Vegas Wednesday (END)

WEDNESDAY NOV 12

Checkout day. Up before 10am.
RIVIERA's Kiosk Checkout was easy.
Headed downtown to BINIONS to cash in
our comps in the gift shop.

The Real Deal playbill had a coupon for
"1 free book" from Cardoza publishing,
the guys who print Doyles and Daniels
books. The ad shows SuperSystem,
Caro's Book of Tells, Poker Tournament
Formula, etc. Being the gullable type guy
I am, I made the assumption that I could
choose from one of the books shown
in the ad. Wrong. The free books are
actually booklets on offbeat topics or
contain only rudimentry content.

AVERY CARDOZA, did you approve this ?
Do you realize how many people you are
going to piss off ?

Remember the potential prop bet with
Sonny involving the fruit plate from
Peppermills ? Gina and I thought it would
be funny to send Sonny a fruit basket.
We hit the Walmart Super Centre and bought
a basket, clear wrapping and fruit galore.
Along with a watermelon, cantaloupe, bananas,
bag of apples, there were a bag of lemons,
a coconut, and an onion...lol. Got a few strange
looks putting it all together on the trunk of
our car in the parking lot.


The Wynn employs 50 Full-Time pastry chefs !

Too long without food so we hit the
WYNN buffet. Gina earned 2 free buffets
earlier so we wanted to use them up.
Excellent food as before. Desserts are superb.
Tremendous selection. I love that they
have bathrooms located inside the dining area.
Most buffets, you have to leave and use facilities
on the gaming floor. Their bathrooms actually
have private rooms with real locking doors,
not just partial metal walls.

Headed back up to SLOTS'O'FUN to use our
$15 for $10 coupon. Crapped out and headed
next door to CIRCUS CIRCUS, to use the same
offer there. Half hour of play and left with an
overall +$7 in profit between Gina and I.
Woohoo !

3pm.
Went to the VENETIAN to cram some
poker in on our last day. Saw TEDDY
"The IceMan" ONROE. He holds the record
for most WSOP television coverage disproportionate
to his results. et up with high school chum ANDY
BRUINEWOUD and his wife GLORIA in the poker
room. They are vegas veterans and gave me
the scoop on what they saw of the WSOP
final table from inside the P&T Theatre.
Played at the V until 8pm (+ $76).


Headed to the MGM and left the fruit basket
for Sonny at the Bell Desk. Would have been
way funnier if we could have gotten into his room
and filled his room with fruit, but we didnt
have time. Dropped off the rental car and
headed for the plane.

Overall, great trip. Left + $1500 so I can't
complain. Bye Vegas, see you next time
(hopefully in a few months).

Vegas Tuesday

TUESDAY NOV 11

Had GOLD COAST lunch buffet using 241
LasVegas Advisor coupon. $9.03 total for two.
Very slow drink service. It was busy, Veterans Day.
6x points so there were seniors galore.
Used a $5 matchplay from ACG on Roulette.
Will + $10. Gina + $10. Free lunch !

Back to the VENETIAN poker room. Got two more
free REAL DEAL tix from Mr. Bill, the floor guy.
I love this room !. + $251 playing 2pm-6pm.

Headed over to the ORLEANS for Dinner buffet
and brought Tom with us. $7.53 each with ACG
coupons. Great buffet as usual. Didnt use the RD tix,
couldnt make it back from buffet in time.






Dropped Tom off at the MGM and headed
downtown to BINIONS to play poker.
Had plenty of good starting hands,
just couldnt hit the board to save my life.
Was down $ most of the evening but hit
Quad Deuces to get back to even.
8:30pm-1am. Left minus - $10.
Earned + $9 in comps so we'll call it even.
I played Zeus, HootLoot and Shopping Spree
slots (+ $8) while Gina was playing Pai Gow.
She was doing well so I popped across the
street to the NUG to check out the poker room.
Sat down at a $1/2 table with 3 russians.
$2400, $1600, and $800 stacks. Very suspicious.
They were the only ones who ever won a pot.
I sat for 2 orbits then left. Talked to a guy at a
limit table on my way out. He said I'm the first
person all night who left the table with money,
they knocked out every single player who
sat in the game. Not sure what was going on,
something didnt seem right. Walked back over
to Binions and convinced Gina to leave
with a + $50 profit at Pai Gow.

