I have been going to Las Vegas for almost ten years, although the last three years I have been limited to 1-2 visits a year for 1-2 weeks each since my wife and I are working on a cultural interchange project in Ecuador. We both work in schools. My school is out on vacation for two months, while my wife’s is still in session, so I am in Los Angeles and Las Vegas for two weeks for both some business and poker time by myself.
Leave at 00:20am Sunday morning and go through a marathon air trip from Guayaquil, Ecuador, through Atlanta and onto LAX on American. Both flights were crammed full so comfort was low, although somehow I did land at LAX 40 minutes early. Ended up at my hotel in Cypress and get settled in. My plan was to go to one of the LA cardrooms and play some low limit to get the rust off my live game. I felt surprisingly okay so hit the nearest poker room – the Hawaiian Gardens.
I’ve played in most of the SoCal poker rooms but this was the first time at HG. First thing, HG is pretty dumpy. It really is just a bunch of semi-permanent tents connected together. It has almost 100 tables for anything from NLHE to Omaha, Pai Gow, Pan, Blackjack and other games. It was also holding lots of promotions. It was having a Sunday giveaway of up to $7500. There was also a bad beat jackpot for Aces full of Tens beaten by Quads or better, that was at $100,000 for a special promotion. Action was busy. The table I sat at was a $100 buy-in with $2/$3 blinds. I had considered going to one of the bigger games, but since I was at the end of a marathon travel session, plus I was simply looking for some live action to warm up for Vegas, I settled for the lower level. It was an inspired decision, because the players in the $100 buy-in games were insanely bad. All of them were experienced playing NLHE, but there was only one who played even a remotely solid game. This was fortunate, because it took me about an hour to settle down into playing anything approaching solid myself. But even when I made a bad play, the other players made even worse plays.
Exemplars:
Hand #1 – I’d done nothing but fold for the first twenty minutes and was getting bored, looking for something to open with. I am in Cutoff with A9off with 3 limpers. I decide to just call and we see the flop 5 handed ($15 in pot). Flop is J73 rainbow, checked around to me and I bet $12 to see what happens, two callers ($60 in pot). Turn is a 9. Check-check I bet $40 with one caller ($140 in pot). Q on river and we both check. My 9s beat his pocket 6s for a nice start.
Hand #2 – I give back a chunk of my winnings when my flopped top set is beaten by a turned straight flush. I am actually quite thrilled because my opponent did not realize he had a straight flush, thought he had a baby flush and was afraid I might have a bigger flush. It could have been much worse, because with my top set I could have lost more.
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