who cares about the Super Bowl? TR 2/8 - 2/12

Enjoy! Provided that the delay isn't too extreme, this should be a notable day to spend some time in Vegas.

Good early call on Darnold making the SB. I also don't care about the game, but my hunch is a clean win for SEA.

arrived. a little later than originally expected but a minor inconvenience that will not curb my enthusiasm.

downloaded a couple episodes of Black Sails for the flight. then found myself sitting next to a nice proper old couple and in an aisle seat surrounded on a full flight. didn't think that one through too well. maybe should have gone with British Baking Show or something otherwise inoffensive. other than one little tittie scene it was one of the tamer episodes. nobody even died.

picked up my rental car smoothly and we are now live. first stop Jack in the Box, my favorite fast food.

from there to Wynn and we are registered with tournament chips on the table.

as usual there will be hand histories, stories and observations of other players. may use demographic or other visibly descriptive identifiers to paint the picture that may or may not be offensive to some readers. will likely be bad play but hopefully there will also be pics of increasing chip stacks. and hopefully at the end there will be glory rivaling the Lombardi Trophy.

Session 1: Wynn Tournament
this is a $200 with $100 add-on so essentially $300 for 50k stack.

pretty nondescript table of old white guys. recognized player on my left from last time who had a super loud obnoxious and constant laugh. I enter in level 5.

- 400/800/800
I limp ep with 33 and it basically limps around.
flop T43. bingo. utg bets 15k, I call with several others
T boats me up, second club. he bets 20k, two of us call.
9h. he checks, I bet 20k and get two calls!
T8 for trips, I show full house, and utg taps and mucks.
one hand and I'm at like 140k

- .5k/1k/1k
I complete sb with 7-3, lots of limpers.
7-5-3, two spades. I bet 2k, calls.
K turn, second club. I bet 5k, co raises to 30k. I call.
river is a red card but it is another 5, counterfeiting my two pair. he checks behind and shows K7 for a better three pair. I lost a bunch but still over double starting stack after just a few minutes.

couple young crusher-looking guys join the table.

- .6k/1.2k/1.2k
YCL1 opens to 2.5k, calls, I have JJ in sb and raise to 11k, three calls. wtf
flop is K72. I check, original raiser bets 11k, two calls. I have to fold.
somehow one of the old guys in it called an all-in with AT (nothing). YCL1 had Aces so yeah, the king saved me. he's up to like 150k already

- .8/1.6/1.6
I open co A9cc, button calls.
Q74 no c. I c-bet, he calls.
Q turn. I check, he bets 6k. I raise to 16k.
he jams. you caught me.

at second break sitting at 62.5k.

Wynn casino floor/poker room is a great place to watch the Super Bowl.

Wynn tourney p2

I try to bluff off the other new young guy and he also jams over. this is not going well.

- 1k/2k/2k
I open with T9cc. YCL2 in sb raises, I call.
Ten high flop. he shoves and I call.
he has AK. gotta win your all-ins...
ace on the turn. and I'm out!

the goal was to last through the end of the Super Bowl. I couldn't make it to halftime.

I'm left to drown my sorrows in a strawberry julius on an empty table

unlucky with the bust out hand. I think you can fold to the turn raise on the 73 hand?

more importantly though....what are the two food items that aren't the burger from Jack in the Box?

I am a bit confused about hand 1 here. Flop is T-4-3 and UTG bets 15k into.. 6k or something? And you plus -several others- call? How does the rest of the money not go in on the turn (or even the flop!) with a 50k starting stack, unless both you and all the others in the hand had chipped up significantly? Doesn't really make sense that many players in the hand here would have 20k left on the turn and the river to commit without being all-in.

Hand 2 is a prime example of fold pre. But I know these things are easier in theory than in practice - I played a tourney this weekend and made one or two terrible completes from SB with cards that should be clear folds. It's a bad leak which I will try to fix ASAP.

Tacos n churros. Langdon does it right, at least at JITB

yes that's been a traditional starter meal. I dunno though, might switch to In n Out next time.. .

I warned you there would be bad play. but if I have a big stack and can play from the small blind and flop two pair I'm okay with that. yeah should have given up on the turn but I'm not mad that one

anyway it was only halftime and since my rooting interest was winning the game I didn't want to leave. Wynn buffet is on the agenda so figured I'll stick around and play some 1/3 to grind those $1.50/hr comps.

