Cardzilla presents …

The new Red Rock Casino/Resort/Spa opened the 18th at 12:00am, and I had been anxiously waiting to see the first billion dollar casino built off the strip. There was a lot of publicity and ads running up to it’s grand opening, which started with a fireworks show that woke my wife and I up at 10:30pm. It was especially exciting for me because I was hoping to find a nice local crowd and a much better alternative for playing poker other than the dingy Orleans. I have grown to not like the Orleans very much, since it is littered with local rocks, ventilation is horrible, and the tournament structures just plain suck. Even though it’s a smoke-free poker room, you’ll probably die of second-hand smoke.

We got there yesterday around 3pm, and even though there were a ton of people piling into the lot, parking was very convenient. We bypassed the parking structure, made our way around to the west side, where I heard the poker room was located. The lot was packed, but we found a spot on the outskirts, and it still only took a couple minutes to get into the casino. When we walked in, all we could say was WOW. They went all-out for this casino. Nice hard wood floors for walking around, beautiful chandeliers everywhere, music, bars everywhere, awesome pool scene, and this place was hopping. The layout is fantastic I think. As I expected, the first thing I saw was the poker room, right next to a fantastic looking sports book. We spent a good hour just wandering around looking at all the amenities. The pit area is very unique. It was laid out in a huge circular area that surrounded a very lavish looking bar. I must say that the layout is the best I have seen, so you have to go check it out if you are in town.

Now to the important stuff; the poker room. All of their 20 tables were full and the waiting list was filling up fast. I put my name on the 10/20 half-kill hold’em game and the 2/5NL and waited about 20 minutes before I was seated at the 2/5 game. The experience so far was very cool. All of the poker room managers were nice and helpful, and the cash in/out area is nicely laid out, so I got my buy-in and headed for my open seat. The tables were beautiful, with a marble “racetrack” style area for your chips, and nice “skinny” red felt tables. The tables were nice and long and I seemed to be pretty comfortable there, even though I didn’t like the chairs too much since they didn’t adjust. Everything is automated at the tables. You give them your “Boarding Pass” (comp card) which is slid through a card-reader, the push a button to make sure that your card is “live” and your seat is generating the comps. All the tables have card shufflers, and a digital readout in front of it to tell the dealer whose card was swiped and clocking the dealers in and out. The dealers were fast and efficient, but I wish I could say the same for the waitresses. It took 30 minutes to see the first one, and 20 minutes to get my bottle of water after I ordered. All in all, a very good experience. I left up after about an hour and a half of playing, but will definitely need to come back again and monitor the scene there. The play was pretty tight because of all the locals checking it out. The poker action was a little slow for my taste but hopefully things will settle down a bit after all the frenzy. Then again, maybe it was just my table.

I finally had an interesting showing at the 1.5K NL in the Bellagio 2006 4th Annual Five-Star World Poker Classic yesterday.  Bellagio was the busiest I’ve seen it in a long time, which I thought was strange for a Monday.  When the tournament started, there still were 50 people in line to get in.  The field was so big, that I started in the main poker room, as the Fontana Bar was completely full.  The final entry count was 498, and interestingly enough, over half of them were gone before the first break.  I was almost one of them, as my stack was on life-support, and I had to push with 88.  Fortunately, I got called by AJo and when an 8 appeared on the flop, I had my first double up in 5 major tournaments.

Shortly before the 2nd break, I had to push again with JJ as my stack was dwindling.  I was not happy to see a young man who was playing like a complete rock re-raise me all in to my left, but was thrilled to see him turn over 99, and I had my 2nd double up before we got to move to the main tournament room.  I still had the same players and seat from the main room, and shortly before the table got broken, I picked up QQ and pushed again.  This time I was up against AKo, but when he didn’t improve, my stack was finally half way decent, but still a ways off from the average.

I had survived 7.5 hours for once.  There were only 70 players left, and they were paying 50.  I started to feel confident that I could do this, and I was playing great.  I had made some great moves that I was very proud of, including a squeeze play with 56c against a raiser and a caller, which worked great because I thought that the original raiser was just playing a bit reckless with his large stack.  My final hand was very exciting.  I had picked up AKo in early position and decided to just push and not mess around with my smallish stack.  The guy to my left called after some thought, and the small blind thought for awhile too, so I wanted him to call also.  The pot was monstrous after he finally pushed also.  Unfortunately, he had JJ, but I was thrilled to see AQo to my left!  I would have cruised into the money if I hit, but a Q flopped and it was over.  I walked away a little disappointed, but overall, very happy with my showing, and got some great experience and much needed encouragement from my previous terrible showings.

