Camped Out At Harrah's

First, the important stuff. I did sign a 12 month lease for an apartment in a large complex on the south end of town. It's a 2-Bedroom with Washer/Dryer in the apartment. I haven't used a laundromat in over 10 years, and I'm not about to start now. I'm also about a five minute drive from Peppermill and Atlantis.

I stayed at Harrah's Reno, since I had a 3 Free Nights offer. I also tried to do all of my Poker and Pit play at Harrah's to help build points for my cross country road trip when I haul my junk across the country.

The best word to describe the Harrah's Reno Poker Room is "Pathetic". They have six regular tables and one small table for Stud games, except they have no Stud games. In fact, the room has only two tables with Shufflers because the other table are never used. In my various sessions, there was never two full tables of Cash games (1/2 NL). Often, they start a table with only four players, and use a single $2 Blind. The tournaments I played didn't have two full tables, and they usually broke the Cash game, because there just weren't enough players.

As for my Poker, the Cash games were profitable (4 session, +$335, 10.75 hrs). They best way to describe the quality of players is to use a word that some of the Internet players use ... Droolers. There were a couple of decent 20's kids, but most of the players were either really tight or just really bad. I hit a few big hands, and most of them got paid off. If all of the local "Pros" will be at the Peppermill, then I will definitely be visiting other rooms to grab the "low hanging fruit".

I played in two tournaments. The structures were horrible with the blinds doubling every level (25/50, 50/100, 100/200, 200/400, 400/800, 500/1000, 1000/2000, 2000/4000... ). Being Harrah's, home of the World Series of Poker, they didn't even have any Tournament software. They were using a mechanical timer which looked like the timer that Wendy's uses to remind the employees to stir the Chili. (That was my first job in High School). They also used the bare minimum number of chips to run a tournament, and the Dealer started coloring up chips on Hand #2. It's really pathetic they don't have enough chips to run a two table tournament.

The first tournament (Mon night) was a $65 Bounty, with $10 for the Bounty. It had 18 players, so I tried the "Fold To The Final Table" strategy. However, I didn't do a very good job of it, and was the first one out. The second tourney (Tue night) was their Deepstack. This one started with 9k chips, but only had 13 players. I made it to the Final Table. But as often happens in the Shove-Fests, the Shortstacks just kept doubling up, and the Blinds got retarded. I ended up in fourth place when the BB, who was the tightest guy there, woke up with QQ. Harrah's only paid two spots, and nobody ever mentioned the Chop word.

Although I was hoping that I wouldn't do this, I ended up dumping a lot of money in the Pit. The main reason for this was because there were stretches of time when there was nothing to do. My Body never switched over to Western Time Zone. So I was in bed by 11pm, and was up at 4:30am. Not too many Poker tables open at 6am in Reno. Also, if I signed up on the List at the Poker Room as the second or third player, it was up to an hour wait due to only having one table running. After I move there, this shouldn't hopefully won't be a problem. I can just hop in my car, and make the 10 minute ride home.