Who: mid 30s, single. Played a lot online back in the day, was 8 tabling plo200 and plo400 when black friday hit. Largest live payout was 1st place in a $100 Caesar's Palace daily for $3500 way back when daily tournaments had 40 minute levels and over a hundred players, so probably 10 years ago maybe?

But since I live in Texas, I've played essentially no poker for the past 6 years other than 3 short trips to Vegas since 2011.

So, strong amateur player, but rusty, and with absolutely no idea of current meta.

What: This trip is centered around the WSOP Event 18, the $565 PLO tourney sometimes dubbed PLO Colossus. I played this event last year as my first WSOP event ever and I busted about 15 minutes before the tournament went hand-hand and they hit the money. Losing at that time has bugged me all year long and this summer's trip is all about redemption.

WSOP Budget = $1500. That gives me 2 bullets for PLO, 1 for the 11am flight A, and one for the 4pm flight B. And as a backup, if I bust early in both, I'll drop $365 for event 19 the Giant that started at 7pm. This would be kind of silly since making day 2 of the Giant would mean I'd have to book an unplanned trip later this summer when that tourney starts up again in July - but if the goal is to cash, Giant will reach the money on day 1, so goal could still be met, and I'll worry about day 2 when the time comes.

Other Budget = $2500. Cash games, tournaments, shows, tours, clubs, whatever. I don't really expect to come anywhere near spending this much since I prefer playing lowest limit games possible and eating at cheap spots. But its there just in case.

Where: Vegas ldo. Staying downtown because downtown vegas is awesome. I avoided it for so long because of some perceived stigma, but I finally tried it out last summer and I'll keep staying there in the future. I love the vibe on Fremont St, how close everything is, cheap table games, everything.

When: Arrive late Tuesday night, 6/6 - depart early Saturday morning 6/10. (At least that's when my plane ticket was originally booked for. A shrewd reader may realize at this point that the PLO event starts Friday 6/9 and is a 3 day tourney. My ticket would have me leave before day 2 even starts.) There are 3 main factors here. 1. I need a few days in vegas before the tournament to play some cards and get back in the swing of things, shake out the cobwebs. 2. I can always change the flight and add another hotel if I make day 2 but if I dont make day 2 and bust out, I'll probably be sufficiently dejected to not want to stay extra days so leaving soon after the loss is probably best. 3. Of my 2 cats, one is extremely finicky about having a clean litterbox. Every day that goes by without it being emptied significantly increases the risk of her deciding 'nope, too messy, i'm taking my business elsewhere' and she'll find a nice cozy corner to make her new toilet. She hasn't done this in a few years...but I also haven't left her alone for more than 4 days in a few years, so I can't be sure whether she's grown out of it or if I always make it back just in time.


Why: Here are my goals
1. Cash in a WSOP event
2. Eat at as many restaurants recommended in the Casual Dining thread as I can.
3. Do some touristy stuff so it's not just 24/7 poker.
4. Don't lose too much at craps.

^GL on the last goal, you could always happen to run good at craps.

Get to the rideshare pickup spot at McCarren Airport around 11pm Tuesday night. Open up my phone and discover that in the year since I last used uber/lyft there are new options for shared rides at cheaper prices. And since lyft was giving me 10% off my next 10 rides. LyftLine it is.

-$10 Lyftline to....


If you haven't spent time downtown, I would describe The D as the downtown vegas version of Planet Hollywood.

+Standup tiled shower (instead of bathtub). This is maybe the biggest selling point for me as compared to other cheap hotels.
+Recently renovated and modern feel
+Generally young clientele
+only $33/night weeknights (obviously not including resort fee)

.loud music in the casino and scantily clad women dancing on pedestals

-Right next to one of the Fremont St. music stages, so even on the 29th floor, it's damn loud in the room up until about 1am. (probably won't be an issue)
-Distance from strip. Most of my play this trip will be on the strip, so I'll have to lyft back and forth everyday.

___________________________

All checked in. About midnight. Room is way too loud to sleep and I'm amped up anyway. Let's get some food!

