Deuces Cracked Homegame & other goings on

To begin with I must apologise for the lack of updates ... this hotel wireless is frustrating me & I have been prioritising other things when I am able to use the internet.
Anyway, events of the last few days have included: The Deuces Cracked Homegame at Aria, a Stud8 tournament at the Golden Nugget, a HORSE tournament at the Orleans, a mixed game at the Imperial Palace & some brief cash sessions at the Luxor & Hooters.
The Deuces Cracked homegame was great fun. Was good to catch up with Chuck, Rob, Joe & the rest of the DC team I had met in Australia, as well as meeting some other coaches & members & being able to put faces & real names to DC names. As far as the poker was concerned, I sat in a $4/8 mixed game, which began as a mix of Holdem, Omaha hi-lo & Crazy Pineapple ... and soon became somewhat different! Of course being labelled a 'homegame' I started off playing like a homegame ... I have 3 outs for a gutshot ... I call; 2 outs for a bigger 2 pair ... I call. Of course from a purely financial perspective, such decisions are not wise ... and of course it was only after these decisions began to be more noticable (ie: I had far less chips in front of me than when I started) that it occurred to me that I should be doing something a little different with my game. So I changed up my game, and the nit that had been waiting to emerge had a chance to join the table. As a result of this transformation, the results turned around.
Of course as the night went on, the games got more unorthodox. At one point the game turned into what became known as 'Slomaha', which on the surface is run like a standard game of Omaha hi-lo. Of course this changed when some of the players decided to show random cards from their hand during play, and eventually turned into a strange cross between Omaha & Stud. The game was played where players were forced to turn over one card (of their choosing, though occasionally this was done at random by the dealer) from their hand after the completion of the round of betting before the flop, before the turn & before the river. There were some strategy considerations regarding the cards that people turned over - do you turn over a pair, a low card, the random 'dangler', etc. This meant that after the river was dealt, there were 5 community cards & each player had 3 of their 4 hole cards exposed in front of them. This of course changed hand reading, as it now became somewhat like a stud hand where you could see people's boards & determine their possible holdings from that. The third card made a lot of difference regarding low hands - given that it is Omaha, you need to use 2 cards from your hand with 3 cards from the board, so that when 3 hole cards are exposed, it became obvious who could qualify for a low. I did OK at this game, though when the game changed to Baduci I had far more success & managed to recoup most of my earlier losses. All in all a fun night. Definitely looking forward to the Bowling next Thursday.
After the recent tournaments, which turned into luckfests because of the typically horrible structures (5 big bet average stacks ... its a game of skill!), I had sworn off tournaments in Vegas for a while, yet still went to the Golden Nugget to play the Stud8 tournament, which as expected turned into a luckfest. I managed to get crippled by the table fish in two hands where he made monsters against my somewhat mediocre holdings, when it seemed like every other hand he had played he had had relative garbage (and had been playing it like the nuts!). Of course even with a short stack I managed to outlast him, however I was unable to regain my chips from the opponents he had so kindly donated them to.
I also decided to try out the Orleans Sunday night HORSE tournament, but that too turned into a luckfest after the first few levels & I busted relatively early from that one. Maybe I should try some NLHE tourneys to change things up a bit??
I also ventured to a few poker rooms that I had not played at previously - the Bruce Buffer Poker Lounge at the Luxor & Hooters. Not much to say about those rooms - played some $1/2NL at each & made a small profit at both ... and of course left with my 'souveneir' $1 chip.
The $3/6 mixed game at the Imperial Palace seemed almost like a homegame with some of the games on offer. I finally made it through an entire rotation of games (which took over 5 hours to get through all 10 games, playing 8 hands of each game) & discovered quite a few games I had no prior knowledge of!
Highlights from the night included:
Playing hi-lo 5 card draw (called A-5 hi-lo) I started with a pair of 7s, drew 3 on the first draw, did not improve, drew another 3, picked up another 7, so drew 2, picked up the last remaining 7 on the final draw, bet, was raised, so I three-bet, only to be called down by the guy who had three kings (from the initial deal) to scoop a pretty sizable pot ($100+).
Finding a wheel (23457) in 2-7 triple draw on the second draw & getting paid off in 2 spots.
Folding the same hand as the winning hand in 4-card Crazy Ocean Pineapple (89 on a board of KT7J35), when I assumed that my turned straight was no good. Of course the other player in the hand had the nut flush draw that missed (yes, even on the 'ocean')!
All-in-all a crazy game that is fun to play, and can at the right time be good for the bankroll, though it can also be very swingy, obviously. This was helped by one of the players who would almost always post a blind straddle when UTG & was later posting 'sleeper straddles' in various positions (for example a sleeper straddle on the button meant that if folded to him, it would act like a straddle where he has last option after people called his raise, otherwise it would act as a standard bet where he had the option to either call or raise).
Next on the agenda: more poker I guess ...