Up at 10am and out of the room by 11am.
Off to the SILVERTON for Lunch Buffet.
$9.63 for two. Their pecan pie tastes like
a giant butter tart. Played another session
at the VENETIAN. + $26
Recieved 5 comp tickets to the REAL DEAL,
a poker based game show that recently
opened up at the Venetian. Sonny, Ed, and
Tom were just finishing up tournament at
the WYNN so they joined Gina & me.
The premise of the show, two poker pro's
and 4 (somewhat) randomly selected audience
members play a game of holdem on stage.
The rest of the audience plays along on
computer touch screens.
The audience sees its hole cards and bets
or folds based on the flop, turn, river.
There are also mini contests throughout.
Pick 5 random cards from a deck of 52
and the top 3 people with the best hands
win a prize. The final hand, you randomly
select 5 cards and if you hit a royal flush
you receive $1,000,000 (over 25 yrs).
The two pros for this session were
TODD BRUNSON and JENNIFER HARMAN.
Jennifer was high energy and seemed
sincerely interested in being there.
Todd, no so much. VINNY FAVORITO
(I played poker with him on a previous trip)
was the MC and did a great job trying to
keep this contrived production seem natural
and moving along.
LACEY JONES co-hosted and did an
acceptable job. I was a little shocked
to see Lacey, who was voted "hottest
girl in poker", only 5 feet away. I guess
you can have skin as rough as T.J. Cloutier
and still be hot. I'm sure she's a nice girl,
she comes across as friendly... but I've
met hotter poker girls.
Back to the Real Deal...
One of the big flaws I found was in the
software. There was a serious time lag.
On a couple occasions, the live hand
was being dealt before action was complete
on the handhelds. I was able to fold on the
turn, saving myself a $16,000 wager
because I saw the dealer on stage deal
out the river which gave one of the players
a full house which beat my two pair.
If there were serious prizes at stake,
there'd be lawsuits flying. Prizes were decent
although not enough to make me drool.
Sony headphones, a portable dvd player,
autographed posters, books, a bunch of
$50 gift certs for V restaurants. I left with
a pretty good booty. Everyone left with a
RD hat & deck of cards because the crowd
won 5 or 6 hands. I made trips with one of
my random 5 card selections so I won a
poster autographed by the RD poker pros.
When I went to collect it after the show,
the girl says "oh you won the books ! ?"
I said, "sure ?!" She gave me autographed
copies of SuperSystem2 and Daniel Negreanu's
Power Holdem. Autographs include Harman,
Brunson, Laak, Esfandiari, etc.
Overall, I liked the show.
Would I pay $75 for it ? ... No.
If it was free, I would go again and again.
There were about 100 people in the audience
and some of them were people who actually
paid full price for the show, including 2 people
who paid $140 for VIP front row seats
(my freebee seats were in the 2nd row)
and they got to meet and take pictures
with the pros backstage.
Immediately after the show we headed
out to the GREEN VALLEY RANCH to take
a shot at the PL Omaha 8OB tournament
that we missed earlier in the week.
Had I known the structure and rake (30%),
I would have skipped it. We arrived
a little late but got on the list to be put in
as other players got eliminated. By the time
I got seated, it was late into the $100
blind level. Starting stack was $2000.
This basically gave me no play at all.
Example: 1st time I play my big blind
there are 4 players to the flop. Pot is $400.
Under the gun bets pot $400.
If I bet the pot ($1200) I have committed
65% of my chips to this hand and there
are still 2 people to act behind me
+ the original bettor. No wiggle room at all.
I finished 11th out of 36 by folding a lot.
Gina came in 9th and Sonny came in 6th.
On a positive note, I made + $ 80 playing
the cash game while I waited for everyone
to bust out.
No comments:
Post a Comment