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#1
11-13-2007, 02:31 PM
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Trip Report WYNN 1/3 and PH $60 Tourney * FINAL PART*
...Cont from Trip Report Day 2B
Last day of the trip October 5th, 2007 I again sleep well and am sure this time that the bedside clock will read that it’s after noon and I’ve lost out on the whole morning. No wait, I played poker for most of the morning so that’s never a loss. Remember that old Army commercial where they say something like “We accomplish more before dawn than most people do in a day”? Pffft….me and Dale have that beat hands down. It’s about 10:30am but still dark in the room due to the drapes and poor view we had. We get up, shower, change and get out the door to head over to the Venetian where our trade show is. The is our last day here and in order to not miss a full day of work on Friday we have booked a 6:00 am flight that gets to Dallas at 10:00 am. The way we’ve managed our sleep pattern so far this is looking like a very foolish itinerary right now. I mean are we really going to just call it an early night after dinner tonight and wake up at 4am to get ready for the flight? I think you can guess the answer. We walk towards the strip exit of MGM and take a shortcut through the poker room. There’s not much action gong on and I glance over at the last table I was at earlier that morning. It was a full table and there still grinding away was Cowboy and a few seats to his right was Russian! And I was thinking Dale and I were total degenerates. Cowboy looked about like I had left him but with maybe more chips in his stack. Russian looked more tired and weary but with a decent stack. I can’t believe they’re still playing. I have to stop and say hi and Cowboy gives us a surprisingly enthusiastic greeting and asks if we’re off to our trade show. He says “tell them Cowboy says hi”. “Who?” I reply. “Anyone who’s working and setting up the trade show. You’ll see them. They’re teamsters.” I now realize his name really is Cowboy. I make a quick joke about teamsters and tell him I will. Cowboys points to Russian and says I should have seen his stack earlier as it was even bigger. I guess his donkey calls have paid off in a good way but I’ll bet his whole stack was in jeopardy several times in the process of getting to this point. I wonder how long they’ll be playing there. Dale and I are quickly able to catch a Deuce bus and we make it over to Venetian and we don’t have the luxury of checking out their poker room which is supposed to be the nicest in town. We get our badges scanned and enter the Sands Expo Center which is attached to Venetian. It’s a great story of how the Venetian’s owner, Sheldon Adelson, bought the run down Sands hotel years ago, tore it down and built the Sands Expo and Convention Center. He then sold a trade show he owned called COMDEX (ever heard of it?) to a Japanese company and used the proceeds to build what is now the Venetian. He then took it public only offering 10% stake of it. LVS is on the NYSE and he is now the 3rd richest man in the US. I digress. We comb through the myriad booths in the trade show and I finally get to the ones I came for. I’m here to look at digital retinal cameras that can take very nice photos of the interior of the eye and I have a good idea of what I’m going to buy but I want to see if the competition has anything that can change my mind. In about 30 minutes I have the info I need. Our last meal was the overpriced sandwiches at TI the night before and we’re hungry to the point that we can’t wait to leave this place. Oh and It’s about 1:15 and the Planet Hollywood (PH) Casino’s 2pm tourney will start soon. We figure we better get ourselves over there and register before we eat. Once you register you’re in and you can miss a little of the beginning play although we intend to not miss a hand. The Deuce is not going to work here so we catch a cab. The cab driver knows the right back streets to take and we’re off. We pass by the Wynn’s staff parking garage and I kid you not the cab kept going but the that garage did not stop. I couldn’t believe how big the parking garage was just for the hotel staff! I then tell Dale that I’m getting that free buffet at Wynn tonight. I did some quick math and figured I just need to play $44 worth of play in a slot machine there to get my remaining points. It doesn’t matter if I play all $44 in one pull or play it a nickel at a time. I figure if I play $1 at a time surely I can’t lose the whole $44. Some of it or more is bound to come back to me. We arrive at PH fast enough and make our way through the casino floor to the back where the poker room is. I notice the renovations they did with the casino are a very nice improvement from this was Alladin. It has a very trendy and hip look to it and even nice tunes being played. We find the poker room, pay our $65 and get a seat assignment. We have about 15 minutes to eat and I’m so hungry I want to just go eat at their Spice Market buffet but I know I can’t finish in time and don’t want to miss the tourney start. There’s no fast food options there so we settle on grabbing a sandwich at the Starbucks right near the room. The oven roasted turkey with pesto dressing on ciabatta roll looks like an outright bargain at $6.50. I look at their pastries and I kid you not they were selling those for about $4 each. WTF. Aren’t those overpriced even at $1.95 back in Dallas? We