Vegas Poker Scene -- September 2018

Below is my September column for Ante Up.  Be sure to check out the profile I did on vlogger Andrew Neeme at the bottom of the column.

The link for the column on Ante Up is here.  Remember, I only write the Vegas portion.  Magazine should be in your local poker rooms by now.

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An Ante Up Poker Tour event will be part of the next big tournament series at The Venetian Las Vegas.

The Venetian Las Vegas DeepStack Extravaganza III runs Sept. 3-23 at the iconic resort on the Las Vegas Strip. The series includes 32 events, all with prize-pool guarantees. Event 17 will be the three-flight AUPT event Sept. 13-16, featuring a $600 buy-in and a $200K guarantee. Players will start with 20K units and levels will be 40 minutes.

For more details, please visit Venetian.com/Deepstack or VenetianPokerRoom.Blog.

In other news, the October Extravaganza runs Oct. 15-21. A $400 Monster Stack tournament has three starting flights beginning Oct. 18. Players start with 30K chips and play 30-minute levels on Day 1, 40 minutes on Day 2. The prize pool guarantee is $150K. The series starts off with a $340 doublestack with a $100K guarantee. It has two starting flights, a 25K starting stack and 40-minute levels. The evening events are a mix of bounty, rebuy and regular NLHE events, all priced at $200.  

A monthly $400 seniors tournament runs the first Thursday of each month. The starting stack is 15K, the levels are 30 minutes and the guarantee is $25K.

The room is running a high-hand-of-the-hour promo in October. Between noon and midnight, the highest hand each hour will earn $1K. 

In tourney news, Pavel Plesuv from Russia won the $3,500 Mid-States Poker Tour event in late June, earning $640K. Yat Cheng from North Carolina received $393K for second and James Romero from Oregon took home $291K for third. The event drew nearly 1,100 entrants and had a prize pool of $3.5M.

The $5K main event went to Boston’s Anthony Zinno, who earned $467K. The United Kingdom’s Ben Jones received $391K for second and New York’s Bryan Piccioli scored $238K for third. The total prize pool was $3.5M and the event drew 547 entrants.

BINION'S: The room is closing out the year with something new for its Saturday afternoon tournaments. The $300 tourneys, all starting at noon, will offer a different discipline each week.

The first Saturday of each month will feature HORSE. Players start with 25K chips and 30-minute levels.  

The second Saturday features a bounty event. The starting stack is 25K and levels start at 30 minutes, increasing to 40 minutes at Level 13. The bounty is $100 and the tournament uses the big-blind-ante format.

The next week is pot-limit Omaha with the same levels and 25K stack.

The fourth Saturday introduces the Downtown Button Straddle. It’s a NLHE event but with the straddle option, a staple of cash games but unusual for tournaments. The first straddle option belongs to the button, who can straddle any amount double the big blind or larger. When the button straddles, play begins with the small blind. If the button doesn’t straddle, the player under-the-gun may straddle for double the big blind. The big-blind-ante format is featured with the same stack and levels.

When the month has a fifth Saturday, the game will be PLO/8, with the same details as the PLO event. 

Sunday through Friday at 1 p.m., and every evening at 7, the room offers a $60 tournament with a 10K stack, 20-minute levels and a $20 add-on for 10K more.

BOULDER STATION: The room has plenty of promotions for Omaha and hold’em players. The newest Omaha promotion is a unique one. It runs Tuesdays and Saturdays and will award players $1K if they’re dealt quads as their hole cards.

Other Omaha promos include a progressive bad-beat jackpot, a $500 high hand of the day on Sundays and Mondays and a $200 high-hand-of-the-shift three times a day on Thursdays.

The $4-$8 Omaha game with a half-kill always has multiple tables running and has a $40 minimum buy-in.

The hold’em promos include progressive quads and straight-flush payouts. Flopping quads is good for $500 on Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays. There’s also a progressive full house promo on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. Full houses with deuces as the pair portion get a bonus, starting at $100 and increasing to $1K.

GOLDEN NUGGET: The newest promo is the High Hand of the Hour during graveyard hours, paying $100 hourly between midnight and 8 a.m. If no hand qualifies, the money rolls over to the next hour. There still are progressive high hands and a bad-beat jackpot.

