Vegas Recap & NAPT Impressions
Poker in Vegas!
My wife felt a little guilty realizing that her plans wouldn't allow me to play any poker during our trip, so she said she'd love to go shopping at the complex at Planet Hollywood and I could play some cash game poker for 2-3 hours. Awesome wife. I sat down right before noon and then I saw a bunch of guys in suits show up near where we were playing. One guy stepped up, another stepped up and they shook hands. What I found out from the dealer was that it was at that exact moment that Planet Hollywood became an official Harrah's property.
Anyways, at the table, the fourth hand in I am on the small blind and complete with 9To and flop a boat with 99T. I check, the other two players also check. Ace on the turn, I bet $5 into a pot of $4 and get two callers. River is a 7 and I bet $25 into the pot and then get min-raised by the guy on my left and the other player folded. I re-raise and the guy insta-folds. Won about $75 on that hand! About 2 hours go by and I'm completely card dead but make a few steals here and there and am up about $85 when I get dealt AJ suited in the CO. Three limpers and I raise to $20, all folds except for the player to my right who called. Flop comes A52 rainbow and he donks for $10 and I flat call figured him for a weaker Ace like 99% of the time. I had seen this guy call down with 3rd pair twice so far so I figured I am just going to let him bet off the remaining $80 he started the hand with. The turn is another 5 and he donks another $10 so I just put him all-in. He tanks, then calls and shows ... omg ... AQ. Really? Turn is not a jack or a five, so I lose a $160 pot to a guy that limp-called AQ in the HJ. My run-bad in Vegas continues ... anyways I got to play, I did have a lot of fun and left the table down just $20.
The PokerStars NAPT
I was not at the Venetian on official business but did manage to grab a press pass both for myself and my wife. She had never seen the Venetian poker room and was really amazed at its awesomeness. Here she is outside the hotel and casino:
As you can see the weather in Vegas was perfect, about 65 degrees! We got inside and got our passes, which we were not ID'd for. We got to have a nice breakfast, complements of PokerStars in their very nice media lounge which had an area to film interviews and plenty of tables with internet connections. Inside the poker room we saw a few familiar faces, including Dennis Phillips who came into the media room and said hi to a few people. If you've never met Dennis, he's every bit the nice guy he comes across on television and is really a great ambassador to the "every man" of the game.
Once the tournament started, most of the players (I think it was 800 entrants into the $5,000 Main Event we saw) had taken their seats, which took up the entire poker room and tournament area at the Venetian.
The tournament featured just about every big name player that PokerStars (and other sites) have to offer. My wife's favorite all time player is Daniel Negreanu, so we spotted him in the tournament area and stood next to him as he played to watch him in action. My wife was obviously stoked to see him and he turned to her and gave a smile. Since she's very attractive she had no problem getting smiles from most of the big-name pros 
Here are a couple of pictures I took at the tournament. I didn't want to take too many because they had an official photographer already taking shots for us media types. Also, I was feeling like CRAP because I had actually come down with a cold the night before which absolutely SUCKED. Anyways here's a picture of a table in-action:
And here is a picture of Randy "Nanonoko" Lew (member of Team PokerStars Online) checking out the board:
Cool stuff. I can't begin to tell you the names I saw at tables. Maria Ho, Greg Raymer, Havad Khan, Kathy Leibert, Joe Cada, Vanessa Rousso, Chad Brown, Jeff Madsen and countless others. Once the tournament got started, the number of railbirds at the Venetian grew to epic proportions. There were also a few celebrities playing, including Montel Williams. The official "Shuffle Up and Deal" was announced by none other than Jason Alexander (George from Seinfeld) himself:
Good stuff. The entire tournament was well organized and considering this was the first major tournament that PokerStars had sponsored and organized in Vegas, they did a great job. After about 30 minutes of just milling around I got real tired (again, feeling like crap) and decided to meet up with my wife and her friends who were in town at the Lux Cafe (awesome place to eat). We got a table outside near the railing, and who walks by fashionably late to the tournament but none other than Joe Hachem himself. I had to say something so I just said "Take it down Joe!" and he looked over with a HUGE smile on his face and waved and I waved back. Apparently Joe loves being recognized as a celebrity, which is probably not a shock to anyone
That was my Vegas trip in a nutshell. After the cafe we went back to the room and took a nap so I could have enough energy to make our show. We bought discounted seats to see "Mystere" at Treasure Island which was a fabulous show. I saw things in that show I didn't know were humanly possible. Anyways, a good trip to Vegas, got to see the NAPT and play some cards too while enjoying a short vacation with the wife.
read moreAria Hotel and Casino
Well this is lame but doesn't look like i will have poker time during my stay here. wife stuff. this typically happens when I come to Vegas with her, never get to do "my stuff" which I am not tremendously upset about. I get that me playing poker requires her to either play, sit there bored, or have her find some other activity.
Anyways we checked out the new Aria which was amazing. It is everything they say it is. Below are some pics.
Tomorrow I am checking out the NAPT with a press pass at the Venetian which should be fun. I also think that we are getting home early enough so that I might buy-in to the special F40 Sunday Millions on Sunday (first time).
Screw You Hard Rock Hotel
i planned our drive to Vegas around a tournament played at the Hard Rock Hotel, a $50 tournament with 25 minute blinds and a 5,000 starting stack. When I went to the lobby of the new "Poker Lounge" I said I wanted to sign up.
Response I should have gotten:
"I am so sorry sir but we stopped having that tournament due to lack of interest. We know our brand new website released last week hasn't reflected that new policy. I can seat you immediately at our 1/2 cash game and if there's anything I can do just say the word."
