Going to Kansas City in June

Anyone got any tips on where to go, what to expect? I know the Ameristar has poker and claims to be the biggest cardroom in the midwest. I'm looking for somebody who's been there to give me the lowdown on what games are fishy/non-fishy, what's the rake/jackpot structure, etc.

I don't play tourneys, just cash games of mostly LHE (up to $5/$10) and a little NL.

ChezJ

UG & I both live in the area if you want to hook up with some FTRers. I'd be happy to meet you for some NL action with a little advance notice.
All three rooms have 1/2NL, 2/5NL, 3/6 limit w/Kill, & higher limit or stud games upon interest. They rarely spread Omaha, but on occasion you can get lucky. Tournaments are listed on their respective websites.

Harrah's: Most popular room for 1/2NL. Probably a little bigger than Ameristar, but definitely more crowded. Tables are close together. Auto shufflers. Drink station in room. Sits next to main casino floor, so you may get more walkin, fish traffic. Inexpensive freezeout tourneys daily at 10am, but they are sold out quick on weekends. Registration starts 2 hrs prior and closes in about 15-30 minutes.
Ameristar: Nice room setup, brighter than Harrahs. Good floor, dealers adequate, auto shufflers. Usually spreads a wider variety of games. Easy Rebuy/Add-on tourney on Weekend mornings. Usually fills just before the start at 10am.
Argosy: Best & newest Hotel. Small poker room toward back of casino floor, usually on the dead side when I see it, but I haven't been on weekend night before. I can't speak to quality of dealers, management, but room looks nice.

I prefer Harrah's for 1/2NL. Ameristar & Harrah's are close together on the east side of KC off 210 HWY, a few miles north of the I-70 & I-435 interchange. Argosy is north of KC in Riverside, MO. I've never played poker at the Isle of Capri and I don't even know if they have a poker room. All rooms seem to have a comp rate of $1/hr.
Good luck.

Thanks for the great info. Have you ever played the 3/6 limit at any of the casinos? I recently went to Atlantic City and found that some of the 3/6 tables had turned into rockfests, since all the fish now play NL. Kind of the same way that stud has no fish any more, only veterans. I can get by at a NL table, but LHE is really my game.

BTW, I will be in town for 2 weeks of training, so you can expect to see me at one of those cardrooms every single night of the week... I can't wait!! Very Happy

ChezJ

Yes, I've played limit while waiting for a NL table recently at Harrahs & Ameristar. 3/6 limit is very soft, VERY passive. A raise = the nuts, but you will get called down by 3rd pair sometimes. Plenty of fish that just want to sit on the cheap. The weekend has plenty of traffic, but I don't know about the week nights.
If you go to Ameristar at 9am or 3pm the first 3 AA's to get cracked get paid $100. At 3/6 you actually try to see if you can get them cracked. It is kinda funny.

yeehaw i am goin on sunday and i cannot wait!!!

Played the 3/6 at Harrahs last night (Monday) from about 7 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. It was the only LHE game they spread. They had 3 tables of 3/6 and the rest of the room was NL. I had to wait over 1 hour to get seated. I have to say, it was rather smoky and I had a hard time breathing since I'm recovering from a cold. Players were loose, 6-8 to every flop with lots of ridiculous river catches. One deep stacked guy donked/raised the flop and turn with any small pair (then magically hit trips). Ideal for SSH strategy.

Unfortunately, I got dealt crap for hours on end, not even getting 2 face cards or a suited ace for the first 2-3 hours. I finally got AK for TPTK but lost to AA. Then it happened again. I played some suited connectors and missed some huge draws. Missed the set with 4-5 pocket pairs. Within 3 hours, I was down $150, even though I had hardly played any hands at all.

I started turning it around by playing medium suited connectors in EP. Managed to crack aces, flush out a straight, and crush a set. Played JTo a lot and rivered a one-outer boat vs an ace high flush. My QQ filled up in a 7way pot. KK held up in a 10-handed (!) family pot.

