Summerlin poker

Tonight I went out to Suncoast to see their new poker room. You can see what I saw in the photos above. Not a lot to say about it. It's much like the old one, but without quite as much of the airy, luxurious space between tables. The first couple of tables are also a lot closer to the noise and smoke of adjacent slot machine than any tables in the old room were. Maybe the worst thing about the new place is that the restrooms, instead of being immediately outside the room, are now clear across the casino floor--one of the longest restroom hikes of any poker room that I can think of offhand. That's annoying.

Suncoast has also recently discontinued its $1-2 no-limit hold'em game. Instead, they play with a single $5 blind, the buy-in being $100 to $500. This is a structure I've never seen anywhere before. It definitely changes the character of the game. It threw me off at first. I guess the best way to describe the result is that people play in a more fundamentally sound way. There is less limping and more open-raising. Seeing a flop feels substantially less cheap, and players are noticeably less willing to play an "any two cards" strategy. Family pots are virtually non-existent. That's what threw me off--I'm used to being up against several crappy limpers' hands when I have a good one. Also, since a raise is pretty much going to have to be to about $15 to accomplish anything meaningful, pots grow quickly. On the flop, because the pot size is larger, a bet has to be larger to succeed at whatever goal one might have for it. I imagined at first that the game would have less action than a typical $1-2 game, but paradoxically the result is the opposite, with far larger average pots. One's variance will definitely be higher as a consequence.

In short, the game plays tighter, smarter, and bigger simultaneously. It's an interesting change of pace and challenge. But after being stymied for the first couple of orbits (because my habitual strategy was not working), and getting down to my last $35, I rallied and hit hands at key moments, leaving up by $339 in a bit under two hours. It feels good not just to win, but to be presented with a new poker challenge and successfully figure out how I have to adjust my play.


I rarely play at Red Rock casino, for two good reasons. First, it's too far away. Second, it's one of the most difficult $1-2/$1-3 NLHE games in town to beat, in my opinion. I would put it right up there with the Wynn and the Mirage as averaging the fewest soft spots at the table. My previous experience there is that I either lose or have to play my A-game to score a win. I hadn't played there since May, 2007.

But tonight I was sort of feeling my oats, and I decided that being at Suncoast was already about 90% of the way there, so I might as well give it another shot. I don't like to think that there's any NLHE game in town that is within my bankroll that I need to be intimidated by. Well, I guess I had a little something going tonight, because I pulled in $177 in an hour, then just felt too tired to be at my best for any longer, so called it a day.


On my way out, I remembered that there's a Fatburger at Red Rock. I've lived here for over two years now, and somehow had not yet found my way to a Fatburger. I decided it was time to give it a go for a midnight meal. You certainly have to wait longer than any other fast food place I've been to (they don't start cooking the burger until you order it), but it is indeed worth it. Much better than In 'n' Out Burger, I thought, though the latter tends to get more raves.