I thought I'd throw in a couple of exhibits summarising the two 2014 trips:




I am very happy with that result. Probably a bit on the lucky side, although in most of my tables I did see enough basic mistakes to think I might be +EV (after rake and tips).




Clearly $1/$3 is easier than $1/$2... and $1/$1 is unbeatable.

I also have some thoughts on the different rooms I played in:

If I ignore the quality of players for a minute, the best room imvho is The Venetian.
+Good staff
+Good drinks service normally
+Good rake ($4 max)
+$1/$2 rather than $1/$3
+Good comps ($2 per hour and Grand Luxe is a good place to spend it)
+Good hotel to use a poker room rate at
+Comfortable room (feels very safe too FWIW)
+Seemed like the casino actually wanted poker players there
Also, it was by far the most reliable in terms of waiting times. Never had to wait more than 15 minutes due to the number of players there and the staff's willingness to open new tables as soon as they had enough on the list.

Aria, Bellagio and Wynn were also good rooms. I think they share most of the factors above, apart from all $1/$3 and even when they were busy you could wait up to an hour for them to open a new table (even when they had 15 on the list). Also, some tables at Bellagio were right next to the sports room and it could be seriously smoky.

In terms of players, I know it's tiny sample size but I found the best rooms tended to have better players. Aria in particular had the most young European players each of time I either played there or just walked by. Mirage had the oldest players as its reputation suggests, Planet Hollywood had drunk and aggressive young players each time I was there.

To some extent it depends on how you like to play:
It's easier to put "good" players on hands and also easier to get folds from them.
With reckless players like I found at Planet Hollywood, Quad, Mandalay, you have to be prepared to "board the variance train", but clearly you could make more money if you ran OK.
With older players at Mirage and to some extent Monte Carlo, you could typically pick up lots of small pots without getting into too much trouble.

Anyway, just my rambling naïve thoughts.

Thanks for reading!

I find that the best rooms tend to have deeper stacks. When I play at places like Excalibur or Monte Carlo, I frequently see stacks of less than $100. Last time I played at Monte Carlo I bought in for $300 and had at least $100 more in front of me than the rest of the table.

And in those games the raises are often smaller. A raise to $7 will be a large raise in those games.

It makes me feel like I'm in a smaller game. I also think it can make those places seem less intimidating. The players with those shorter stacks can be really bad, but being short is a good move on their part. When I stack them I'll only win around $50-$150 off them instead of something like $250-$450.

If the stacks are deeper then the games are better in those places.

I'm also starting to think that Aria has the nittiest games (in general, as each table is different).

But I'd still tell people to not worry about this too much.

Track hours played in your spreadsheet (round to nearest 15 minutes is what I do). Dividing by # sessions played means nothing.

I would definitely agree that the smaller rooms have more short-stacks. Often the short-stacks are the worst players but it is easy to make the mistake of not noticing how short they are and committing in a pot you didn't really want them to.

My average session is about 2 hours (I know that's very short by most people's standards). So I guess my hourly is about $15 if that helps. I'm not going to play poker professionally, so I don't need anything that accurate - it's already a bit over the top that I record the result of each session.

Just come back from this year's trip with the wife, arriving Wed 18th November and staying 8 nights.
(This was my 5th trip to Vegas.)

First four nights we stayed at Bellagio which we hadn't been to before.
Price was $142 per night or $195 after including tax and resort fee.
Not too bad considering that we had the weekend days in that.

Last four nights were a short walk away at Aria.
Got a similar deal to last year via SmarterVegas, which was $101 per night or $149 all in, but included a $50 resort credit per day (can be used at Bellagio too).


Some goals for the trip:
1) Make a profit from the poker
2) Wife make a profit from the poker
3) Put in longer poker sessions (previously I average about 2 hours per session which is very low I know!)
4) Try some limit poker
5) Play poker in the Orleans (never been there before)
6) Try the automated poker at the Plaza
7) Tick off remaining rooms on the strip I haven't tried before (Luxor, Excalibur)
8) Visit Red Rock Canyon or Valley of Fire (have never left the city on previous trips!)
9) Play on The Trooper's table at the Linq
10) Get some free stuff from MyVegas

Day 1 (Wednesday)

10.5 hr. flight was pretty smooth, other than the fact that I woke up with a bad back.

