November 18th 2007

The flight to Vegas was great and the time went reasonably quickly, it is just impossible to sleep on a plane so knew I was going to be very tired on arrival.

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The view of the Vegas strip as we landed though soon got the adrenaline going and tiredness took a back seat as I impatiently wanted to get to the hotel and buy in to my first cash game.
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2 hours after landing I am in my hotel room at the Tropicana (thats the night time view above from my hotel window). After a quick freshen up I head down to the poker room for a Budweiser and a game of cards.

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I initially buy in for my $200 at a full ring table $1/$2 blinds and sit to play and assess the players. The Tropicana is not known for its tough games although you do get one or two locals taking advantage of this who can play a bit. First impressions were that there were no dangerous players at the table. There were however 2 people who were loaded with cash, limping into every pot and calling any pre flop raise with trash. This was an ideal situation it was just going to be a wait to see who would get their chips.

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I managed to get into 3 big pots with the gentleman loaded player holding the middle card to a straight 3 times, only to amazingly get the pot split all 3 times as he held the same middle straight card.

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I then proceeded to make an ill advised re raise on the same gentleman holding 88 on a board of Q72. I wanted him to fold but was expecting a call, so when he re raised me all in for a further $130 I had to give him credit for a better hand and folded. This I know now on reflection was a very bad play as I shouldn't be trying to put moves on a serial caller - noted for my next session.

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All these antics following another $100 top up left me down $150 on the session after 2 1/2 hours. I was contemplating cashing in after the next round of the table when to my joy I looked down at KK in the SB. All the serial limpers came into the pot so when it got to me I decided to give it a big pre flop raise of $12 knowing that at least one of the cash laden callers was going to go with me holding a weaker cards whilst the rest should get out of my way. So I wasn't too chuffed when one of the tightest players 2 to my left announced a re raise to $24 after his initial limp. Not surprisingly every one got out of the hand (even the cash laden callers) and I was left heads up. Now I am not folding KK to anyone so decided to give it a hefty re re raise of a further $50 (pot size approx $160) .... Mr Tight just called, OK so now I don't have him on AA, I just didn't want an A on the flop. The board came out JJ6 with 2 hearts (and I didn't have a king of hearts). Having about $150 left behind me I put in about a $100 bet which he thought for a while then put me all in for the rest of my chips. I insta called with my last $50 or so. How relieved I was when I saw his QQ (also with no hearts), the K's held up and I had gotten back to just over my total buy in of $300. I took a couple more rounds of the table and managed to steal a small pot using my new found image of having the goods and decided to cash out $22 in profit.

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Dave and Len entered a $50 freezeout. Dave came 2nd for $200 after a deal on how the $720 prize fund should be distributed amongst the final 3 players.

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So there ended the first day in Vegas. Ready and geared for some games the next day I retired to my room for some much needed shut eye. I will report my daily wins and losses so the figures for today are below:

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Buy Ins - $300

Returns - $322

Profit - $22

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So until tomorrow ...

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Keep It Tight!