|
|
#21
09-04-2007, 06:53 PM
|
|||
|
|||
Re: What\'s Lake Tahoe poker like?
I also went up to Tahoe over the holiday weekend. Headed up Saturday afternoon to Crystal Bay where a bunch of friends had a cabin for the weekend. As you can see, the weather was horrible, and Lake Tahoe is a miserable place besides. No one should ever go there.
 There was much drunken merriment at the cabin, and I managed to get away Sunday afternoon for some pokering. I went to MontBleu first. The poker room is in its usual location at the back of the casino, though if you know where it is it has its own outside door, which is nice for cigarette breaks. But the bathrooms are horribly located, and you need almost 10 minutes to take a piss. The room is very nice, brightly lit with high ceilings and a wood & blue theme, though small. Only 8 tables. There was one $2-$6 spread limit table and one 1-2NL table running when I got there, as well as two tables left from the morning tournament. I put my name on a list (6th position) for 1-2NL and they immediately started a new table. I was shocked with only 6 names on the list, and frankly not very optimistic about it getting going. It took about 15 minutes to round up the players, I bought in for $200, and we were underway 7 handed before long. At first it was a great table, with a mix of bad regulars and bad tourists. I got some nice starting hands, but couldn't connect with any flops and was down to about $150 when I doubled up with top pair when I had the caller out-kicked. Took another nice pot when no one wanted to look me up when my jacks made an overpair to the flop. As advertised, this was one of the friendliest poker tables I've ever been at. Table chat was fast and loose, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. As is the norm with great games, there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of variance to go with it, as exemplified when my top two was cracked by a chaser who hit his draw. All that work and I'm practically back to even, c'est la vie. The table almost gets broken up for the 5pm $46 tournament, but they combine the two NL tables into one and play continues shorthanded, but the tournament structure is terrible (what can you expect for $46) and within minutes not only is the table full but they've started a list again. I take another nice pot with TPTK after being donked into on the flop when I take a stand and no one looks me up. But by now the tourists have busted and the bad regulars have gone home and been replaced with the good regulars. "Larry" gets me and the other guy next to him some of Fizzy's pickles because "they are the best, you have to try them." I offer to pay for the pickle, but he insists they're free. "Fizzy" is sitting on the other end of the table patiently value betting the socks off whoever sits in, and when asked how he makes the pickles doesn't respond. Must be some sort of secret. I go card dead, and the table is tightening up, its getting on 5pm now, so I decide its time to grab a bite and hit Harvey's. All in all Montbleu is a very nice room. The dealers are friendly, courteous, and competent. The cocktail girls were attractive and fast with the drinks (I drank only Coors Lights as I was going to have to drive home later). The floor made an iffy ruling while I was there, but it was fair enough and no one complained. Everything is super informal, and if there were open seats I saw players join the game without complaint without talking to the brush or floor first. You cash your chips out with the brush. I throw a few tips to the floor/brush/cashier and leave up $182. So over to Harvey's I go, and it takes 15 minutes to find a parking spot. I should have walked. I want a quick and cheap bite to eat, but I can't find anything that isn't a sit-down restaurant in Harvey's. After circulating the casino floor twice (noting where the poker room is for future reference) I pull aside one of the customer service folks and ask if there's any fast food, they tell me I will have to go to Harrah's for fast food to their food court. I'm a little bummed, but the woman walks through the tunnel connecting the two casinos all the way to the food court where I get a $5 slice of cheese pizza. It was very nice of her, but far from quick and cheap. Oh well. Back to the poker room, where I have to stand outside the ropes waiting for someone to acknowledge me. The guy who got the other Fizzy-pickle shows up and tells me the game turned into a rock garden after I left. We chat amiably for a few minutes when the brush/floor shows up and after finding out that we both want 2-3 NL says "there's open seats at 4, 9, 6 I think, and maybe some others. Get your chips first," and wanders off again. So I get $300 at the counter and sit into a game. Harvey's has a nice room as well. Its not walled off and is just in a corner of the casino, so its a lot like playing poker on a casino floor, which is new to me. There are 20 tables, but only about 12 of them are filled. If they only fill 12 tables at 7pm on Labor Day weekend I can only wonder what the other 8 tables are for, but whatever. There is a big pile of trash near my seat that stays there the entire time I'm playing. The cocktail girls are positively smoking hot and wear rather skimpy uniforms. Wow. I start with a redbull and vodka because I'm getting a little groggy, but soon switch to just coffee. The dealers were friendly, but all the ones I saw were very slow. Combined with the loose play I doubt I saw 20 hands an hour there. Speaking