USA Day 20

VEGAS BABY!!!
Yes, I'm now in Las Vegas. Managed to get the perfect seat for the plane to Vegas - a small plane where I had the row being first/business class, where I could actually stretch my legs out straight & only barely touch the seat in front of me. Legroom on a plane ... who'd have thought?
Eventually sorted out my room, after discovering that my booking was cancelled! Always a good start ... but then it was off to do the essentials before hitting the poker tables.
The essentials: a meal at Earl of Sandwich & getting myself a ticket for UFC 116, which is in just over a month.
Poker started with $1/2NLHE at Mandalay Bay, where I managed to find myself on the wrong end of cooler hands on multiple occasions.
Top pair & nut flush draw v small flush = I miss; TT runs into JJ; TT runs into the old UTG limp-re-raise, so I fold & my opponent shows KK; 88 runs into AJo on a board that is 7-high until the river ... jack; and finally manage to run KK into AA for the bustout in style! Of course I knew the lady in the hand had a monster, just wasn't good enough to pick WHICH monster & after flatting pre-flop & on the T-high flop, I reluctantly got it in on the turn before finding out the bad news (yes, I knew from the start that is was QQ+, I just hoped it was the QQ end, not the AA end!).
After leaving Mandalay Bay I found myself ar Aria, which is one of the nicest looking poker rooms on the strip, and sat down in a $4/8 limit holdem game. The play was suitably horrible (plus I found some run-good) & I picked up a tidy profit before the mixed game I had put my name on the list for got started. Of course I was expecting some sort of standard HORSE-like mix (I had played HORSE once before at Aria on my previous visit to Las Vegas), though the floor staff had said it would be up to the players to decide the mix when I registered. By the time I had made it to the table, the mix had been decided & I was up for some learning on the job.
The mix was a five-game mix, rotating ever 8 hands & included Razz, Omaha hi-lo & stud hi-lo, which seems pretty standard. The final two games were 2-7 triple draw (so I would be playing my first live cash session of 2-7, though I had played it in tourneys & a little online previously) & Badeuci (which may or may not be spelt correctly). Badeuci is a split-pot game, with half the pot going to the best 2-7 low hand & the other half going to the best badugi hand (with Aces playing high for both games). Badugi hands are low, unpaired, rainbow cards (with the standard nuts being A234 rainbow). In Badeuci this changes, so the nutss are 23457, with the 2345 being of different suits. This gives you nut-nut, with the 2-7 wheel & the best badugi hand. Of course my knowledge of 2-7 comes almost entirely from the 'Triple the Gold' series on Deuces Cracked, as well as the short playing time in 8-game tourneys, while my badugi knowledge comes from a brief Full Tilt interview with Huck Seed & my badeuci knowledge comes from an interview with Deathdonkey, I think from Deuce Plays, with the key point I remembered being 'aim for a decent badugi & hope to back into a good 2-7 hand' as the way to play to try and scoop. Turned out to be an interesting game, with a number of the players being dealers from Vegas (or dealers in town for the various tourney series over summer), ranging from players who seemed pretty decent TAG-ish ones through to total maniacs. I left the game just after 4am after playing for about 5 hours, and only finished slightly down for the session (though still ahead overall from the Aria visit). Interesting game & one I would definitely go back for. Definitely puts the Aria much higher on my list of best poker rooms in Vegas.
Next: Omaha hi-lo at Orleans.