Vegas Monday eve

Funniest moment of the day.
Sonny is cracking up laughing and says

" You gotta see this ! " There was a guy

at the poker room cage asking his friend

to take his picture, posing as he cashes out

his racks of $1 chips, like it was a huge payday.

Being the smartass I am, I say to Sonny

" Dare me to get my picture taken with him?"
So I go over and ask the guy if I can get my

picture taken with him (and all his chips),

like he's a poker superstar. Love how he

fans out his money for everyone to see.

Classic !

12am?
Hungry. Went downtown to the GOLDEN

GATE Shrimp Bar & Deli for one of their

famous sandwiches. Had the Cable Car

(turkey, ham, roast beef, swiss cheese,
lettuce,mayo) $6.99. Great shrimp cocktails

for 99cents.

Wandered down to the GOLDEN NUGGET

to play a little poker. Got stacked by donkey

bombers. - $200. The Nugget has started

raking 50cents preflop, so if its raise and

take it with no action, the GN is still getting

there's. Boo !

Vegas Monday

MONDAY NOV 10

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.

Vegas Sunday

SUNDAY NOV 9

The big day is finally here, the WSOP
main event final table that has been
delayed for 4 months. Unfortunately, I
'll have to watch it on tv like common folk.
The line up to get into the Penn & Teller
theatre at the RIO is crazy long and the
set up isnt very good for spectators.

Went for lunch buffet at the ORLEANS
(241 ACG) and hit their poker room after.
Always seems to be a very busy room,
even during the week. 1/2 hour wait.
Their list procedures are a little sketchy.
Names occasionally appear above you
on the list with out explanation. They have
different colored symbols they can put
with peoples names. Green is phone-in,
blue is table change request, etc...
but people got bumped for no obvious
reason (locals friendly with poker room
manager ?). Watched a bit of the $4/8 and
$8/16 Omaha H/L cash games. Very juicy.
People had very little clue to what a
good starting hand is or even knowing
if they were winning.



A new must-move $1/2 table was started
and we got seated. I didnt even get to
play a hand before I was moved to the
main table. After about a half hour,
JERRY YANG - 2007 World Champion
sat next to me at our table. Super nice guy,
very friendly. He showed a big bluff the
first hand, then he played tight ABC poker
after that (He left +$300).

It was a real up & down session for me,
lots of tough decisions (which I usually avoid).
River beat me on several big hands/pots.
Sometimes I just got outflopped....
I had QQ against villains AK.
Flop is QTJ of spades. Luckily I only lost
about $60 on that hand because villain
had no spades.

I folded a flopped gutshot Q high
straight flush draw, face up to the shock
of the dealer and most of the table.
3 all-ins behind me. Had invested $50
on the flop but would have cost me my
stack, $220 more. What most people fail to
consider in this situation is what your
opponents likely holdings are. With 3
other people all in, it is highly likely
one of them is drawing to the Ace high
flush. One of my other opponents may
have already made the straight.
It is quite possible in this situation that
I am drawing to a one outer to hit the
straight flush. I might even be drawing
completely dead if one of my opponents
holds my str8flush card. Atleast I got a
"wow" out of Jerry Yang for my fold.
Left the Orleans + $25.

1am.
Decided to check out CAESARS PALACE.
The entire casino floor was nearly vacant,
very few people at all. The poker room
was the same, almost empty.
2 tables of $1/2. The high hand jackpots
were a joke. $100 for 4 of a kind,
$100 for a str8 flush, $500 for royal flush.
They scoop $1 from every pot and
all they want to pay back is $100 ?
That's weak.

Signed up with the brush and he told us
to have a seat and grab a cocktail,
wont be long. Sounds good.
After 2 failed attempts to get a drink
from a snobby Caesars waitress,
we bailed. No action, no service,
no thanks. Headed back to the RIV
and called it an early night .