Another week in Las Vegas

So I'm beginning to get pretty burned out by poker, so I'm looking for any excuse to get away from the tables for a while. Since my post last Friday, I've:

• gotten in A LOT of hours at the tables
• grinded my way out of the $2k hole, back to even, then back down to -$1k grrrrr
  
• played at Excalibur, MGM, Mandalay Bay, Wynn, Mirage, Venetian, Bally's, Stratosphere, Aladdin, Monte Carlo, Imperial Palace and Caesars Palace

Blackjack has been running surprisingly well, haha! Despite the poker frustration, though, I am having a really fun time. We'll most likely be seeing a couple of shows in these next few days, so that should be a good alternative as well. We leave on Wednesday, so I have exactly three more days to make something happen at the tables. Wish me luck!

First week in Vegas

Well today marks the end of the first week in Vegas and I'd like to write a quick recap of what's gone on so far. First off, a word of advice that someone told me before coming here and that I can not emphasize enough: When going to Vegas, bring enough money with you.

We're staying in the Exaclibur Hotel & Casino and our goal was to play 5 hours a day so that we get a poker room rate on our hotel room. That plan changed after a couple days of realizing that the Exaclibur has a really crappy poker room. They only offer $1/3NL and the games are not as good as advertised on the internet. Because I came here to play at least $2/5NL, the Excalibur games just aren't going to cut it. They have a few solid dealers, but the tables and equipment are a joke. Moving on...

I started off well, winning around $800 in the first couple days playing $2/5NL at the MGM Grand. I then immediately lost around $750 the following day and another $750 the day after that. This prompted me to get really drunk with Olli and play some $2/4 limit at the Excalibur, where I managed to lose another $170 raising every hand. I have to admit that I had a lot of fun, though.

The next day I played a $115+50 rebuy tournament at the Venetian, where I came in 5th place (out of around 60) for $580. My opponent hit a miracle on the river to eliminate me, but that's part of the game. That night, the floorman at the Excalibur tipped us off that there was a juicy $1/3NL game going on with a really drunk donkey. His name was Sam and he was incredibly wasted. The game was shorthanded and it was not uncommon for him to open-raise it to $50 preflop at any given time. To make a long story short, I grinded it out for 6 hours only to get all-in against him on a 3863 board. He shoved on the turn, I called with QQ. The river came down a 7. He saw my queens and told me I won. He was so drunk that he didn't even realize he rivered a gutshot with 95o to take down the $600 pot. That didn't help my case much.

Last night I had another really frustrating $2/5NL session at the MGM Grand, where I spent 7 hours pissing away small pots until I got a standard set-over-set hand with QQ against KK. I left down around $400. I thought things would be different today, but apparently I was wrong. I took another set-over-set beating with 55 against 66 at Bally's, which costed me an additional $300. I just wanted to quit for the night, but Sutti and Olli convinced me to give it another shot. I headed back to the MGM Grand and hopped into the $2/5NL game. It only took me two hours to lose my whole stack with 65s on a 556QJ board. My opponent obviously had Q5.

At this point I am down $2000 from poker alone, not factoring in any additional costs such as hotel/food/entertainment. Thank God I brought enough money with me, because this shit is absolutely ridiculous and it is getting quite expensive. I had a lot of plans for Vegas, but none of this crap was involved in them.

My cousin is in town with his girlfriend right now, so I'll just try to hang out with them and get my mind off poker for a bit, because I don't know how much of this I can handle. I may step down in limits for a couple days and try to regain my confidence and recoup some of my money before I consider getting back in the $2/5NL or any higher games. I'm still here until the end of January and I'm really hoping for a change sooner rather than later...

Fastest update ever

This is going to be super short, but know that I am in Las Vegas having the time of my life! More is soon to follow, I promise!

Poker After Dark

NBC has just recently started airing a new poker show called "Poker After Dark." The great thing about the show is that it is broadcast from 1am-2am each night, giving myself (and fellow night-people) a chance to watch some quality television late at night. Each show is one week long (Monday-Friday with a Director's cut on Saturday). Each week is one single table tournament where the winner gets $120k.

Now to the best part about the show: You can watch every episode online!

Tonight I went to Harrah's for another poker session, but unfortunately I never got into my groove and I dropped $320 on some bad plays. It's kinda bad that that was my final warm-up before Vegas on Friday, but oh well, I can't change the facts. I've got a good feeling going into Vegas and I'm sure that the trip will be a big success. I'm reluctant to set monetary goals because I don't want to feel pressured, but the main goal will be to have poker at least finance the whole trip.

Never buy a Ford built in KC

Being the degenerate that I am, I've made it out to the casinos the past three nights for some live NL $2/5 action. On Sunday night I decided to give Harrah's North Kansas City another try. This is the casino that I played in back in October which prompted me to create a negative blog entry about it, calling it a casino I can't recommend.

Not too much has changed. It's still a really poorly-run card room, but apparently it's the only place in KC where you can get any action these days. I had two donkeys at my table Sunday night, one of which donked off his $300 buy-in to me during my BB special (Q4s on a 44J flop). I ended the night up $308 after 3 hours of play.

I had nothing to do tonight, so guess who went back to Harrah's after getting a taste of blood the night before? Tonight's action was pretty strange. The table began tight/aggressive, then switched to weak/tight, then loose/aggressive and then finally some more weak/tight to end the night. I was down slightly for the first few hours before getting my AA paid off by the big stack at the table. I ended the night up $340.

Side note: Towards the end of the night, a black man named Teddy gets a seat at my table. Teddy is wearing a Ford labor-suit and makes it no secret that he is simply taking a break from work to get a few hands in. He works the graveyard shift at Ford and is responsible for quality control of each automobile produced at the factory. During the good hour and a half he was at the table, he also consumed 4 (four) martinis. He plays super loose and pretty aggressive, which led him to lose $900 to the table pretty quickly. He claims he is still up $3k from the weekend.

The other players all know Teddy as a regular who seriously does just take random (on the clock, lol) breaks from his shift to come play poker at Harrah's. He is known to always have booze in his car but apparently Ford doesn't seem to mind his constant drunkenness on the job.

Someone once told never to buy a car built on a Monday or a Friday. The theory is that the workers are still hungover and unconcentrated on Mondays and so excited for the weekend on Fridays. I'm not sure about that, but I can warn you from purchasing any Ford car built on Teddy's graveyard shift.

Back in KC

Well happy new year to anyone reading this! My internet access was very limited in California, so I didn't really get the chance to update the blog at all. Basically it was a good time, even though I was there for my Grandpa's funeral. My cousins kept me entertained throughout my whole stay so all was fine.

I got back into Kansas City last night but was too tired to do anything productive. Tonight I elected to head over to the Ameristar Casino and check out the $2/5 NL game. Because it was Friday night, the action was a little juicier than usual, which was a nice surprise. They say that the Kansas City games are amongst the tightest and toughest games in the country, so you can imagine what a relief it is to see some donks sitting at the table when you arrive.

I had peaked at over $600 profit, was then down $150 and in the end I ended the night with $329 of profit in just over 8 hours of play. Of the three KC casinos, Ameristar is definitely my favorite. As I described in a previous post, the room makes for a very comfortable atmosphere.

With Vegas just around the corner (I leave for Las Vegas in 6 days!) I have been tuning up my live game by finishing Caro's Book of Tells and am now focusing on NL Hold'em by Sklansky & Miller. I should have it completed by the time I fly in to Sin City. Other than that, my bankroll is looking healthy and I am pumped up for what is going to be a sick trip!