I’m cheating a little with this blog entry. I actually wrote this on the PKR.com forum about a month ago but thought it would work on here quite well too – with ADDED HYPERLINKS! Plus, it will make Starch Poker look a bit more populated, with minimal effort.
Basically, I went to Vegas for a holiday/work with family recently and played a ton of poker. Here is what happened. Cue the cut and paste…
I just got back from an 8 night trip to Vegas where I played about 50 hours of $2/$5 No Limit at the Venetian, ate some good food and generally had a fun time. Although as anyone who has been to Vegas before knows, it’s always amazing to get home by the time you get to day 6 or 7!
I got into some pretty interesting situations in the cash games so thought it’d be worth mentioning a few of those on here as well as some general advice for people who may be playing live Vegas cash for the first time during this summer’s WSOP.
First of all, from talking to a ton of people it seems that by far the best places to play are the Venetian, Aria and – during the WSOP only – the Rio. As I said I played Venetian every day and there were rarely fewer than three $2/$5 games going and always at least one $5/$10 game too (I didn’t play but the games here looked pretty soft too). A lot of the smaller casinos simply don’t run anything above $1/$2.
In the Venetian the minimum buy-in is $200 and max is $1000 – in some other places there is no cap on the max buy-in which I think can detract from the games somewhat as amateurs may not show up because they fear being outstacked (even though we all know that relative stack size is the only thing that matters, many find it a mental disadvantage) and games can sometimes play tighter as people are scared to commit a lot of money without the absolute nuts. It also has great staff and OK places to get food nearby while you are playing (Mongolian chicken at Noodle Asia is gooood).
Here are some general thoughts/strategy for the live Vegas cash games;
- Good news: they are soft. I played probably ten sessions out there, won eight and lost two for a total profit of about $3600. I’d say that anybody who can be a winner in PKR’s $200NL games can easily beat the $2/$5 there as long as they adapt to live environment well enough.
- There aren’t that many young online kids regularly playing yet. In the whole week I came across about five or six players only that I would describe as very good. Sure, there are some decent, solid players but the number of players that actually put you in tough spots and use a lot of aggression is very small.
- Be prepared to play postflop a lot more. Nobody 3-bets. It’s like playing poker back in 2005. Everybody is terrified of A-K, just call raises with it and look to bluff catch only. This makes it pretty easy for good players to counter though – I was continually 3-betting in position and the Vegas regulars automatically assumed I had JJ+ everytime and would regularly just fold to my c-bets if they had missed.
- As long as you don’t do anything stupid the only way you should get stacked with a 200BB stack is through a massive cooler or bad beat. Players just play very predictably. You can bet, bet, bet for value with a hand like AA before making an easy fold on any street if you are reraised. Even if it looks like a hero fold, they will show you how they outdrew you every single time.
- Constantly be on the lookout for which is the best table to play at. Not only in terms of how bad everyone is at poker but generally the table which looks the most fun will also have the most value. There’s nothing worse in Vegas than playing on a deathly quiet cash games table where everyone is playing really tight and the pots are all small.
- Talk to people. Everyone has more fun if you talk at the table and it loosens the game up.
- If an old guy with a Heartland Poker Tour cap on 3bets he will absolutely have QQ, KK or AA. It’s a fact.
- You need to adopt different preflop bet sizing to that you’d use online. Standard raise size is at least 4xBB and if you are looking to squeeze, isolate or 3bet light you better make it big. Say you are straddling to $10, there are four callers and it’s on you with J-J. There’s no point making it $50 as everyone will call guaranteed. You need to smash it up to about $90 or $100 in live games if you ever want the pot to be heads-up or three way.
- Everyone set mines way too much. It doesn’t matter if they are calling off a ton of money, getting zero implied odds or whatever, nobody folds small pocket pairs preflop. So don’t pay them off if they show aggression postflop.
- People cannot hand read. I had one hand early on where me and villain started hand with $1200 stacks each. To cut a long story short, I had QQ on a Q-7-8-Q-T board, checked the river where he bet $350 and check-raised all-in for another $750 on top. He tanked for ten minutes and called with J-9 for a rivered straight – it’s one of the worst calls of all time. People love to be stations live so bluff less and value bet good amounts.
This is all a bit rambling but I hope there is some good advice in there somewhere for people in Vegas this summer. While the games are quite different in style they are significantly softer than the average online game. There are also some mega-rich fish going around at various points (weekends are the best time to play for obvious reasons) so try and play with those as much as possible.
Anyway, more importantly, I discovered some cool new restaurants while I was out there that I’d definitely recommend. Here are my top three…
1) Julian Serrano Tapas at the Aria
Really good mid-priced tapas place at the back of Aria. The gambas (garlic prawns) and lobster dishes were especially amazing.