A $2-$4 limit game with a $20 minimum buy-in runs 24-7, as does a $1-$2 NLHE game with a $100 minimum and no maximum. You can often see huge stacks in play in this game.

WYNN: Florian Duta won the $1,600 Wynn Classic Championship for $430K in July. Yuliyan Kolev of Bulgaria claimed second for $284K and Cy Williams of Northern California earned $196K for third. The event drew 2,100-plus players, creating a prize pool of $3M-plus, smashing the $1.5M guarantee.

The $400 seniors event is the first Wednesday of the month, has a 15K starting stack, 30-minute levels and a $25K guarantee. On those days, it replaces the $140 daily that runs Monday-Thursday. On Fridays and Sundays, a $200 event runs with a $10K guarantee. The Saturday tournament features a $25K guarantee and a $225 buy-in.

ARIA: The big-blind-ante format is featured in all of the room’s daily tournaments. Monday through Thursday at 1 p.m. is $140 for 12K chips and 30-minute levels. The same tournament runs at 7 p.m. on the same days. Friday through Sunday, the tournament starts at 11 a.m. and has a $240 buy-in. The starting stack is 20K and the levels are 30 minutes. Friday through Sunday at 7 p.m., the $140 tournament offers 20-minute levels and a 20K stack.

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Meet Andrew Neeme

Andrew Neeme is a pro poker player and vlogger who moved to Las Vegas after working in marketing and the music industry in Los Angeles.

How did you get started in poker and vlogging? I got started playing online on a handful of sites that became popular after the Moneymaker boom. Online poker was easy back then and I was able to grind up a roll from the micros to a healthy $5-$10 no-limit stake. As the percentage of my income grew in that pursuit, I decided to make the leap full time and moved to Las Vegas in 2008.

After playing poker full time in Las Vegas for about eight years, the grind had started to burn me out a bit. Or a lot. I was missing a creative outlet and felt a bit lonely at times, since the only real outcome from my work was a small uptick or downtick in my net worth. I wanted to share the ride with an audience I thought might get a kick out of having a window into the low or midstakes grinder life, with Las Vegas as the main backdrop. The vast majority of the poker media coverage was focused on nosebleed cash games and tournaments, while the biggest portion of the audience would never be able to sit in those games. I wanted to showcase the games that people were actually playing without sacrificing too much production quality.

What are your poker goals?  I want to keep moving up in stakes. I want to win a million dollars. The usual stuff. And with the vlog, we’ll eventually get to 100K subscribers on YouTube. All of that stuff will happen, and it’s only a matter of time.

Action Buttons, Kill Pots and a Deli From the Past

When last I left you (here) I had just busted out of the Sam's Town $40 tournament.  But Lightning, Flushhdraw and Chris were still alive.  And I busted out on the last hand before the first break, so I had a chance to tell the guys that I had busted out.  I believe it was at that point that I found out that Lightning's old blogger buddy Mike , who I first talked about in the post here, had also joined the party.

I assume he saw Lightning's tweet about playing at Sam's Town and decided swing by.  I believe that, inasmuch as he didn't have a car, he had taken Uber from the Strip all the way to Sam's Town.  I wish I had thought of asking him at the time how much that cost him.  I would be interested to see how much that length of an Uber ride would run.  Oh well, maybe he'll read this post and leave a comment—if he even remembers.

We talked a bit and then I just figured I'd hang around while the rest of them inevitably busted out.  The first thing I did once the tournament resumed was walk around a bit and look around the casino some more.  One thing that intrigued me was the nearby Sports Deli, in the Sports Book.  Lightning had texted me that the three of them were all eating there while I was driving over.  And he said the food was really high quality.  And cheap.  So I had to take a look.

When I mentioned last time that Sam's Town reminded of a casino from when I first started going to Vegas, this deli is really what I was mostly referring to.  It wasn't big, but it had a big counter and more importantly, a big menu.  Not just sandwiches but hot dogs and even burgers—and fries.  I think there was some Mexican food, salads and even breakfast selections.  And furthermore—yes it was cheap!  A burger (with fries) was $6.25.  That'd be close to $20 on the Strip.  A hot dog and chips was $3.50.  A pastrami sandwich was like $6-$7.  And again, according to Lightning, the food was really good.

