We arrived in Las Vegas late in the afternoon on Thursday. We caught our shuttle to the Bellagio where we checked in and dropped off our luggage. We then headed over to the Rio so that we could register for Friday's $1500 No Limit Texas Hold 'em event. Amazingly there were no lines during any of this process. Usually the check in lines at the hotels in Las Vegas are notoriously long, but we got very lucky. We spent a little bit of time walking around the Rio's Convention Center, visiting the Amazon Room, the large room that was now being used as the room that the events move to after their initial starting location, the Pavilion Room. When we got to the Pavilion Room I just couldn't believe how large the room was. It had over 300 tables in the room, and there was still plenty of walking space and the tables didn't seem to be too crowded amongst each other, either.
After getting familiar with the new setup of the convention center we registered for the event and got our names on the cash game list. I was called first, and was seated on the far side from where the board was that contained the lists. After sitting at this table for just a couple minutes I could tell that this was a good table at which to be. I played a few hands and then my friend Dan got seated at the same table. Figures. I travel 2000+ miles to play poker, there's 20 tables running the cash game we both want to play, and he gets called to my table. Table change requests can be made, but I had already witnessed too much awful play to consider leaving so I just decided to deal with it.
Well, this ended up working out very well for me. Before the end of the night I was up $850. I got dealt some good hands, having gotten dealt AA two or three times and also was dealt KK twice. One of the times I got pocket Aces I was against the "perfect" player for the hand. He was a player who would call a lot of hands preflop, but never raised. His girlfriend/wife was sitting behind him and watching the action, too. Well, after he called my preflop raise and then he bet in to me on the flop I knew that I was going to have a chance at a big pot. We got it all in on the flop, and I never even got to see what he had because after the board paired the turn and an Ace hit on the river I turned over my AA to show the full house I now had.
I picked up another decent-sized pot when I reraised a pot preflop with AK suited. One of the players on my right called my reraise, and the flop came: 5-5-5. Once again, even though I was the preflop raiser the other player bet in to me. Usually when this happens it's because the player is trying to "feel" out where they are at in the hand, so I sent a message by reraising enough to put him all in. He called, so now I figured he had a pair and I'd need an Ace or King to get there. What I didn't count on was the 5 that came on the turn. This actually gave me the nuts! It turned out he had 6-6, so I now had him outkicked with our quads.
There was one other pot that was sort of fun, and that was one where I had 6-4 offsuit. I picked up a pair on the flop, where I called a player's bet, and then picked up a double-gutshot straight draw card on the turn, so I raised the player to steal it but got called. The river got there so when I bet it she really didn't see the straight. In fact, after she called and I turned my hand over, she had to look long and eventually I had to point out that the 4 in my hand gave me a straight, which disgusted her to no end and she left.
All of these hands got the trip started off on the right note as I finished that session up $850. We called it quits sort of early knowing that we'd be starting our event at noon the next day.
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