Session 2: Wynn 1/3

table was pretty interesting and fun. there were 3 old pals from North Carolina next to me. one of them was drunk and it was his first time playing poker in Vegas. he basically learned the etiquette rules one by one. "you bet $12? I raise it to $13". string bets, playing out of order, folding his big button on his option, etc. he was pretty terrible. but he had it every time!! he played most hands, always bet on junk flops, raised any of my bluff bets. hit flushes against other players, pipped my pairs, etc.

his buddy next to me was friendly and I had a good time chatting. third guy beat me in an early hand and then went like an hour and half with nothing. then of course his last 20 minutes he got me a few times.

not much for hand histories, but here's a couple:
- an open, I 3bet to like $25 with QQ. there are like four calls.
flop is ace high. I'm done.

- I open Ah7d on button, get calls.
flop Ad9s4h, young Asian guy starts blasting. I call.
turn river 8h 9h. may have been three hearts. he bets $65.
saw him try a failed bluff a few hands ago. I have pair of aces with poor kicker. but I do not believe he has a better ace with his preflop lack of aggression, don't believe he has hearts, and don't believe he would play a 9 this way. flip in a calling chip and show my ace. he grimaces with like JT or something so my read was right and I win.
I find it is easier to play against semi-competent players than bad players. maybe I'm in that first group which is why I generally struggle lately.

anyway, there were a bunch of not very good players at the table and I got pretty good cards but could never match the flop. so when you got idiot calling stations playing any two cards and the flop is routinely T85 or J33 and I miss my AK and AQ and my ATss get a red flop there's not much I can do. when the SB ended and the three amigos left I didn't have much of a stack so I cashed out too down $350. didn't play any 7-3 this time and honestly don't think I played terribly. maybe I bluff too much. maybe I c-bet against calling stations too much.
whatever, that's poker. not a great start to the trip. but I brought more than 1 buy-in with me for a reason.

Drove out to Red Rock and checked in to my predictably awesome room.

so far everything has been very smooth. only downside is my room number is 154 which is at the end of the hallway about 2 miles from the elevators. holy smokes that's a long walk.

9pm, sat down for a late dinner at Lotus of Siam. service and atmosphere excellent as always. ordered the pad see ew, per the server's recommendation, and I was absolutely happy with it. delicious, filling, and priced under $20. c'mon now, I love Red Rock.

and the "best" part is the server was actually able to figure out how to process my poker food comps. I usually room charge it first and remember when I'm checking out but those people know nothing.

before trekking down that long hallway again I found a pai gow table (casino was packed so it wasn't easy to find a spot) and played for like an hour and a half. won like $50 in as uneventful fashion as possible, which is what I like.

it was a good first half day.

How’s it been going today??

decided on a turkey club sandwich at Lucky Penny for lunch. it was fine. the turkey club from the RR pool bar and from room service was the best sandwich I ever had, but apparently this is not the same and was not as good. not bad, just not as good.

logged back in for work-work until about 2:15pm, where I went down to the pool to relax until they close at 4. such a beautiful perfect day in February. there were actually quite a few people out and in the water. a bunch of kids, but some had a smoking hot mom that joined me in the jacuzzi for a few minutes so I did not mind.

was planning to work-work some more but just too tired. I'll do some more in the morning. took a little nap. then eventually headed downstairs.

sat down at an empty pai gow table and played for 3 hours at $30/hand. normally there isn't much to say about a pai gow session but this one was interesting enough to have a few notes.

Session 3: pai gow at Red Rock

- people came and went. one lady, who criticized me for not playing the bonus sides, played for about 15 minutes then left all grumpy. "this table is awful, pai gow is supposed to be a social game. nobody's talking and nobody's smiling." I was happy and had a smile the whole time. sorry that I didn't ask about her dog. good riddance to her.

- another guy drove me crazy. he always set his hands in a terrible setup, never logical. he got a bunch of straights but would never put them in order (i.e. T7968). pairs were never placed adjacently (K4764A). he hit quads queens + pair of deuces and arranged them QQQ2X + Q2.

- there were some pretty wild hands
dealer hit full house + AA.
dealer hit quad 4s + 55.
dealer hit quad 7s + AA.
the very next hand a player hit quad Ks + AA.
I mentioned player hit quad Qs + 22.
a player hit a straight flush

- the first dealer ace high pai gow was on the 41st hand. that one was a dealer pai gow + player pai gow, which is worth 40x. so if you played the ace high bonus every hand you would have been a loser, even if catching the max bonus. that was a little different than Sunday night where there was dealer ace high pai gow 3 times in 17 hands.

