Aria is The Nut's

I have been staying at Aria this past week and have really enjoyed the place. When not playing tournaments at the Rio, I have been playing the live action games at the Aria poker room. I have to say it’s by far the nicest room in Vegas and is headed up by Adam Altwies, who was one of the senior people at Bellagio. The room is spacious and there is plenty of room between tables, the chairs are comfortable and the staff truly excellent. They have a private room, called “Ivey’s Room,” where we held a big no limit holdem game tonight, but I get ahead of myself.

My day began at the Liquid Lounge Pool, where I had a meeting with Scott Heckmann who is CEO of LaserAway, and grew up with Keoni who is the guy who runs the place. Although the whole pool area at Aria is beautiful, the private Liquid Pool is really nice. We had lunch there and thoroughly enjoyed the scenery, if you get my drift. Then I had to go to work, or should I say play. We began the game three handed, which I really enjoy. The game filled pretty quickly and it was quite good for a while. Then one player went broke playing “flips” with the loosest player at the table. He said he would leave if we didn’t flip him double or nothing for his last 10k. So the table pooled together 10k and one pot limit Omaha hand was played for 20k. Our pooled money lost and he now had 20k to keep playing with. The good news is I won a decent pot off him shortly thereafter when I called his button 4 big blind raise with a suited ace from the big blind.

The flop came 2 7 7 with 2 spades, and that’s right you guessed it I had A 7. I checked and he bet about the pot and I raised him a full pot back, which he called. The river brought a red jack and I bet 80% of the pot and he called. The river brought the four of spades and I didn’t like it. Obviously I thought it was possible he was calling me with a flush draw. The river went check, check, and when he checked I breathed a sigh of relief.

We are playing again tomorrow at Aria and I highly recommend it. They spread a wide variety of games and I think once people try it and start playing there it will become the place to play in Las Vegas. They have a tournament series scheduled beginning June 27th, here is the link: http://www.arialasvegas.com/casino/poker.aspx