Check my notes from the casual dining thread...downtown recommendations are unfortunately closed right now. Maybe could go over to Main St. Station's 777. But nah.

For 4th meal, I decide to eat at:


This restaurant was mentioned very few times in casual dining thread, most recently with a simple "nacho daddy sucks", but it was pretty highly reviewed on google or wherever and I like nachos, so whatever, I'm goin.

-$21 BBQ Pulled Pork Nachos, PBR draft, tax/tip



It was just ok. I could have actually done with more cheese and less pork. The onion straws were surprsingly good. Wouldn't have thought crunchy thing on crunchy tortilla strips would be a good combo, but that was probably the best part.

It's about 1am Tues night/wed am, time to test that 'dont lose too much at craps goal' so I head over to Fremont which often has $3 craps tables. My favorite part of playing here though is they have a digital counter at the table that displays how many rolls the shooter has thrown.

Tonight they are only $5 tables though. Uh oh.



I've got an early day planned tomorrow and 2am vegas time is 4am Texas time so I'm ready for bed. Head back to the D. While walking through the casino, there's a lot of cheering from the craps table...



In bed around 3am.
Day 1 totals:

In.

1. Is the other cat named Firefly?
2. Are there decent (basic, clean) and quiet rooms DT at that price? Or is the tradeoff quiet vs cheap?
3. At some point (perhaps at end), I'll ask about poker rooms DT vs Strip. NLHE and PLO. I went to V twice last year, never even made it DT.
4. I've played live 2 years, 3-4x/week, never once dropped a dime on table games. Was with a buddy on the w/e, waiting for a table, put 20 on craps, ran it up to 80, lost it all. But fun! Now I'm debating if I need a new line on my spreadsheet to account for what will clearly be an ongoing leak. I'm so ****ed.

heard the D was nice like you described for the $$.

also, im not much of a craps degen besides betting the pass line with max odds but even if the table is $3 or lets say $5 since its whats available as of now, are you actually capping your bets at 5$? i will start at minimum but depending on how i am doing i am usually at 3-5x min wager at least

1. The other cat is Indiana, but you call him Dr. Jones, doll.
2. Loudness all depends on which side of hotel you are facing. Last summer I stayed at the D and faced east (towards El Cortez) and it was perfectly quiet. It's just the west side (facing 4 queens) that is above the stage and loud. I'm not sure if you can guarantee which side you'll get in advance, but you can probably request this at checkin and get the side you want. In the future I'll request an east facing room.
3. Golden Nugget and Binions are the only 2 rooms downtown (i think). golden Nugget is on the bravo app so you can check the games on there. Golden Nugget actually did have PLO running on Tuesday night and I stopped by before going to play craps, but with only 1 table and a few names ahead of me on the list, I waited a half hour and nobody left their seat so I wasn't gonna sit there all night waiting.

They do still have $3 tables during the day. They just up them to $5 in the evenings. Sort of like how strip properties will have $10 tables in the day and up them to $25 in the evenings.

Re: odds vs min bets - I have more fun betting on more numbers instead of betting max odds. Example, suppose I make a $3 pass line bet. If I'm deciding where to bet my next $15, I would much rather place 5 $3 come or place bets and be able to win with lots of different numbers instead of putting it all on the odds and winning more money on only a single number. Though in reality, I usually do a combo of both, put 1-2x odds down and then come or place bets on 2-3 other numbers.

The EV difference in each case is pretty negligible. taking the odds is marginally higher, but literally only by a few cents. come bets only cost like 1 cent per dollar. place bets like 3 cents per dollar. The fun value of winning on lots of numbers is well worth it.

Alarm goes off at 6:30am. Nice little 3 and a half hours of sleep but I got a full day planned. Out the door around 7:30, cross the street to Walgreens to grab a soda, head to Dunkin Donuts to grab a donut. -$5 for breakfast. I'm failing at 'eat at recommended restaurants goal' but a lot of places don't open until 8am and that would have been too late.

