everything fell into place at the right time. Every time I had the best hand it held up, and once I won with the worst hand too, calling a short stack’s TT with my 88. I found a few good spots to take down chips that should not have been mine. There was one situation that I had to play rather bizarrely though: I began by stealing the blinds with two players still to act when it looked like nobody was interested in playing. I had complete garbage, but I went with my instinct (which is the major improvement I feel I’ve made this trip – although I know there are still many more opportunities out there). The next hand it’s folded to me with KQs and I make the same raise and get the same result. The next hand I have a slightly better hand and slightly worse position – AJo. I just couldn’t bring myself to raise three hands straight without the third hand being a monster. The other players don’t have to be paying a great deal of attention to notice my sudden rush of aggression, and I didn’t want to be facing a reraise that looked like someone taking a stand with this hand. I’d probably have to call in that spot. So I just limp in and fold to a raise from the small blind. Weak, and I may as well have not played the hand at all.
At the start of the final table someone brought up the idea of a 9-way split for $250 each, but one player said no and nobody seemed bothered after that depite my usual calls of “7 way chop?”, “6 way chop?” as each player fell. With first prize standing at $900, I asked out loud what payout would trigger a W2 tax form (of course I already knew the answer was $600). I made sure to point out that if we kept playing and lost one more, a three way split would result in everyone getting just over $600. The other three immediately wanted to work something out to avoid paying any tax and based on chip count I got $467 of the $2070 remaining in the prize pool. Somewhat conveniently, the chip leader received $599.
So I’ve broken my streak finally. I don’t have to stay an extra week now!
I hate small blind vs big blind situations. That’s how I managed to bust out last night at Binions, after playing solidly enough to keep up with the pack the whole way through, and recovering from two crippling beats where I had the other guy dominated with my AK. In fact I thought it was going to happen again, as I moved all-in with AT for a little more than a standard raise. One guy goes to call but only calls the blind. Pay attention dude – your call is binding. But I survive against his A6s and I’m back in it.
Then I’m on the BB for 1200, and only the small blind calls. I check my Q7o and catch top pair on the flop – QT5, all different suits. When he checks to me I bet 1500 and he agonises and calls. I don’t believe he’s acting, and is weak but thinks I’m full of it. He checks the offsuit Jack on the turn and I know that if I check behind here I’m pretty much giving up the hand, with top pair. That’s kinda weak, and I don’t have enough chips to do anything else so I have to move all in.
There’s a lot of popular limping hands that beat me now, QK, QJ, QT, JT have me crushed but my pot sized all in bet will be big enough that KJ, J9, T9, A9 would be making a mistake by calling with their draws, but might consider doing so anyway. Will I only be called if beaten? No – even AJ or AT might think they are winning. Can I call a river bet if I check here? Probably not. Am I likely to be winning? Yes, so giving a free card is terrible. It’s a horrible horrible situation because it’s so marginal and I have almost no information about my opponent’s hand to help make a better decision. I don’t like the all-in move, and just wish I was never in the hand to start with, but I can’t see a better option.
Can I really fear a straight here? The board shows TJQ, but AK would probably not have wanted to give me a free play. 89 or K9 might be around, but would be making a very questionable call on the flop, getting less than 3:1 and poor implied odds with my remaining stack size. But that’s exactly what happened – K9 made the gutshot straight and I was busted playing a hand that I wanted to give up preflop. Someone please raise me next time! Anyone!
And of course, once again I survived just long enough to be too late to get in any of the 11pm tournaments. Three days left. Three tournaments at most… I think I need to stay another week!
I played like a bleeding demon tonight, and look where it got me. Up to 12k chips (three times starting stack) by the first break, finding plenty of opportunities to gather small pots and maintain. And then this happens. With blinds at 300/600 and a 50 ante I’m dealth JTo in the small blind. There’s one limper and I complete the bet. Big blind checked. The flop comes down a fantastic 89Q with two hearts. I have the Th so I have the nut straight and I know nobody else can have a straight with a flush redraw. I check and the BB kindly bets 1400. The other player raises to 4000 and so I move in.
The big blind calls in a flash, but the other player goes into the tank for a while and eventually folds and shows his top pair, top kicker AQ. The big blind shows J9 hearts for middle pair, an inside straight draw and the second best flush draw. He had about 5000 left so the pot was so juicy he had to call. The Kh fell on the river and I was crippled.
Later I agonise over whether calling here is better, but either calling two raises or putting in a third raise screams “monster” and I probably won’t get any more action from the other player, plus if a heart comes on the turn or the board pairs, do I back off now? I don’t think there’s any reason to get tricky here, I made sure I got my chips in with the best of it and there was plenty of money to pick up even if I don’t get any action. I was at least a 2:1 favourite against any hand to not go broke at least (a hand with a J or T will split the pot about 10% of the time.).
So left with only 5000, the blinds jumped up to 400/800/75 and I had to move all in with any two cards when it was folded to me in the cutoff. 5h6h was plenty good enough, but not against JJ. The flop couldn’t have been any kinder, bringing two hearts and a 6 so it’s essentially 50/50 at this point. I reminded myself to get it quietly when one of my 14 cards came, but it never did and I was out just before 11pm. Which is a crap time to go out of any tournament because it was too late to run up the strip to Caesars or down to Sahara for their late night efforts.
This was so frustrating. This tournament seemed like it was going to be the one. The conditions were perfect for getting a win under my belt – a small field (49 players in total), a fairly slow structure (30 minute levels is about as good as you’ll get here really, although the Mirage during the day has 45 minute levels) and the chance to gather a decent sized stack early on. We were down to two tables before I’d broken a sweat, I hit the nuts and watched lots of chips work their way to the pot without me even having to do anything. Then went home in 13th place.
Seriously, I can’t play any better than this. 🙂
The signs for Red Rock Casino label it as Red Rock Resort. Which I suppose it is, but it’s location in Summerlin makes it somewhat more utilised as a locals casino than a resort hotel. In fact, it looked like the hotel wasn’t quite finished yet when we went.
The feel of this place is a bit wierd and the vibe is somewhat mixed. The decor puts i somewhere between in-yer-face and over-the-top. It’s feels intensely modern and cool, to appeal to a young locals crowd. But it’s also seems to be trying to compete with the Bellagio or Wynn for elegance. There are some quite horribly excessive chandelier structures over part of the casino, and then you move through to a new section and they’re all gone. So the kids get to gamble over here, whilst the rich folk have this part to feel at home in…
Didn’t stay long, given that one of the reasons for visiting was because it had a cinema, but Superman Returns wasn’t showing and however good Snakes on a Plane might be, it’s title doesn’t do make it sound like making any effort to watch. Claire said there’s a reason Speed wasn’t called “Bomb on a Bus”, and I tend to agree.
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