Sunday morning I woke up around 10:30 and wanted to try to make the horse tourney and, since it was at the hotel I was staying at, how could I miss it? After making myself presentable, well, at least getting clean, I headed down to the newly moved poker room at the IP. I was maybe 15 minutes late and I was able to join in the festivities. I sat with Falstaff, Bruce, Mattazuma and a few peeps from the Full Tilt Forums and I believe a few from the Ante Up Nation.
I played pretty solid until the stud 8 round where I failed to complete the multiple outs that I had for at most a straight flush since 5th street and the second hand a flush or boat from 6th. Those two hands cost me most of my stack. I believe I donated all of those chips to Bruce, the eventual co-winner. My final hand came down during the first hand of the Hold’Em round. With less than 3bb I had pocket tens UTG and raised it up with Falstaff being the only caller. When the SB and BB folded Falstaff said he had the Hoy and I showed my hand and told him he would hit and Ace on the flop. Sure enough, the Ace hit and I was second out after a little over and hour and a half. Not nearly near where I would have liked to finish, but what can you do, someone has to be second out.
To drown my sorrows I headed back over to Margaritaville for more Landshark Lager and a Cheeseburger in Paradise. I friggen love that place. You must try the Loaded Landshark Lager, which has some sort of lime liquor in it. Mighty tasty.
After I had properly drowned said sorrows, I went back to the IP to watch the outcome of the horse tourney. After a lot of time passes, Falstaff and I went over to play Piagow Poker. This was a new experience for me and boy is that game fun. Falstaff bought in for $100 and I for $60 and for the next two and a half to three hours we hammed it up at the table. Best $45 I’ve ever spent. I rollercoastered from down to $11 to $85 to $15 to $74 back down to $15. I must admit, I play a mean piagow shortstack.
Unfortunately, I completely missed the Saprano’s finale during the piagow fun. Hopefully I’ll be able to see a re-run this week.
After piagow, Falstaff, T and myself headed to the fifth floor of the IP for some food goodness. We ended up at the Pizza Palace and we all had more food than we could eat, the portions are just that big. After dinner, drinks and shooting the shit, Falstaff and T headed back to the place that has a prick for a tournament director and I headed back up to my room. A little bit of online poker and Team America World Police from Netflix and I was off to lala land.
Monday, I woke up around 9, cleaned up again, packed my bags and checked out from the IP. All of the video poker, video slots and piagow playing comped me a little under $25 from my bill, which paid for my first nights room service. I check my bags and headed over to the MGM Grand to play a little more poker. Or so I thought.
I finally ate at a Vegas buffet for breakfast and then looked through the poker room to see if there were any bloggers left, but I didn’t see any. So I thought to myself, I still haven’t seen the Shark Reef over at Mandalay Bay, so a walk and a tram and I was there. If you haven’t been to the Shark Reef, it’s definitely worth it. I took a lot of phonecam pics and really enjoyed myself watching the sea turtles and various sharks while inside the sunken ship.
Afterwards I spent the next six hours at the Mandalay Bay poker room. I made personal history by getting felted my second hand at the table, my a kicker that was 1 lower than my opponents. REBUY! The table was awesome, some real donks, solid players and inbetweeners, but everyone was super nice, chatting and very personable. When I first sat down at the table, we had an almost-retired software engineer who liked to bet hard at pots and new how to build them. His favorite bet was $75. To my right, one of three salesmen who were in town for the Oracle gathering. Near the end of the table an older gentleman who had built up a rather big stack, a frat boy, a random player and another player who was loose-weak. Only four of the players left during the first four hours of the session, so I got to know the players, some more than others.
At one point, a dealer was trying to explain to a player after he got up and started to leave the table, that house rules state that if you are the third player up walking around a full table that once the blinds reach you, you are eligible to be bounced from the table, if there is a list. The player sat back down and asked, “What?” “It doesn’t matter now.” Said the dealer, bringing laughs to the entire table. I flipped him a $1 chip and said, “That’s for the laugh!” About halfway though my session a player named Sam sat to my immediate left. At first he was rather quiet, but as the hands continued to be dealt, he opened up more and more. I strattled just about every other orbit and one of the Oracle sales guys, who would now be the new UTG+1 would raise my strattle every time with a raise of $19. Every. Time. I didn’t mind, because every time I got a huge hand during the strattle, I got and extra $19, which only happened once. Most of the time I didn’t have crap and the hands were not worth the extra $15.
About two hours before I had to leave the table to head to the airport, we got a new player who strattled his first and I said to the table, “Someone else strattled! This is awesome!” He nodded back at me. A little while later, Sam strattled a hand. The three of us randomly started to strattle hands building up pots. Sometimes, the first player would raise it up to $12 and five of the remaining players would call. Talk about and awesome pot builder. One of those hands I was lucky enough to take down, but most of the time I just got out of the way. Near the end of my session, Sam and I tried to get everyone at the table to strattle. We got five players in a row to strattle a hand until the last four players decided that a strattle was not in their game plan. Feh, we tried. Every dealer at the Mandalay Bay poker room was awesome and I will definitely play there again. I cashed out for a small profit of 4.5BB an hour and headed back to the IP to get my bag and head home.
Overall for the trip, pokerwise I finished up $35, paigow down $45, video poker/slots down $110 but up $25 in comps. Considering my first 14 hours there I was down $400 in poker alone and in a funk, coming home down $95 in gambling as a whole, I’m perfectly fine with that!
tags: mandalay bay, paigow, poker, strattle, summer classic 2007
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