After a short flight from Tampa to Charlotte and an hour layover, our Jet stood still on the runway nearly an hour and a half after it was supposed to take off. That’s really what you want to do before a four and a half hour flight. So we arrive in Vegas about 5pm. Check into the Luxor, and my friend and I go down to the sportsbook to meet 2 other friends who were already there. After watching a little hoops and taking a brutal beat on the NCSU NIT game, my friend and I got a quick bite to eat and headed down to the poker room.

We decided to give the Luxor poker room a try just based on convenience. Even with their goofy 1-1-2 blinds and 50 max buy in. They seat us at a table with only 4 guys playing. One of them is a drunk college looking kid with a stack of about $300 in front of him & 2 very loud, drunk black guys with equally large stacks. The very first hand I see is this kid calling a $200 bet with a low pair and he lost most of his stack to one of the black guys. I liked what I was seeing already. Obnoxious, drunk people with large stacks making maniac calls. I was going to sit back and wait for my cards. Unfortunately, one of the black guys then started getting belligerent with the kid, saying “F you Vanilla Ice” just cursing real loud, and surprisingly, the dealer didn’t say much too him. All 3 of them left shortly after that, and soon our table was filled with some of the most unbelievable fish you’ve ever seen. I still think of myself as a player that has a TON to learn. I’ve only been playing about 3 years, and most of that is online. I read this forum, and I can tell you guys are light years ahead of me. But I expected to see much better players than I did this weekend. Onto the action….

I’m not as good at remembering every detail of every hand, but I’ll just go over some of my big ones. This first one was a couple hours into playing. Any critique about the way I played these hands would be welcome, too. One of my favorite hands from Friday night went this way. I was UTG with Ah-10h. I bumped it up with a 10 dollar raise and everybody folded until the guy on the button called, small blind and big blind folded. Flop came down 10c-10d-3s. Wow…I’m sitting pretty. I bet 5 dollars, which my friend(who was at the table) said it told him I had a 10. The button raised it to 20, and I just decided to call. With the rainbow there, I wanted to maximize the pot as much as I could. I put the guy on a high pair at that point. Maybe jacks or queens. The turn was 7s. I limped in with a 10 dollar bet, he raised it to 50, which was about half his stack and I had about 70 left. I thought for a second, and I still didn’t put him on pocket 3’s. So, I decided to re-raise and push all my 70 dollars in. I hadn’t even finished it and he said ‘call’. For that split second I was scared. Maybe he had the 3’s. But he turned over K-10. As it turned it out, it wouldn’t have mattered, because the river was an Ace, which gave me the boat, and I took home a nice pot.

So this gave me a nice stack that I slowly kept building. People kept coming to the table and buying in for 50, and my friend and I were just running all over them. Again, you can’t believe how bad some of these people were. Most of them didn’t even know the rules…mucking their cards out of turn…mucking their cards when they were the big blind and there was no raise. The dealers were getting really frustrated. We ended up playing for about 5 hours before we cashed in, and I left with $440. So, I cleared $340 since I re-bought the $50 early on in the night. My friend cleared $290.

So Saturday night I was brought down to earth real quickly. We sat a fairly full table, and my very first hand is Ah-Qh. I bumped it up to $25, and everybody folded except the girl who was to my immediate right who just called. And speaking of pairs this girl was phenomenal. I’m not a breast man, but damn….The flop was As-10h-6h. So, I have top pair with a good kicker and a flush draw. She’s first to act, and she bets 10, I raised her and went all in, which was my last $25, and she called and turned over AK. Ughhh. I didn’t get a Q or a heart on 4th or the river and was busted out on my first hand. I honestly don’t know if I played that bad or not. I just felt I had to go all in. So, I was determined not to let this bother me. I re-bought in and eventually re-bought 50 more. My friend and I played from 7:30 until 4:30 in the morning. Once again…more bad players…drunk college kids mostly who have been watching too much poker on TV. At one point I was up $125 over the 150 I bought in for, but after cashing in I had $210, so I cleared a whopping $60 for 9 hours of grinding work.

Sunday we walked over to Hooters for some wings and beer, and we checked out their poker room thinking there would be really bad players, but there was a 30 minute wait. We walked next door to the Tropicana, and all they had was a tournament going, but the manager, who was a very nice guy, said we could get a 1-2 game going in about 10 minutes. I liked that we could buy in for $200 here. Especially since everybody else was buying in for 40 or 50. There was a few good players here. I played ok for a while, I was up about 100, but I started getting careless. I also got rundown by a maniac when I had pocket K’s. I like to play KK really strong, because I’m always scared of seeing that A on the flop. I was on the big blind, and I raised it to 30 and got one caller. It was a guy who has just sat at the table. The flop was 10-7-4 rainbow, so I’m loving it. He was first to act and he want all in with his remaining 10 dollars. He turns over 4’s….This maniac called a 30 dollar raise with 4’s? That one pissed me off, and I started tilting a little. I started playing too many hands, and I cashed out $161 in chips, so I lost $39. I didn’t like the feel of the room. The dealers were very friendly compared to the Luxor, but something about it felt dingy…

Sunday night we went back to the Luxor. I played for about 3 hours and had a net loss of $25. Once again, playing way too many hands, trying bluffs that just weren’t working, etc… I think I was just burnt out.

So all told, I showed a profit of $336 for about 22 hours of poker. I had a blast. I probably netted about a $100 loss in sports bets. I wished I would have seen more of Vegas. We hardly did any partying, maybe I’m getting too old for that.

I also need to mention that the cocktail waitresses in the Luxor poker room were great. Very fast, and I never went thirsty. I anticipated waiting much longer for free drinks. I just drink a few beers Friday night, but Saturday night, I drank a ton of vodka/tonics, but they must have been really weak, because vodka usually sneaks up on me, but I wasn’t feeling anything.

I’m sure I forgot some other things, but overall the weekend was great. Thanks once again to Doug, Michael, and all the great posters on this site who I learn so much from. I plan on being back very soon.