I really wanted to post while I was in Vegas but was so exhausted the entire time, never got around to doing it. I had a fairly good trip and ended up roughly four buyins for 2/5nl. Most of the games in Vegas were great with no max buyin, so I was sitting with over $1k a pop per table. The other great thing about Vegas is that almost every casino I played at featured nine handed play, which let the games play much faster. I'm used to playing so many boards online, so every little bit helps. In general it was a great experience for me. I could have definitely done better but my game fell apart a bit the last day. I didn't sleep great in the hotel rooms unfortunately but I've been sleeping light lately anyways.
Like I mentioned before, the WSOP was being held during my stay at the Rio. In the end I opted to not play in any tournaments. I really don't enjoy them and didn't feel like putting down the money to play for an excruciating long amount of time. I also haven't been playing a lot lately online and am still off my game a bit. I basically saw almost every pro in the room at one point or another, minus Doyle Brunson. They had some great events going on and I saw Kenny Tran win the 10k heads up while I was there. The room itself was huge and very energetic, it must have had over 400 poker tables. I played some 2/5 cash games in the room while the tournaments were running and enjoyed myself. I didn't earn any comp points toward Harrahs there though so I didn't play long. I mostly played at Ceasers Palace, but ended up checking out almost every casino while I was there. Ceasers had a very nice room and ran a decent amount of 2/5 games. Bellegio was amazingly nice although I didn't end up playing there at all during this stay. I also played a bit at the new Wynn poker room which is also very nice. The Venetian is amazing as well, although they ran ten handed games there so I only stayed for an hour. Something that was interesting to me was that for the casino which hosts the WSOP, the Rio; their poker room is absolutely terrible. They have about 10 tables and rarely run a 2/5nl game. When they do there's a sick waiting list anyways. Smoke also pours in from the main casino floor, so basically the entire thing sucks. The dealers are also heinous. One of them dealt me six streets.. when have I ever seen that in my entire poker career? You had to tell some of them what your hand was as well, I saw them muck winning hands several times and the player had to intervene to win the pot.. pretty pathetic for a casino set up.
On my last day there I went down to Freemont street and checked out all the old school casino's. I went into Binion's casino, which was what used to be Binion's Horseshoe a few years ago. The entire thing had a very 1950's feel and was just incredible to walk through. The poker room wasn't bad and contained a lot of poker history. They have their wall of WSOP champions and a wall of the poker hall of fame. There is also a table there with singatures of all the great players. I took a few pictures of this casino and will make a point to upload them here sometime in the future. I did want to play there but was time constricted, so will make a point to play there next time I go.
Overall though I really enjoyed myself, although there's just so much going on in Vegas ALL THE TIME, that I just got so tired of all the audio visual input and got worn out relatively fast. It was great staying in a mostly comped casino room, however renting a house would have provided far better rest. This is something I'll look into in the future. I do have several notable hands I played that I'll post here either later tonight or tomorrow depending on how much energy I have. I still haven't fully recovered and am sitting here in a zombie like state, lol.