Pic of the lunch:



Movie/TV pics - I'll be impressed if you can guess all of three...






Arrived at Bellagio about 4:30 and tried the $20 trick.
Was given a fountain view which seemed like it would be worth it:








However, after sitting down for 2 minutes, we could hear every word of the conversation of the people in the adjoining room. It was like the connecting door was made of paper. So we called down and asked for a quiet (non-connecting) room.
What was quite good was that they gave us a room very close (same floor, few doors down but on the non-fountain side). Also, they said we could just go straight there since the card was automatically reset to that room. Pretty neat.


Room 2 view was still fine for us, but obviously the $20 was wasted!




There were still some problems though - there was an intermittent beep from the minibar and blood stains on the sheet, one of the towels and a dressing gown. After some complaints we got a $50 resort credit and some posher dressing gowns - but you would think somewhere like the Bellagio would check that linens looked clean?


We headed down to Noodles for some dinner before calling it a night (jetlag taking its toll):

I hope you rungood!

Thanks!

Day 2 (Thursday):


Random picture of the view in the morning:



Had a very lazy morning in the room (including ordering breakfast), then went down to the buffet for lunch:



The food was pretty mediocre to be honest.
However I had a 2-for-1 voucher from MyVegas so it wasn't too bad overall.

After lunch my wife went to the Bellagio poker room.
I like the Bellagio poker room but we very rarely play in the same room. She feels more pressure if I'm there and get more stressed watching her hands than I do playing mine. You can normally get different tables but I prefer just to go for a stroll to another room.

So I took the "secret route" to Aria and then kept walking south.
The secret route isn't very secret (it's via the conservatory) but the key is not to use the tram and instead walk through Vdara:





When I got to Excalibur they only had a seat at the 2-6 spread limit game.
This was a bit of a bonus because I wanted to try some limit and I had never played at Excalibur before.
I was in for $180 and out for $191 after a session of just over 3 hours:



I even managed to get a couple of $5 bluffs through.
It was a pretty relaxing way to get cheap drinks so I'd consider doing it again, particularly if running bad in NL and wanting to take it easy.

I went on to Luxor to cash in a MyVegas voucher for tomorrow night and while I was there I played a couple of machines:

Closest I got to a royal flush:


The heads up poker machine still loves bluffing (I think I'm 4/4 against this guy now):



On the way back I grabbed a picture and a couple of burgers:





Fatburger is always pretty good.

Back was starting to kill me so I had another early night (boring!).

Keep the nice pics coming!

Better Call Saul

Jurassic World

Spy

I got the first two (assumed it was Saul and not BB) but had no idea at the third.

Will do! Pity about the words though hehe...

I am impressed.
Didn't think you'd get the Spy one...


...Day 3 (Friday), morning:

Morning sunrise:



I had some time to kill while waiting for the wife to get ready so I sat down at Bellagio. Bought in for $180 (I tend to start off a bit slow).

Table was pretty good, and I chipped up to just over $230 fairly quickly.

Then the following hands happened:

Hand 1:

In SB with 22.

3 limpers and I complete, BB checks.

Flop is 632 for my first set of the trip!!!

I bet $8 into $15.
Folds to the button who calls.

Turn is 6
I bet $15 and button raises to $45.
Not crazy about this raise. I should be good but I do have bottom set and this raise suggests he might have more than straight and/or flush draws.
I call the extra $30.

River is 4

I check and button bets $50. I call and he shows 63o for the better full house.
It's a limped pot so I guess "it is what it is".
I wasn't particularly surprised he had 63 - I was probably about 50% confident to win when calling the river.

Hand 2:

Immediately after this hand I'm on the button with ~$125.
3 limpers and I bet $15 with AA

3 callers so pot is $64 and I have $110 behind.

