Hey all,

Here's a TR I wrote on another board but figured I'd share:

A while back my gf mentions that one of her friends was getting married in Blackhawk (Colorado), and that we should go out and meet up with them while they set everything up. Long story short, the Ameristar in B-hawk ends up treating our friends terribly (this was practically expected with Ameristar's rep) and they end up planning a Vegas Wedding.

We fly out on June 9th on the first flight (6am) to save some cash as she's studying for the CPA exam until her job starts in Oct.

Flight is fairly uneventful, and we land a few minutes ahead of schedule. Grab bags, get to the cab line (or lack thereof at 730am), and get to TI after the cabby misses the turn lane for the blvd and has to drop us off in the back.

No dice on an early check in so we drop the bags and head for Denny's. During the week the 2 4 6 8 special allows us to eat for about 8 bucks total with tip...like I said we're kinda cheap. We putz around the North end of the strip half looking for a game, but primarily wanting to check in so we can take a nap. We find the penny vid poker at the Venetian so decide to just play long enough to get a redbull. The machines are right by the bar so we end up doing this at least 4 times during the trip. Finally check into room and nap for about an hour.

We brought a suitcase full of snack food this time around so we eat an apple and some other stuff and head out to check out the WSOP as neither of us have gone over to check it out in the past. We end up missing the harrahs shuttle by about 15 seconds, and the gf convinces me to walk. It's about 85 out so this goes against my better judgement, but I oblige. Walk isn't too terrible, but we're glad for the air conditioning when we arive at the Rio. Walk around the Rio for a bit, watch the Omaha8 heads up match (which somehow doesn't end while we're there with both of them at 10bb), see a bunch of "big name" pros start the 10k 2-7, and finally hit the shuttle back to harrah's.

A bit more food at TI and off to finally get some hours in @ Venetian. I immediately realize that I should be coming to vegas every year during the series as they have 3 tables of 4/8 omaha8 and 2 of 4/8 horse. I grow very tired of hold 'em and LOVE playing in mixed games so I jump in omaha8 while on the list for HORSE. I think I make it one rotation in Omaha before I'm called over to HORSE. I'm clearly rusty at the stud games and bleed a few bets, but end up coolering the guy on my left in a LHE pot. It was nice to finally meet a guy who could take a beat and not care as he had been a mid stakes tourney grinder online pre black friday, so he was certainly used to it.

One of the guys at the table (motorcycle john) starts talking about the Mixer at TI, and how they are trying to get it going. I had been trying to end up in this game every time I'd come to vegas with no avail, so I let him know I'm interested and get all the details. I end up moving to the main game for 4/8 horse and find it much less fun, so I pick up +11 bucks with beer in hand, deciding to go have some fun at the TI.

Grab the gf and head over to TI, she ends up going to take another nap and I sit down at the mixer. I'm not sure of all the AVPers that were there, but I think I was the only non-local (please introduce yourself if you were at the table! it was tons of fun). I end up knowing how to play all the games decently well as there weren't any insane games. Line up was: stud 8/b, razz, omaha 8/b, double flop omaha, badugi (added later), and 2-7 triple draw. I play for about 5 hours but only had about a beer an hour. I ran insanely well making quads 2 times in omaha 8 for a scoop both times, the 3 different badugi's, and plenty of good razz hands. End up +138 in a 3/6 game which i'll take any day! My vision gets blurry at about 3am, so I regrettably decide to sleep.

Next day was fairly uneventful. We woke up and went to try the Hash House which was flipping amazing! Other than that the gf and I just played @ Venetian for about 5hrs waiting for our friends to arrive. I end up +65 in 4/8 omaha 8 with no real big hands of note other than mis-reading my hand once and ending up with the nut low (yeah i'm obviously awesome at that game). After playing we decide to splurge and get sushi + sake at Khotan in the TI. We sit outside on the deck and just chill. Easily the best meal all trip! We don't get very fresh sushi in denver so i try and make a point of grabbing some every time in vegas. Rest of the night is mostly spent hanging out @ the hotel as we're both very tired.

