Description: Amy had a conference to attend in Vegas – her work was putting her up at Caesar’s for 5 days (sweet), so if I could wrangle the time off, I could get free room, and free time to play lots of poker while she was in class. Needless to say, I got the time off.
I played in many of the casinos while I was there (Caesar’s, Paris, Mandalay, Bally’s, New York, Sahara, Monte Carlo, & Excalibur) – and the best, by a mile, was Caesar’s. I got there about 9:30 a.m. most mornings and found the games just starting – and lots of the same guys there each day (at least at the $1 / $2 NLHE table). These guys were great – all older gents who had been playing for decades, and I sat there with them and just absorbed all that I could from watching and asking questions of them. I allotted myself $300 for each of the 5 days I was there – and set each day’s winnings / losings aside.
I went broke the first day, but doubled up the second day, for a net of $0. By the end of the week, I was up a very modest $160, but I had learned A LOT. Mainly, I learned that I didn’t want to tangle with the “older gents” – they were too good for me. My morning sessions were all losers – in fact, I usually bought in for $100 at ~9:30 and would play it until Amy called to meet for lunch at 11:50ish. In nearly every case, my initial $100 was gone by the lunch break.
Then, after lunch I would head back – and the crowd would be different; most of the older gents were replaced by a little looser crowd and I found that I could hold my own against them. Then in the evening, the “internet yahoos” would come in – the young kids who think that they’re just going to roll over everyone because their hyper-aggressive nature works oh-so-well online. Obviously, this is when I made all my money back.
In any event, I can’t say enough good things about Caesar’s – the staff was great, the poker room was absolutely terrific (set away from everything, quiet, comfortable, spacious, no smoking; by far the best one I played), and it offered me a tremendous learning experience: Grinding it out may not be glamorous, but it doesn’t have to suck.
There were just so many hours of poker played during this time that I can’t remember everything (I played as much as Amy would let me, which was ~55 hours), but some hands do stand out…
1) At Caesar’s, one of the “older gents” (Jimmy) raises to $5 and I call from BB with Kc Jc, and everyone else folds. Flop is Tc, 9d, 3c, and I check-call his $5 bet. Turn brings the Kh, and he calls my $10 bet. The river is the 9c giving me the second nut flush, which I check and Jimmy conveniently bets $10 – I raise to $25. Jimmy ponders and calls – I flourish my flush, and am crushed when Jimmy rolls over pocket 3’s for a small boat. Damn, I thought I might have actually had one on him, but he pulled it over on me ;-)
2) At Mandalay, I was steaming because this young internet yahoo was just on-fire, catching everything, and crowing about it like a rooster come sunrise (like playing 94o to a preflop raise and hitting runner-runner for 2 pair – “You can’t touch me – I always play 49, it’s my lucky hand!”). Anyway, I’m biding my time and waiting for the cards to change, after a while I get pocket Q’s in the SB and pop his $10 raise to $40, everyone bails out and yahoo-boy calls. Flop brings a 6, 7, 8, all hearts. I’ve got the Qh so I bet $20, he calls, Turn is a 4c and we both check. River is Ts and we both check (I had no read on his “unreasonable” hand selection – I mean he could possibly have a 5 or 9 and be slowplaying back at me…) – I show the queens and he yells out “Tens” – he’d caught his set on the river. I got up, cashed out what I had left and walked back to Caesar’s (muttering the whole way).
3) At Caesar’s, I was playing with the gents one morning and an internet-yahoo sat down with us. Now, he’d been watching us while waiting for a seat to open and knew that we were all playing squeaky-tight – so he sits down and pops it to $10 from EP with his first hand – I call with KQs from the button, everyone else gets out. Flop is KQ5 rainbow, and he moves all-in – I ponder for a second (set of Q’s or 5’s maybe?) and call – he flips over K3o and moans when I show the 2 pair. An 8 on the turn and he’s calling for chips. After a few hands, he kind of laughs and says, “That was pretty stupid of me, you guys are so tight I hoped to get one by you.” So, I figure if you can laugh at yourself, you’re not a complete loser, and we chat it up a bit. Turns out he’s from SoCal too and Jimmy (one of the older gents) tells us about when he used to run the floor at Commerce – good guy, great stories. Anyway, I look down a little later and I’ve got Jacks from UTG – now, this is the 5th friggin’ time I’d had JJ that day and none of them had worked out for me, so I limp in and hope to hit or miss for cheap. SoCal boy raises from the button to $10, the BB calls and I’m getting ~3:1 on this hand – so I call (normally I’d pop it here but I was too skittish about the jacks that morning). Flop comes JT8, with 2 diamonds. BB and I check, SoCal boy bets $30, BB folds and I move in. He ponders out loud, “Hm, you got a jack? You got a nine and hoping to draw out?... I call” and he flips over QQ, I show the jacks and he’s happy – “Oh man, that’s great, I’ve still got outs” – yeah, 6 of ‘em. Then an 8 comes on the turn, giving me a boat and killing most of his outs, a river 5 and he’s not so happy anymore. He got up and left shortly after this – but me and older-gents talked about these 2 hands for the next 2 days that I was there. :-)
4) At Caesar’s, at night – Ward (who was also at the same conference with Amy) came out with me on our last night there and we sat down at a freshly starting $1 / $2 NL table. I was in seat 7 and Ward was in 8 – seat 1 was a serious looking dude with ~$700 in chips that he brought over from a $5 / $10 game (they busted up one of the two 5/10 tables due to low turnout and consolidated at 1 table – so this guy was waiting for a seat to open) – this put everyone else at a severe disadvantage as everyone else bought in for only $100 with maybe 1 other guy buying in for $200 (which is what I should have been doing but I didn’t know it at the time). Seats 2 and 3 were to internet-yahoo buddies, 4/5/6 were fairly tight (4 was a bit of a caller), and 9 was pretty solid.