sit there and eat and the sandwich is surprisingly filling. I like coming to Vegas to eat well and my past 2 meals have been sandwiches. Disappointing. That Wynn buffet will be a good meal to cap off our trip. We get our seats just before dealing and I’m the last to sit. As I sit down I decide to actually say “Hi, how is everyone doing today?” to the table. This is odd for 2 reasons. Firstly this is just not my personality and secondly this is poker. We are all competing against each other, not the house. It’s not a blackjack table where all of us root and cheer for each other and hope the house busts on every hand. I’m actually get some response back from my tablemates and even the cute girl in seat 9 gives me a genuine smile back. I think she likes me. That smile could have also been a laugh and not the old laugh with you kind of laugh. Must have been the laugh at you kind. Let’s play. There are 4-5 tables of players here and the reason people come play here aside from the very nice room with superb chairs that have rollers and tilt back and the good structure. You start with 4000 chips and blind levels are 20 minutes with good dealers. The other poker rooms I’ve played at so far have cocktail waitresses that are well, um, mostly hot! When our PH waitress walks in and the kindest way I can put this is that PH doesn’t discriminate based on looks. I order my coffee and bottled water. . Unlike the other 2 tourneys I am not card dead here…..far from it. I pick up awesome hands like AK and AJ suited. One problem though, these are not made hands from the hole. These are the kind of hands that can flop just good enough to get you in trouble. And that’s exactly what happening here. I normally don’t fall in love with these hands early in a multi-table tourney but I’m still kind of feeling the rush from MGM and damn it I’m going to play. Nut flush draw on flop and a bet in front of me? I call. Open ended straight draw? I call. Within about 15-20 minutes I’ve whittled my stack down about 2600 chips and I look like a total call station donkey. And cute girl is not just cute – she is a player. I’m watching her raise pre-flop then check raise the flop to take pots with less than premium hands. Her play says it all. She’s been here before and I haven’t. I fortunately get cold decked until the break which keeps me out of trouble and I walk over to Dale’s table. He has a decent stack and has added chips. Not much memorable happens after the break and when the blinds rise up high enough I start getting some decent starting hands again. I win a small pot, move all in a couple of times to take more pots. An older lady from Vermont to my immediate right limps in from her small blind and I have a decent enough starting hand to where I say “I’ll put you all in”. She’s been tight enough to where I expect a fold and get one. I then see I miscounted her stack and realize I would have been finished had she called and won Cute girl lost a tough hand and I take her blind soon after. Eventually she busts on a tough beat but just looks my way, shrugs and leaves. Doesn’t even faze her – like I said she’s obviously been here before and seen it all. No way I could have taken a beat like that as well as she did. Dale has just busted on a big multi-way all-in hand I and is going to go play some 1/3 cash. I have a critical hand come up where a guy moves all in and I look down to see pocket tens. I don’t really have enough chips to do anything in this tournament since there have been 60 buy-ins so far. I call and he flops his ace. The turn bricks and the river is my T to bust him and finally have a decent stack. I apologize to him saying I had to call and he agreed 100% and shook my hand. Just as I’m starting to cruise we go on break again. We are soon down to 2 tables and strangely enough it seems all the short stacks are at my table and the other table has players with very big stacks. My 13,500 chips is about 2nd biggest at my table The blinds have escalated to where there are a lot of shoves and it’s hard for me to make my stack grow much less stay stable. I get impatient on 1 hand and raise with a marginal hand. After it folds around I realize that the player under the gun had limped in and I hadn’t realized that. Had I known it I wouldn’t have played this hand as he was the big stack at the table. When he called my raise I knew I was in trouble and when the flop didn’t help me and he led out the betting I was through with the hand. That cost me 2000 valuable chips and it stung. One momentary mental lapse creates a snowball effect because a few hands later I limp in with A4s and the big blind moves all in. She is an overweight young girl who I gather is a dealer either here or another casino. But I have no read on her otherwise as to what her hand range could be. It’s about 2500 more for me to call her and I really think I should but if I lose I probably don’t make final table and have a chance to make the money. I fold after a long time and a girl to my right says if I had an ace I probably should have called. That stupid hand where I threw away 2000 chips earlier made me fold here where I probably had the best hand. F-ing snowball! We are close to getting to final table and finally we do. My stack is dwarfed when I take my seat next to all the other players. I think I’m down to 6000 chips after being hit by the blinds and bad play. Fortunately I get a good seat relative to the button so I can hopefully get a