You used to be able to find a place like this in every casino you walked into in Vegas.  Maybe not quite as cheap as this (relatively speaking, considering inflation) but not that far off.  This is exactly the kind of place every Vegas casino needs and used to have. No more.  You have to drive out to Boulder Highway to find it now.  What a shame.

Sure, MGM has a deli near the sports book (and poker room).  But it has a very limited menu, and you can't get a burger or fries, and just two or three sandwich choices.  And the pastrami sandwich (which is awful) is like $17.  There used to be a Stage Deli in that location (at MGM) which was better quality food and a slightly bigger selection, but still nothing like this little sports deli at Sam's Town.  I swear if the food is as good as Lightning claims, and if the poker room had more 1/2  action, it'd be worth it to drive out there regularly.

What was interesting about this is that I noticed a big food court on the other side of the casino when I first entered it (from about as far away from the poker room as possible).  I mention this because generally speaking food courts have replaced these type of delis at casinos.  Instead of a "mom & pop" style deli (well, it looks like a mom & pop place), they have these food courts with all the franchise places having a space.  You know, there's a Subway or some sandwich place, a burger joint (McDonalds or maybe Johnny Rockets), a pizza place, a Mexican place, a Chinese place, maybe an ice cream shop and always….always…a Starbucks.  Of course, because they're inside a Vegas casino, the prices are jacked up well beyond what you'd pay at your local version of the same restaurant.  When I'm downtown and playing in a tournament, if I make it to dinner break I always walk to the Subway that's at The Plaza.  And my sandwich and soda cost about $3-$4 more than if I had bought it at a Subway in a regular strip mall.

Anyway, since I had eaten I didn't buy anything but I was really impressed with the place.  I looked around some more and then sat down at an empty poker table and stared at my phone for awhile.  By this time they had opened up a cash game.  I considered playing in it….and when it had gotten nearly full, I decided WTF, I might as well play.  It looked like the guys were going to be playing in that tournament awhile.  Guess they're all better players than me.

Well, the game was 2-6 spread limit, not exactly my game of choice.  But I figured why not give it a shot for a little while?  It had been a long time since I've played a limit or spread limit hold'em game (other than as part of a mixed game).  If I'm not playing no limit, I'd prefer fixed limit to spread.  Actually, I've never really seen the point of spread limit, but I guess some people like it.  I think I played 2-6 spread a few times at MGM a few years back when they were trying to establish that game

But I didn’t have a choice.  When in Rome…as they say.  So I bought some dollar chips and joined the game.

When I got into the game, there were two interesting things about it.  One, it's a kill game.  Not half-kill, but full kill.  So if someone wins two pots in a row, the next hand is a kill pot and you're suddenly playing 4-12 spread limit until someone else wins a pot.  And the player who won those last two pots has to post $4.  Usually that's an additional blind unless that player happens to be the blind.

You know how I feel about kill games, right?  Oh wait, you don't.  Amazingly enough, I've never discussed my feelings about kill games or half kill games.  And the reason it's amazing is that it should have been one of the very first topics I discussed when I started the blog.

Now those of you who have been with me since the beginning will recall that when I started the blog, I was almost exclusively playing limit poker, mostly 2-4 limit.  That was the game I started with when I first played poker in a casino and I was still playing it when I started the blog in September of 2011. Jeezuz…..can it be seven years already?  Seven??? Wow, maybe I should do something for my anniversary?  Anyway, the point is that my assumption was that the posts I would do about poker would all be about limit poker.  And one of my issues at the time was the increasing number of rooms that had added the half-kill to their low fixed limit games.  Because back then, I really, really hated it.

Although I had been playing poker regularly in Vegas for a few years by then, for most of that time I had full time "real" job (in a very much non-poker environment) and didn't get to Vegas that often.  And I wasn't heading down to the local L.A. rooms very often either.  So I was still trying to figure out the poker thing.  And I couldn't seem to master it to the point where I was a winning player.  Now maybe I wasn't very good, but I came to believe that the main reason I wasn't winning as a 2/4 limit player was that at that level, it's virtually impossible to overcome the rake.

Anyway, I can't remember where or when I first encountered limit games that had the half-kill or even the kill rule.  I think I'd been playing for a few years before I came across one.  But find one I did, then another, then another.  And it was happening in some of the rooms that had been my favorite rooms to play 2/4 in.