So - I'm off to meet my ride at 8am.



-at $99, this is probably the most expensive non helicopter tour of the Hoover Dam.
+BUT, I'm buying time with that. It's also the shortest tour. Most tours advertise 5-6 hour length because they shuttle you to a bus, so you've got a little extra time in there during the transfer. By contrast, Pink Jeep advertised 4 hours door to door, and I'd much rather get back at noon than 1 or 2pm.

Number of people who made "take all the dam pictures you want" joke:



I was a little disappointed that with the tour group trips you can only do the Powerplant Tour, there's no option to do the Dam Tour that visits more of the dam including a chance to look out the face, but whatever, I didn't want to deal with a rental car, so this is the best I could do.

Highlight of the Tour:



Most Disappointing part of the tour:



Legit scary part of the tour:


Plan for the day is as much time playing PLO Cash games as I can spare to make sure I didn't forget how to play plo. Plan for tomorrow is going to be as many NLH daily tournaments as I can fit in to get used to the clock and blinds going up and all that stuff.

I let the driver know I'll get off at MGM Grand with the others instead of going back downtown...

Noon Wednesday - only had a donut for breakfast - that means lunch time. I'm at MGM Grand. Time to go to the casual dining thread and find a good recommendation:



This place is awesome. This place may be closer to fast food than casual dining, but they do cook everything to order and I had to wait about 10 minutes for my food, so I don't think it really qualifies as a fast food joint.

The sandwich was awesome. The honey chile sauce was great. The waffle quality was excellent. Thin and crunchy. They would not be great breakfast waffles to eat by themself, but for the sandwich, they are perfect.

I really strongly recommend Bruxie for lunch if you are in the south strip area. I kinda wish I had gone back the next day since I wanted to try their Nashville Chicken sandwich also.

________

Alright, time for some PLO. I've been checking bravo app and Flamingo has actually been running a 1-1 plo game regularly, and the past couple days it's started around 1pm. I start walking towards Aria which definitely has plo going. Get to Aria...Flamingo has 6 on the list of interest...lets risk it.

Keep walking to Flamingo.

Take a break at a "Half Price Tix Tonight" booth and pickup tickets for [spoiler] tonight and [spoiler] tomorrow.

Arrive at Flamingo around 12:50.

Risk backfired, PLO is not running yet at Flamingo. Oh well, they have a 1pm daily tournament going on and I'm not up for continuing on to Wynn or going back to Aria.

With 15 minute levels and a lot of shallow levels this thing got shallow real fast. Started with 3 tables, I lasted about 2 hours, was close to final table but not quite.

AJ < KK and I'm out.

_____

And double whammy - the PLO table had started up during the tournament, but already broke and now there are 0 names on the interest list.

****

_____

I've got dinner plans but there's a little bit of time to kill. I hear there's a basketball game tonight, NBA finals, game 3....

Walk over to Harrah's sportsbook since I'll be back here tomorrow. The line on the Warriors Cavs game is only 3.5 points huh...


_______

Have a little time to kill before heading back downtown for dinner. Walk over to Casino Royale...


________

Lyft back to the D for dinner at...



I no longer recommend this show. Last summer I went and sat with a couple super hot girls and it was a lot of fun. I now realize that the girls were fun, this show is horrible.

The meal is awful. The jokes are lame. And even though they advertise that they change the show every 3 months so you can go back again...it's still 90% the same. Clue #1 is a business card with handwriting on the back that you can match to somebody's nametag. Ok so what if the person doing the writing is different, it's still like essentially exactly the same thing.

__________

show's over, I wonder how that basketball game is going, head down to the long bar and check out the tv screens.



effin A. I can't watch this anymore. Guess that's a hundred bucks down the drain.

Let's head back to the strip, still have 1 more ticket for a show tonight.

I kind of love how this isn't in a spoiler tag.

+1 for Bruxie. Their waffles have a nice crisp to them.

Sent from my ZTE A2017U using Tapatalk

But it is an awesome bathroom. Probably the nicest public can I've ever seen.

