I’m just back from my very first trip to Las Vegas and it was quite the trip. I didn’t go to play poker, but you can bet I played while I was there.
The trip itself makes quite the story.
An annual industry conference (my industry, not the poker industry) was being held in Sin City, the first time it had been held away from the literal West Coast. (It had been founded in Seattle and dabbled in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area.) I decided to drive from San Francisco instead of fly.
This conference is Sunday through Thursday. I take the whole week off of work and use the following days to “recover.” This year, I had planned to “recover” in LA, where I’d not been in awhile. But I’ll get back to this.
My plans were to leave work early, drive most of the way, get a cheap hotel room in Barstow, then drive the last couple of hours Saturday morning. (I’d then help with the conference setup, plan out the daily conference newsletter I publish, and get ready for four full days.) I checked out some online travel sites for hotel rooms, but figured I’d get a better deal by using the hotel coupon books and finding a room when I got there.
Well, my trip began badly. It seems rush hour began early. I left just after 2pm and it took me an hour to go the dozen-plus blocks to the freeway. Typically, I take freeways out to I-5, a trip that takes about an hour. This time it took 2.
I stopped for gas in Coalinga and made another mistake: getting a sit-down meal instead of fat food. The service was terrible and it took me more than an hour to get out of there. As a result, I didn’t get to Barstow until 11pm, about 2 hours later than planned.
And there were no hotel rooms in sight. This was quite puzzling. I had no clue what might fill Friday night hotel rooms in a small desert town in the middle of spring. After driving up and down the main drag with no success, I got back on the road.
I had no success finding hotel rooms the next couple of exits, so I decided to keep driving, which took me through the Mojave Desert at night, a place that I’d hoped to see for the first time in the light of day.
I stopped in Primm for gas and thought about trying to get a room there, but I reasoned that I was then less than an hour from Vegas itself, and it should be easy to get a cheap room there, right? Wrong.
I made it to Vegas and began looking for the discount hotels. Not knowing the area, I stayed on or close to the Strip, where no place had any vacancies. By then it was well after midnight. Well, I had a room for Saturday through Thursday, so I thought I’d try going to the Tropicana and seeing if I might get an extra early check in. No dice. No rooms.
By this time it was nearly 4am. I was at a loss. I found a spot in the Tropicana parking lot that was under a tree and away from most lights. I used a casino restroom to take out my contact lenses, then went back to my car, put up the sunshade, pulled out a blanket, reclined my seat, and napped there.
I actually managed to sleep until 9am. This scenario actually wasn’t that much different from when I travel to the east coast. I usually take a red-eye flight, sleep 4 or 5 hours on the plane, and arrive there tired, but not having lost a day to travel.
I went inside, put in my contact lenses, and spent some time helping with conference setup before I was able to get my room. And an interesting room it was. At first, it seems like most any hotel room. Until I got to the bed. A huge mirror above the headboard. Another huge mirror on the wall alongside. And one more huge mirror on the ceiling above the bed. Only in Vegas, I thought.
With a big of downtime Saturday night, I thought about finding a poker game. No, another part of my brain told me, you’re too tired. But I was also restless. The Tropicana has no poker room, but the Excalubur across the street did, so that’s where I headed first.
It took me awhile, but I found the poker room. (It took me a lot longer to find my way out once I was done, thank you very much casino designers.) There they have a low-limit spread game. I’d never played a spread game before, but I signed up for the $2-$6 game.
It turned out to be both interesting and mildly profitable (a net of $47, 4 pots in 2.5 hours). The Excalubur features a money wheel which you get to spin if you get aces cracked. While mildly entertaining, I also realized that this wheel meant that no one would ever fold pocket aces, even in the face of an overwhelming defeat (and especially not at such a low-limit table). That meant, it seemed to me, a tiny adjustment to my game.
I played there again Tuesday night and ran into a very interesting character, one that I was able to exploit. He was across the table and wearing a very large ring, one he had no hesitation to claim, to anyone who asked, that it was a National Championship ring for a large Midwest college.
After playing for awhile, I realized his play was very predictable: if he had any ace, any two face cards or any two suited cards, he’d raised the maximum before the flop. So if I had a hand that played well against any of those holdings, I could reraise to isolate, then try and play hard one-on-one. This strategy turned out to be a profitable one, to the point where after I’d won a couple of pots this way, I pushed one the same way a bit later with a slightly weaker hand and made him fold on the river with an aggressive bet. That night I played probably too long (for 5 hours, until 3am), but I still netted $52 (on 13 pots).
By Wednesday afternoon, I was really starting to have an itch. And itch to stay in Vegas instead of driving over to LA. So in the afternoon sessions, I fired up my notebook and started hitting the travel sites. Was I in for a surprise.
My first few days in Vegas had utterly shattered my stereotypes. I had thought of Vegas as a gambling town, where you could always find cheap rooms and cheap food. I had been looking forward to feasting at cheap buffets everywhere.
Times have changed.
I came to realize that Las Vegas is making over its image, trying to position itself as a destination resort with high-price entertainment and family activities. It’s succeeding, but at the cost of its former image (and some would say that’s not a bad thing).
The lunch buffet at the Tropicana, for example, was something like $13 or $14. Heck, just a sandwich ran $7 or $8. It’s like they aren’t aiming for the gamblers anymore, but for the tourists, who come to town with pockets stuffed with cash not to gamble, but to spend.(It also put into perspective what I found at the Bellagio later in the week, a $30 buffet.)