of the loose play, preflop play at the table was positively aquatic. About half the hands were unraised preflop, often with 5+ players in them. I fold for an orbit when I get AQo on the button. I want to see how they react to a raise (since I'm pretty sure I haven't seen one yet) and after 2 limpers I make it $20. Everyone folds. Curious. I'm totally card dead, but at least I get to see a flop every orbit when I'm in the blinds. A5o in the small blind, I complete for a dollar and the flop comes AA7 rainbow. I check, MP bets, button calls, I'm worried about kickers and just call also. Turn is a 2, which makes me pretty sure no one has boated up, but does nothing to ameliorate my crappy kicker situation. I check and it checks around, so I figure I'll call any reasonable bet on the river, when *whap* the case ace shows up. I check, MP bets $10 again, a call, and I make it $40 only to have it fold around. I turn up my cards because quad aces is cool, and I'm (much to my surprise) informed that I've just won some sort of jackpot. Sweet! The dealer tells me its some % of the bad beat jackpot "probably a couple hundred dollars." That's [censored] awesome! After a few minutes a lady comes by to make me sign a form and delivers my $95 jackpot. Whoop. Tee. Doo. I give her a redbird and $10 to the dealer because, whatever, this is vacation. Again, this is one of the friendliest tables I've ever played at, and I get in a couple good conversations about this and that with the folks around me. I'm absolutely card dead and just fold for the next few hours, until I find QQ UTG and make it $15. We see a flop 4 handed, king rag rag, and I c-bet $45. I get one fold, but a woman calls and then the cutoff shoves all in for about $200. I fold, and they chop up my c-bet as they both have AK. Its getting on 10pm now, there's no obvious targets at the table, and I figure there should be another good party going on back at the cabin, so I rack up and leave up $22. So that's my story about Tahoe poker. Definitely friendly games as advertised in this thread, though game texture will vary from table to table. I took the long way home to avoid Burning Man traffic, and that was the right choice as it was just gorgeous meandering through the mountains on my way home. I'd be happy to play again in either room. 
|
|
#24
09-10-2007, 03:06 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Re: What\'s Lake Tahoe poker like?
Nice report.
|
|
#25
09-15-2007, 07:19 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Re: What\'s Lake Tahoe poker like?
[ QUOTE ]
All in all Montbleu is a very nice room. The dealers are friendly, courteous, and competent. The cocktail girls were attractive and fast with the drinks (I drank only Coors Lights as I was going to have to drive home later). The floor made an iffy ruling while I was there, but it was fair enough and no one complained. Everything is super informal, and if there were open seats I saw players join the game without complaint without talking to the brush or floor first. Again, this is one of the friendliest tables I've ever played at, and I get in a couple good conversations about this and that with the folks around me. So that's my story about Tahoe poker. Definitely friendly games as advertised in this thread, though game texture will vary from table to table. [/ QUOTE ] My experiences up there have been the same. The card rooms up there behave like a poker player is an actual customer and go out of their way in treating the patrons well. Its a very refreshing change from the normal (mis)treatment commonly handed out at Bay Area card rooms where customers are taken for granted. I've made three trips up to Tahoe in the past fifteen months or so and have enjoyed the time I've spent at the MontBleu and Harvey's rooms. The player base seems to be small, but the regulars in the game are pretty bright about doing their part to keep the games going. On my last trip in August I found myself in a pot limit mixed game at Montbleu. When I say mixed game, it was truly almost anything you could think of. The favored game appeared to be Tahoe Pitch and Roll which is 7 stud H/L where you're dealt four cards to start and then discard one. They played 2-7 triple draw, double handed Omaha (the dealer picked this) and all kinds of obscure derivations. It was just simple poker, exactly like a home game. Sometimes we had three or four in the game and never more than seven. No one complained and the better players (like Fizzy) made sure the tourists (like me) felt at home. The dealers made the occasional mistake. No one complained, reasonable rulings were made and the game moved along quickly. I'd not played much 2-7 triple draw. After absent mindedly showing down a hand with an A (my mind kept drifting into lowball mode-there were cocktails involved), Fizzy reminded me for what was probably the third time in 5 minutes that an A is not a very good hand in 2-7 TD. Sitting in that game was the first time in a very long time where I knew I was at a significant skill disadvantage against the field in a live game and the better players were going to give me a pleasant ride for the cost of the ticket. It was a real lesson in smart card room demeanor. (I wasn't able to stay long enough to take the beating that was coming and escaped with my stack undented.) The level of service and the playing experience in Tahoe is head and shoulders about that found in Bay Area rooms. Its a shame that the Bay Area rooms can't make the same effort.
|
 |
|
|
Linear Mode