In the end, I pulled myself out of the deep hole and even made $8. I realized afterwards that I must have paid about $60 in rake, jackpot drop, and tips. This explains why I make so much more in my home games for the same amount of time and effort.

By the way, the bad beat jackpot is over $260,000 now.... some guy would have hit it last night but he folded 99 to a $3 flop re-raise after already raising to $6. He would have caught running 9's vs quad 5's. People wouldn't shut up about it for hours.

At least I earned $0.75/hr in comps, although they won't "activate" for 72 hours. They also have a free soda fountain and coffee maker in the poker room. But you have to pay for alcohol.

Although I said the game was loose, there were only a couple real fish at the table. The rest knew what they were doing and wouldn't give me action post-flop unless they had me crushed. But I couldn't use my tight image to bluff, because it was always 6way on the flop. The one agg fish was the card-catcher I mentioned earlier, and he never paid me off. The other fish dumped their chips very quickly, though I did get a piece of them before they left.

I will try going back on Wed or Thursday to see if the action gets any fishier.

ChezJ

Went back to Harrah's tonight (Wednesday) and they canceled the nightly tournament because too many people were packing into the poker room to take a shot at the record breaking bad bead jackpot ($267,700+). They had 5 tables of 3/6 and about 4 tables of the $60-$200 NL (1/2 blinds I assume) and 1-2 tables of the $200-$500 NL.

I actually came close to winning a mini bad beat jackpot when I rivered quad Q's vs aces full of queens... but I only used one card in my hand so it didn't qualify.

The game was a total fishfest, much better than Monday night. 7-8 players who limped any two cards (I mean ANY) and never folded until the river no matter how much raising/checkraising occurred. As usual, there was one lucky agg who would cap pre flop with 65s and catch hands left and right. Other than him, myself, and my TAG friend, the entire table consisted of grandmas and grandpas who were so loose passive that they didn't even raise QQ, KK, or AA pre flop, much less AKs/AK. If they ever donked into you, you were dead meat. They were all very nice and friendly, so that made it fun, even when I went on a -$160 run getting my AK beaten 3 more times (haven't made a dime on that fucking hand yet, it's cost me ~$150 this week), having KK cracked, and missing some extremely expensive 13-15 outers.

One funny old lady kept complaining about how fast the BB came around, yet for the last two hours she won *every single hand* that she played in the BB, including AKs, KK, and *back-to-back* BB's where she was dealt AA. Talk about improbable! She also won about 50% of the time from the SB. So eventually she stopped complaining about paying her blinds.

Somehow I managed to drag about 3-4 monster pots and pull out ahead by $10 before the table broke. At midnight, I knocked out a guy with my JKs (my initials), then nobody wanted to play 4 handed so the game died.

Again, if it weren't for the rake, I would have made a hell of a lot more money. With the rake (+ jackpot drop + tips), the game is very tough to beat. You are always getting outdrawn by the fish school's wacky 2prs, trip 2's, and gutshots. Having infinite patience doesn't help if the game breaks after 5 hours.

Will go back again and see what else I find... at least I have about $7.50 in comps now.

ChezJ

I played at Ameristar on Friday night... and Saturday morning... and Saturday afternoon... 20 hours straight. If any of you KC locals were there, I was the asian guy with the gray polo shirt.

With the bad beat jackpot over $270,000, the wait list at Harrah's was over 3 hours. Nobody wanted to play at Ameristar, despite their jackpot being well over $100,000. The poker room was half empty so I got seated within minutes. When I arrived (10 p.m.), they had 4-5 tables of 3/6 with full kill, 3 tables of 1/2 NL and 1 wild table of 15/30 limit (wish I had the roll!).