- quite a different pace. I kept a tally for both sessions. Sunday night was like 1.5 hours I thought and had 17 hands (maybe I missed a few, we can say 20). Monday night I had about 110 hands in 3 hours.

- by my count I had 28 wins, 28 losses, and 45 pushes, plus 5 dealer ace highs. but even after tips and drinks I was +$45 so I must have been like +2 bets.

- I didn't play the bonus bets. in those 110ish hands, by my count, the bonuses would have paid out 60x bets. there was a few envy wins but if I put $5 on the fortune bonus every time, even hitting an unusually high number of qualifiers, I would have lost about $70 more.

- the progressive bet is $2 at Red Rock. I didn't hit anything above a full house. if I played that every hand I would have lost another $200.

I like most of the PG dealers at RR. there are just a few that I'd call bad (unpleasant, slow, bored, etc.). Moe and Henry were my favorite today.

I played pai gow in Atlantic City this weekend. Two dealers said that people set their hands this way in order to make it difficult for the dealer and have them pay when they shouldn't (and if the dealer doesn't see it when the player has it, then the player will correct them). Not sure if that's true, but it at least makes sense.

Great pics so far. Good luck the rest of your trip!

it's a total douchebag move but I understand, thanks

Are you trying to imply all of those side bets are sucker bets? I'm shocked Vegas would allow this!!!!!

I know right

it was kinda fun to keep track and document though. it's a slow game, I had plenty of time and nothing better to do

went out looking for dinner. there's a new place Hearthstone (opened 9 days ago at Red Rock) but just looked diner-ish with a small menu that didn't jump out at me. looked at Yard House but I wasn't in the mood for bar/pub food. went to Lucille's, where I've been for a cheap lunch like 4 times but never dinner. the only BBQ place in Bismarck was Famous Dave's (which I like) but they closed last year.

first food splurge of the trip with the brisket + babyback ribs combo.

funniest part was the food came out in like 3 minutes. meanwhile they didn't get the table biscuits ready for like half hour when I was nearly done eating. (they did give a take home bag with a bunch of biscuits but they weren't great anyway)

best part by far was the beans side. the brisket was okay, not worth the premium surcharge. the ribs were not good; barely any meat on them and they were hard to eat. I did not like the barbeque sauce; maybe too vinegary; I like Baby Ray's and Famous Dave's better (sweeter).

service was good but for $45 or whatever it was not a great meal.

as I walked around and found a table at the food court to type my notes above from the pai gow, I noticed Nielsen's Frozen Custard and decided to splurge a little more with a strawberry banana Butterfinger concrete thing. not cheap but it was really good. recommend. I'm happy again.

wandered back to the casino and played a little pai gow with my buddy Henry the dealer until they had to switch out decks. degened a little on a VP triple play bonus poker machine. did not hit a bonus.

as I walked around past my bedtime, there was an empty craps table. I've never played and while I've been watching some live play and YT figured this would be a good way to learn without any pressure from other players. I did get up about $15 at one point and considered picking up and leaving but I hit the point or whatever so the dealer said "roll again!" but I got like a 3 which was a surprise loser. I rolled a few 7s before very many nice hits so while I learned the game I didn't win anything.

after dinner I lost a little at pai gow, lost a little at VP and lost a little at craps, between $40-60 at each.

but hey it was a great day

No idea how many hands we played on Monday alone, but Gwen would have hit 7 ace high matching pai gows. No idea how many I would have hit as I never bet that. Still, we had a good laugh at missing out on $1400.

Thanks for your paigow stats, interesting!

moving day
set my alarm for an early wake 6am but surprisingly didn't sleep well and was already awake when it rang.
spent the morning doing work-work until check out time.

decided to visit Palms to play a little and sat down for some pai gow. seemed like there was only one table open, and it had an idiot who was slow and didn't know what he was doing and an old Asian guy who was blowing a ton of smoke all over. eventually I saw a new table opening and moved over there.

overall, I won my first hand. good start!
I then proceeded to lose nearly every hand. I'm fine losing a bit and filling the time but this was horrifying. following the first hand I dropped $300 in under an hour. had only one other winning hand vs like 10 losers. how is that possible??
if I want to drop $300 in an hour I'll go play poker.
this is my first significant setback of the trip. at least it's only money.