[jively]

I went to Vegas for a conference 10/28-10/31, and was able to spend 2 nights at the Wynn before to play some poker. I got the poker room rate ($199 per night) by playing about 12 hours there. The room was nice. I heard here that the $8/16 limit game was good, so I tried it out. It was higher than I had played before, but I wanted to give it a shot.

On Friday night, I started my trip by losing $333 in my first 2 hours. I don't think I was playing particularly bad, but my top pair hands were just losing to straights and flushes. The game seemed a little tight at times, and it seemed like the guy on my immediate left was trying to isolate me. I did play back at him and won a nice pot when I raised and 4-bet with AKo. I bet the flop and turn unimproved, but he folded. Whew!

I had a lot of hours left to play so I moved down to $4/8. I won back $125 in 3 1/2 hours to finish off my Friday night.

On Saturday afternoon, I started at $4/8, and won $92 in 4 hours. (They had a lot of trouble getting the $8/16 game started on Sat. afternoon. 2-4 guys were sitting at a table but didn't want to start short, and they were sitting there for hours.)

I then took a break to watch the Penn State / Ohio State game. I had never bet on sports before, but thought the line (Ohio State by 3 pts) was way too low. I am a Penn State grad and root strongly, but I felt pretty confident Penn State would lose, so I bet $20 on Ohio State -3. (If PSU won, I wouldn't mind losing the money; I just didn't want Penn State to cover but still lose. Almost win/win, right?) Well, Penn State got bet badly and I won $20.

Now that I was down only about $100 for the trip, I wanted to give $8/16 another shot. I started off losing another quick $100, but stuck in there. I won some pots (my KK held up when it was 3 bets 5 ways preflop, and AK won a nice pot with top pair), and had a nice run, and ended up $303 for the 2-hour session. I climbed out of my hole and was now up $187 for the trip.

I was pretty happy about the play, and took a walk down the strip to the Venetian. I sat down at an open $4/8 seat. (By the way, Tara the cocktail waitress was really hot! What a body.)

I was up a little bit value betting top pair hands. I was really tired, and decided to leave when it got to my big blind. On my last hand, a fun hand came up. I had A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]5[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] and limp. It was ~6 handed, and the flop came something like 8 7 4 with 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]s. I think it was 2 bets, 5 handed building a big pot. The turn was an offsuit 6 giving me a straight and still with the nut flush draw. The SB bets and I raise. There are 2 callers, and the SB attempts to call by sticking out a bunch of chips. He said "is that right?" but the dealer counts and sees that he put out too many, saying "you have to raise now." I "penalized him" by 4-betting it. (I figured no one had 9-5 for that higher straight, but somehow I forgot about the possibility for 10-9...) All 3 call. Now it's a huge pot. Come on [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]!

The river was another 8, pairing the board. SB bets, I call with my straight, and someone else calls. SB had 8-4, hitting a 4-outer on the river for a boat. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] I really would have liked to win (or even chop with another 5) that ~$250 pot.

Anyway, I ended up down $36 in that 1 1/4 hour session. I ended up $151 in my small stakes hold'em play, averaging 1.6 BB/hour. It was really fun. (It didn't pay for my 2 hotel nights, but it was really fun.) I also got comfortable with drinking some wine near the end of my session to get my buzz going. So, my +$151 included about 8 glasses of wine. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Thanks for reading.

-Tom