good hand and shove it to take down any kind of pot. The blinds are 1500/3000 and after 4-5 hands I look down at pocket tens again. There’s a raise, then another player with a slightly bigger stack than me goes all-in. I’m not feeling as good about my hand anymore but this may be my best chance. I call the all-in and original raiser folds. He has AQ and I have a decent chance being a 55/45 favorite here. But he flops an ace or Q and I’m done finishing 9th. Top 6 get paid. The overweight girl I had a chance to bust makes quite a comeback and finishes in 3rd place. That should be me I think. I watch Dale play some 1/3 for a short while and he finishes in the black. It’s about 5:30 PM now and we’re in a strange predicament. Our flight leaves in about 12 hours and it’s our last day here. It’s too late really to go take a nap back at MGM and we’re already half way up the strip. We decide to head up to Wynn right now. We walk north on the strip from PH just to enjoy the weather and get some outdoor air. I talk a couple of girls into taking our picture in front of Paris and in exchange we’ll take them out to dinner. They accept…right. I reciprocate and take their pic too. Gorgeous day. We eventually catch a Deuce bus heading north towards Wynn and we climb up top and there are 2 front row seats there. The view of the strip through the very clean and large glass window is pristine. As good as the strip looks now this must be a great seat to have at night when the strip is totally lit up. View from atop the Deuce  We arrive at Wynn fairly quickly and walk past the Ferrari/Maserati dealership that sits at the hotel entrance. Last night when we came here we made a beeline straight to the red card station and to the gaming floor to try and claim our free meal. Today we took a more casual stroll through the hotel and it was impressive. This is a pretty sexy place. Not raunchy sexy but just cool sexy. Dale says he’s coming back here with the wife next time. A winning move for sure. We take a look at their outdoor lake/waterwall/pine forest and it’s amazing! You feel like you’re in Europe maybe. We look into one of their lounges that’s just opening and it’s plush with awesome lighting and design. It’s now time to get down to business. The Wynn owes us dinner and we’re here to collect. Dale doesn’t like my slot machine strategy too much and he wants to play video blackjack. I’m not so sure that’s a good idea or if you can even earn any red card points like that. The slot attendant isn’t even sure. He finds a video blackjack machine and sticks his red card in and then a $20 bill. After playing a few hands sure enough his points balance increases. It was taking forever to earn any points playing video poker but not here. I abandon my slot machine strategy and sit down at a blackjack machine next to him. I stick my card in and $20 too. Dale is running well and hasn’t lost much but has gained a lot of points. I’m not doing bad either and I’m glad to see my point total increase and am down slightly also. These machines will not let you split cards or double down on any 2 cards and this is significant because if you are playing a pretty strict basic strategy game this gives the house more of an edge on you. Shankar calls us and he’s done with his seminar and is taking a cab to meet us here. Dale gets to 25 points and he’s only lost about maybe $2 from his original $20 investment. I make a good recovery and am actually up to about $23 and I only need about 3 more points. I then go on this sick run where I have good starting hands and the dealer’s up card will be like a 5 or 6 (very favorable for the player) and the dealer still outdraws me. My balance goes down to about $13 before I finally get my 25 points. Awful run of cards at the end. But I’m done. Counting my $18.50 loss at video poker and my $7 loss here that puts me at about $25.50 in the hole to earn that buffet. Dale came out better losing only about $22 altogether. We take our red cards to the booth where a gentleman swipes them, enters something on his computer and hands our cards back to us and says we’re good to go. Shankar finally find us in this maze of a casino and we head over to the buffet line. Hunger has caught up with us and it takes us about 20-25 minutes to reach the cashier where our red cards are swiped and they work. We just have to sign a slip.We see Shank’s bill ring up to $36. I guess we kind of came out on the winning side of this red card deal. If you factor in that we lost the free $10 they gave us to start with it’s not as impressive I guess. After paying it takes another 5 minutes for the hostess to seat us. I see people with plates stacked high with snow crab and I’m ready to claim mine. We get seated and I head straight over to the snow crab and peeled jumbo shrimp station to start. I also get some cream of mushroom soup. After finishing up with this course I head over to see what’s on the hot stations. I check out the seafood area first and they have prepared 4 different fish in 4 different ways. There is mahi mahi, red snapper, salmon and tombo ( a type of tuna). I tried all 3 and the snapper was the best. They also had 4 different ceviches. After my fish course I went for the heavier stuff. There were chicken and chorizo kebabs, t-bone lamb chops, osso bucco, boneless short ribs, etc. I didn’t even touch the Italian and Asian stations. Shanks said the tandoori chicken at the middle eastern station was good. I did save