Now here's something I've never mentioned before.  Back when I first started playing, one of my favorite places to play was The Orleans.  You see before I started playing poker, Orleans was always one of my favorite casinos. I played tons of blackjack, craps and then Pai Gow there.  They had low betting limits.  And the rooms were fairly cheap so I stayed there often too.  And back then, they had some decent cheap food options (and my favorite burger joint, "Terrible Mike's").  So it was only natural for me to give their poker room a try when I started playing poker.  And I liked it.  They always had plenty of 2/4 action so you didn't have to wait too long for a seat.  Sure the players were nitty, but so was I and I liked that, I didn't want to see a lot of raises as I was learning the game.

And then one day I went in there and the 2/4 game had become 2/4 with a half-kill (I think they converted the 4/8 game to half-kill first, but not sure).  I guess I knew what that meant but perhaps Orleans was the first room I played to have it, again not sure.  And once I learned what it meant, once I played it a few times, I absolutely hated it.  And after a time or two, I never played 2/4 in Orleans again.  And as I found other rooms that spread their 2/4 with a half-kill, I stopped going to them also.

Biggest objection to the half-kill was simply this:  If I wanted to play a 3/6 game (which is what the 2/4 game becomes when the half-kill is on), I'd go find a 3/6 to play (in those days they were easy to find).  Also, it seemed so arbitrary.  You could go 90-minutes without winning a pot, then suddenly win two pots in a row and you've changed the game, plus you're committed to posted extra and costlier blinds.

Besides, I figured people played 2/4 because they wanted to keep the stakes and the betting low.  If they were looking for a more action game, they could find it.  Why try to turn a 2/4 game into a bigger game when people were playing it most likely because they liked to nittiness of the game?  It made no sense to me.

Anyway, I stayed away from those rooms, and I missed a lot of them but why should I play in a room that had rules I didn't like when I could always find a game with rules I preferred?  Note:  When I played 2/4 at MGM back then, it did not allow for kill pots.

So when I started the blog, I knew in the back of the mind that someday I'd need a topic to write about and then I'd write a blog post pontificating on how much I hated the half-kill games.  But before I got around to it, I started playing No Limit (first tournaments, then cash) and I had a whole lot of other stuff to write about.  And since I was no longer playing a game where you could even have kill-pots, there was no point in going on about it.  Until now.

Anyway, for this game, I was ok with the full-kill.  I mean I now play NL, how could I logically object to the max bet being increased to $12 when for the game I regularly play the max bet could be your entire stack on any street?  But somehow I suspect if I was ever to go back to playing limit regularly I'd still prefer to avoid games with kills and half-kills.

The other weird thing about this game was that it had "action" buttons.  I think these are also known as "overs."  I'd heard of them but had never played with this before.  As explained to me, players had the option to ask for an "action" button when they joined the game (or any time after).  If any hand ever gets down to only players who had an action button, the game suddenly becomes No Limit for the rest of that hand. 

I guess I see the logic of it, especially for a room that doesn't get too many live hold'em games. Obviously some of their regs only want to play the spread limit.  And some obviously prefer NL but they may not get enough of each to have both games a lot of the time.  So they have play a combined game to fill up the table.  The action players who want NL have to deal with a lot of spread limit hands, but every once in a while a hand gets down to only players who really want a NL game and they get their way.  It's a weird hybrid.  I suppose sometimes, everyone at the table has an action button and then the game just becomes a regular NL game.

Since it was new to me, I opted not to take an action button.  My thought was, I really had no idea if the strategy changed for this type of game.  I mean I know how to play NL (at least in theory I do).  And I remember enough about to play limit games to get by.  But is there a strategy for a hand that starts out as a limit game and suddenly turns into a NL hand when the last person without an action button folds?  I imagine there is some strategy involved, and not having ever giving it a thought, I felt it safer to avoid the situation altogether.  How about you?  Anyone every played in a game like this before?  Is there a specific strategy you can use to handle the unpredictable nature of it?  For a game that can change from a fixed limit to a no limit game in the middle of a hand?

As for the game itself, my card-deadness continued.  I only wrote down one hand, a small pot I won.  Let's see, I limped in with Ace-10 off.  The flop was Ace-Jack-x, all hearts.  My 10 was a heart.  I bet and got a caller.  I bet again on a blank, call.  The river was the King of hearts, giving me the second nut flush.  I bet and got called, he had the 5 of hearts.