Saturday is wedding day so most of our time is spent hanging out with friends. We get a very short Venetian session in, I lose 61 mostly in LHE. We ate lunch at margaritaville, had some coconut shrimp which was great (though i don't know how you could mess up that dish). Eventually everyone piles in a party bus for the wedding at some place north of the stratosphere in sketch-ville. True McDonald's style wedding as we're in and out of the chapel in 30 minutes. We spent more time waiting around than we did in the actual ceremony. Half the group decides to go buy 24oz pbr's across the street, but has to leave them on the sidewalk during pictures...and then has to threaten a bum who stops to try and swipe em. This is obviously a classy wedding party.

Dinner is at spice buffet @ pho. I've never been big on dinner buffets in vegas, but we suck it up and pay the 35bucks a person (grat included), but get to skip the line. King crab legs are not an excuse for this highway robbery, but they were OK. for 25 bucks less Khotan was looking pretty awesome.

We peace out to go meet up with some people @ oshea's, and gf and I game a cocktail waitress before leaving. The groom ends up getting food poisoning (i can't recommend the spice buffet enough), but a few of us keep going and end up at toby keith's. We buy a vodka redbull, and then exit for JET in the Mirage. The AVP tourney is going on, so I heavily consider ditching the club and trying to get the mixer going again, but end up biting the bullet to pay for some good old fashion ear ringing with the added advantage of not being able to move while girls scowl at you for bumping into them and slightly spilling their drink. (as an aside...do not bring a drink onto a crowded dancefloor and expect to keep all of it unless you've asked for a sippy cup).

We finally leave, end up hanging around Ceasars playing video poker for a penny and drinking Gin and Tonics til we are too tired to think.

Sunday the groom decides that he needs to be intoxicated all day. We decide that seems valid and end up drinking the entire day away while trouncing around the strip, playing games to see how many high fives we can get. We end up back @ margaritaville and I at least get to watch most of game 5 of the NBA finals before going back to the room to try and nap off the booze. Got some pizza for dinner @ the place by the TI poker room which was pretty good for the price.

The gf decides to sleep and I go down to see what games are going on in TI. I'm very tired so don't feel like playing in what seems a not so good nl line up, so i donk around @ 2/4. The game is 6 handed which I love in low stakes LHE since there will normally be less players in a pot, leaving some room for actual play rather than just bingo. I run it up +90 in about 1.5 hours and call it quits to sleep.

Monday is leaving day so we decide to play a bunch. End up going down to Bally's with the groom. Never got in a nl game but sat 3/6 with him so he could lose his money slower (he is a pretty typical over confident amateur with little clue but a lot of gamble). Sit there for about 2.5 hours til the groom's 100 is gone, and i'm stuck -65.

Head back to the TI, decide to enter the 2pm $50 tourney, and 4 hands in lose almost the entire stack with 2pair vs nut flush, so my tourney is over in less than half an hour. Gf is @ venetian so i go over and sit 1/2 NL for the only time all trip, and run it up to +175 without one showdown on a fairly soft table for the room. We grab some pizza in the foodcourt with all the comps and catch a cab back to the airport.

Flight back was insane as a bunch of drunk retired frat boys sit around us, the drunkest of which ends up sitting next to me in the aisle, making sure to say "how are you?" to literally every person who walks by for the entire trip. We end up being the last off the plane as his friends ditch him, and it takes us 5 whole minutes to wake him up as he eventually waddles off the plane with his sandals on the wrong feet. I guess we had to run bad in some portion of the trip...to top it off the luggage takes about 30 min extra to get to the carousel.

