Vegas Day 6

"Vegas Day 6"

Worst Day so far. I was down $48.50 today. It’s my only ‘down’ day of my trip so far. Hopefully ever. Someone pointed out to me that if my *worst* day is being down $48.50 that I’m doing really well. And that’s true. I’m still up over $1290 for my trip, but I really wanted to get to $2000 before Claire arrived. And that’s gonna be hard to do now.

One problem was that I got crap for sleep the night before. I just could NOT get to sleep. I finally fell asleep at like 10am, and woke up at 2pm to Sean and Brent texting me if I wanted to head to the Excal buffet.

In all my trips to Vegas, I’ve never once done a buffet. I’m just not into fancy food, and Claire could never eat enough to warrant a buffet’s $20 price tag. I decided, fuck it. So I got my tired ass out of bed, and headed down to the buffet.

I had been saving up my $4 Excal meal vouchers since I got here. I had more than enough to get the buffet for free so that was good. What wasn’t good was the long ass line to get a seat.

After spending about 30 mins in line, we finally got a seat. The place reminded me of a crappy Sirloin Stockade or Golden Corral buffet. It was nothing special. Well, that’s not true. The Mexican cuisine was something special. It was quite literally the absolute grossest looking Mexican food I’d ever seen in my life. I ended up having some fried chicken, some beef things with gravy, mashed potatoes, some chicken noodle soup and a salad. The salad was the best thing, and it wasn’t all that. Still, somehow I managed to eat too much. Yay.

Tired and bloated, we headed to the Excal poker room. As expected, there was no $1/$2 game running so I had to jump into a 50c/$1 game.

Session 1: Excalibur 50c/$1 NL Hold ‘Em
This table was so freakin’ tight it was ridiculous. The average pot size was $8. $8! A $5 raise was met with raised eyebrows and lots of comments. I was not used to playing 50c/$1 anymore. This was not a good thing.

About the 2nd hand in, I was in the Big Blind with K6o. I checked and flopped a pair of Kings on a board of K49 rainbow. Small blind bet $3, and I raised to $9. Every folded back to the small blind. He called. Turn card comes a 6. Sweet. He checks, and I bet $15. He calls. This guy only has like $17 left after the call. The river comes an A. He goes All-In. I course I call. Guy had rivered two higher pair. He was calling me down with a pair of 4’s until he spiked the Ace on the river. Lucky idiot. Alright. I see this is gonna be a long game.

I reload back up to $100. There’s now way I’m letting these guys off easy. They’re so meek that I start playing almost any two cards and playing very aggressively. And they call me down over and over with high pairs and beat me for $20-$40 pots. Which I guess makes sense because if they’re gonna wait for KK, they might as well go the distance with me. I’ve been raising tons.

I kept topping off to $100 waiting for the chance to catch one of the the bigger stacks. I finally got one. I’m in small blind with 46s (spades). Flop comes 3h 5c 7d rainbow! I check. Some guy bets $5. Guy in late position calls. I call. Turn comes a Jh. I check. Dude goes all in for $83! Sweet! Guy to my right thinks about it. I’m thinking... Call! Call! He folds. Boo. I call and announce that I flopped the nut straight. Guy has a 2h 5h. A pair of 5s and a flush draw. I dodge the flush with a river Kd. Now I’m in business!

In the 3 or so years we’ve been playing at Excal, I’ve never got to sping their “High Hand Wheel”. Basically if you’re at Excal and you get Aces full (with both hold cards) or better, you get to spin a wheel of fortune style wheel for some free cash. I’ve NEVER hit a qualyfing hand here. Can you believe that? They used to allow you to spin it if your pocket Aces got cracked. And I’d done that 3 times before. Yay. Anyway, I hit quad Q’s on this table, and FINALLY got to spin it! I won an extra $35. :-)

The only other memorable hand was when I had QQ and some guy in early position raised to $6.50. He at first was going to raise to $7.50, but took it back down to $6.50 for some reason. I raised to $15 with my Queens, and he immediately raised me to $40. I’m sitting there thinking... are you serious? I look at my Queens. I look at him. I say, “There’s no way that you are brave enough to do that to me without AA or KK. There’s just no way. I’m folding my Queens.” I fold and notice that the hand doesn’t end. I look up, and Brent had called my $15 bet! Oops! I apologized for talking about my hand. I really didn’t mean to. I had no idea there was another player in the hand. He was OK with it. He understood that it was an accident. Brent ended up calling, and the raiser started going on and on about how he couldn’t beat me. That I was too good. The thing is... I didn’t even know he was going after me. Haha. He shows KK. Brent shows AK. He’s still going on about how I folded my Queens. I mean, I didn’t think that was that hard of a fold. A meek player from early position raises, decides it’s a bit too much, reduces the raise, he gets re-raised by an aggressive player (me), and then all of a sudden he’s re-re-raising? Yeah, it’s not too hard to fold QQ there. But that just goes to show how bad these players are. I think that the folding of QQ was just common sense. He’s thinking I’m a genius. And he seemed sincere too. Anyway, his Kings hold up. Brent loses. :-(

With all the top-offs early on. I was in for $318.50 on this table. I actually got all the way to $319.00, but I played a top pair of Queens poorly and ended up down $92.50 for the session (including that $35 I won on the High Hand Wheel.) I probably could have made it back, but the table broke. Bah. My first losing session in a while. Oh, well.

I headed to the $1/$2 table.

Session 2: Excalibur $1/$2 NL Hold ‘em
As expected, this table last only about 2 hours... I made +$44 to sorta offset my earlier losses. Because I hadn’t slept much the night before, I was dead tired. We ate some cheap 25c wings for dinner at Dan Marino’s, and this time I slept like a log.

Tomorrow: Claire and Brian fly in to Vegas!