Horseshoe Casino Poker Room Council Bluffs, IA Tournaments ...

WARNING: this is going to be really really long and not overly exciting. Also my grammar is pry going to really suck because I’m writing so much and don’t really care to proofread it a ton.
For about the past month, I haven’t been very active in terms of any kind of poker. I started studying for the CPA exam about a month and a half ago. I decided to cash out pretty much my entire online roll and the relatively small live roll I had left and just focus on studying. I figured this would help with any distractions as well as the devil on my shoulder saying, “just take a day off of studying and go play.” Anyway, about two weeks ago my brother was getting ready to move back to college. It’s pretty much on the other side of the country and my parents usually end up making a vacation out of driving him out there and moving him in. I live in central Illinois and he goes to college in Wyoming. My parents asked me if I wanted to come for the 4-5 days and hangout because I really like the area that he goes to school in. It’s right next to a huge mountain range so there’s tons of cool stuff to do: hiking, climbing, fishing, etc. I was way ahead of pace for the studying so I decided to take a break and cruise out there with them for a week a so. I know there’s a decent amount of casinos on the drive there so I figured I could also convince them to stop at one on the way back and I could play at a new poker room that I’d never been to before, so I decided to go.
After dropping him off at school and having fun in the mountains for a few days, we started the drive back and the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa was about halfway home. I convinced them to stop for the night and stay in the casino’s attached hotel, saying I would split half the cost of the room. I was pretty stoked about playing in a new room as well as playing some live poker for the first time in a long time.
Night 1
I looked up the information for the poker room on the website and it said they were spreading something like 3/6 limit, 4/8 limit, 1/3 NL, and 2/5NL. I was pretty excited about this because I’ve never played limit live before, so I was planning on trying that out. I have friends that have said live low stakes limit poker is literally worse than Hitler, but I decided I’d try it anyway. I got to the room and asked about limit and they said the only games running were no limit. This was a Thursday so the room wasn’t super crowded. Damn, there aren’t any limit games running. Oh well, I’ll just play no limit. My first impression of the room was that it’s really big. I’m used to playing in home games and underground rooms so this was cool. The couple of casinos that are by me have small rooms (like 5-6 tables) so it was cool to see a room that was this legit (like 20-25 tables I would guess). The WSOP circuit stops there, so I would assume that’s why the room is so big and nice. Keep in mind my opinion of the room is all relative as I’ve never been to Vegas.
I ended up playing that night for about 4 hours. Every single dealer I had was great. Didn’t have a single complaint about the poker room staff at all. I didn’t do so hot the first night and ended up leaving down $150. Here are what I think were two interesting hands from the first night:
I’m in the cutoff with As9d. Effective stacks are something like $225. Folds around to aggro asian guy in the hijack who raised to $13. I call. Button folds. Both blinds call. Flop is Ac4d8s. Asian bets $15 and I call. Blinds fold. Turn is 7h. Asian bets $15 again and I call. River is 7x. Asian bets $20 and I call. Asian shows AT and wins. I think I played this hand pretty bad, but not entirely sure. Probably should have just folded pre, I think. Oh well, a couple hands later he bought me a beer. He was a nice guy.
The second hand I opened an unopened pot with AcQc from the CO by raising to $14. An older kind of nitty player called from the BB. Flop was 4cTcJh. Old guy checked and I cbet something like $20 into $30. He raises to $55 and I jam for something like $175 more and he calls. He shows queens and I brick. I was really confused by this hand. I think it’s okay getting it in here? Would like some comments on this hand. Effective stack was mine at something like $225. I think this line was spewy when looking back at it. But originally I thought both my pairs were live, obviously I was wrong.
So anyway, I had fun and got kinda drunk so it was a solid night overall even though I left down some. I went out to find my parents. My mom has become a slot degen lately so she can pretty much occupy herself for hours haha. But she said my dad had been wondering around for a long time and watching her not really doing any gambling at all. I felt kind of bad about this. He doesn’t really ever gamble and seemed kind of out of place, so I wished I would have hung out with him a little bit more and shown him how to play some of the games.
A couple of the negative things about the first night, I signed up for a players card hoping to get some sweet comps or something. The only thing you get when you sign up for a players card is a free t shirt. No slot dollars or table play or food comps or anything. Pretty bogus imo but whatever. One thing I was excited about for this casino was that I figured beer and food would be cheaper than I’m used to. The beers and food are pretty ridiculously expensive at my local casino so I was thinking that one that was this big would have much better deals. I was wrong. Beers were like $4. Pretty ridiuculous that a casino charges that much for a beer imo. I would think that they would have better deals for people paying rake and losing money to them. I guess not. Their food was also ridiculously expensive imo. I ended up getting a rebuen and fries from one of the little walk up restaurants outside the room before going back to the hotel room for the night and it was like $12. Again, too expensive imo but whatever it tasted pretty phenomenal actually.
Link to part 2:
http://www.reddit.com/PokerBlog/comments/2g2e9a/trip_report_horseshoe_casino_council_bluffs_iowa/