My goal on my first trip of many others in the past three to four years to Las Vegas was to play a poker tournament every morning while on our five-six day vacation.

I'm a craps and sports bettor but for the past 2-3 years have wanted to play holdem poker because everytime I lost on the craps tables I would say to myself, I could've used this money to learn how to play at the poker tables.

We started our Fri/Sat (Mar 17/18) trip and drove from San Francisco down to Laughlin south of LV because the room rates on the Strip are much higher. This time of year from winter to the spring is the best time to go to Laughlin because during the summer it can get as hot as 115 degrees (always 10 deg. hotter than Vegas).

Saturday AM I played my first big tournament at the River Palms. They have a 9am(10am?) $15 buy-in with no rebuys and I was 3rd to go on my table (lasted 25 min.). They get a lot of tough local players and I was very nervous that morning getting up very early. The room was semi-sequestered on the middle level of the 3 level casino overlooking the Colorado River.
After getting trounced, I headed to the craps tables...

Sunday Am I entered a 60 minute shootout tournament at the Flamingo Hilton Laughlin (9am/10am?). They had two tables to start and the buy in was $22 giving you $1000 plus a pink $500 chip. I had the most fun at this table because we had an eight month pregnant woman playing with her husband. During the game,she would experience stabbing pains from her baby and the lady dealer who used to be a nurse said to her, "...if we need to have to deliver this baby we'll do it right here on the poker table as she turned to a local on her right and said to the man, "and you'll help me too" at which point he turned to a younger man on his right and said she was talking to you." During the game, I had a small lead and this time coasted with it however the pregnant woman was doing very well and knocked out her husband. This time I made it to the final table but I was middle in the field with chip stack and made a move with 3-4 minutes to go. When I saw that Kings were winning on the previous pots I raised with K-8 with the pregnant woman on my left. I saved the pink chip for this raise and everyone called with a beautiful sea of pink chips on the green felt table coming in. This hand was for the win. At the end, three of us were left to showdown: A-K ns, K-8 ns(me) and K-8 hearts for her. The flop was something King but the kicker was 3 hearts on the board. She won the big pot with a minute or two to go--impossible to lose with all the $500 pink chips she had-- I turned to her husband standing behind her at this point and shook his hand and said nice play and good luck.
That day we drove to LV and checked in at the Gold Coast $60 rate for Sun,Mon,Tues. nights.

Monday morning headed over to the Monte Carlo and checked out their 9am/10am (?) tournament. The buy n was for $40 but the pay off was for $900 plus that morning. I sat with two poker dealers on my right and left, raised the big blind and he re raised me $300 having two 6's I folded but this was a lesson to how touchy people can be concerning their blinds. The dealer was the worst. He hardly talked and when I wanted to raise he corrected me and said I should call instead which confused me and affected my play. This was the least of my favorite tournaments and I was out in less than twenty minutes but I was not the first to go, the dealer on my left lost to a flush on the river. The competition there was the toughest. The room was sort of smallish, all dark woods, quiet but nothing to get excited about more like a library.

Tuesday morning I headed over to the Excalibur and they have a 9am tournament $25. The room there was very nice. Big ceilings, quiet, plenty of tables. I watched people coming in from the rail where the restrooms were located and sat down to my table the same time the dealers did. The dealer was very warm and helpful to the beginning tables and I started to notice different people's tells such as posture suddenly getting straighter when the player had the nuts. I lost to an older Filipino player who had two pair to my aces but lasted about 25 minutes. I really liked the room. The competition was mostly working class tourists staying at the hotel and a few locals.

On Wednesday AM, I wanted to play a ring game and I think why I hadn't was because my wife was with me the whole time and I didn't want her to wait for me since we like to do the casino things together except for the morning time when she's asleep. So I drove out to the Sahara because I remember the last time there was a short handed game out there.

There were four players there and I bought in. One old timer was sort of a loud mouth and though he was helpful at first I could see how much the other players and dealer ignored his chatter after having to hear the same bitching and moaning all night long till early morning now at 7am. It was a $2-4 game with only one $2 blind and absolutely NO rake. I think the poker room is the only good thing going on in that casino because the rest of the table games and machines suck. I could see that the table was showing a trend of low cards on the table and for player hands after the first 10 minutes of play. I won a few low $ pots and I got the 1/2 Kill button of which I learned how to play on the spot and when I had a pair of 4's on that hand started to raise the pot. The older player called it, the sleepy headed gentleman woke up and started to call it along with my raises and the dressy, ESPN look alike husband called as well. The board showed the third 4 giving me the set so I proceeded to pump it till there was nearly $80 in the pot. When I showed them the set of 4's the old man was absolutely beside himself calling it junk, that I played junk and could not believe it. In the middle of my stacking everyone's chips, I said what the hell and proceeded to sling my own crap back saying: "...it's not my fault, I was getting the cards so I bet it." I turned to the ESPN guy and he agreed, "...you had to do what you had to ." I knew those guys had been up all night so I said to myself right before that big pot to use this as your advantage. I stayed for about ten more minutes and there was a dealer change and two more players added to the mix so I headed out to enjoy my first big ring game win.

Drove back to the Gold Coast and went downstairs to their 10am $25 tournament. There poker room is at the far end of the casino where their buffet is located and the other restaurants. It's just a partitioned area but the tournament gets a lot of local as well as tourist players. The first hour is limit and the next hour is NL. They move through the blind structure fairly quickly and I was able to last for an hour before getting called with my pair of threes. I worked on my table image which was better than my playing because he had me on an ace which would've won but he called my $300 bet with his 10's and I was out of there.

The two other casinos that I'm sorry I didn't play but which I will go back to in the future were the Riviera which was just a roped off area next to the walkway mainly because the competition is mostly tourist--a good mix of women and men with hardly any local pros. The other one was the Plaza only because I like the feel of it plus the locals are good players. The Palms had too many young player that morning playing with nothing but red chips--too expensive.