Hey wow, two weeks later...
I'm not doing my usual huge narrative for this trip, but I did want to do a little bit of closure for this one.
This was a last-minute trip which was inspired by some major issues in the life-tilt department. Since I found myself with free time and it was most def on the cheap, I jumped at it although I had some reservations about how I would fare in what can be the loneliest city in America if you're bumming out about stuff.
Anyway, here's a key points wrap up (rather than my daily play-by-play):
2+2 Meetup: I was super groggy and starving when I got to South Point so I opted not to play poker but I got to meet a lot of folks, including DSB and TO, who are awesome and inspired mad jealousy in me because their lives are crazy rungood. I don't really discuss it on the board here, but I'm a writer and I'm currently working on a book telling the stories of people involved in gambling, from poker players to casino staff to lottery junkies, so this was a great opportunity to meet some folks and trade contact info to get some stories. (PS, some people owe me private messages, hint, hint.) I wish I had caught the name of the very nice gentlemen who provided me my favorite laugh of the evening, when he asked if we wanted to get a game going "anything but boring old Hold'em" and I suggested Swingo:
At which point her pointed to his head, made exploding sounds, and walked away.
Food was great, thanks to the 2+2 team for the hospitality. Also, I kind of love South Point.
Poker: overall, really wasn't bad but felt bad. I am not going to break down too many individual hands because it would be a lot of bad beat stories. I was in an awful variance downswing which quickly became exhausting and not a lot of fun. Strong games I cashed big but in between were so many 1 or 2 BI loss sessions that it became very easy to feel like I was getting killed when in actuality I was doing fine. I track sessions pretty meticulously but in my overall life tilt state it still felt like I was getting the crap kicked out of me.
Part of the problem was that I ended up at PH and Flamingo a lot because it was very difficult to game select into my favorite games when Bellagio and Aria were running huge wait lists. (I should say that PH games especially weekends are the total nuts and I really love the night staff at PH and appreciate that fact that some of them remember me from trip to trip when I'm not really in Vegas all that often. Not so much Flamingo, which I'm feeling pretty negative on these days.) I never got the timing down to get a seat at the B until 4 days in, which was really frustrating. I'm on record as saying that the B's 2-5 game is my favorite, and once I finally got in, that $2400 run in 4 hours was sick, a great combination of run good and excellent play in my ideal state.
So, a vote-getter for favorite hand of the trip: For those who've never played there, the B does this weird thing if you take your seat right as the blinds pass you where you post in and still have the blinds post. Therefore I was first to act and look down at pocket sixes, when one of the larger stacks at the table raises. I call and flop my set into a two-spade Q high board. In this situation I frequently bet out immediately to set up my turn play, especially if I'm new to a table. Original raiser flats, which to me screams AQ/KQ/QJ. Having a set OOP here is pretty much perfect. J no spade comes off on the turn, which is exactly what I want, because I can play this like I'm on a flush draw and check, get the original raiser to try to win the pot. He complied with a $100+ bet and I shove, he tank calls, A of spades come on the river and I flinch for a moment hoping my evaluation of the situation was good and the set wins. Within 2 orbits I'd stacked two more people and basically cruised my way to the huge win. For some reason it just seems like people in the B 2-5 game, even deceptive players, play their hands face up and it is, for my game, a highly exploitable situation.
Worst hands--gah, I had plenty of bad play this trip but having flopped full houses counterfeited twice was epically sad. The second time was at a very loose-passive 1-3 cash game at the Rio full of people who will drop $10K to play the main event but never play cash higher than 1-3. I flopped J99 with J9 on the button in a limped pre-flop pot a guy in a blind hit runner-runner queens to make a better full house. Thankfully, that pot was cheap, as was my first pot at Aria where I raised with AA, bet the flop (all rags), got a call, bet again when the turn came a K, got a call, and then check/called the river J so guy could roll over KJ.
Waaah, I'm a crybaby. Looking back on it, I think the B game and the crazy late-night PH 1-2 game full of 2+2 lurkers were insanely fun and actually felt like real, challenging poker, and when on life tilt I need challenges to distract my mind, which is why I play in tougher games better. (Also, I move up in stakes so they respect my raises.*)
*No, I don't.
Blackjack: I have gone from very very infrequent BJ noob to it being my second game in the last few months, to the detriment of keeping my focus on poker. I blame the baller style of Neb and his TRs. At any rate, my home poker room also features a lot of blackjack and I have found a very comfortable groove in a game that simply doesn't exist in LV: 4-deck blackjack.
4 deck if you even half know what you're doing is amazing because bad shoes get over quickly and good shoes tend to be amazingly exploitable. All it takes is one or two hands in a row with a bunch of low cards and suddenly you can go on a sick run with unapologetic pressing. It's also a $25 game which chases a lot of the really ****ty players who can throw a shoe off with erratic play away, and I'll often wrap up an evening with an hour or two playing 2 hands of 4-deck once my usual game breaks.
Unfortunately, I didn't warm up my regular BJ game before I left and it made for some very tough runs in LV. Had a good night at South Point, a couple good sessions at Flamingo, a couple really bad sessions, and the insane night I already detailed where Drew (he of the 400 bat tattoos) and I wandered off-strip and DT trying to take advantage of the Longhorn and Bighorn's "loosest blackjack in town" rules. As I mentioned before, they allow doubling down on 3 cards and unlimited splitting on anything but aces, but I never saw a single shoe that wasn't running terrible. However, by the end, Drew and I were toasting the absurdity and laughing at our losses while the pit boss at the Big Horn (which is the saddest casino I've ever played in) glared at us for even being there.
Really, though, this trip was about people, and I was really glad to get to meet and hang out with Natamus and be introduced to the wickedness of double double bonus VP, glad to hang out with Drew a couple times, including a hilarious morning after my epic Bellagio run where we got wasted playing nickel VP in Margaritaville and kept yelling for the waitress to bring us more drinks (because there was literally no one else there at 6 AM).
So with expenses I'm down a bit for this trip, and I came back feeling totally fried, but I got a ton of research done for the book and now, two weeks later, I realize I basically gave myself a crash-course in what it means to manage my game when outside issues are hanging over my head, which is not a bad place to be. And suddenly, writing this, I want to plan my next trip. What's everybody's schedule like?