Meanwhile, I’m searching for inexpensive hotels, my budget not being that of high rollers, and my search is not going well. But I do eventually find success, but my success is downtown, not on the strip. It turns out also that for many it was around spring break time, and that’s why it was so difficult to find rooms.
The hotel I got was right next to Binion’s Horseshoe, and it was just $40/night, even if the place is well worn. The room is clean, the bed is somewhat comfortable, but don’t mistake it for luxury. The casino is small and dark and the people there feel more like fixtures. So once I check in, I drive back down to the Strip, where I decide to try playing at the Bellagio.
When I arrive, I find that cars are being stopped at the garage entrance and the trunks being searched. I’m told later that it has to do with “security.” As if cursory checks are going to deter anything. Like many post-911 measures, it’s a feel-good, high-profile activity that provides no real security at all. But I digress….
Bellagio is a beautiful place for beautiful people, and I feel mildly out of place. I find the poker room only to find that it’s not a “room” at the time. The poker room is undergoing renovation, so a section of casino floor substitutes. I also find that the lowest Hold ‘Em limit game they spread is $4/$8.
This makes me nervous. I had just recently dipped my toes into the waters of $3/$6 at my local cardroom and I was worried that $4/$8 would be going too deep, too soon. But I had little choice if I wanted to stay there. So I signed up.
When I was called, I bought $250 in chips. I like to make sure I start with a stack that can withstand the ups and downs of a typical session, and I abhor small buys and having to buy in again and again.
I sat down and decided to wait to post, wanting to get a feel for this new game, the new limit in a new locale. I felt nervous, almost like when I sat down at my very first brick-and-mortal $1/$2 game, and so I’d not really gotten a feel yet when I had to post my first big blind..
When I looked at my very first Bellagio hand, I was underwhelmed: 3-7 offsuit, one of the worst starting hands in Hold ‘Em. But no one raised and I was able to see the flop for free, a flop that came 3-3-7.
OK, here I am, my very first hand at the poker palace that is the Bellagio, and I go from having just about the worst hand possible to one of the best, flopping a full house. I don’t remember how the betting went, I don’t remember what came on the turn and river, I know only that I raked in a decent pot for my first hand there.
It must have set the tone for that night. I played for 4 hours, took down 9 pots, and netted $170. I was feeling good.
I woke up chipper on Thursday with plans to take in another historic spot: I planned to play at Binion’s, right next door. Binion’s has a daily no-limit tournament with a relatively small buy in every afternoon, and after lunch, I walked over to sign up.
Binion’s casino seemed to be just a small step up from the one next door, still seemingly dark, but not quite so. The poker room was easy to find. It was huge, and it was mostly empty. This vast swatch of poker tables sat unused. A small roped off section had active cash games going, but for the most part, the place seemed empty.
Sign up was easy and I took my seat as one of 120 entrants, the first time I’d ever played in a no-limit game of any type, never mind tournament play. (My previous tournaments were all low-buy-in limit games.) I decided to begin cautiously, and I did pretty well. The dealers were good, and at one time I think my table had the world’s oldest poker dealer, a lady who looked as if she was in her 80s, yet both more than competent and quite friendly.
It appeared to me that many of the people who signed up for this tournament were regulars. Lots of people seemed to know each other. I finally bowed out in 40th spot when a somewhat aggressive player beat a fairly decent holding by making a runner-runner straight. Although I always would like to be at least in the money, if not winning (which I’ve not yet done in a tournament), I can’t say that I was disappointed in my performance for a first timer. Like the hours already spend in cash games, it was a learning experience, and a good one.
Yet I returned to my hotel room feeling a bit disappointed. I simply lazed around a bit, flipping through the TV channels, knowing that this was to be my last night in Vegas, thinking that this meant I should get out and play, but just not feeling up to it. An ESPN rerun of a show from last year’s World Series of Poker got my attention, and I watched that until after the sun set, and then I set out for Bellagio.
My desire to play one last time in Vegas—I had no idea when I’d ever return—overwhelmed my poker sense, that is, to not play when you’re not at your best emotionally. My emotional state was also affected by my realization that I was in Vegas by myself. I had talked to a friend back in the Bay Area and she suggested I should take in a show while I was there. I looked into it, but as I was pricing the possibilities, I realized that I really didn’t want to go alone.
With all that churning in the back of my head, I sat down at a Bellagio table. You can guess the result: My only losing Vegas session. I played for 5 hours and had 10 wins, but still had a net loss of $135.
Friday was the drive back home. I decided, after I checked out, that I’d play one more time, and I’d do it at Bellagio. I got there by 9am and was seated quickly. Knowing that I could not play long (with a long drive ahead and not wanting to get home too much after dark), I still played somewhat cautiously (especially after the previous night), yet I had a massive session. I played just 3 hours and won “only” 8 pots, yet in stood up from the table at noon with a net profit of $260.
It made the drive home much nicer.
As I approached the Bay Area, my poker itch began kicking in. Friday night is my normal poker night anyway, so I decided to stop in at my regular poker room, arriving at about 11:30pm. There was a $3/$6 seat available right away, and it was the #10 seat at that table, one of my favorite positions.
I had 3 pocket pairs in my first 4 hands, two of them AA and KK, made two of them stand up and won one other of those first 4 hands. Those 3 wins were to be my last of the night. I think I may have gotten a bit overconfident and a bit loose. I didn’t win one more hand. In 2 hours of play, I watched my $150 buy in and early hand winnings dwindle to $0. I decided that I’d not try and fight myself and the table anymore buy buying in for more, and instead picked up and went home.
Still, that was one heckuva Las Vegas experience and now I can’t wait to go back.