All good things must come to an end, right? And if you remember Vegas Grinders, you know we were big fans of the MegaBeat Jackpot, a progressive multi-property payout. Though none of us cashed in, the promotion was enough to draw each of us (and many of you) to various Caesars property poker rooms on repeat occasion. Anyhow, promotions naturally change, and it’s been about a year that the MB was in play, but there does seem to be some decentralization going on at Caesars- and WSOP-branded poker rooms in Las Vegas — or maybe it’s more of a recentralization? — which may or may not have anything to do with different rooms getting autonomy while others prepare for the axe. Wild speculation, but we do know that email addresses have changed recently, with a promo list like the one below coming from @caesarspalace.com instead of @caesars.com … and these sorts of changes seldom happen for no good or apparent reason.
Caesars Palace January poker room promo info below:
Mondays and Tuesdays are arguably the worst days of the week for poker, which is why I often take those days off.
The tourists have donated their Vegas dollars to the grinders over the weekend, and even the L.A. crowd has headed back to their movie studios and plastic surgeons.
This meant that for the final two days of my week-long experiment in playing Las Vegas daily tournaments, I would have to hit some of the bigger casinos — Caesars Palace and Bellagio.
The 10,000 starting stack at Caesars Palace's nightly tournament.
With a WSOP-circuit event being held at Caesars, I didn’t have trouble finding a comfortable-size field for their nightly 7pm tournament on a Monday. With a $110 entry fee, this event has a $5,000 guaranteed prize pool (Mon-Fri only). The staff and one local at my starting table who had already worked out the math said they would need at least 63 entrants to reach that figure. Caesars’s nightly tournaments sometimes start with even fewer players, offering a healthy overlay.
Of the buy-in, Caesars took $20 as a “maintenance fee” and $10 was for the staff toke.)
Grinders and well-known pros filled the room — the 2008 WSOP Main Event third-place finisher Dennis Phillips sat a few tables away playing a cash game and Jeff Madsen, the rapper who also won 2006 WSOP player of the year, was at the final table of the main event in the elevated area nearby. I didn’t recognize anyone at my table who should have given me trouble.
A Week of Whiffs?
I was due for a nice run, having missed the money in my first 5 tournaments. The 10,000 chip starting stack and 20-minute levels felt comfortable out of the gate. I’d have to beat out 59 others to earn the $1,914 first-place prize.
It’s been a few weeks since my last post but the grinding hasn’t stopped. Well, actually I didn’t play much at all over the Thanksgiving weekend as I spent the holiday in Palm Springs with some family. Here are some photos!
Front of the house we stayed at in Palm Springs
Top of a mountain, accessible by gondola, looking down on Palm Springs
Some cool trees on the mountain top
Me
I went into a bit of a breakeven stretch over the following four sessions. I have only myself to blame for this because I failed to use any sort of anti-jinx methodology. For example, say you send a tweet talking about how hard you’re crushing a game or how amazing you’ve been running at the tables. I usually don’t like to write such tweets because over 50 percent of the time they carry the jinx-virus, which will abruptly halt any and all rungood and stop it dead in its tracks. That being said, it is possible to tweet such thoughts to the twittersphere, but it would be foolish to do so without using anti-jinx protection. You’re simply putting yourself and your bankroll at risk without strapping on a hashtag along the lines of #plsdontjinxitkthx at the end of your happy tweets.
I don’t know why we call the poker gods, Gods, but we do. They seem more like a bunch of high school dropout, weird uncle, goofball idiots to me. When they abandon you, it is the filthiest, loneliest feeling you can imagine. But when they reflect their light on you for any kind of extended stretch, you feel, well, enlightened. Chosen. So in tune with everything you can hear the hum of the earth.
I somehow managed to sneak a $117 victory past the jinx-bouncers playing $1/$3NL at the Rio on the 1st of the month. But the next day when I ventured into the Palace of Caesar, his games of $1 and $3 were not so kind. I left @CLVPoker $400 lighter in the pocket, and followed that with a small $85 loss on the 3rd. My spirits were quickly risen on the very next day, which was a Thursday. Thursday evenings, as you should know by now, means Pokerati game night. The PLO/NL mixed game has treated me really well since its incarnation @PalmsPokerRm (#nojinxnojinxnojinx) and this particular Thursday brought happiness in the form of a $520 win, erasing losses from the previous two sessions. Unfortunately the breakeven stretch continued another day; on Friday I played a long, 10-hour session at the Rio dropping about $700 in frustrating fashion. Actually there was a pretty interesting hand from said session…
Minimal info at the moment … but around 12:30am today, according to Las Vegas Metro Police, a lone gunman walked into the Stratosphere and reportedly headed straight for the 8-table poker room, where he jumped a table, attempted to grab a bunch of chips, and then fled on foot. But apparently he ran into a casino employee on the way out and left empty handed.
Probably shouldn’t be laughing about violent crime FAILs, but LOL … just realized I wrote “walked into the Stratosphere” … so clearly the wannabe robber must be Criss Angel. OK, I jest … but what do you think the odds are that this amateur thief could be an online poker player who just lost his roll and is considering new career options? I’ll bet … either that or a neighborhood crackhead.
Vegas fave Annie LePage and her lapddog playing poker at the Jen Harman SPCA fundraiser. Bijou seems to like their hand or is just hoping for a walk in the big blind.
There was a big charity event Tuesday night at the Venetian … part of their Deep Stacks II series … Jennifer Harman’s Charity Poker Tournament benefitting the Nevada SPCA. This has become one of the bigger Springtime celeb draws in poker, and is always a memorable shindig because of the presence of cute animals. You shoulda seen the look on the dealer’s face when Bijou (pictured here) jumped up and scampered around the table. I think half the players nearby were all cued up with jokes of “reraise!” and “floor!” had the pup, um, pushed a potty stack across the betting line.
Anyhow, I don’t know the numbers yet …I think it was actually smaller than in previous years, with 140something entries 30 minutes before late registration closed. But it really was a lot of fun … and the NSPCA seemed thrilled about the money the event was still raising, not to mention the number of rescued pets being adopted.