1st hand, I pick up AK and pop it to $10, 1 calls as do 2 and 4 (2 is giving me the evil eye like he’s going to pick on me all night, we’ll see…). Flop is AK7 with 2 spades, and it’s checked to me – I bet $10 and only 1 calls. Turn is a 6d and I bet $25, he ponders and flashes 97o as he mucks – I figure he was going to try to take it from me on the turn or river (especially if a spade came) but my turn bet meant that there wasn’t enough left in my stack to make it: a) worth his while, and b) likely that I would fold. Yay, score 1 for me.
Next hand, I get AA (holy crap, what’s up with these cards?) I pop it again to $10 and no one calls – I show the aces so they don’t think I’m BSing them (and so I can steal more easily later).
I limp a couple of times over the next few rounds with iffy hands (QJo, K9s, etc.) but seat 2 raises whenever I come in. Then I pickup TT in the SB and pop it to $10. Now 2 has already folded but his buddy 3 is still in, so he calls so he can “punish” me in place of his friend. Flop is a lovely T92 with 2 diamonds, I bet $10 and he raises to $25, I call. Turn is a problematic Jh putting 3 parts of straight out there, I bet $25 and he asks how much I have left – now I don’t really want to have to make the decision if he moves in and I’d rather he just went away, so I do something that is probably illegal (but I didn’t get pinched for it) – I counted out my chips on the inside of the bet-line, tallied them up to $103, and said, “There’s $103, call if you want.” I mean, this is technically betting out of turn and stealing his initiative, and I don’t know why the dealer didn’t say anything. But I had top-set on the flop, of the 3 top pocket pairs, if he’s got QQ (the most worrisome hand I could put him on for this, possibly 88, QJ, AJ, AQ, or a diamond draw) he’s got a lot of outs and I’m not real keen to have him draw out on me – this was the only thing I could think of to put the pressure back on him – while it was his turn to act. He pondered for nearly a full minute and folded.
5) Same game as #4, above. A while later I get 77 in MP/LP and limp in. There’s 6 people in the pot and I’m kicking myself for not popping it. Flop is an amazing 742 with 2 hearts. 2 checks, 3 is out, 4 bets $10, 5 is out, and 6 is in but I forgot – he’s played so few hands that I didn’t realize he was yet to act – and I put out $25. The dealer admonishes me (as he should), and I apologize to the guy in seat 6 because I do feel bad. Well he hems and haws for a loooooong time (nearly a minute) and I’m feeling like a loser and of course 2 and 3 are smirking at me like I just stepped in a steaming pile and tracked it into the casino. 6 finally folds so I put out my $25 and, after this “problem”, everyone just folds it around and I take a small pot with top-set (I found out later that 6 had 56o for an open-ender). Anyway, I felt bad but remembered that the pre-action move is a fairly common bluff maneuver (re-raise before it’s your turn like you’re so excited you just can’t wait to get your money in there) – but I guess no one else at this table had heard of it cuz they seemed to believe that I had the goods…
Bottom Line: Returned from Vegas with more than I went with, and started the poker drawer with my modest $160 in winnings.
Lessons: Too many to count – but the main lesson was that patience is a virtue (you can’t “out-aggress” a lot of these young players [especially at a $100 table in Vegas], so a good methodology here is smart, patient, tight-aggressive poker, and use their aggression against them). Also, I got sucked-out on with a lot of hands and got very discouraged by it, so I had / have a tendency to try and over-protect my cards when they are good, and to trap with them when they are great.
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