OK, enough is enough.  Time to do some calculations now after the 5th tournament in a row of being completely card dead.  I don’t intend to make this sound like I’m whining, but this is just ridiculous.  How is it possible that someone can be THIS card dead in 5 tries.  This time, I played in the yesterday’s 3K buy-in at the Bellagio 2006 4th Annual Five-Star World Poker Classic.  Fortunately, I chopped a 1 table satellite and got in for half price.  I saw a ton of poker superstars, such as Barry Greenstein, TJ Cloutier, John Phan, Dave Ulliot, and Amir Vahedi.  When the tournament started, I was surprised to be seated at the featured table!  It was on a raised platform and all lit up, and overlooked the rest of the field.  Jack McClelland, tournament director, was overseeing everyone play and the cards were in the air a little after 12pm.

So, lets run some numbers now.  I figure that you probably see about 25 hands an hour during normal play.  Since I lasted about 3 /12 hours, I saw roughly 85 hands. So, in that amount of time, I should have seen at least 5 pocket pairs, AKo probably once, AQo or AJo at least once, and a pair or any hand with an A in it at least 21 times.  This is what I consider a “normal” distribution of cards.  In the last 5 tournaments, I have not gotten anywhere near these numbers, and I am not exaggerating.  I had 4 pocket pairs, and won on two of those fortunately.  I never had AK, AQ, or AJ.  In fact, I had maybe 10 hands with an A in it the whole time.  I had some trapping hand like JT suited and KQ suited, but could play them because of the action in front of me.

On my last table, which was comprised of John Phan and Devilfish to my right, and Amir Vahedi 3 seats to my left.  It was a very interesting table and was fun to see some of the pros play.  My last hand was against John.  I picked up my 4th pocket pair (99) on the button after John raised 3x the big blind. I decided to just call and see a flop because, with his monstrous stack, I knew he would call if I pushed.  The flop came 883 with two clubs.  John bet 1500 and I decided that he had two overs, so I pushed my remaining 3600 in.  I knew he would call but I figured I had him beat so far, and I was right when he called and turned over AQo.  My day ended when a Q came on the turn.  Another frustrating tournament showing, but I’ll have my day in the sun one day, if I can just get some cards to play with, and have my favorites actually hold up.

Went to Bellagio yesterday to check out the action at the 2006 4th Annual Five-Star World Poker Classic. The main event is the 25K buy-in WPT season 4 finale No-Limit Hold’em Championship. The tournaments are played in the Fontana Bar near the main cage. I am really trying to get to the next level in my tournament playing, and these bigger buy-in events have just not being kind to me. I know it takes a lot of skill to win these things, but I also know it takes a little luck, and by that I mean getting your fair share of decent cards. It is amazing to me, at the moment, that on every larger buy-in tournament of 2K or more, I have been completely card-dead. I not complaining, just don’t understand it. I wish there was something more to write about, but unfortunately, I had 3 pocket pair (2’s, 8’s, and Q’s) the entire 2 1/2 hours I lasted. The Q’s went down hard on a flop of AK8 rainbow when I made a continuation bet and got raised.

Fortuantely, the other thing I look forward to is the side games at these larger tournaments. The main poker room was packed, and because of my early exit in the tournament, was able to grab a 30/60 seat fairly quickly. This was a fun table. There were a couple guys here from the tournament also, and it’s interesting to see how these guys throw money around after a tournament, looking to get their money back. I managed to win some of my money back, but again, I noticed how different the distribution of cards were. In those 3 hours, I had at least 15 pocket pairs including AA and KK twice, and many suited connectors which go well with such a rammin jammin game. Just wish I could get anywhere near these types of cards in the larger tournaments.