Flop is KJ4

Checks to me and I bet $50.
Folds to late position who raises all-in.
I call and they show KJ for top two, which holds.

Not sure there's too much I can do about this one, absent specific reads (which I'm terrible at!).
In hindsight maybe I could have raised to $20 pre-flop, but then on the other hand if I had done that and everyone folded I would have criticised myself for not betting $15!

-$180 in just less than an hour. Not a great start to the trip, but never mind.

Wife would be ready soon I decided to kill 10 minutes playing VP.
Hit a few nice hands but by no means covered my poker loss:



Wife is now ready, so we try Lago, the new Italian restaurant at Bellagio.
I'm not a huge fan of the fact that all B restaurants apart from Noodles don't show prices on their menus outside... but I ask for a copy of the actual menu and it isn't too bad for lunch.

We both go for the 3 course lunch, which was $28 each. Some pics:



Decent value.
Wouldn't order the meatballs again but other than that the food was good and you get a great view.

Day 3, part 2:

After lunch I wandered down the strip and found a $1/$1 game starting at the Linq. I was hoping to meet the Trooper but was told he only works from 8pm.



Bought in for $150 and chipped up to $250 over the next 2.5 hours or so.
Then I flopped my second set for the trip!!

In a pot with a small raise pre, I had 66 on a 6TQ flop.
Other player with ~$200 bets, I raise, he re-raises all in and shows 9J

So I was about 60:40 to win.
I was a bit relieved he didn't have a higher set given the action but still not great to see OESFD.

Turn is a brick but river brings a diamond.
Maybe I don't want to flop sets

Cash out after 3.5 hrs total for -$80, so -$249 for the trip so far.


After that I had to run over to Tender steakhouse at Luxor for dinner.
It had decent rather than great reviews but I had a $75 voucher from MyVegas so that convinced me.

I tried my first wagyu Kobe-style beef ($85) and we also ordered the sirloin bison ($35) for variety and cheapness:



The bison was "OK" but I was really impressed by the wagyu. Tasted a bit like bone marrow. Really nice. I can see why people pay so much for them.

Quick pic from the walk over:

Great stuff DW, enjoying the trip very much

Bellagio's attitude: If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.

If you didn't know, there's a tram connecting Excal to Mandalay Bay, which has a very nice restaurant row. They have the place with the wine angels and also the place with the giant boobs on the wall, among others.

Thanks for sticking it to the heads up machine, go #teamhumans!

I just stumbled across this thread and noticed this pic, love the Vic, love there chips (they used to have different £5 chips for the poker room similar to the 25s)

anyway, love the reports keep up the good work

Your support is much appreciated.

Hehe. I think it's more cynical than that: "we can charge $2 more per item as long as we don't tell them up front".

Worse than that though... even once we'd sat down at the restaurant, they gave us the food menu and then very proudly gave us a tablet to choose drinks from.
They had all sort of information about each drink... apart from its price!
I had to ask how much a beer was - they went away to check and when they came back they told me "normally between $10 and $24". So I ordered water.


I have taken it once before, maybe Luxor to Excalibur. But it was pretty slow so I gave up this time.


I never play for very long though. Just buy in for $20 and play a few hands. So clearly I don't fancy my chances.


Day 4 (Saturday) - morning:

Woke up very early again (jetlag) and spend a couple of hours in bed watching my favourite ever series:



Any guesses?



It was still early, so we walked down to my favourite buffet in Vegas, the Venetian Grand Luxe breakfast.

I don't think I'll get much agreement with this one - it isn't very snazzy and doesn't have much variety.
But what it does have is great OJ, sausages, eggs, omelette, fruit.
Because there aren't many options the food is really fresh.

Some quite crappy pictures below:



Then I went to the poker room at Venetian and as ever got a table quite quickly.

Bought in for $170 and quickly lost $100 after I flopped TPTK with AK against someone who successfully slow-played a set.

(Flopping sets not working well for me looks like it may become a feature of this trip. )

What was particularly helpful was that afterwards the two players to my right discussed loudly about how obvious the other player had a set and that he was "hollywooding all the way".

