They Have Cash Games in Vegas, too

If you’ve read the last couple of postings you might be thinking that I didn’t do anything else while out in Las Vegas except participate in the World Series of Poker Academy or watch the Main Event. Well, that just ain’t the case. The poker academy did make up a good portion of 2-2 ½ days while there, but I had about 4 ½ days out in Vegas so that left me with what I figured to be about two full days to do other things, so I didn’t waste a whole lot of that time sleeping unless I felt I had to get some sleep.

When we arrived Thursday night Adam and I decided to head over to the Wynn and get involved in the cash games there. I’ve usually done well at the Wynn so I thought this would be a good idea. Well, I was wrong this time about that. I sat down at the $1/$3 game at the Wynn and over the 5+ hours I played there I managed to lose about $500. It’s not the worst loss I’ve had, but it was the manner in how it happened. I never lost a huge pot. I just got whittled away, $35 here, $50 there, and so on and so on. I won my share of pots, but nothing big, and I was losing a lot more than I was winning. In fact I was so glad when we decided to leave that I couldn’t wait for the academy to start because I knew I couldn’t lose any more money until that next evening!! I never feel like that when I walk away from a poker game.

The schedule of the academy had us starting at 9am, and because we had the academy tournament that evening (which I’ve posted about already), I actually didn’t get my next opportunity to sit down at a cash game until about 11pm Friday evening. The poker academy tournament was being held in the Caesar’s Palace poker room so when I busted out of that I went to talk to Adam to see what he wanted to do. He had already busted out and was sitting down in a cash game. I told him I’d leave whenever he wanted to and he wanted to play a little more so I got on the short list for the poker game and got a seat about 15 minutes later. I then proceeded to play what was for me the shortest session of poker that I can recall playing in a live game. This happened because about 10 hands into the session Adam found me and said he was done with his cash game for the night. I told him I’d play back around to my big blind (I actually played one additional orbit), but I managed to pick up about $100 in the 18 or so hands I played.

The next poker session I played was after we had left the WSOP Main Event at the Rio. We had watched about the first two hours of play of the Final Table of the Main Event, but it wasn’t real exciting. Without hole card cams, which cannot be shown to the live audience for obvious reasons, poker isn’t really a great spectator sport. Adam and I tried to make the best of it, using notepads to try and jot down notes and see if we could “read” any of the players during the action. We thought that we might get to verify our reads when we got back home and compared our notes to the ESPN coverage if any of the hands we watched were part of the coverage. In those two hours of play we saw 29 hands, of which there were only 3 or 4 flops, and there was only one showdown at all. No one was knocked out, and with the blind structure what it was we both felt it could be a while before we saw any significant action, so we left about 2:30 or so. Adam had decided to get in to the 2 o’clock Daily Tournament at the Bellagio. The nice thing with this tournament is because it is such a deep-stack structure (10k starting chips, 35 minute levels, 25/50 starting blinds) no one usually gets eliminated right away. The Bellagio even allows late entries through the first four levels of play. Because of this Adam was still able to enter the tournament when we arrived.

I, on the other hand, decided to sit down at the cash games again. I sat down with my $300 in the first available seat, which happened to be seat #1 to the immediate left of the dealer. I really don’t care for that seat or the seat on the immediate right of the dealer either so as soon as another seat opened up I requested to move, and I got to move to seat #2. One of the other things I look for when trying to find a seat at the table is having a big stack, preferably a loose big stack, on my right. That wasn’t the case with my new seat (the table big stack was in seat #3), so when seat #4 opened up I moved there. I then proceeded to watch in the next half hour as seat #2 picked up pocket Kings and a middle pair that turned in to a set on a flop. Ay ay ay! Timing is everything. Well, as it turned out seat #3, although he was a big stack, he was tighter than a fat guy in spandex. So I moved again, this time to seat #8. Once again I watched the new player in my old seat pick up a lot of chips, this time when he had QQ v TT and another hand where he made the nut flush with AKsuited. In the meantime, my stack was dwindling. In fact, in one hour at this table I was down $500. So I pulled out my last buy-in I had planned for poker gambling. It was at this point where I finally turned things around. I was getting what I wanted with the seat change, too. The player in seat #6 was playing very loose, and I found him betting in to me, often times with no hand. I ended up picking up the $500 I was down, and also picked up an additional $300 or so. I was now back in sight of the even line, which considering how things were going I wasn’t sure if I would see that again.