About four-and-a-half years ago, I took my first ever poker vacation to Las Vegas to play tournaments. It was a bucket list item for me, and at the time I thought it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Three years later, in March 2025, the stars aligned for me to “rinse and repeat” and travel to Las Vegas a second time for a poker tournament vacation. Now, a year-and-a-half later, it worked out once more that I could take a few days to travel to Las Vegas and play poker tournaments.
When I say “to play poker tournaments,” I mean that in the strictest possible interpretation. Aside from eating and sleeping, playing in poker tournaments is pretty much all that I did on each of my three trips to Las Vegas. On my first trip, I played in 14 tournaments over seven days. On my second trip, I played in 15 tournaments over six days. On this latest trip, I managed to pack in 16 tournaments over the course of six days. Across all three of my trips I exclusively played in Texas Hold’em tournaments with buy-ins ranging from $100-160 (with one $230 buy-in exception); i.e., what are commonly known as “dailies”. Thankfully, I ended up in the black on my first two trips, so I was aiming for a trifecta this time around.
Crashing and Burning Repeatedly
This time around, I split my time between the Horseshoe and Caesars Palace, since each runs a number of daily tournaments. Things started out well at the Horseshoe, with me taking down a massive pot on a lucky river. I flopped a set of Jacks and called an all-in bet only to see that he had flopped a straight. Luckily for me, the board paired on the river. Unfortunately my luck ran out soon thereafter when my turned flush got lured into calling someone who had flopped a full house of his own. And when I say “my luck ran out”, I mean it… it seemed like from that point onward, nothing worked!
I dusted off my next bullet at Caesars with top pair top kicker against someone who had flopped top two pair.
On my fifth tournament I flopped a wheel. But so did another player. A third player was all-in with us and rolled over a flopped set of twos. The board paired on the turn and, well, “the wheels fell off”.
After five blanks, things finally improved for me in tournament #6, as I made it to the final table. With 23 players entering, only three of us would make the money. I negotiated a deal whereby we’d pay the bubble $100 (that tournament’s buy-in). A funny thing happened when we got down to four players: the dealer burned a card and put out the flop, and all four of us looked at her and started giggling – since she hadn’t dealt us any cards yet. She was quite embarrassed, but it was all in good fun. Thankfully, I managed to avoid the bubble and finish in third place for a $500 score.
I was not as fortunate in the next tournament, as I ended up being the bubble boy… and in this particular tournament we had not successfully negotiated a deal for the bubble to get paid. “Oh well,” I said to myself, as my pocket Queens got busted by A5… there were more tournaments yet to play.
The next few tournaments couldn’t have gone worse. I’ll save you the bad beat stories, but I’ll just share that the image below captured one of the rough hands I ran into, with my fives full losing to quad jacks. The bottom line is that I only managed to record one more cash, and in a nutshell, after 13 tournaments over five days, I had only cashed in two tournaments. Balance-wise, I was very clearly in the red at this point.
All’s Well that Ends Well
Then came my last day in Las Vegas. It started with a $100 buy-in tournament at 9am that attracted 25 people. The top four would finish in the money. As we approached the bubble, one guy at the table made his refusal to make a deal quite clear, so onward we played. Wouldn’t you know it, karma got him and he got knocked out in fifth place, walking away emptyhanded. I brokered a deal with the remaining three players and walked away with $400.
I then late-regged the 11am $100 tournament, which ended up attracting 27 entries. I managed to triple up pretty quickly, which gave me enough chips to again survive until making the final table. As the field continued to dwindle, I tried repeatedly to broker deals for even chops, all of which were rebuffed. It worked out in my favor, as I managed to make it heads-up. My last remaining opponent and I agreed to divvy up the remaining prize pool for $600 apiece.
I came to play as much tournament poker as I could… so I entered one final tournament, late-regging once again for the $100 5pm tournament at the Horseshoe. This one ended up having a 46-entry field, the largest one of my trip, so seven players would end up making the money. My hot streak continued and I once again found myself in the money. When we got down to four players, I suggested a chop, to which everyone agreed, giving us each $646 apiece.
Tournament poker is unpredictable. You don’t know what kind of table you’ll draw, what skill level other players will have, how the deck will or won’t hit you. All you can do is play your best, stay disciplined, and hope luck smiles upon you. After five days of painful results and outcomes, things thankfully couldn’t have gone better on the final day of my trip.
I aim to be process-oriented rather than results-oriented, but the bottom line is that an ITM of 31% and an ROI of 23% is something not just to be proud of, but also that helps feed my desire to want to keep making more trips to Las Vegas to play tournament poker.
I’m hoping to make these pilgrimages annually now. Beyond the sheer joy of getting to spend a week doing something I enjoy so much, I’m optimistic that through persistence and staying cool, calm, and collected at the tables, I’ll be able to continue recording strong results, too.