Response I got:
"Oh. Yeah we don't do that one anymore. (looks back down to her magazine). Oh, you say our website says we have a tournament now? Huh. (shrugs shoulders and goes back to magazine again)"
Let that be a lesson in customer service - it sure as hell doesn't exist in the new and unimproved poker room here at Hard Rock.
Welcome Back to Las Vegas
I have returned to Vegas for the weekend with my wife and we are going to have a great time!!
At the Hard Rock Casino and I had to take a picture with this sign for a bar!
Lessons Learned from the Prop Bet
I'm not sure how interesting it was for the readers of my blog to follow my progress during last week's prop bet. Judging by the dearth of comments, I'm guessing it wasn't of much interest to most of you. That's fine. But what I think might help is writing out some the lessons learned from participating in the prop bet, because I think I definitely benefited from putting myself through that torture.
For those of you that follow LOST I kind of feel like Sayid did after the episode where we see him learn to become a torturer. He does what he has to do in order to save himself and his loved ones and basically tortures a bad guy commanding officer of his to get the information he needed. At the end of it all, he's changed and gets taken to outside the city by the Americans. They drop him off in the middle of the road with the American tell him, "Looks like you picked up a new skill set." He handed him a wad of cash, then left him there and drove away. I feel like that because I feel like I went through this very difficult process, gained a valuable skill (massively multi-tabling) but have been left out in the middle of nowhere (with some money) asking myself "well wth do I do now?!".
Anyways, enough of the random and vague metaphors.
The first thing I learned is that as soon as you start a prop bet, you will, without fail, go on a downswing. It'll suck and be frustrating and irritate you and every end. Life will seem dull, gray and horrible. It happened to me, it happened to Zachvac and its happened to countless others. I don't know why or how it happens, but I just know it does. If you ever decide to put yourself through something like this, just be ready for the fall-out.
One surprising thing I learned was that if you do add more and more tables, it doesn't necessarily mean you just play ABC autopilot poker. In fact, if you arm yourself with the right poker software you can definitely play a great thinking poker game. Here's what you will need:
- Holdem Manager or PokerTracker 3, with a HUD chalk full of stats
- TableNinja (or its equivalent) for assistance and shortcuts
- A good playlist for iTunes (or no music at all!)
- A great ergonomic mouse that won't kill your wrist after long days of playing
- 2 monitors, with your main monitor at least being a 24" 1920x1200 resolution monitor. Your second monitor should be the same but if its a 22" 1600x1200 that's fine too.
- Experiment while not playing with table layouts and try to get it so that you can always be able to click on a table. If you can do this you can jump to tables during short breaks and hit the fold button if there's a hand that's an obvious fold.
- Eye drops. Lots of 'em.
- Comfortable chair with arm and back support
You have to create an environment where you can focus and you get a system down that works. There's no way that I could play even 15 tables if I didn't have the dual monitor setup along with the shortcuts program. We all operate differently and you need to experiment to see what works for you. Make sure you save your table layout within the poker client so you don't have to redo it every time you start a new session.
Another important lesson is knowing when peak hours are for your time zone. For me in the Pacific Time Zone, I found that the tables were "best" starting around 11am and were good until about 10pm during the week. Thursday nights were exceptionally good, and starting from about 10am on Friday through about 8pm on Sunday games were fantastic. I think if anyone ever went "pro" for online poker they would forced to adapt their playing schedule around peak times at the sites. Clearly, you can't play 8 straight hours no matter who you are - you have to eat, you have to go to the bathroom and you need to simply close your eyes to rest. Factoring in these breaks and creating the right schedule is really important.
One very underrated thing about playing "full time" or in my case undergoing a prop bet is pacing. Setting the right pace every day and outlining your schedule a week in advance is very important. For me, once I got through the first two days of the challenge, I realized I couldn't just wing it. I set myself a daily hand requirement schedule and stuck to it. In the morning each day I outlined my time schedule to estimate when I should play and get other activities accomplished. That was one huge piece of the puzzle for me in my success.
Before this challenge, you have to realize that I was used to playing 4 or 5 tables of 6max games, which I had done for the better part of 3 months. When I last played Full Ring regularly, I think I only played 9-10 tables at a time. By the end of the challenge, I was playing 19 tables without any issues and no time outs on any table. You just have to push yourself, experiment and not get freaked out when your computer starts beeping and flashing. Stay calm, make the right decision and quickly move to the next decision to be made. I kept telling myself I do have a timebank which is automatically clicked, which helped me remember that I have time to think through my decision making process in a hand.
I am not sure if I will remain 19 tabling (or more) Full Ring moving forward, but I know I can do it. Most likely at 50nl FR I'll remain 19 tabling to keep myself in a groove. My upswing out of the downswing didn't really take off until I started doing the 19-table sessions and that allowed me to get in a lot more hands per hour. I played 30,000 hands in 30.5 hours which is just crazy. Last year I think I played 180,000 hands total, so to get 1/6th of those hands in for a year within the timeframe of a week is quite an upgrade.
Sometimes you have to push yourself in order to make leaps in your game and often times it will be very frustrating and uncomfortable. If I didn't have money on the line in my prop bet, there's no way I would have finished the challenge because I would have bitched and moaned about the break-even stretch that was just destroying my mindset. That tilt would have forced me to "take a break" and come back later rather than fight through it, which I have so often struggled to do.
I'm not sure what else there is to say but I am hoping this long entry helps a few of you learn some of the lessons it taught me.
read moreAbout Me
My name is Sean Gibson and I am a poker journalist and part time poker player. I work full time at PokerNewsDaily.com where I host a daily news show called "The Daily Deal" and also handle the bulk of the live player interviews. In terms of poker you will find me playing $1/$3 No Limit Hold'em in Vegas or in Los Angeles (or San Diego) and online playing small stakes games.
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