Vegas Virgin - advice needed

[craigbetts]

I am heading to Vegas as part of a stag party in mid October, covering a Thurs-Tues period. The stag is a keen poker player although there are members of the group who are not au fait with the pokers. I think and am hopeful that I'll be able to get away with playing one tournament during this timeframe so I obviously want it to be a goody.

My usual tournament buy in is upto £100, though I would happily play one upto two or three hundred dollars during my stay (does the venetian have a deepstack event on a saturday? is this $500 plus juice?). What tournaments do the blonde masses recomend? Ideally I would like to have one or two options as I am going to have to be flexible.

We are staying at Planet Hollywood and there will be one or two of the guys looking to play the odd cash game, this will be no more than an hour here and there and at a low level. So what poker rooms should I be looking to play in? Any other gems would be welcome too.

I expect all plans to fall by the wayside and to do my conkers in by the first day, but I do love a good plan.


Many thanks, Craig.

[Woody502]

Hi mate, it looks like the next DSE at the V is the end of October so you may miss out.

http://www.venetian.com/Pages.aspx?id=2451

The daily lunch time tourney at the V is one of the best on the strip ($150 but $340 on Saturday) and should be tried at least once in my opinion.

http://www.venetian.com/uploadedFiles/The_Venetian/Gaming/TournSch1008.pdf

Most of the tourneys under $100 are not the best structure and quickly turn into a crap shoot but a few to consider are CP at 12pm, Mirage at 7pm and the Sahara (only if your up that way) at 7pm.

Most casinos on the strip that have a poker room will spread 1/2 my favourite 3 would be V, PH and MGM as a rule you seem to get decent action in all 3.

Enjoy!

[outragous76]

Best low buy in tourneys are ph, treasure island, MGM, these are circa 60 bucks.

Venetian and ceasers have excellent 120-180 buy ins

[craigbetts]

Thanks for the replies, I have heard so many good things about the Venetian deepstack festivals that it is an aim to return in November and play a couple of these. I just have to survive mid oct first and go on a little spin up to fund it.

[vegaslover]

For under $100 Sahara has by far the best structure. Decent numbers too. They have a 7pm and 11pm tourney. Both will be over a k for 1st from a $40 buy in.
plenty of low cost roulette/blackjack for the non players. You wouldn't want to spend too long there though

[Sheriff Fatman]

Check out www.allvegaspoker.com for info on the regular tournaments. 

As mentioned, many of the low buy-in events are crapshoots with very fast structures, so worth looking around for a bit of value.  http://www.pokertournamentformula.com/las_vegas_poker_tournaments.htm might help, but worth double checking that the info is still current.

[millidonk]

I was the Stag on this particular trip. Fair to say the majority of poker was alcohol fuelled. Played one donkament 70 dolls in PH, ran KK and JJ into Bullets on back to back hands. pretty standard. Bettsie ran deep and was chippy with 7 left, top 5 paid, obviously came 6th.. that was without me down there as the antirail. 

Few cash highlights such as my slow roll on Betts, mate who has no idea calling him down in a $300 pot , after repopped pre and a bullet been fired every street on QQK68 board (or something not remotely like that) flipping pocket FTW (think he had aj).

 I am a terrible story teller, hopefully he can enlighten us into what else happened. I don't remember much and what i do, my therapist is helping me deal with.

There is a new place called Larry Flint's Hustler out on Dean Martin drive well worth a butchers.

[Rotty]

The lunchtime tourney in Aria is very good though they were introducing some bizarre "cashout" game at weekends recently where you could sell a proportion of your chips back, bit silly really

[DungBeetle]

Best low buy in tourneys are ph, treasure island, MGM, these are circa 60 bucks."

PH has a horrendous structure now.  Start with 6k in chips and it goes 100-200, 200-400, 400-800 within first hour.

Treasure Island is much better - doesn't become a crapshoot till 3rd hour.

If you want to make money - LUXOR cash game.  I'd avoid the Venetian personally - it's just a giant cash game rake warehouse now.

[craigbetts]

Virginity lost!! woohoo.

As predicted all the plans I had envisaged fell by the side. I managed to play one tourney and that was at PH, as mentioned the structure was a turbo with a go-faster sticker splattered all over it.... 55 players and top 5 paid, 70 dolls entry with 20 of this being skimmed from the pool!! ouch.. The standard was poor and I managed to chip up to be chippy with 7 left, cue over aggro play by myself and a few shortstack's hands holding up and I take the bubble. I took a peek in the poker room at Ceasers and there looked to be a decent daily/weekly structure on offer, I had intended to play one of these though the drinking won the day.

Onto cash games and I'll be the first to admit I am a poor player. My first session saw me quadruple my stack before getting it all in post flop when I was a slight dog to scoop the 800 doll pot. I think i would like to post this hand on the pha board as I really do need to improve my cash game, my thought process at the time was that I had bought in for 100 dolls and I was near enough flipping for 800 dolls.. I was in vegas and there to gamble so I'll go to the races all day!

Following a trip to Freemont St and a loss of 200 dolls playing roulette I decided that most of my roll would now take place on the 1/2 cash tables at PH. 3 losing sessions out of 9 kept me afloat and ensured I had beer money for the duration. A couple of highlights were being 'slowrolled' by my mate when my river bluff/blocker bet was only called by a str8 on a paired board, matey sigh called thinking I had rivered the boat so its more a megs without calling it imo! Another beauty arrived when one of the non poker players in the group sat down and on his first hand I barrelled off 3 streets on a kq669 three heart board, getting called by oppos 33, soul read for sure!!!

Overall the visit was just beyond my wildest expectations, the beauty of doing next to nothing on my 'to do' list as left me a window of opportunity for next time. Craps I just never understood, despite reading Woodsey's idiot proof guide! The one thing I would like to take away, is to improve my cash game and to ask any knowing blondes, what advice would you give for a novice cash game player? what aids/books/nuggets would you recommend to develop.

Thanks again, craig