I played three sessions of Texas hold’em while in Las Vegas this past weekend, losing two and winning one. While I would rather win more sessions than I lose, in this instance my combined losses were less than the one win. Therefore it ultimately worked out.
I played once a day at three different casinos, losing the first two games at Golden Nugget and The Mirage and winning the last game at the Venetian. Out of those three games I have only three hands worth discussing.
The first hand was the first I played out there. I sat down at the Golden Nugget with $200 and the two cards I immediately saw were queens. I raised it up to $8. I was re-raised by a middle-aged woman in late position, who made it $25 to go. I re-raised her to $100 flat, as that was a little less than what she had from the eyeball test I made at her chip stack. She went all-in for another $20 and I called. She flipped over aces and I was in a lot of trouble. That is until a queen came on the flop. But my happiness wasn’t to last long as the turn was an ace and I lost the hand.
After giving away $120 not more than two minutes from taking my seat I was able to get back $50 of that and quit three hours later with a $70 loss. My rate for that evening was a loss of $23.33 an hour.
The next hand of interest was the next day (technically the same day as I didn’t go to sleep the first night until 5:30 a.m. Pacific time zone) at the Mirage. I held 10-8 of spades and flopped a flush when the K-J-9 of spades was dealt out. I was second to act and had three others in the pot. I made the decision to slow-play my flush, thus disguising the power of the hand. That is a risk as if another spade comes that doesn’t give me a straight flush I would be sitting with a flush that could be easily beat by an ace or queen. We all checked the flop and went to the turn with $8 in the pot.
However, my fears were put to rest when the turn was the seven of spades, giving me a jack-high straight flush. Again I checked it because there is no reason to scare the other players out and if none of them hold a spade then I am not getting called. By checking I am hoping somebody will bluff at it after my check or the first guy will bet on the river. None of this happened and we checked it around again. The pot still has $8 in it.
The river was the queen of spades, giving me a straight flush from the king on down to the seven, but only using one of my cards as my eight isn’t necessary any longer. The first player checked and I decided to bet and try to make something out of the hand. It was extremely fortunate that I made that bet as I will explain in a moment. I was called by two of the three players and exclaimed I had the winning hand when we were prompted to show.
The reason my $5 bet was so crucial was the Mirage has a high-hand bonus for straight flushes that pays $175 on top of what you win in the pot, which in my case ended up being only a little more than $20. Not only was I lucky to win hit a straight flush, but I was even luckier to get the bonus as I was supposed to use both cards in the hand but I only needed my ten. Since the hand was somewhat confusing with a straight flush from the king to the seven the floor manager misread how many of my cards were used and I got the bonus.
Sadly even with the bonus I could not hang on to my winnings and I ended up walking out with a $90 loss because of the third hand to be mentioned. I was dealt pocket nines and raised from late position, making it $10 to play. I was called by only one player who had limped into the hand for the $2 minimum and we went heads-up to the flop with $25 in the pot.
The flop was 10-6-2 rainbow. My opponent led out for a pot-sized bet of $25. I raised it to $75, thinking I could push him off of a ten. He thought for a long time about the amount of money it took to call and he finally made the call. To me it felt like he had top pair with a kicker between jack and ace. He liked his hand but he was not sure whether I had a higher pocket pair. The pot now had $175 in it.
The turn was a seven, giving me an inside straight draw should the eight come. I now had six outs to win the hand in case a bet couldn’t get him out. He checked and I quickly pushed out a stack of 20 red chips for a $100 bet. Although my heart was pounding I tried not to show any regret or fear of being called, hoping my bet still looked like a pocket pair higher than anything on the board. My opponent fretted over what to do for a very long time. I was nearly convinced he was trying to figure out whether his ten was good or not. Finally he stacked all his chips on a $100 bill, because those are allowed to be in play at Las Vegas casinos, made motions to move it all to the middle of the table but said call as he did so. After a bit of confusing chatter between the player and dealer it was understood that he simply had called my $100 bet.
At this point I know I am beat. I assume he has a set because that is the only thing that makes sense. What was the most confusing part of this hand though is that he checked the river. If he was going to go all in on the turn then why not do it now on the river. It was about another $65 to call had he moved it all in the middle. Since the river was a four and didn’t improve my hand I said, “I check. You have me beat.” I showed my nines and he flipped over twos, for the flopped set.
I will admit that he really sold a weaker hand than his set and had the situation been different I might have made another bluff on the river to try and win the $375 pot that was available for the taking. Because of my hand and what he had left I probably wouldn’t have bet the river or called a bet because I knew I couldn’t beat what I thought he had, let alone what he really had, and the bet would have been too small to push him out of it. It was well acted though on his part, up until his gaffe with the all-in/call misspeak.
I left the Mirage with $90 less than I started after five hours of play. That equated to an $18 an hour loss for the day.
My last night of poker play resulted in a $375 profit after four hours of play, amounting to $93.75 an hour. Although I made so much money, none of the hands really stick out enough to chat about. I did take a $95 loss with kings when a guy three-bet all-in pre-flop after I re-raised his initial raise. He had A-10, hit a ten on the flop and an ace on the river for two pair.
For the entire trip with all three games combined, I won $215 at poker and made $17.92 an hour. Yet, when that is combined with what I lost at all the other games I played I lost about $350 for the trip.
In 2010 thus far, I have made $1,615 playing poker at a $10.32 hourly rate. This will likely be my last post for the year as I don’t plan on playing in any other cash games until the new year. I’m glad to know after 30 different games and 156.5 hours of play I am a profitable gambler.
I look forward to building a bankroll at poker in 2011 and attempting to win $5,000 off of $300 by the end of the year. That is the goal I have set for myself, but we will see how it goes.
Until then.
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