I don't have any other notes which probably means I played quite badly if I'm honest.
In any event I lost the remaining $70 to go down -$419 for the trip so far.
Not disastrous by most people's standards but for a nit like me a bit difficult to recover from.

Rather than rebuying I went for a walk to the Wynn. While waiting for a seat, VP continued to be kind to me:



However I'm starting to realise how little I know about how to play "deuces wild".

E.g. I didn't initially realise how different the payout was to the machine I played the day before (and I don't know which is better?!).
And when I hit two deuces - should I have held the two fives as well or tried to hit 4 deuces (or something else)?

What you've got there has a payback with perfect play of 97.06%. The one you hit the wild royal on is 97.09%, basically the same. Here's the strategy for the 97.06%:

http://wizardofodds.com/games/video-...0-d-200-d-800/

You hold a four-of-a-kind with two wilds or fewer, so you made the right play. Deuces Wild strategy is pretty intuitive, which is why the paytables are worse, most people approach perfect play without putting much effort into it.

seinfeld reference? 5* !

good luck on the comeback trail

Great trip report! I really enjoy following along.

Enjoying

Courtesy of a recent plane journey myself! (It was a perfect 90-minute guilty pleasure film)

Great TR btw.

I've only been to the Vic once actually, but it seemed pretty good for London.
I say "for London" because it isn't 10% as fun or relaxing as playing in Vegas.
The only place I've found nice people playing at in London is the Cromwell Mint, but they are only good for tournaments.
Thanks for the nice comment too!

That's some good knowledge - I'll have to do some research before I go next.

Thanks for all the nice comments above.

I found it pretty funny. Jason Statham was very good.



Day 4 (Saturday) part 2:

...Struggled to get a seat at the Wynn so I tried my luck at TI and sat down straight away at their only table ($1/$3).

I could tell right away that the table was good.


To my left I had 4 players who knew each other (from somewhere like Sri Lanka?) but very little about poker.
They were told off for string betting a few times, and played most hands to showdown with 2nd pair being a typical winning hand.

To my right were 3 middle- to old- aged Americans who knew a bit more about what they were doing but they were also very passive in pots.


You need to find some hands against these guys though. For the first half hour or so, I couldn't find anything and was down from my initial $200 to $150 or so.


Then I looked down at pocket queens and managed to get it all in pre-flop against someone who was sitting on about $130.
Normally I would have to think twice about "stacking off" for 65-75 BBs with QQ, but against this table it was a no-brainer.

One of the other players had an "agonising" fold before showing 66.

The player who did call showed 77.

Luckily my queens held up (although a 6 did appear, which upset the folder ).

So I was back up to about $300 and won a few small pots on top of this to take me to $330 or so.


The next key hand was when I was in late position and limped with 79

Five players to the flop, which came K68
(pot = $15)

Checked to me, I bet $8 and get two callers, one of which is the button.

Turn is 2
(pot = $39)

Checked to me, I bet $15 and the button calls but other player folds.

River is K
(pot = $69)

This gives me the flush but pairs the board.
I bet $30 and the button raises to $85.

Against good players I'm starting to feel pretty bad about this - full house is possible, as is a higher flush.
But against these guys?
Another no brainer - trip kings seemed most likely, and I even thought about re-raising.
But being a nit I just quickly called and he showed K10.

This was a good table...

I stayed around for a while longer but the bad players gradually lost their chips (after rebuying 3 or 4 times for the minimum) and my wife was ready to meet up. So I cashed out +$282 after just less than 3 hours.



Puts me back to a much happier -$137 for the trip.


We took the short walk to Fashion Show Mall and spent a while shopping.

Cool name for a shop:



Blurry view of Palazzo from just outside FSM:




For dinner we went to one of our favourites, Canonita at Venetian.
Food is good and not too expensive and the Mojito there is one of my favourites:



The 15% off with Grazie card still seemed to be working as well.

Nice session at TI. What time of day was it? I usually see just promo grinders when I go there.