room for dessert however and had a chocolate mousse type of cake with coffee. I can’t eat the quantity I used to be able to at these buffets. And I got tired of getting up from the table numerous times to go get stuff. I think the lack of sleep probably had a little to do with it. Well we’ve eaten, now what? You guessed it – poker. We go and find the Wynn poker room and get our names on the list for a 1/3 cash game. It’s a busy room and pretty swank. We all get seated fairly quickly and my table is near the back close to the cashier’s cage so I just walk up to it and buy $300 worth of chips and I get a bunch of $3 chips along with some $1 chips. At my table I have this guy in dreadlocks to my immediate left and going clockwise there’s 2 young Vietnamese players, a guy and girl who might be boyfriend/girlfriend. After them is very small, elderly man followed by a heavyset guy, a tough looking Mexican American guy and not sure after that. I lay back a bit to watch the action at first and the heavyset guy seems to be running the table and knows what he’s doing. All in all a friendly group. I pick up aces fairly early on and it’s a limped pot by heavy and there’s a caller. I decide to limp thinking will be a raise behind me and then I can do something. Mistake. There’s about 2-3 callers behind me and I realize my aces are in trouble here. I cannot remember the flop, turn and river exactly but I tried to manage the pot for a cheap showdown which I got. My aces held up and my play there definitely caught the attention of a few players. Dreadlocks smiled and agreed as I said “I was just begging to get my aces cracked there”. Needing to throw these guys off the scent of how bad a palyer I am I raised a pot with J-9o and showed it down which again they took notice. There, a little unpredictability I figured. I got into a pot with old man and tried bluffing him. Mistake. If he was in a pot he had something. I didn’t realize this until I tried the same thing again later on and again it failed. I win a decent pot from Mexican with QJ either hitting to pair or maybe 2 pair. Every time I’d get chips I’d give them away it seemed but in a way I’d changed a pattern at the table. When I arrived the standard raise had been $9-$15 pre-flop but I started throwing in raises of $6-$9 and it had the effect of lowering the opening raise amount from then on. Cocktail waitress had been coming by but I wasn’t ready for a drink until about her 3rd time around and I ordered a Hennessy neat. It arrived in a nicely shaped snifter and after mellowing in it for awhile the heady scent of the cognac actually floated around the table and caught the attention of a few players and even the Asian dealer we had at the time. I joked with her that she must be Vietnamese. Dreadlocks quickly orders himself a Hennessy the next time the waitress comes by and when she brought him his drink it came in this short, cylindrical glass that just didn’t look right sitting next to my snifter. The waitress apologized and said they only have 5 snifters in the whole place. Lol. It was like ordering prime filet mignon at a fine restaurant but then having it arrive at the table on a plastic plate. He laughed it off and we enjoyed a drink together. Poker tip – It’s not a bad idea to make friends with opponents who have position on you. 2 new guys join the table. One is a short, dumpy guy who I find out is from Guatemala and we joke about it being the banana capitol of the world. And to my right a guy who just arrived in town today with a group of friends and I learn he is also an online player and he’s recently won an online multi-table tourney on Pokerstars. OK. After several pots involving Guatemala me and online guy remark to each other that we can’t figure what the hell he’s doing. Totally unpredictable.I wish I could remember more hands here but I just can’t. I do remember holding on to my valuable snifter and pouring refills from the ugly glasses into it as they came. I have a good hand against the Vietnamese girl who has made 2 flushes already and I think she's made a 3rd against me with 4 suited cards on the board but I have the ace giving me the nuts and re-raise her short stack all in and bust her. Online guy respects my play enough to where I get him lay down what was probably the best hand twice by using position and betting. I pick up aces again and this time it’s raised pre-flop to $9 with a caller. I flat call figuring I’ll have position and I don’t mind 2 others in the pot. Mistake, as dreadlocks and 2 others call the $9. Again I’ve let my aces go up against too many people. The flop is a dreadful K-J-Q with 2 suits and I check figuring I’ll raise anyone who bets as this flop surely hit someone. It checks all the way around and an Ace hits the turn. Good card for me? Not if any of the 4-5 other players have a T. There’s no danger of a flush. It checks to me and I fire $21 at the pot. Dreadlocks says slowly “OK, let’s see who really has what here” and raises to $90. Ugh! Guatemalan check/calls him and my hand is pretty dead here unless the river causes the board to pair giving me the second nuts to quads. My pot odds are poor but my implied odds aren’t bad in other words I don’t like my odds to make my hand although I know I’ll make a bundle if my boat hits. I fold and of course the river is a J. I want to puke. They each had a T for the straight and I don’t even want to think of the pot I’d have raked in had I played it