While I was playing some more folks we knew (or knew of) showed up.  Let's see, there was Alysia Chang, a tall guy and another couple.  The tall guy I figured out to be Washdude, who I've been following on Twitter for some time.  I guessed who he was (I was right) and introduced myself.  Turns out he is a really nice guy.  I didn’t figure out who the couple was until I was gone and I never got introduced to them.  But I later came to understand they were Jason and Adriana, who I tweet back and forth with and who appeared to be good friends with Alysia.  May I belatedly say to Jason & Adriana, nice to have almost met you!

None of my pals ever joined me in the spread limit game.  I actually didn't play very long.

Now at some point Chris abandoned Lightning leaving him stranded at  Sam's Town, along with Mike.  I suppose I should have left them there to Uber back to the strip, but of course I agreed to chauffeur them back there myself.  Am I a nice guy or what?

It was a fun night at Sam's Town, good people and I felt a bit like I'd taken a trip back in time.

The Sam's Town Quickie

Note: This is sort of a two-parter, although the poker in the two parts will be unconnected with each other, so each part more-or-less stands alone. 

This took place the day after the tag team tourney I talked about last time (here).  Lightning was still and town, and had arranged to help fellow blogger FlushhDraw with a medical procedure he had scheduled for the day.  He was gonna hang out with retired blogger Stump (Chris) who was driving Flushh to the appointment.  All this went on while I spent the afternoon slaving away at work from my hotel room.

Late in the afternoon I finally heard about their day and their evening plans.  The medical procedure went fine, Flushh was feeling well and they were all headed over to Sam's Town to play in their 7pm $40 tournament. Lightning sent out a tweet to that effect, asking for anyone in the vicinity to join them.  OK, I thought, I didn't have any plans for the evening, why the hell not join them?

It turned out that by the time I found out about this they were already at Sam's Town having some fine dining.  So I was on my own for dinner.  I ate in my room and then headed out to god's country, I mean Sam's Town.  I took my life in my hands by trusting the Waze app to get me there.

You've probably never heard me talk about Sam's Town on the blog before—unless you read my Ante Up columns, because I have talked about it there.  But truth be told, I had never played poker there before.  Sam's Town is way out on Boulder Highway, a good long schlep from the Strip.  It's actually beyond Henderson.  It's part of the Boyd group, same folks who own Orleans and Gold Coast.  It is most definitely a locals casino.

Back in the early days of my Vegas trips, when I was going there with my pal Norm like three times a year, Norm and I would occasionally venture out that far.  Because it was so off the beaten path and strictly for the locals, it did have lower betting limits than the Strip casinos, which is what we were always looking for.  But honestly, there was never really any reason to go there once we had seen it once or twice.  I recall that whenever we did go there, we noted that we immediately lowered the median age of the patrons in there by about a half (but to be fair, we were much younger in those days!).

Once I started playing poker, I knew they had a poker room but never felt compelled to make the drive to check it out.  The main cash game is 2-6 limit, not exactly my game.

But how could I resist playing with those three clowns?  Besides, I had never met FlusshDraw before and it seemed like high time to do so.

It turns out that from the Strip it's pretty much a straight shot heading east on Flamingo to get there, so simple even Waze couldn't screw it up.

Due to human error, I missed the first turn into the parking area from Boulder Highway and ended up at the back of the property.  I headed for the first parking structure I saw and it turned out I parked about as far away from the poker room as I could and still be in Clark County.  If I had walked from Bally's it wouldn't have been much more walking.  I certainly didn't recall how damn big the place was.  I was surprised by the size of it. BTW, the parking structure I missed by turning in the wrong place is right next to the poker room.

Now walking in and through the casino was an interesting experience.  I swear, it didn't seem like I'd gotten there by car, it was more like I'd taken a time machine.  It reminded me of Vegas from 20-30 years ago.  It was nothing like the Vegas Strip casinos of today (well, if you ignore the slot machines, the gaming tables and stuff like that).  Just a totally different vibe than I've experienced from a Vegas casino in years.

