|  Vegas June 2006 | | Day Three(Tuesday) | | Lunch at Bellagio buffet around 2, excellent as usual.
| | Hit the gamblers general store, got another year's worth of cards and a decoration for "Pete's Poker Room".
| | Then it was on to Ala...er...an unnamed casino. Actually we went to Paris first as I was dying to play in their PL Omaha daily tournament. As soon as we saw that they had exactly one table running we knew it wasn't good. Rich checked with the guy running the room and they said they might only get 3-4 people for Omaha and needed 8 for a tourney. So then we went to the unnamed casino next door that isn't Bally's...
| | Joann decided to skip the tourney and play limit, which wasn't kind to her but she lost less than Rich and I and played longer so "kind" is relative. Rich and I disagreed on which of us suffered the toughest beat (neither would be considered a "bad" beat). I had pocket 10s and a raise into me which I called. Flop came 3-4-3, raiser bet into me (about the size of the pot) and bearing in mind the format (if you don't double up in the first three rounds you're in trouble anyway) I decided to risk it and pushed hoping he just had slick or something. Alas dude had pocket jacks and I didn't hit. I went to the craps table, after I left Rich had slick and was short stacked. Rich will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the sequence of events was that someone with a short stack but slightly bigger than Rich's raised into him. Rich came over the top all in and the other person called. They had J-10 and hit. Rich can't believe that they called the reraise, I say if you're short stacked anyway J-10 is a hand you take your chances with hoping you have two live ones (which they did).
| | My luck started to turn around, however. At the craps table I had the dice to myself for a while and was throwing 7s and 11s left and right. No kidding, got paid on the pass line 2-3 times every time between points and didn't hit any craps between points. But 7s don't work so well once there's a point...So anyway, I got on one roll, someone else came over and got on a bit of a roll and I almost doubled up from $100-$188. Along the way I had a minor dispute where I was sure I put out a come bet and the dealer paid the guy next to me. Pit boss quickly said to pay both of us and threw in an extra $5 chip for the "original bet" since there was only one chip on the table to be paid (remember this). Later asked to have my chips colored up and was given two black chips, two greens and two reds (that would be $285 for the casino un-savvy, had 3 $1 chips as well). Gave the "dealer" a $8 tip and ran away from the table with my bounty. More about this later...
| | Then it was on to Venetian, along the way Rich was giving Joann a hard time about being a Star Trek geek and I made the mistake of disagreeing with Joann about whether The Enterprise was NCC-17701 or NCC-1701. Never, ever, ever think you know something about Star Trek when you're with a Star Trek geek, especially if that geek is your wife. We had an elegent dinner of Nathan's Hot Dogs, then checked out the poker room there. Tournament format sucked, but the poker room was beautiful. Then it was on to the Hilton to try and hit the Star Trek experience gift shop. Good news on two fronts, the shop was closed so no money was spent and they had a model of the Enterprise overhead that mercifully confirmed Joann was correct about 1701. You married folk surely appreciate my joy at being proven wrong in that case, right?
| | On to Wynn for a quick checkout, the Ferrari dealership charges $10 just to go in and look at the cars. The format for their $330 tournament is awesome, 3000 starting chips and 45 min rounds. However the satellites for $85 are just 1K chips and 15 minute rounds (two of 10 win entry) so there's no skill involved there - push and pray basically. We decided against trying that, at least for today.
| | Then it was on to Orleans for a little $2/4 hold'em. We were at a table with some of the biggest morons you've ever seen, but I was the only one able to take advantage. There was this one woman who couldn't understand how to bet, was constantly talking to the guy next to her (not a pickup thing, unless the young man had a thing for short, fat, much older women), and played just about every hand and kept sucking out on people just enough to keep her about even. She was the single most annoying person any of us had ever seen at a poker table. Joann and Rich, who the dealer called "the quiet one" when she found out we were together, couldn't take advantage of the bad play but I had one of those "perfect hands" where I hit a boat on the turn and someone else had the nut flush on the river. Neither one of us could get our money in fast enough, alas most of his money was already in the pot because he was going to put in everything he had and after a lot of reraising and capping on previous streets he only had two bets left for the river.
| | So that was it for last night, an early night as we were back in the room by 2am and up for day four by 9.
| | But one last note on "the unnamed casino". Last time I was in Vegas I was at one of their craps tables (going to try and keep this short) and we had a little incident. I believe that someone made the point 6, dealer at our end of the table marked it correctly, dealer at the other end marked 8. Nobody noticed at the time. Couple of rolls later 6 comes off and our dealer starts paying. Dealer at the other end yells at our dealer and tells her to move her button and stop paying us. She moves it but protests. Well, as you can imagine people at our end of the table start freaking out. After much arguing they agree to check the video tape. 15 minutes later they come back and say that they checked the tape and they they explicitly saw our dealer move her button from 6 to 8...no shit, morons. Now people really start freaking out. They offer to let us take our bets off the table and start over...we leave our money out and the next roll is a 7...and almost everyone leaves.
| | Clearly, even if we were wrong (we weren't), they lost way more money pissing us all off than if they had just done the right thing and paid us off. Fast forward to this trip where a pit boss did the right thing in an unclear situation (if I was wrong it cost them $10 to make me happy and keep me at the table) and then karma was at work when I got that extra $100 chip.
| | That's all for today... | | Post a comment |
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