Bellagio: Then and Now

Toopskees · #1 03-18-2007, 10:12 PM

Just back from 5 days there (in Monday 3/12, out Friday 3/16). We last stayed there about a year ago. Noticed some changes since then, and wondered if this was just my imagination running away with me:

Then: Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald playing on the sound system
Now: Oldies and soft rock from the 60s, 70s and 80s (a la Phil Collins, Steve Winwood, etc)

Then: 30 people on the waiting lists for 4/8 and 8/16, with waits of 2 hours or more being the norm
Now: Immediate seating and (frequently) shorthanded tables

Then: Loose and aggressive games with some tough locals but mostly knowledgable players
Now: Totally passive donkfests. I saw 2 incidents that I could not believe and wanted to pass on. They both occurred during the same 4/8 session. This guy sits down to my immediate right. The button gets moved in front of me. He looks at it and asks me, "What is the significance of that thing?" Needless to say, he didn't last long. About an hour later, an Asian guy sits to my left. For the first few hands, he actually looked like a good player. But then this hand came up, and I nearly peed my pants. He and I were involved in a big pot. I had flopped a set of queens on a board of AQ862. When he kept raising and reraising, I had thought I had run into a set of aces. But at the showdown, he flipped over K3 offsuit. The dealer pushed me the pot, and he complained very loudly that he should have won. His reasoning was that a QKA23 made a straight! He even told the dealer, "Look. I have 12, 13, ace, 2, 3!"