Just Got Back From Vegas

I just returned home from 4 day trip to Vegas - Thursday through Monday at the Bellagio. The trip was good, as I won enough to pay for my trip and then some. I'm a 30-60 limit hold 'em player who also played some 15-30 hold 'em while I was there.

The poker room at the Bellagio was busy. The level of play varied wildly. Sometimes, I was at tables where the play was tight and very sound, with none of the players making any obvious, exploitable mistakes. At other times, the play was truly awful. For example, one opponent was in a pot heads up with me with 66. I had AA. He peeled on a flop KQ4, spiked a 6 on the turn and cracked my aces. Other examples of awful play include players who raised in early position with Q8o and drawing to backdoor gutshot straight draws in small pots.

I also played in a couple of nightly $150 NL hold 'em tournaments at Caesars. The play was reasonably good and most of the players seemed to be locals.

Overall, my sense of Vegas is that it is much busier than it was last year, when it was deader than I'd ever seen it in the 20+ years I've been going. Having said that, it is not nearly as busy as it was 3 years ago when the economy was still healthy. The city and state are still having a tough time, and I think it will be awhile until the city fully recovers. However, it's still a great place to play poker and I look forward to my next visit.

Glad your trip was profitable! Going there on Saturday myself and hope for the same.

Thanks! I wish you the best of luck as well. The action at the Bellagio was pretty good. I also heard a lot of good things about Caesars and the Venetian. I didn't play at the Venetian, but the nightly 7 pm tournament at Caesars was enjoyable.

I will be playing at the Venetian since we are staying at the Palazzo 3 of our 4 nights.

I should've mentioned something else about my trip. One of my relatives wanted to go to Binion's downtown, so we did. What a dump! Oh, how the mighty have fallen. I knew that the old man's daughter had run the place into the ground and was forced to sell, but it was still sad to see it in its current condition. Binion's Horseshoe used to be famous for its single deck blackjack, but when we went on Saturday morning, it was offering only one double deck game and 8 deck games. But get this -- it was paying only 6-5 on all blackjacks! Benny Binion must be turning over in his grave.