All in all I was +290 in poker and played about 12.5 hours, while the GF was up about +440 and played something like 15hrs. Not too shabby for a relaxing time in the desert.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it :)

So...I know i haven't updated this in forever, but that's what jobs do I suppose. My free time has gone practically kaputs lately. But I've found the time in between (actually during) old episodes of 30 rock to update, so feel honored.

Anyways, as the title suggests, I was in Vegas last weekend for CES (consumer electronics show) and got a bit of poker in. I've always enjoyed reading other's trip reports, and have done a couple of my own at www.allvegaspoker.com .  Anyways, here we go:

First Day/Flight/Whatevs:

So I got about 2 hours of sleep due to the fact that I was packing late, and was working pretty late as well. My flight left Denver at 644 am which meant leaving my house around 430am (yuck).

I really hate airplanes. Especially when they're sold out. Especially when it's before 8am. Anyways I at least had the back ailse seat which to me is the most comfy (other than maybe the front aisle.)

The flight was rather bumpy but went alright I suppose. No cab line obviously, got to the TI with a pretty friendly cabby which was a bit of a surprise as it's like pulling teeth with the grand majority of them.

Got to the hotel, checked the bag and headed straight to the conference on a shuttle. This took a huge amount of time due to some acid leak or something that stopped up traffic...not to mention 140k people in town for the conference. Got to the conference, got the badge, discovered my badge wouldn't let me in anywhere for like 2 hours. I made my way to the monorail which took an inordinate amount of time trying to find in the hilton.

Back to the strip, got some mcdonalds breakfast (probably not a good idea), tried to check in early, then milled around half heartedly looking for a game. This day had an added amount of stress because someone on my team at work (i'm a project manager) was getting laid off that day and I had no idea how they would take it. For this reason I hunted out the free wifi in the venetian food court and tried to assess the situation and calm some people down over skype/email. This was probably where my headache started. 

I then reserved to go back to the conference. Finally got to check some stuff out, mostly Intel, Microsoft, LG, and Motorolla booths, the headache got terrible during this process due to lack of sleep water and sanity.

Made it back to the hotel around 1pm and got checked in early. Finally got a chance to take a nap and some alleve...and that was like heaven. I never thought I'd enjoy sleeping in vegas that much. Also, if you care about sleeping the beds at TI are flipping awesome. Seriously...I've been there twice and hesitate to go anywhere else now. The only ones that come close are at MGM but I still the the TI ones are the best. 

So I finally woke up and went down stairs trying to find a game. No game at TI, walked to the venetian, got on the 4/8 list but my friends came into town before I got a seat. Back to the TI where I decided to start drinking, so i gamed a cocktail waitress (i.e. walk around till you find one taking drink orders and put a buck in a slot machine), got a corona and started feeling a lot better.

After my friends got there we decided to forgoe the conference for that day and hit the tables. For my friends this means blackjack and craps...for me this normally means poker. But when we got downstairs I reserved myself to play a blackjack since they still had $5 min and I was drinking anyways. I won like 40 bucks and we headed out to get Chipotle and meet our other buddy in town.

The night got a little fuzzy after that as we kept drinking...but somehow we ended up at Bally's. This was my suggestion since I knew the game would be soft and they'd have reasonable minimums. We get there and I'm fairly intoxicated but take a seat at 1/2 after like a 20 min wait with just a bill, figuring this will simplify my play as my effective stack will be 50bb. I sit next to a guy who I have a long chat with about the tech world, and places to live in the US, as well as being a musician. It was one of the more enjoyable stranger/poker meetings i've had. I love it when people aren't dicks in a game full of them.

Anyways the table is filled with rocks at the start, but a good aggressive guy eventually shows up. I see him value bet a river against a nit for like 1.3 times the pot...so i figure he's going to gamble. Almost the next hand I get dealt rockets utg, raise it to 5 ONLY because I figured aggro guy who was OTB would want to get more in there. He obliges by iso-raising to 20. I only have like 75 behind at this point so I shove, he calls, I double up.