Before one of my favorite tournaments on the strip last week, I tried a 10/20NL cash game to kill some time.  There was a ton of action in the poker room and the sports book because of March Madness playoffs playing to the final four.  I checked out the table before I sat down, and it looked relatively calm.  Everyone had approximately 2K in front of them except for one huge stack of about 40K and a couple smallish stacks of 800, the minimum buy-in.  I had never seen any of these players before, so I decided to sit opposite the huge stack and to the right of this older gentleman that looked to be playing kind of tight.

I only had an hour before the tournament, and I just didn’t want to sit there like a rock, in fear of losing my 2K, so I tried to get involved early and lose that image right away.  Luckily for me, I got slapped in the face with the deck and took advantage of it.  In one hour, I had AA, KK, TT twice each, QQ once, and an assortment of trapping hands like JQh, 78s, and such that I played in late position.  It was fun to get involved and had already pushed my entire stack in 3 times against big raises.  It was very nerve wracking, but fun at the same time.  I was up about 5K at one point, when my AA went down in flames to a guy that cold called my 5x raise preflop, then pushed on a seamlessly harmless flop of Q93 rainbow.  When I bet 600, and he pushed, I figured I was up against trips, but I couldn’t lay it down because it cost me only 1K more to call and it was worth it to me. He had pocket 9’s and I lost a bundle on that one.

The most interesting hand of the whole day occurred after I had been pounding at this older gentleman most of the time and had apparently gotten him frustrated by re-raising him numerous times when he didn’t bet enough on the flop.  Every time he did this, it was apparent he was just trying to steal and it was very obvious he was starting to tilt. Anyway, I limped with TT on the button after 2 other players limped. The old guy raised the pot to 270.  One of the other players called, and I called to see a flop of AQ6 rainbow.  He, again, bet only 300 into a pot of 860, which signaled to me weakness, and after the other player folded, I raised to 1200.  He started thinking for a bit, but called, which didn’t make me feel too good about my hand all of a sudden.  He checked the turn when a 5 fell, and after that huge call after my raise, I decided to check behind him.  The river brought a beautiful T, but it was a little problematic because now there was a straight and a flush on board.  He checked again, so I decided that my trips were good and made a value bet of 600.  He, surprisingly, re-raised all in, and now I had to take some time to think it through.  After about 2 min of pondering what he could possibly have, I ended up putting him on KK and he was tilting.  There is no way he would have checked a straight or flush on the river with the amount he was down already.  So I called, and he didn’t want to show his cards at first.  I pushed my stack in and said again  “I call !”.  His hesitation made me feel a lot better because I knew I had him beat now, but he was refusing to turn his hand over, so I just sat there with my protector over my cards waiting for him to do something.  He said  “I have Kings”. I said,  “So, you are folding?”.  Finally, he threw his hand face down towards the dealer and he mucked them. I picked up both my cards and showed him one ten (I know, kind of cheesy to do that, but he was acting like an ass for the whole hour).  He flips out and grabs the cards our of my hand , then proceeds to throw them face up to everyone.  I was flabbergasted, and didn’t even know how to react.  I decided to just smirk and let it slide knowing that I had him really tilting now.

The tournament was starting, so I got up, but I think maybe I should have stayed a bit more since he came back with another pile of chips, just ready for someone to take away.

Went to Caesar’s today to check out the $80NL with one $50 rebuy.  The place was packed with the NCAA final four games starting at 3:05pm.  Decided to kill some time in a $2/5 NL game until the tourny started.  The day didn’t start off too good after I flopped the nut straight in the BB holding 86o in an unraised pot, and got reraised all-in with someone holding trips.  It is very hard to fold the nuts, so of course I called, and he turned quads.  Fortunately, I made my money back when I got a little crazy with JJ against a new player, and re-raised him all-in preflop.  He held AA, but when the flop came with a J, that saved my day.

The tournament was packed also, probably because of the final four games. After all the rebuys, the final entry count was 141.  The last time I had played this tournament, they gave you T3000 in chips to start, so I was disappointed when they give you only T1500 now.  That changed my strategy tremendously.  Even though you still get 40min rounds, you definitely need to accumulate chips early.  Anyway, I was basically card dead the entire tournament, watched the basketball games and was out shortly after the 2nd break.  There just wasn’t really any interesting hands to blog about, so I just took my basketball ticket home and cheered on UCLA when they completed my parlay win.