



Las Vegas, Sept 5th 2015

My first stop on my “Tourist poker experience” was Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. This is one of my favorite places in Vegas, so I wanted to start here. I can easily say that it is still a favorite.

The poker room here is small - only 3 tables in total. They do have daily tournament, which is often cancelled or at the most is a one-table tourney. This sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? But those are just numbers and facts that have no impact on the game played. When I was there it was 1 to 2 tables that was active, both with 1/3 no limit Hold’em. The games were pretty good with a nice mix of tourists and decent/good players. It was very close to being a 50/50 mix, which I think is good. Having only tourists can be too much and having only regulars is just boring!

At the Hard Rock it’s no max buy-in. You can sit down with as much as you like! Since I was going to play as a tourist I decided to sit down with 100 big blinds, or $ 300 in normal-people terms. From the start I couldn’t win a pot. I was down to my last 100 before I won my first pot. I was thinking of reloading, but playing as “a tourist”, I decided to not do that, and keep playing my low stack. It turned out pretty good. I was able to build when I got something that looked like cards and situations that were playable. It was in fact going very well until two Norwegians (!!!) sat down. WTF? Norwegians in Vegas? It was Bjørn Wiik and Owe Egeland that arrived. To be honest, they were there as tourists and they were not entirely sober. This could go both ways, as the table was getting a bit crazier even before they showed up. My stack at this point was around $ 800. It didn’t take long before it was down to below $ 200. I couldn’t win a pot and I got a bit annoyed to be honest. F**k being a tourist! I decided to reload $ 300 more. Now I wanted to play poker!

And I also decided to start drinking. This could get ugly! Andreas on vodka cranberry is not an easy thing to have at the table.

I think I played pretty well to be honest. I won’t brag about doing thin calls with king high or bluffing the shit out of people (and showing). That would be narcissistic and rude. So I will just say that I played decent.

Everything looked good until I flopped top set vs. pair and a flush draw against my fellow Norwegian Owe. The pot ended up at around $ 1,100 and I lost it. I was down to $ 300-ish again and felt pretty blah. Time to order more drinks - mudslides this time - quite a few of them in fact.

Since doing that I won most pots. I was pretty lucky in a few spots and I also got the table into “being afraid of Andreas-mode”. I like it when that happens.

To make a long story short: I ended up with a profit of $ 3,880 after all expenses (massage and tipping) were paid. I played for about 7 hours and had a very good time.

Conclusion:

Hard Rock is a very good place to play poker, both for grinders and tourists. The balance between tourists and decent players is pretty much perfect and the atmosphere is among the best in Vegas I believe. I have rarely had this much fun playing poker!





I don’t know where my next stop will be, but I’m looking forward to it!





Hard Rock Hotel and poker room review