Overall, Ameristar is much nicer than Harrah's. The casino is more luxurious and spacious, with high ceilings for better ventilation (though it's still smoky on the second floor where the poker room is hidden). Smoking is banned inside the poker room. The leather seats are really comfy and the tables are very well spaced compared to Harrah's sardine can of a room.

They had the $100 "Busted Bullets" promo running at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. I saw it awarded 4 times at my table (and was the ace-cracker once), but I myself never even got dealt AA for those 20 hours. Got plenty of other hands, though, hitting +$60 within 4 hours. Around 2 a.m. we got shorthanded and I quickly blew about $100 on missed flops and second-best hands. At least they reduced the rake to $1 (from $5).

Suddenly around 3 a.m., playing 4-handed (my forte), I burst into flames with a series of monsters that all got paid off big-time... nobody gives you credit shorthanded. I rocketed to about +$100 and probably should have left, but I wanted to stick around for the 9 a.m. Busted Bullets. Naturally, this resulted in me giving away many chips.

I was able to fight off sleep deprivation by eating comped meals (their deli runs past 4 a.m., thank god) and drinking caffeine. There's no free soda like at Harrah's, but at least the waitresses are hotter. Around 2 p.m. I started to crash badly. It didn't affect my game so much as my attitude. I had been having fun with other players, joking, laughing, etc., up until 1 p.m., when I got moved to a table full of crotchety old geezers who never cracked a smile and looked like they wanted to tar and feather me every time I raised. They never gave me any credit for a hand, 3-4 of them chasing to the river with any shitty gutshot or bottom pair. My AK went nowhere in an expensive kill pot, and my TT and JJ got outflopped. Before I knew it, I was on a $160 downswing, delirious from exhaustion, and just plain having a bad time.

I knew I was in bad shape, but I figured I'd crash the car if I tried to drive the 20 miles back to my hotel. So like a true degenerate, I decided to go for broke with my last $100. Since every pot was over $80, I knew it would only take 2-3 wins to break even. Finally, I hit a ridiculous runner-runner full house that started as a pair of deuces with 15:1 pot odds to chase. Then I hit a couple very mediocre hands that held up... and that's all it took to make me whole again. I cashed out at 4 p.m. for +$27, hardly more than $1 an hour. I must have won another $200 that went down the rake slot. Sad

Sadly, that is the nature of low-limit casino poker. If I'd played 6/12 (which was just starting as I left), I might have made some serious coin.

The next day (today), I went to Harrah's and got seated at a nice, friendly 3/6 game with 4-8 players to every flop, tons of checking (free cards), and no pre-flop raising without AA/KK. I got lots of playable hands (especially given the loose/passive table) but missed every flop til I was -$70. Then I hit an awesome rush, flopping a set of Q's, catching trips in the BB, flopping a K with AK (FINALLY!!!), having 99/TT hold up on super-scary boards, etc. Within 2 hours, I was +$90 and, having learned my lesson, took the money and ran. (I also had homework to do for my 8 a.m. class tomorrow.)

So I've finally registered a serious win (+15 BB post-rake) after a week of essentially break-even sessions. Yes, I've had +$200 runs, but they only came after -$160 downswings, so they added nothing to my bankroll. Logically, I know it is all one big session, but psychologically, I still need those W's to validate myself as a winning player before I sit down for the next session.

ChezJ

Played at Ameristar last night (Tuesday) and the action was super loose... unfortunately after about 3 hours of holding steady, I got caught up in the looseness and started playing a lot of junk hands like everybody else. Well heck, my premium hands like AK were going nowhere so why not... I actually won a couple huge pots by bluffing then catching a gutshot and a set. Unfortunately, instead of just taking the money and running, I tilted away all but $60 then got my AA cracked by 85o in a $200+ kill pot, leaving me broke.

So much for my psychological advantage. I guess winning 4 sessions in a row actually made me cocky so I lost the fear that kept me tight before. Now I'm down for the week.

ChezJ

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Going to Kansas City in June

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Going to Kansas City in June