Vegas Post Mortem

Here is something frustrating.  Spent about 45 minutes yesterday updating my blog (due to popular demand) when I hit some key and deleted everything!!!  Learned my lesson will now save work in progress as I go.

So, starting my day to day Vegas experiences.

Day 1:  We arrived about 2:00 Monday and by the time everyone else got there and checked in, bags stowed, food eaten,etc. we hit the poker room about 4:30.  The omaha game was fine and I ran up about $150 in sugar but then hit the skids and could not win a hand.  After giving it all back and re-buying a couple of times, I went to bed about 1:30 a.m.  A very bad start to my week primarily because of the sleep deprivation plus the negativity of starting in the hole.

Day 2:  Kind of a repeat of day 1.  Started playing a 1/2 NL holdem game with a $200 buy-in.  Played tight and was down about $100 when I picked up 10/10 under the gun.  The button straddle was on by an older local player who was crushing the game.  He had stacked several players and had about $1000 in front of him.  I min-raised, hoping he would re-raise me on his straddle.  He just called the $6 total bet.  The flop was awesome for me, 9/4/3 and I bet $25.  He re-raised to put me all-in.  I snap called and he tabled 9/4 for 2 pair which held up.  I left for the omaha game.  It was no kinder to me and due to lack of sleep called it quits fairly early.

Day 3:  Decided to control my losses by playing some tournaments and headed to my old cash cow the 11:00 Mirage $65 tourney.  I lost my stack fairly early with my AQ meeting KK, but decided to re-enter as felt the game was pretty soft and blinds were still manageable.  It turned into an o.k. decision when we chopped 8 ways for $300 each.  The payouts were really designed to encourage this as very top loaded with big fall off for 2nd, with the other places paying just a little less.  We all got about 3rd place money.

Day 4:  My Tri-City buddies were leaving in the morning at 11:00 and Don coming in about the same time from Phoenix so I just hung out till he got there.  We talked about playing the 3:00 WSOP deepstack but decided to wait for Friday (bad choice). So, I suggested we go over to the Mirage and hit it again.  Don busted out early and I was running very good, probably 3rd in tournament when my 9/9 raise got a shove from a fairly bit stack holding KJ.  He flopped A/Q/x and you can imagine what the river card was (his gutshot 10).  The same player got the rest of my chips when I got it in good with a weak ace vs. Q9 and he found 2 queens.  We moved over to the Orleans where we were staying.  My bright spot was hitting a royal flush in video poker with max play 5 cent machine which paid $200.  I used the money to enter the 7:00 Omaha $125 bounty tournament there but had very bad luck and was out in 2 hours.

Day 5:  Don and I hung out at the Orleans, he was playing video poker and hit 2 royals and quads on the quarter video netting him $2000.  Nice day for him.  We wandered over to the Rio to sign up for the 3:00 $235 deepstack only to be told that it was being cancelled due to the monster stack tournament.  Crap.  That was the reason Don had driven to Vegas and the tournament I had been looking forward to.  We checked out other tournaments and decided to try the Caesar's Palace 2 p.m. $125 deepstack.  They had remodeled the poker room, it was much smaller with little room for big tournaments.  We were both seated at insane tables with rookie players.  It would go like this:  small blind, big blind, raise to700 (really? with blinds at $25/50?).  Players made really dumb plays, mixing up the value of chips, folding unraised big blinds, etc., etc.  The better players were slaughtering the game.  I lost most of my chips with my J/J hitting trip queens.  The player was bad but knew that he needed to flat call my bets to the river.  Don was knocked out, I lasted another hour and went out on my A/2 small blind vs. JJ in the big blind.  The flop had 3 spades (I had the A) with a 3/4 on the board.  Had more outs than I could count...any ace, any 5, any spade.  Player down.

Day 6:  We got up early and drove to Phoenix, no more poker. On a positive note had a great visit with my family.

In retrospect the first day was a killer for me.  I was playing catch up football and was tired the whole week.  The cash game went so bad for me that I was feeling snakebit and just quit doing it. Tournaments were my best bet and with a smidgeon of better luck would have cashed in another one or two.