Trip Report: Day 4

By day 4, I don’t think I woke up too early; in fact, I think Sazzy and The Happy Pebble had left for work before I woke up.  I decided to go to the Rio and check out the action at the WSOP – which means it was after noon because I don’t think the play started until noon.  I found one room, and walked around the tables watching the action.

It was AMAZING!

You hear the chips shuffling, the table talk, the bad beat stories, and all the people!  There were so many rooms of tables that I lost track of who was playing where.  I tweeted a few of the bad beat stories I had overheard while walking around.  I remember one guy talking about why he would never play Ace-4 suited.  I stopped at the ESPN feature table, and watched some of the action there.  It was really pretty spectacular.

While watching, I had found Kathy Liebert, Tom Durr, Dennis Phillips, Jesus Ferguson, Phil Hellmuth, and a few other notable players.  Little did I know that Phil Ivey was doing REALLY well; he was tearing up the tables at the main event, and appeared to be an unstoppable force!

Later that evening I decided to stop at The Gold Coast to play poker; it’s near the Rio, and seemed convenient.  Every once in a while I tried to stop in at the Rio to play poker in their little poker room, but empty seats were an endangered species.  The waiting lists for all games were long, and I had no hope of getting a seat anytime during the WSOP.

So I headed over to the Gold Coast where I felt like a minority.  The game was great though; I played $4/$8, and ended up leaving up about 2 racks, or $200.  A guy who was sitting next to me told me the same bad beat story about 5 times; I was getting really tired of listening to him!

As an aside, let me make a statement about bad beat stories.  Everybody has them, and very few of them are truly bad beat stories.  Statistically speaking, everyone loses with great hands and sometimes we win with bad hands.  It happens all the time – it’s best to just get over it and move on.  :)

There’s only one true bad-beat story I had ever heard that was interesting, and really seemed to qualify as a bad beat.  A guy from Sequim, WA drives to Las Vegas on his Harley Davidson motorcycle to play in the main event at the WSOP.  This was in the early 2000′s, but I’m not sure which year.  He walks into the Horseshoe, and pays his entry fee on the day before the main event was to begin, and decides to leave and find something to eat/drink.  He left on his motorcycle, and found himself waking up in a hospital bed a week later.  He had been involved in a horrible traffic accident, and spent the first week of the main event in a coma.  He lost his buy-in, and the WSOP wouldn’t give him a refund.  The accident was not his fault and the other driver apparently had no insurance.  Now THAT is a bad beat!

Okay well anyway, I eventually went back to Sazzy’s to rest my head again for another night.  :)

Trip Report: Day 3

So I promised to get the trip reports written, and it’s already Sunday so I suppose I had better get off my butt and write!  :)

First, here’s an interesting story that relates to my trip.  Before I left, having decided to drive I had my car checked out.  It needed the 30,000 mile check-up anyway, so I took it to a shop near my home, where it received the all-clear.  Brakes still had more than 50% wear left, as did the tires, so 4000 miles to Vegas and back ought to be just fine, said the mechanic.  The day after I returned, my right rear brake started grinding and squeeking horribly!  Having just been told that my brakes were fine, I didn’t believe they were bad, so I assumed a rock or some dust had gotten up into the brake and was grinding.  I took it to the same shop that did my 30,000 mile check-up, and they said there was no rock; the rear brakes were GONE!  Seriously – no pads at all, the rear brakes were metal-on-metal and I shouldn’t drive at all.  Thankfully this didn’t happen on the way back; I had to park my car until Saturday (yesterday) when the shop finally got the necessary parts in, and they were able to do the work.

Okay, so back to the scheduled program…  :)

Day 3, I woke up in the World HQ of The Vegas Tourist, and decided I wanted to play some limit poker somewhere.  I searched the net, looking for the best places to play something like $3/$6 or $4/$8 and found a couple of recommendations for MGM and Monte Carlo.  So I decided to head down to the South end of the strip, start at The Tropicana, and work my way North until I got tired or ran out of money.  :)

The first time I visited Las Vegas, I stayed at The Tropicana, and it was fun.  Thankfully I didn’t need my room much, as it smelled horrible, but I certainly enjoyed playing blackjack and poker there.  I parked in their parking lot, and started looking for the poker tables.  It turns out that The Tropicana no longer has a poker room, so I sat at a $5 minimum Blackjack table with $100.

