Las Vegas trip

I've spent the last several days in Las Vegas and can say I'm *almost* ready to go home, but not quite. Due to a fabulous Hotwire deal I'm staying at Boulder Station, and am currently looking out my window at almost the entire strip in the distance, as well as downtown. The hotel is much nicer than expected, though the poker room offers what I've been thinking of as "smoker poker" since it's not a non-smoking room. I played some 2/4 limit last night at a very loose table... at least half the pots were won by rag hands with 5-9 callers even in raised pots. The two hands I won were with A4o and 67s, and I ended up down about half a buyin after a couple of hours.

My main reason for this trip was to attend a WSOP Academy class that was a freebie as a result of placing third in a previous tournament. We had a lot of great instructors (Phil Gordon is an awesome speaker, and Paul Wasicka is a total puppy... young, cute and a really nice guy), and the class included two tournaments in which main event seats were given away. I ended up placing in the top three in the first tournament, and as a result of a chop deal won $2,000 and another future class. It's my biggest win to date by far.

Today I played in an Omaha H/L tournament and made the final table, but didn't win much more than my buy-in back. I feel I played well, though, and am happy to have had the opportunity to play one of my favorite games in a live tournament setting!

I've also been sleeping a lot. I may be one of the few people on earth who finds a Vegas vacation to be totally mellow and relaxing. Now I get to go home tomorrow and back to the usual routine of cleaning up fur and cat poop and scratching my itchy husband several times daily.

OK, just got back from playing 1/2 NL downstairs. Best table ever! I didn't take away a whole lot of profit but it was worthwhile for entertainment value alone.

I sat down across from an empty seat with a good stack of chips in front of it. A few minutes later, Paul Magriel sat down there! So there I am sitting across from Paul Magriel (who turns out to be a heck of a nice guy, and totally cute when he bets "quack quack").

Then it becomes clear that there's a drunk maniac at the other end of the table shoving in about 50-80 chips preflop on every hand. At one point he put out 150 before even looking at his cards, then called off about 300 more with 85 offsuit. It ended up being a three-way all in with about half the occupants of the poker room gathered around the table to see the outcome. This guy is ranting about gambling it up and how he's got a room comped and has women and rubbers waiting for him, LOL.

I mostly folded and waited for KK to double up through the maniac, and gave a bit of it back before finally going back to my room for some sleep -- which is now imminent after a shower to get the smoke out of my hair. I wouldn't have been too bothered if I'd lost my entire stack, that's how much I really liked being there... even though I think NL cash games may not be my thing (see, it was educational too).

The inventor of 'M' ? WOW!
Itchy husband! ewwwww!

Congrats on the cash.

Sweet! Good job playing! Hope to go back soon with my wife. (Got married there 4 years ago.) Didn't play poker first time I went though

Congrats on cashing RC,,, Great job,,, i would pay SOME bills and put the rest toward your poker account,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, buck

Yeah i'd love to see how some of the top .50/1 or 1/2 cardschat people would do on an extended poker weekend in vegas. I think they'd clean up the town.