Practically the same thing happens 10 hands later, I get aces, raise, Short stacker shovs for like 40 with tens, I double up.

At this point my stack is up to like 180 and I had ordered another corona so I figured I'd just leave up as I didn't much feel like playing real poker (also the aggro kid left).

Rest of the night gets even more blurry, and we end up back at the hotel at like 1, mostly due to the fact that we all woke up super early.

Day 2:

Me and my buddy wake up fairly early (at least for the previous nights' activities considered) and our other friend is super hung over and stays in. We grab a bagel sandwhich at the venetian (cafe santa lucia) which was pretty damn good. Hit the monorail to the conference after a 20min wait in line.

The show was freaking awesome! HD Tv's a half inch thick, 3d projectors, practically every company had a new tablet. I wrote some tech blog type stuff at justinces.blogspot.com .

Anyways back to the strip and our friend who was still pretty hung over. We take it easy while we wait for another friend coming into town with her sister who had just turned 21. We hit the strip pretty hard as friend's sis was ready to party. I play a short session at Harrahs and lose 5bucks, but realize the table isn't soft in the least bit. I play probably one hand of note in which I raise AJ LP, get called by two, flop top pair on a scary board and ep leads out for 10. I call as does everyone else, turn completes a small straight, ep checks, i bet 20 into like 40, get min raised, ep check raises to some absurd amount. I fold, and LP calls. River is meaningless, EP checks, LP bets huge, EP calls. Pot was probably 300 or so, EP had aces and LP had straight, but aces cracked got paid 100bucks.

LP and I start talking about the merits of his river bet for value, as well as the merits of EP's actions with the Aces cracked promotion. It's at this point I realize that 80% of this table knows what they are doing...which is not really where I feel like playing on a friday night in vegas.

I leave, go drink some scotches (after I found out that glenfiddich is comped at harrah's owned casinos this is just about all i drank) and we eventually end up at osheas. I take a car bomb, ask the friends if they are going to gamble for a while, and sit down at that 2-6 spread game.

I quickly realize that I can beat this game while shitfaced hammered, so I make it my goal to do so. I play only one real hand of note after 3 hours and something like 4 guiness draughts. On to the hand (it may be fuzzy):

The aggro guy who seems to think he's better than he is button straddles to 3. I find TT utg and pop it to 9, MP dude calls, button raises max to 15 total, I call as does MP. Pot =42 (huge for this game already). Flop comes T77 two clubs. Due to the rare amount of aggression pf I elect to slow play til the turn. I check, MP checks, LP bets 6, i call MP Calls. Turn is the 8 of clubs, and this is probably the best card ever to check, so I do. MP bets, Button raises, I lay the hammer down and raise. Both call and button is all in at this point. I elect to bet blind hoping that the river is a club. It isn't but MP calls anyways. At this point button calls out might hand, and I politely tell him he's correct and he starts to get mad since he had aces. This is easily the biggest hand the table has seen in quite a few hours.

I ride out the rest of the session, finally cash out, somehow get handed a shot of jaeger (ugh) and we stumble off into the night.

Day 3 is uneventful as we are somewhat hungover and have a mid day flight. We get out rather painless and all is well.

I ended up betting on the ravens at some point during the trip as that line was a lock which is a cap on a great trip!

If you got this far you are certainly a champion, and if you're ever in colorado I owe you a beer.

~Justin

(p.s. zimba thanks for the tip on the card runners promotion, i scooped that up for sure!)

I seem to remember blogging an example about getting "2 outered....twice" in my intro blog. That laughably just happened in the last twenty minutes! I really did laugh...and then shut down for the night. Either way since the last report I've mostly just played cash. Had one terrible short session of .25/.50 LHE that dropped me down and I've been grinding it back on rush due to the bonus out now. Almost back to plus since then, down $9 or so. Not a big deal, after rakeback and bonus it'll definitely be plus. 