I eventually found the poker room and was fairly exhausted from the walk. I wondered if I could take Uber to get back to my car.  I noticed Chris sitting at an unused poker table talking to a rather large fellow, who I assumed was FlushhDraw.  I said hello and met Flushh.  He is a really nice guy and told me a little about his procedure.  Chris and I caught up as well.  They pointed out that Lightning, problem gambler that he is, didn't want to waste any time just sitting and talking when he could be playing and was indeed splashing chips at the only game they had running, a 2-6 spread limit game.

It's actually a really nice poker room, much nicer than you'd expect for a poker room out in the hinterlands.  Eleven tables, nicely spaced apart.  And the room is well run.

When I went over to register for the tourney, I noticed the name of the woman who was running things and taking the money for the buy-ins, Kay.  I realized that this was poker room manager, who I have been dealing with via email and telephone since I started working at PokerAtlas.  Seeing as how I'd never been to Sam's Town since I started this job, I'd never met her.  So of course I introduced myself.  It always nice to meet someone in person you've been working with only electronically until then.  I even had my brand new business card to give her.

Before the tournament started, I tweeted out this:  "Playing Sam's Town $40 donkament with @flushhdraw , @AbramskiChris and @lightning36 . Keep me in your thoughts and prayers."  Well I thought it was funny.  It did get me 12 "likes."

The $40 tournament started with 5K chips and had 20-minute levels.  A $5 staff bonus got another 2K chips.  Not exactly the deepstack tournament I like.  You'll note I rarely play tournaments at that level.  Just not enough play for me.  But with a month in Vegas planned, I'd have plenty of time to play the kind of tourneys I prefer.  This one I was playing for social reasons.

They got a very good turnout for a Tuesday night—five full tables and there were alternates (they weren't staffed for more than five tables).  But the cash game did close down because most of the players in it were playing in the tournament.

Flushhdraw and I were at one the same table, and Lightning and Chris were together at another table.  My notes were quite sparse.  I wrote about a hand during level 1 where I raised preflop with Ace-Jack, c-bet, got called, and had to give up.  That was it until level 3 when it all fell apart.

Down to $5,950, I was in the small blind with Queen-9 off and completed.  The flop was 9-8-x, two of a suit.  I bet $600 and it folded to Flushh, who shoved his last $2,800.  Hmmm…..I figured he knew I had a hand there, and that he wouldn't be risking his tournament life without a pretty good hand himself.  So I decided there was no way he couldn't beat my top pair, mediocre kicker.  He must have a better kicker to go along with his 9, or perhaps two pair?  9-8 was very possible.  So I folded.

Note: Before the evening was over I asked him what he had and he told me Ace-8.  Ouch.  I said, "I thought you had a better hand than that!"  He replied, "I knew you would, that's why I did it.  I was desperate."  Well congrats, sir, on being a better poker player than me.

I still had chips to play with and we were coming to the first break. The next hand would be the last hand before the break.  On the button with King-Queen suited (hearts), I saw just about everyone but the Pope limp in front of me.  So I raised to1K (not sure what the blinds were, I no longer have the blind structure).  As soon as I raised, the guy on my immediate left said, "I knew that was coming."  Huh?  How did you know that?  Cuz I lost the last hand?  I still wasn't desperate. I wasn't gonna raise with 7-deuce there.  How did you know I was gonna get a good hand like King-Queen suited?  Weird.

I got 4 callers. The flop was King-high.  It checked to me and I bet $2K.  Not sure why I just didn't shove there considering the size of the pot but I didn't.  The last guy with cards called.  After a blank turn, he led out for 2K more and that was more than I had.  Of course I called.  Of course he turned over Ace-King to take the pot and bust me out.  When I showed my hand after we were all-in, that idiot next to me said, "I knew you were desperate." 

I didn't say anything to him.  But what a jerk.  It's not like I was raised preflop with garbage.  King-Queen suited is a raising hand, right?  And then I had top pair, second best kicker.  Nothing in my play indicated I was desperate.  This guy was clearly clueless.  Maybe that's why Flushh likes this tournament so much—the players are so bad.  Too bad on this night and I didn't get the cards to take advantage.

I was the first of the four of us to bust, but none of our group cashed. But Lightning was the last to bust out and then imagined that we made a last longer bet.  We hadn't.

Well, I have more to say about this evening, but I'll save that for next time so I can get this posted now.  Come back in in a few days for more of my Sam's Town report.  (Now posted, see here).