I arrived in Vegas a couple of days before my buddies, so i could play somepoker without them staring over my shoulder. I arrived in Vegas just in time to play in the 11am tourney at the Sahara. The tourney was a $42+20add-on tourney. In my opinion, this is the best low limit tourney in Vegas. Players have the opportunity to start with a total of 3500 in chips. This is by far the highest amount of starting chips. I finished mid pack when my KK ran into AK and an A appeared on the turn.
After the Sahara tourney I headed to the Palms. I arrived in time to start up a new 2-5 NL game. The most memorable hand here was the fist hand that was dealt. I'm sitting in the big blind at look down at 10h10c. Four players limp to me and I make $20 to go. I get two callers. The flop comes 8 high no suited cards. I bet $40 and am called by both players. Turn brings 10s putting 2 spades on the board. I bet $60 and get called by both players. River card is the ace of hearts. I check. Player to my left goes all in, player two folds and I call. She had A8 for two pair. I'm happy to have nearly $600 after one hand. I end up leaving after about 4 hours and a profit of over $400.
On a side note, I played with Joe Awada, who according to one of the locals plays at the Palms quite often. I attempted to avoid every pot Joe was involved in.
After leaving the Palms at about 1am I decided to head to the Bellagio and see what all of the fuss was about. I’ll admit that the Bellagio has a very nice room, but tonight was not the best of nights for the room. Not more than 10 minutes after sitting down, the fire alarm went off. The alarm continued to go off for about 45minutes. Of course none of the poker players even thought about leaving their chairs. Not much action cards wise here. I bought into the 1-2NL game for $200 and cashed out for $205.
However, the highlight of the night and probably the whole trip was sitting next to Jason Bateman (actor – Arrested Development, The Sweetest Thing) for about 2 hours. He is quite possibly the funniest person I have ever met and a really nice guy. He was quite intoxicated and a very crappy card player, but he had some great stories to tell.
After a good solid night of sleep and a good meal at the Excalibur buffet, I headed to the Wynn. This is a very nice room. The line for the Ferrari dealership was longer than the line for the poker room. Again, not a whole lot of action here. I sat down at the 1-3NL with $300. I left after about 3 hours with $319. The toughest thing about this table was wating for the new players to figure out how much the bet was. In my opinion, the $3 chip is the worst idea in poker since Poker Superstars II. By the time I left dealers were calling out bets by the number of chips being bet not the dollar amount.
To Be Continued