Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 15:17:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Mark Rafn Subject: 2006 trip report I totally suck at names, even for people I've known for over 10 years now. Please insert yourself as you like into the following snippets of memory. Travel: uneventful, except for ludicrously long waits for luggage to arrive on carousel at both ends of the trip. Wednesday morning, went down to grab my badge and lured Foldem into playing a bit of craps. The Venetian actually had a $5/3-4-5x table open, the only time I've ever seen one below $15 there. I usually start playing the don't, and then switch sides based on my whim, but was playing pass and come this time. Error. We both got KRUSHED for a few hundred in 3 shooters who each rolled point-number-number-out. Played the $330 noon tourney at the Wynn. 49 players, they said this was about normal recently - apparently a slow summer for them and they had ~120-150 most days during winter. I expected to see some BARGErs, but if you were there, I missed you. Between some actual good play on my part and some good luck having my flop semi-bluffs alternate between stealing and sucking out, I get to the final 6 with second-shortest stack. I lean toward "no deals", but I don't feel that strongly about it, and I didn't object when everyone wanted to take $300 from first to pay the bubble. A bit of a mini-rush later (and some opponents who didn't loosen up nearly enough when short handed with fairly large blinds), and I'm heads-up with about 40% of the chips. I decline a fair deal, and manage to continue to avoid my natural weak-tightness long enough to grab about 70% of the chips before my As3s gets reraised all-in by QsJs. I instacall, and he flops a queen to worry me, but then makes his flush and I win! I highly recommend starting BARGE with a win, and I think I'm going to try it more often. I pretty much bled money the rest of the trip (with notable exceptions in the 9-18 LHE and a BEAUTIFUL craps hand at Casino Royale), but having rebuy money in my pocket kept me out of the hole I sometimes find myself of "in Vegas, but don't want to lose any more money, so I can either feel bad and not play, or play anyway and feel guilty." My wife Wendy, sadly, did not follow this strategy, and is massively stuck at Pai Gow and Blackjack. Expensive free room for us! Together, we're stuck just a little, and there's no actual financial harm, but she feels bad and that drains her vegas fun quotient quite a bit. Thursday I'm not in any BARGE events and Wendy is having a spa day before we have dinner and see Blue Man Group, so my plan was to go ride the coaster and big shot at Stratosphere. We'd rented a car, but I decided to check out the monorail, so I started walking. Casino Royale is just next door (which is already a long walk!), and has $3/100x odds craps. Spew $200 by switching from darkside to rightside at exactly the wrong moment. They have a sit-down half-size craps table there. I started to play, then found that it's only 10x odds (still not bad - $30 odds on $3 bets is about right for me), and had the grumpiest dealer I've seen, so I moved back to the stand-up table to make back a little bit. Another long walk to the monorail station, a little while at low-limit gambooling at the Sahara, and somehow the day is over and I have to get back for dinner. No rides for me! Pinot Brasserie was very nice. The tasting menu had a pairing with a bunch of German wines, about which I know very little but definitely enjoyed. I'd somehow never managed to see BMG before - it was fun and amusing, but probably won't be top of my list for required Vegas attractions. Wendy and I then play some -EV games, including Pai Gow tiles, which I kinda know how to play but don't know the tiles that well so I need help from Wendy or the dealer to set my hand fairly often. We both manage a small win. Sat down for a new 6-12 mix game, with mostly locals who wanted to argue about which games to play. One player didn't like stud, another didn't think we had enough split-pot games, and yet another wanted more flop games. The only agreement was that there's enough Hold'em in the world and we don't need it in the mix. I think we eventually settled on ROPE, overriding some of the complainers. Fun to play games I usually don't, and my luck held for a nice win. Friday is a blur - I honestly don't remember what I did most of the day, but Wendy and I went downtown, with the plan being for her to skip the craps crawl (she doesn't like craps, and was still feeling bad about previous losses) and either just hang out or head back to the Venetian. I got to MSS about 8:10 and the table was full. I squeezed in and was shocked to find myself the only don't bettor on this side of the table. Vilification and death threads add to the fun, but there were JUST enough numbers hitting to keep me from making any money. There's good beer there, though, and it turns out they're willing to book 3-way bets for me, the crew, and the cocktail waitress, and actually lock up her wins and pay her when she next came by with our beers. $10 craps at Binion's? That's lunacy. I was sad when the $1/100x table went to $3/20x, and had mostly written the place off last time I was there, but this clinched it. It was our home for so long - always a dump, but it was OUR dump and had the redeeming feature of at least being a good place for small -EV games. Now it just makes me sad to be there. They still have one reasonable single-deck BJ table. $25 min, but every other hand-dealt table I saw this trip paid 6/5 on naturals. I then let Marlin talk me into playing the big dollar wheel or whatever it's called. The best part was having the dealer try to explain why my brilliant system (martingale) wasn't as brilliant or novel as I claimed. I showed him, though! Lifetime winner at this game! The wedding was beautiful, as all weddings are. Along with everyone else, I take the over on the 53 year line. Not much of a Karaoke fan (but the performances so far had been so good I was tempted to change my mind), and I'm a lightweight so getting tired, I head back shortly after the ceremony. NLHE tourney - toughest and most fun tourney of the year for me, but I was pretty card dead. Not much happened, got a few playable hands that I gave up on the flop, then got KK with a small raise and min reraise in front of me. You see what's coming, but my brain hates me, and I just didn't consider the possibility. I raise a bit bigger and both call. Flop is ten-high with 2 hearts and Allknight makes a smallish bet. For some unknown reason, I instantly put him on a heart draw and jam. He actually thinks a minute before calling and showing his aces to put me out. Wendy wins our last-longer bet, getting past the second break before Perry stops talking long enough to bust her. I was out just in time to make the noon tourney. $500+50 buyin, 36 players. But wait: the screen said $17460 prize pool. Turns out the venetian charges a fee AND rakes the prize pool 3%. I know this is common in big tourneys, but it seems slimy to me, and the only response I can think of is to reluctantly not tip if I cash in a tourney with this rake. Sucks for the dealers, I hope they tell management to either take enough to pay well, or to leave it up to the players entirely. I get zero real hands, so I'm reduced to playing crap like KJo and A7s enough to survive for a bit. The tourney ends when I get QTo on the small blind and jam the AQT flop. The small blind doesn't have a very tough call with KJ. Wasn't feeling well, so napped for a bit, came in on the tail end of the banquet, got only to the 2nd level of roshambo, both games got to 9-9 after a large lead. I need to work on changing up my game, I guess. Played a bit in the non-silly 1-2 PLO, moved to 2-4 chowaha (sane game. Drinking heavily, but actually able to fold some hands, and rarely restraddled. The must-drink table was playing first-nation chowaha at this point: one card down, one card on your forehead where opponents can see it but you can't). Go to the must-drink mix game, then to the may-drink game when it broke. Best part of this was twice misreading my hand and accidentally scooping. Another year of much fun, I'm now resting up for next year. Many thanks to Peter and Chuck for organizing it 3 times just for us to play it once, and to the dealers and staff at the Venetian poker room who really got us. Thank you to our former and I hope future sponsors PokerStars and ParadisePoker, and to the very kind folks who stepped in to cover things. Fuck you to the gaming commissioners and gummint bastards who are afraid of online poker. -- Mark Rafn dagon@dagon.net