MOAR?!

Lyft drops me off at MGM Grand.

NBA Finals is probably over by now right? Cavs were up by like 8 just a few minutes ago. Let's see how much I lost by...


_________
Already gave it away maybe, but I'm here at MGM Grand for a show...



Here was my seat. It's not very close, in fact, its pretty damn near the back, and all the way to right, right next to the main entrance. But it ended up being a super awesome seat for trying to figure out what was going on for several reasons. 1. Nothing was behind me or to the side, everything was in front, even the stuff that happened inside the audience. 2. I was right next to the entrance, and there were always workers there on walkie talkies or whatever calling out stuff that was about to happen or had just happened to cue other people to do whatever they were suposed to do. At first that was pretty damn annoying, but after a little while I kind of appreciated it.


I have so far been using spoilers pretty heavily, but really just for suspense.

The next spoiler is legit spoiler. I'm gonna talk about his tricks. I probably don't really know anything and am likely super off on all my guesses, but nonetheless, if you don't want to know what tricks he does then don't click this spoiler.



Alright, nuff of that. This is supposed to be a poker trip after all. And today was supposed to be PLO training day and I haven't played any plo.

To the WYNN!

Walk around for about 10 minutes and can't find a poker room anywhere. Bravo app clearly indicates 2 tables of 1-2 PLO running at Wynn though.

At Encore, I find out that there's actually 3 tables running, but table 3 is playing 5 handed and is a must move.

As I arrive, a player gets pulled to the main game, so we are still 5 handed.

Game also is playing larger than expected, it's 1-2, but it's a $5 table, so under the gun can raise up to $15, which is a little higher than I was hoping to play seeing as this is my first PLO in a year.

But I'm here, let's do this.



I'm on the button with Axxx, suited ace.
Middle position raises to $15.
Hero calls.
Blinds fold.
Flop:


And with that, floor comes and tells us that we need to move.

I think we're all getting places in the main game for some silly reason.

No, we're just playing out in the tournament area, and there's an empty table in the main room, so we are getting pulled in there.

Rack up my chips and head to:



The size of the game isn't a problem. I've $900 on me so that's 3-4 buyins. The problem is we're playing 5 handed and this is not helping me practice for the wsop tournament where I'll be playing 8-9 handed, I expect to see more players per flop and more showdowns. I asked some of the other players, and they said they'd been at the must move for awhile. It wasn't turning over very quickly.

Let's try Flamingo again. There's only 1 table and bravo shows a lengthy list, but maybe they'll open up a second table?

eff Flamingo

this place has the absolute worst list management I have ever encountered in a casino.

I was 12th on the list when I arrived. only 1 table open. the table had an open seat.

30 minutes later...


now there are 2 open seats.

I take a seat at 2-4 limit at least to kill time while I wait. It's torture though because my table is right next to the plo game.

Finally the 4th person on the list takes the seat...but of course there is STILL an open seat.

It's around 12:30 now. At this pace, even if not a single person on the wait list is here (which there might not be, there's nobody sitting around, though they could be at other tables like me), but yea, even if nobody takes those seats, it'll still take until 2am before they get to my name.


There was probably only 15 minutes during that whole time when the table was full. Literally for hours there was a seat open and they were just waiting to give everyone a full 10 minutes to take the seat before they called the next person on the list.

like, just thinking back to this still makes me mad right now just typing this up.

absolutely ridiculous that it takes an hour to get through a 6 person waiting list when none of them are even in the building anymore.

Anyway, I finally get seated at a now full table of 1-1 plo at 1:45am. I just move my $100 stack over from 2-4 limit so I've got $100 in front of me. Probably 2 players have less and are pretty short. The other 6 all have me covered and biggest stack is around $500. While I would be happy to buyin for the max against these players, I want to play a little shorter to be at least somewhat representative of the stack to pot ratios I'm likely to see in the wsop.

first notable hand

$2 button straddle
sb call
bb call
Hero has AAxx utg

folds to button

Hero:




_____________

Skip ahead to last hand of the night.

