Vegas March Madness Trip Report

[MtSmalls]

Cliffs Notes at the bottom. Warning: No strippers/hookers/blow. Just poker. The big payoff for the trip is on the final day.

For the past four years, I’ve been taking an annual pilgrimage to Vegas for four days of poker during the first round of the NCAA tournament. I am joined in this annual trip by one of my roommates from graduate School, Dan.

Dan: Let’s just say that Dan is, in most ways, a typical New Yorker. Brash, opinionated, generally a good guy. He is also short. That doesn’t come into play during the trip; I just like to point it out to him. Dan plays mostly NL these days, and is squeaky tight.

Wednesday:
I decide I am not going to work the half day on Wed as I had originally planned, as I have more vacation time than I can actually use, and I just won’t have any real concentration for it. Instead, I lounge around most of Wed. morning until noon, when my wife picks me up and takes me to the airport. Pre-printed boarding pass + simple carry on + Wed. afternoon, means I am through security and at the gate less than 15 minutes after being dropped off. An hour wait, an uneventful 90 minute flight and I am in Vegas, it is 3PM local time.

On the way to the rental car counter, I get a call from Dan, who has been in Vegas for about 2 hours now. He apparently decided to stay in the airport and get lunch, rather than head directly to the Strip. Fool. I meet him at the rental car counter; we get upgraded from our cheap-o subcompact all the way to mid-size. BONUS. Ten minutes out the lot, but they’ve screwed up our contract and given us a Saturn Ion instead of the Malibu. No worries, the lady behind the counter fixes it in five minutes flat and we’re off. We’re staying the weekend with my aunt, who has a house in Henderson. Beat: Family obligation and social etiquette mean that I have to sit down and catch up with her before getting to play poker. 2 hours later, we’re headed for the strip.

We decide to hit the MGM, as we liked the room a lot last year and the games were loose and fast. I have been practicing my no-limit skills on line, but know that I am a rookie in this camp. (I’ve been playing limit for more than 10 years). I actually manage to build a decent stack shortly within the first hour. This is largely at the expense of a 40ish woman who sits in the one seat shortly after I take my seat. The floor tells the dealer she doesn’t speak much English so be sure to help her out. She might as well have put all her money on the table in $200 stacks and started handing them out. She played nearly every hand and would call just about any bet (I did see her fold a few hands on the turn) all the way to the river. I doubled up through her when I raised AQ, caught an A on the flop, bet the whole way and she finally called all in on the River with pocket 10’s. However, you had to get out of her way when she actually bet at the pot. If she did, she was holding no worse than the third nuts on the current board. And she would never bet the flop, but always check/call. She re-loaded three times in the first hour before her luckbox activated. I lost one big hand (about half my stack) when I flopped trips with a medium kicker and got called by the same trips with the nut kicker.




We decide to call it a night at 2am, as Dan has been up more than 24 hours. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but we have three more days to go and we have designs on the Noon tournament at Caesars the next day.
Wed. Totals: 7 hours of poker, I book a small loss, Dan books a small win (<$20)
The rest of the trip will be posted today and tomorrow, in easy digestible chunks.

Cliff's Notes: Long awaited LV trip. First day 7 hours of poker at MGM. I am unsuccessful at NL. Dan is short.