A buddy of mine in Vegas has been pressing me for some time to start playing no-limit poker. After 3 years of limit poker, I finally decided this was the trip.

We hit Red Rock Casino and I gotta tell you, this is a nice room...very nice. Yeah, there are alot of locals grinding there but the $2/$5 table I played at seemed to be a great table to cut my teeth on the no limit game. No real maniacs...seemed pretty straight forward. I was up alot early but found a couple of losses and walked out of there down $4 for a nice session. Not bad IMO.

Dealers were good, players were somewhat friendly. Comp cards are swiped right at the table and the Red Rock has a great automated system for letting the desk know they have an open seat. Dealer pushes a control panel mounted on the table which lets the desk to get the next player. Great system.

The Casino itself is very nice as well and I would play there and the poker room again in a heartbeat.

The next day, I hit Caesar's...which up to know is my favorite room. I fell back on the old limit standby and found the $3/$6 game to be an exercise in frustration...massive frustration. I think I am a solid limit player and nothing worked on this day. $100 lost to all sorts of bad beats...some seemed to be almost impossible but alas they were all too real.

Once my buddy showed up, we hit a $1/$2 no limit table that just started up. The game was about the same as my experience at red Rock the night before but the big difference was the different tourists types who would just dump their cash on the table. A very profitable session for me as I won over $500. I stole some pots and won some big hands...one in which I ended up with a royal flush on the river (my first). Caesar's doesn;t currently have a high hand jackpot but the dealer said they would likely have one in place after the first of the year.

I still like limit but I have a new found respect for the no-limit game and quite frankly will likely start to make no-limit my game of choice as I start to learn about it more. I made some mistakes but none of them really hurt me too bad.