Stack Sizes:
SB: $?
BB: $?
UTG: $100 (table image = even tighter than me)
UTG+1 (Hero): $125 (table image = tight)
UTG+2: $500 (loose aggressive)
Button: $300 (same player as I went in with AAxx vs KKxx earlier, though he's moved to a new seat. he is on tilt plays most hands, has rebought several times)

UTG: Raise to $4
Hero: Call
UTG+2: Raise to $18
Button call
SB fold
BB fold
UTG: All-in for $100 (very fast)
Hero: all-in for $125 (after about 10 seconds)
UTG+2: "wtf am i even doing in this hand". call $125 (after about 30 seconds)
Button: call $125 (pretty much instantly)
UTG: (at this point somebody points out that utg couldn't have gone all in, the pot was too small at that point, everybody in the hand just says 'whatever' so UTG now calls all-in for $100, and we just hand wave it and move on.

Main pot is a little under $400
Side pot has about $80.

SB and BB place $20 side bets on which of UTG vs Hero has AAxx

You can go ahead and place your bets now...





Flop:

Turn:

River:


UTG flips:


Hero has:


UTG+2 has:


Button has:




And with that, it's time for bed.


Lyft back to the D. In bed around 4:30am.

Plan for tomorrow - tournaments all day.

Totals after Day 2



Goal 3 (do touristy stuff)

I didn't know you could play PLO with $100, at any steaks.

The game at the Flamingo is 1-1 blinds. I think the min buy-in is actually like $50. You can straddle on the button for $2, which puts action on the sb first preflop. About half the table was straddling.

but the non-straddled hands, were legit 1-1. Even after a couple limpers a pot sized bet was still only like $6.

If it weren't for the whole wait list taking a million years thing, I would really recommend this game to somebody who wants to try out plo but the aria/wynn games play bigger than they are comfortable.

(Note: Harrahs also has a list of interest for this 1-1 plo game, but during my trip it never quite got started. Thursday I did stop by there and ask about it since they had 7 on the interest list, but their room is small and every table was in use so they couldnt start up a new table even if they wanted to.)

Enjoying this TR

Always good to get reports on shows, trips etc as well as just the poker.

Bally's is probably a good place to try this also. They have a lot of tables and have dealt PLO before. But you would have to bring enough people with you to start a game.

$100 PLO steaks are usually rare

Up at 8am. I'm a morning person and I don't wanna miss anything. Plus I love breakfast, and yesterday I was very disappointed to have only grabbed donuts. Out the door at 8:45.

By foot, arrive at breakfast destination around 8:55. That's clue 1.

Here's clue 2:
Clue 3:


Answer:


This place is awesome. I absolutely recommend it. It's about 3-4 blocks south of the Plaza. Even coming from The D which is at the other end of Fremont St. Experience, only about a 10 minute walk, 15 tops. And you can do half the walk in the shade under the dome.

So, what did I order you ask?



duuuuuuuuude, you gotta get this thing.

Start off by making yourself 2 pieces of french toast.
Then spread peanut butter on 1 piece, and nuttella on the other.
On the peanut butter piece, add a sliced banana
On the nuttella piece, add a few pieces of bacon
Now slap em together like a sandwich and cut into triangles.
top with powdered sugar and a handful of strawberries

keanu_woah.jpg . Yea. I know.

They serve it with syrup...Nope that's 1 flavor too many. I tried a bite with syrup and that was literally the straw the broke the camels back of flavor overload.

But without the syrup - right up there with best breakfasts I've ever had. The peanut butter and nutella are creamy enough so the dish doesn't taste dry even without syrup.

Bacon, banana, peanut butter, french toast, you can't go wrong. Probably didn't need the nuttella - but why not.

If you are downtown for breakfast you gotta go to MTO Cafe and get the Fat Elvis.

_____________
double check the website, yep, Caesar's Palace still shows a 10am, $100 tourney with a pretty good structure for a daily.

In the Lyft at 9:30am heading to Caesar's Palace.