out. Another big hand that I have misplayed badly. Somehow I’m still in the black but not by much. A younf Danish guy sits and he’s very aggressive. I avoid pots with him. An older Latin guys sits and he’s a total donkey. He called me so hard all the way to the river on one hand where I really thought he had me beat. He had nothing. Only other notable hand occurs when I have 6-9 and the flop is K-9-9. I decide to bet the flop out of position and Dreadlocks raises me. I flat call him and make a reasonable bet on the turn. He thinks about it, looks at his now very big stack and says I might have a 9. He folds showing me KJ. Based on his play so far I have a hard time believing he folded that hand. I still feel like maybe I was careless and he might have seen my hole cards to let him make that fold. Or he just read my call of his raise really well. It was puzzling. Our table eventually breaks up and it's about 2:30am anyway so we need to start heading back to MGM to pack up. I cash out and am up less than a $100 and Dale cashes out in the black too. He was at a tough table where this one guy seemed to play and raise every pot. I have to say the play I saw the Wynn was of better caliber than MGM or Mandalay Bay. For sure there were a few donkeys but the ones who weren’t were solid. As we’re leaving and I’m waiting for Dale to finish using the bathroom I see these 2 very attractive ladies and one of them goes to the ladies room and the other is standing and talking with a middle-aged guy in dress pants and blazer and I couldn’t hear them but their body language spoke that they don’t really know each other. She had both hands gripping her purse in front of her and standing just far enough away from him. Dale walks out of men’s room and past them and he tells me he heard her say “Thanks for the date”. Up the elevator they all went. You gotta love the people watching that’s in this town. We get back to MGM and have just enough time to shower up, pack and lay down for about 15-20 minutes. I remember that we used our Player’s Cards at the MGM poker room the night before and tell Dale we should go see is we get any $$ back for our play. We walk back over to the poker room and they give us a slip of paper that’s good for $11 towards any food/beverage in the next 24 hours. We tell them we’re leaving in 2 hours and the manager agrees to put the credit back on our account for our next trip. I think they comp $1 per hour and I don’t think we played 11 hours. We check out at the front desk and catch a $10 cab back to the airport. It’s 5 am and a long walk to the terminal. I’m ready to board that plane and just sit. We finally board and I’m asleep in my window seat before the plane lifts off. Final thoughts: I really enjoyed playing the live cash games on this trip and time just flew. Playing with the same players at a stretch and getting to know a little about them is a lot of fun. And there’s no doubt it’s a little more fun and easier to play if you win some money. How do I think I won money on this trip? I’d say I got good cards when I needed to, played them OK, paid attention to what was going on but most important of all – I didn’t get unlucky. Sounds stupid but it's the truth. If any of you are coming out to Vegas to play I’d highly suggest you try the 1/2 NL cash games and some of the better tourneys that are abundantly available. 
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#2
11-13-2007, 02:59 PM
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Re: Trip Report WYNN 1/3 and PH $60 Tourney * FINAL PART*
Not trying to be a dick, but your totally passive play hurts my head. You`re not going to make much money when all you do is play hands weakly out of position in multi way pots and let people catch up at low prices.
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#3
11-13-2007, 03:11 PM
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Re: Trip Report WYNN 1/3 and PH $60 Tourney * FINAL PART*
Thanks for the report. When I'm not playing poker and eating buffets, I at least like to read about playing poker and eating buffets.
I usually don't comment on strategy on trip reports, but man... you gotta start raising aces against these low limit players!! I was cringing both times.....
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#4
11-13-2007, 03:50 PM
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Re: Trip Report WYNN 1/3 and PH $60 Tourney * FINAL PART*
[ QUOTE ]
Not trying to be a dick, but your totally passive play hurts my head. You`re not going to make much money when all you do is play hands weakly out of position in multi way pots and let people catch up at low prices. [/ QUOTE ] OP doesn't claim to be a pro, and he admits he didn't play his strongest hands too well. IMO it was a pretty entertaining trip report (very detailed which i don't mind) and breaking it up into multiple parts made for an easier read. he does need to play more aggressively, we all know. other than not raising AA, the line i HATE is bet/calling the flop OOP and then leading the turn.
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#7
11-13-2007, 08:31 PM
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Re: Trip Report WYNN 1/3 and PH $60 Tourney * FINAL PART*
[ QUOTE ]
thx for the advice. [/ QUOTE ] [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] i enjoyed the TR, checkraze. i will look forward to future reports as well.
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