Also i got a real job...so less poker once again. But no complaints! Definitely lucky at this point in time to even have one (and it's something i'm interested in). 

Well I almost made my hourly goal, and that's ok considering I went to two rockies games and went out 3 nights. I made about 21 dollars and logged almost 18 hours. A lot of this was due to one mtt run deep, the cashing of which won't be in the images since I had to restart my computer during it (grr). I played a lot more rush than I normally do considering I don't normally like rush, but I ran really well so I'm ok with it I guess. SNG's went terribly and i ran incredibly bad on the bubble all over the place, not the worst thing ever but still, it's not my favorite thing especially after starting the week off so well. Oh well. Anyways here are the graphs for the week. The tourney graph would be at 0 if the mtt cash were counted. 

Have played a bit in the last two days. Mostly SNG and Cash, one MTT. 

Results since Sunday:

Total Time: 632 Minutes 

Cash : +3.55

SNG: +9.05

1 MTT: +2.73

Obviously the SNG's didn't go as well as earlier mostly because of simple run bad in normal spots. Meh. Also I ran deep in a tourney but couldn't close it out, then end of those are so swingy and variance loaded it can be a little frustrating. If it weren't for that tourney though the hours wouldn't have been as good i suppose. Meh...back at it tomorrow. 

Well it was a crazy summer, but I've moved back from WA and I'm searching for a job in the Denver area. While that's going on I've been grinding sng/cash at the micros again, finding it just as enjoyable as before :). I spent the summer trying to keep up on 2p2 but not playing at all so I'm sure I'm a little rusty, but two months isn't much I suppose. I guess a goal i'd like to have is to put in 20hrs a week as I probably haven't ever done that and I haven't logged a significant amount of hands in my career online at least. I'll try and keep this updated as a motivation for me. So...

Sunday Aug 22nd

SNG's (2.25 on FT) = 173 min; net = +20.25

Cash (2nl fr on FT) = 80 min ; net = -0.76

Total = 253min ; +19.49

Cash session I played pretty poorly overall, but no real hands of note. SNG's was just a bit of run good and simple decisions (as if there were anything more to beating them). In case you didn't want to do the math, 20 hours is 1200 minutes, so i could use putting in longer days then yesterday. Also, the two games won't ever overlap if I can help it. Hopefully this works out! 

~Justin

I'll be leaving to work at a summer camp in back woods WA for the next two and a half months or so. There may be internet but I doubt i'll have time to blog/play (online is illegal in wa) which is sad :(. After coming back i'll have no job so I suppose I'll have plenty of time for both though. I'm excited for that as I've never had large amounts of time to play before now so we'll see how it goes! I don't plan on becoming a pro or anything though so don't get your hopes up. I honestly think that would ruin the game for me, not to mention make it a lot more stressful rather than fun. Anyways i hope you all have a good summer/wsop!

~Justin

I've realized recently that poker related subjects are on my mind very very often. Which is weird considering that I don't actually play all that often...maybe an average of 5 or 6 hours a week sometimes quite a bit more but only rarely. I probably just enjoy the environment more than anything, or perhaps just the welcome distraction from what seems like every day life. It's fun to day dream that a game could solve all your financial problems...though if it ever did do this I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy the game much.

I played in a 2-10 live game in blackhawk this weekend. Pretty typical terrible play going on. I think i only made one major mistake but still lost a bill...KK<78...AQ<97 (standard obv) I did drag one big pot which was nice...but whatever, I wish i could totally not worry about money like that, but ministry doesn't exactly pay the bills well. Am I hoping it will soon? I'm not even sure about that. Or what I hope at all really. Weird.