What happened next is something I still talk about, and probably will until I’m old and gray.  A person walked up to the Blackjack table, sits at third base and puts $10 on the table.  This person was probably in their 30s, had what appeared to be about a day’s worth of stubble on their face, unkempt hair, and kind of smelled like beer.  This person was wearing a simple maroon dress with bows on the straps.  I believe they were also wearing jeans under the dress, and flip flops.  I was a little surprised, but hey this is Vegas!  Maybe this guy is down on his luck and didn’t have anything else to wear?  The guy next to me, who happened to have just gotten married during this trip and was with his wife, looked at me and I looked at him and we both kind of shook our heads.  I figured, without people like this, Vegas just wouldn’t be as interesting!

Anyway, I ended up losing my $100 buy-in at the blackjack table, and decided to move along and find something I know I can win at:  poker.  I walked over to the MGM and found the poker room.  There was only a couple of tables going, and they were all no-limit.  I had decided that I didn’t want to risk too much of my bankroll during this trip as I needed to have some left over when I returned and couldn’t withstand any big losses.  I inquired about limit tables, and the person at the desk said that they would probably be starting a $2/$4 limit table by about noon or so.

I was more than shocked!  $2/$4 is *really* low limit poker!  The rake makes that game almost impossible to win.  I decided to move on and find another game to play in.  I ended up walking to the Monte Carlo, and they had a $2/$4 game going with one seat open.  I figured I would go ahead and sit down and try the game out.  In all I believe I ended up making about $100, but it was definitely a tough game to beat.  The problem is that at such low limits, the rake ($5 from each pot) is too high relative to the pot sizes.  It is often possible to actually lose money when you win, especially if you’re heads-up on the flop.

After that I decided to go downtown, to one of my favorite poker rooms:  Binion’s!  They didn’t have any limit tables available, so I decided to sit in on a $1/$2 No Limit table.  Right off the bat I was up about $100, and feeling good.  By then it was getting late, and I needed to get back sometime so Mark and Sazzy wouldn’t worry about me.  I was then dealt the last hand of the night:  Ace-King offsuit.  I love Ace King; it’s a great starting hand, and definitely worth a healthy raise.  I was in early position, and decided to make it $10 to go (the blinds were $1/$2).  I got one caller, so we were heads-up on the flop.

The flop comes 6 of Spades, 8 of Diamonds, 2 of Clubs.  No flush yet possible, and even if my opponent has a small pocket pair or paired anything on the board it’s worth fighting for.  I check and my opponent bets $15.  I raise making it $30 to go.  He calls.

The turn is the 7 of Diamonds – making a flush draw possible, but more ominous is the obvious 6-7-8 on the board making a straight possible.  Since we’re heads up, I figure I’ll represent the straight; after all, I really don’t believe he has the straight at this point, and probably paired the 8.  If I can fight for this pot strong enough, he might just fold his pair to my Ace King.  I’m behind at this point, but I’ve shown enough strength that I think I can get him to fold.

I make a pot-sized bet:  $80 and he makes a groaning call.  I’m almost sure he has nothing better than top pair at this point.  The river makes me feel pretty good – it’s the Ace of Clubs.  The diamond draw didn’t get there, and I spiked top pair/top kicker (Aces with a King kicker).  He checks, and I decide to go all-in; I think I had about $60 or $70 behind, and there was a lot in the pot – enough that all-in was my only real option.  He again groaned, but called.

I show Ace-King, and he smiles and shows pocket 8s – he flopped a set, but I played my hand so hard he believed he was behind and I had caught a straight.  I lost, but thought it was a fun hand to play.  I didn’t mind losing that hand at all.  :)

So busted out, I went back to Sazzy’s place to put my head down for the night.  :)

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