We flew into vegas at about 8 am vegas time (from chicago) with a plan to play about 5 different no limit tourneys and maybe 5 other cash games. We planned our first stop to Imperial Palace late Thursday night (CES during the day!) based on reviews on this website of being a great first time poker room. I've been playing hold'em for about 2 years so i feel i have great play, but was still obviously nervous about my first trip to vegas playing. Me and two of my friends made up the trip.

Playing the 1/2 no-limit game at IP was pretty awesome. It wasn't too hard to get up from 40-60 bucks to about 250 in a couple hours. the play was somewhat loose before the flops (lots of 15-20 raises preflop on $2 blinds) but after the flop if you hit anything or even wanted to stab at the pot just go "all-in". i bluffed alot of pots that way, but if you get in a good situation like flopping a set of aces you can also get some callers. Suprised to see myself and others win $150 hands at a 1/2 table, but it happened. The players were mostly laid back, there to have fun types but you got the occasional dude with the sunglasses who only played pocket Aces so he'd sit there fot 3 hours in between hands. This one guy looked just like Nick Nolte had on sunglasses i wanted to ask him if he was going to wait "48 hours" before playing his next hand! There was also another guy there with sunglasses on so my buddy turned to the guy next to him and started singing "I wear my sunglasses at night" and we all pretty much started laughing at the dude. moral of the story is you don't need to bring your sunglasses at a 1/2 table....you'll look like an idiot and probably get made fun of by drunk guys like me.

I played very agressive all three days and probabaly could've left with 600 dollars but eventually my agressiveness caught up with me. twice i flopped top pair (10's) with two other low cards, no straight or flush draws on the board and nobody acting like they had pocket pairs before the flop. went all in both times, got called both times one time to a dude who had a pair of sixes (Q6 in hole) and wound up hitting trips and another time by a dude who had AJ and didn't realize the odds of pairing his ace or jack were next to nothing after the flop and of course he got lucky.

Cocktailers and dealers were great, don't drink too much though. WE had about 3-4 drinks an hour there, eventually that makes you play a little looser than you want. it's great if you want to have fun though. cocktailers were always around. dealers were all friendly, we loved shane and greg, but they get points off for one bad hand in which i had jacks full of 10's, the other dude flipped over KJ (another hand i got drawn out against!) to give him kings full of tens. The dealer started splitting the pot, i of course didn't say anything and the idiot in the hand next to me didn't even know he had me beat (i honestly don't think he even knew he had a full house when he called my huge raise). so i'm sitting there like "allright awesome the dealer didn't catch that" until some guy at our table pointed out the mistake and my opponent took the pot down. Doens't that suck huh? I was mad at the guy who snitched me out for a minute but forgave him after he tipped us off that the pornstars (the adult film convention was in town too) were staying at venitian and hanging out at the bar there everynight. so we left the tables and all went over there for some viewing activities later that night.

Friendly players at the IP, good service, and a good time. WE felt comfortable there and the minimum buy in was so low that we felt it would be good to hang out there the weekend. I did go to Alladin one afternoon to play 1/2 and it was much different. First off, management was kinda rude, i literally stood there staring at like 4 managers for about 10 minutes before anyone even asked if i needed a table or any help. much quieter room, much more serious players (at a 1/2 table!). Bought in for about 80 bucks and lost it in about 4 minutes, seriously! I made bad calls, but honestly, these guys were raising like 30 bucks preflop which is huge for the blinds. When you have about 5 people call behind you and all you have to do is throw in 30 bucks for a chance to win 200, it's the right odds for me to see a flop with any two cards. First hand had AJ, second hand Q10, got busted right after that. Then all th guys looked at me like "what an amateur" as i left the room. whatever, they can go and sit around in their business casual all day talking about how great their investment portfolios are, but i don't buy it if they're playing 1/2 games. Their kids probably think they're dorks anyways, so I left the room and never looked back!

overall, good trip, will definitely play more elsewhere but a good first room is Imperial Palace...also, it's right next to O'Sheas which has a bar in the back serving $1 drafts and some dude who loves the Denver Broncos who will straight up tell you he sells drugs. I'm not into that stuff, but if you're looking, he'll be there