I went super deep in the daily dollar last night. Somehow i managed to have 250k chips at one point. My roomate railed me for nearly the entire tourney and was prett depressed when i busted in a standard spot. I shrugged it off after 5 hours of play and barely a score...i was used to this sort of disappointment i later realized. And since i was used to it...it wasn't nearly as dissappointing. dissappointment is a function of misguided expectation. I completely expected to get into a situation in which i might lose all my chips busting for a very little amount. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

Life has been good though. It's really hard to complain about much...and here i sound so emo. Meh, i guess introspection isn't necessarily emo...and it's certainly not a bad thing in moderation.

I have turned my roomates into degenerates.

Or perhaps i've started something to keep them from becoming degenerates.

Over the last week every one of my roomates has gotten insanely interested in online poker. This is primarily due to their recognition of my dominance in the home games we've had. Not only that, they want me to teach them.

So i willingly sit on the couch watching 2nl on stars off of my friend's dirty ass laptop and try to explain to him why open limping just about anything under the gun is a bad idea.

But there is something to all of this really. I really like trying to impart knowledge to others for their benefit. It's interesting to see which tactics work, and how people differ in their learning styles. Also...I am an asshole when it comes to teaching. If you do something stupid, i'm going to let you know it was stupid, so that next time you think about doing it you hear my whiney ass voice somewhere in the back of your mind. Not everyone responds well to this. But not everyone takes it seriously when it's a 2 dollar game.

The other day I opened up 4 3.40 sit and goes on stars and got a 3rd a 2nd and two 1st's. That was sick. Then soon after I won about 45BB playing primarily .25/.50 fl on stars. Small rushes like those keep me coming back. It's nothing to write home about, but it's nice to finally run above expectation for a while.

My roomate sweated my play on stars 5nl today (i don't play this game much but he wants to learn no limit) and I was running pretty good, finding an easy score early with KQs and then getting paid off with aces against TPGK. After a very in depth analysis of a few spots it was time to show him what poker was all about.

A reg who was on both tables I was playing was starting to tilt like nuts after taking a 6% beating (flopped a set vs. TPTK and villain goes runner runner for a bigger boat). He was pushing a 130bb stack preflop like it was nothing. Making sure I noted this to my roomate I was dealt AKs in position vs. villain. He raised pf to 3xbb and I repopped. Sure enough he then 4bet all in for an absurd amount. Stating all the reasons this play was profitable against his range to my curious roomate I called. Villain had AQo, illustrating my point perfectly. The flop came AAQ and I lost my stack. After transfering him 3dollars on stars for pizza the night before, I think he started to really get a better grasp of this whole thing... a 70/30 is simply that...they are just numbers. As long as we distance ourselves from the money the numbers will work out. Emotion is the x factor. And the reason that guy got it all in poorly vs. my hand. Ah poker...you will forever be both a learning tool and an addiction.

So my roomate has a blackjack shoe...

The past two nights i've been fronting the house against my roomates...they've consistently been going way up then losing it all back and more from like 5 hands. Blackjack is the worst game ever...unless you are the house. We're not playing for any real stakes though...just something to do. But man...I just don't understand the allure of playing games like that.

My buddy's birthday was last weekend and we all went to blackhawk. I came mostly to drink and play penny slots...thus eliminating my costs for the drinks. But man do they try hard to not serve you at some casinos. Then a guy with us won 7500 off of a $5 slot on his first and only pull. Crazy. The crazier thing was that they didn't even try to keep him in the casino! No comps, not even an offer for a free room voucher for during the week. I feel like that's just bad business as they let his money just waltz right out of the place.

This all has led me to the conclusion that casinos are some of the most depressing places. I hadn't spent too much time outside of the card room till this past weekend and man...people are seriously degenerates. And that depresses me a lot. For some reason when I see a degenerate poker player type i see a bullseye, but in table games i just feel bad. Poker really does turn on my ultra competitive mode. Meh.

Anyways I lost 3 pots all with aces in omaha hi two nights ago all getting the money in pf. Twice against other aces. Once against kings who made a flush. Omaha pf is so stupid...but the games were playing so loose it was hard not to get a significant pot going.