2) China Poblano at Cosmopolitan
This might be my new favourite restaurant of all time. If anyone has been to Wahaca in London it’s kind of similar (Mexican tapas/street food dishes) but with the added benefit of doing Chinese dim sum too. It’s cheap and utterly awesome, everyone should go here.
I got into some pretty interesting situations in the cash games so thought it’d be worth mentioning a few of those on here as well as some general advice for people who may be playing live Vegas cash for the first time during this summer’s WSOP.
First of all, from talking to a ton of people it seems that by far the best places to play are the Venetian, Aria and – during the WSOP only – the Rio. As I said I played Venetian every day and there were rarely fewer than three $2/$5 games going and always at least one $5/$10 game too (I didn’t play but the games here looked pretty soft too). A lot of the smaller casinos simply don’t run anything above $1/$2.
In the Venetian the minimum buy-in is $200 and max is $1000 – in some other places there is no cap on the max buy-in which I think can detract from the games somewhat as amateurs may not show up because they fear being outstacked (even though we all know that relative stack size is the only thing that matters, many find it a mental disadvantage) and games can sometimes play tighter as people are scared to commit a lot of money without the absolute nuts. It also has great staff and OK places to get food nearby while you are playing (Mongolian chicken at Noodle Asia is gooood).
Here are some general thoughts/strategy for the live Vegas cash games;
- Good news: they are soft. I played probably ten sessions out there, won eight and lost two for a total profit of about $3600. I’d say that anybody who can be a winner in PKR’s $200NL games can easily beat the $2/$5 there as long as they adapt to live environment well enough.
- There aren’t that many young online kids regularly playing yet. In the whole week I came across about five or six players only that I would describe as very good. Sure, there are some decent, solid players but the number of players that actually put you in tough spots and use a lot of aggression is very small.
- Be prepared to play postflop a lot more. Nobody 3-bets. It’s like playing poker back in 2005. Everybody is terrified of A-K, just call raises with it and look to bluff catch only. This makes it pretty easy for good players to counter though – I was continually 3-betting in position and the Vegas regulars automatically assumed I had JJ+ everytime and would regularly just fold to my c-bets if they had missed.
- As long as you don’t do anything stupid the only way you should get stacked with a 200BB stack is through a massive cooler or bad beat. Players just play very predictably. You can bet, bet, bet for value with a hand like AA before making an easy fold on any street if you are reraised. Even if it looks like a hero fold, they will show you how they outdrew you every single time.
- Constantly be on the lookout for which is the best table to play at. Not only in terms of how bad everyone is at poker but generally the table which looks the most fun will also have the most value. There’s nothing worse in Vegas than playing on a deathly quiet cash games table where everyone is playing really tight and the pots are all small.
- Talk to people. Everyone has more fun if you talk at the table and it loosens the game up.
- If an old guy with a Heartland Poker Tour cap on 3bets he will absolutely have QQ, KK or AA. It’s a fact.
- You need to adopt different preflop bet sizing to that you’d use online. Standard raise size is at least 4xBB and if you are looking to squeeze, isolate or 3bet light you better make it big. Say you are straddling to $10, there are four callers and it’s on you with J-J. There’s no point making it $50 as everyone will call guaranteed. You need to smash it up to about $90 or $100 in live games if you ever want the pot to be heads-up or three way.
- Everyone set mines way too much. It doesn’t matter if they are calling off a ton of money, getting zero implied odds or whatever, nobody folds small pocket pairs preflop. So don’t pay them off if they show aggression postflop.
- People cannot hand read. I had one hand early on where me and villain started hand with $1200 stacks each. To cut a long story short, I had QQ on a Q-7-8-Q-T board, checked the river where he bet $350 and check-raised all-in for another $750 on top. He tanked for ten minutes and called with J-9 for a rivered straight – it’s one of the worst calls of all time. People love to be stations live so bluff less and value bet good amounts.
This is all a bit rambling but I hope there is some good advice in there somewhere for people in Vegas this summer. While the games are quite different in style they are significantly softer than the average online game. There are also some mega-rich fish going around at various points (weekends are the best time to play for obvious reasons) so try and play with those as much as possible.
Anyway, more importantly, I discovered some cool new restaurants while I was out there that I’d definitely recommend. Here are my top three…
1) Julian Serrano Tapas at the Aria
Really good mid-priced tapas place at the back of Aria. The gambas (garlic prawns) and lobster dishes were especially amazing.
2) China Poblano at Cosmopolitan
This might be my new favourite restaurant of all time. If anyone has been to Wahaca in London it’s kind of similar (Mexican tapas/street food dishes) but with the added benefit of doing Chinese dim sum too. It’s cheap and utterly awesome, everyone should go here.
Cool decor inside China Poblano.
3) I Love Burgers at Palazzo
My new favourite burger place in Vegas. Try the jacket potato fries. Good beer list too.
Have a great summer in Vegas everyone who is lucky enough to be going…
Starch
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