ElSapo
04-08-2004, 02:17 PM
Vegas Trip Report
I waited a couple of days before going to work on this, just trying to let events settle in my head, recover, get some sleep, and so on. This will be, I think, fairly long. It will also be short on poker content. I went to Vegas with six friends last week with the intention of playing higher, maybe from 6-12 to 10-20. I got there and realized that it was infinitely more fun to sit in the 2-4 games with my friends and get drunk and have a blast. I was, after all, on vacation.
So that’s what I did. Serious playing went out the window, with a couple of exceptions, and the seven of us spent four days in Vegas gambling and drinking and eating and drinking and gambling and going out and getting loud and rowdy and doing just about anything except play serious poker.
It was the right choice, no doubt.
Thursday, 6 a.m. The phone rings. “You’re awake?” “Yeah. See you at the airport.” Only I wasn’t awake. We’d all gone out the night before to celebrate the trip, and everyone had left the bar trashed. I remember dinner, and the 10 bottles of wine, and the after-dinner drinks, and darts and the bar next door, and a round of deserts, and vodka tonics, and then… Well, and then the phone rang, that’s all I can recall, and I was leaping out of bed to pack, screw the shower, no time, call a cab, flight leaves in less than two hours, toss in extra socks and some clothes and go.
We land in Vegas, four of us on the same flight, and walk out into the terminal. Vegas is paradise b/c you can even gamble in the airport. I drop $1.25 in slots as we wait for everyone to get off the plane. From there we get a car to our hotel, paid something like $35, which may or may not have been a good deal. But I hate the shuttle, since you never know how long it will take, and your first hour in Vegas just doesn’t seem like the time to be standing in lines.
Our hotel was the Boardwalk, which boasts on its website “Next to the Bellagio!” Only in Vegas is the selling point of one hotel how close it is to the next one. We dropped our bags and went for a walk, as we were too early to check in. Wandered through the Monte Carlo, Paris, Bellagio. When we finally get back to the hotel, three (Patrick, Dave and Bright) of us are looking to take a nap and hit the hotel pool. My body wont let me do that, and I wander over to the Monte Carlo.
Funny aside. Giving our bags to the bellhop guy, or whatever he’s called, Dave reaches for a tip. He pulls out cash, and accidentally drops it. A bunch of 50s and 100s hits the floor. We all stare and the burst out laughing. Back home, it’s all credit cards and 20s, and to see this, really, looked absurd coming from us. There’s about a second pause while it sinks in, yeah, we are in Vegas, Dave picks up his money and we all head out, laughing.
The Monte Carlo is a nice poker room. Small, and they don’t spread many games, but if you’re looking to play some low limit hold’em you should be happy. They spread 2-4 and 4-8, each with or without a half kill, and a no-limit game on the weekends. The room is small, with dark walls, and relatively quiet when compared with the rest of the casino. The sounds of the slot machines are still there, but are at least not as bad as the Taj or Excalibur. Odd about the Monte Carlo is they take a high hand jackpot drop, which they talk nonstop about, but no bad beat drop. For the record, I think 2/4 with a half-kill is silly.
I’ve been playing in the 4-8 for about 90 minutes when my friends walk in. The pool was awful, they say. This is just after my KK chops three ways when the board finishes 45678r. Awesome. The 4-8 is weak and loose, but I put my name down for a transfer anyways to my friends’ table, and pick up QQ. Flop a set and go a couple of bets against a decent player who had trips on a Q5835 board. I move to the 2-4 with Dave, and go card dead. Card dead for the next three days. No worries though.
A word of advice – never sit at the short blackjack tables (the ones for wheelchairs). They may be sitting there, empty, the only seats around, but they’re bad luck. As if the game wasn’t negative EV enough. Down $100 in about 45 minutes. Only Patrick wins, $3, and comments he’s won back 1/3 of his overpriced sandwich. Not surprisingly, it’s Patrick who has the least idea of how to play. I tried to work out my hourly rate at blackjack based on this and got depressed.
That night we hit the Piano Bar at New York New York. I’ve only been in town 14 hours, so I’ve yet to adjust to the type of woman Vegas attracts. I spent the first four days (of a 4 day trip) absolutely floored by breasts. Breasts breasts breasts. Why don’t they dress this way in D.C.? Damn… We leave the piano bar around 2 a.m., hammered, and Dave demands we try Pai Gow. I lose $10, but somehow propose to the dealer who graciously declined. Dave, who had obsessed over the game for weeks, for some reason, won $10. Jon hit the craps table and apparently hit it big. I couldn’t see straight by the end of the night, but while I’m cashing out $5 chips I notice his chips have several zeros on the end.
Back to the poker room. Sleep? Hell no. Drunk, laughing, a bit rowdy, we get a new game started at the Monte Carlo, which would prove to be our room for the next few days. Five of us sit for the next three hours with a few others. The rake kills us.
I concede, we were annoying. Laughing, telling jokes, a few serious looking players at the end try and out-tight us and a couple others are at least partly joining in the fun. I straddle the big blind a few times, raise blind, bet dark, all of which I’d never do in another game. Somehow I manage to end even by the time the game breaks, and everyone had a great time.
Jon and I play on a while and end up getting breakfast with a guy we met. We talk poker, about the difference between Party’s 3-6 and 2-4 and 5-10, and I get his email and promptly lose it. When I see him three days later he has to remind me who he is. Who’s the ass? Yeah, me. Sorry.
So I slept two hours, and it’s time to get up. Friday morning in Vegas. Who sleeps here?
Eventually, all of us are awake. Which means it’s time to play some cards. I think we did a couple hours at the Monte Carlo, though I’m not certain. Time has a way of blending in Vegas, and what happened on what day I’m not sure of. This report may well be out of order and twisted around, but I think it’s largely accurate. Skip the day, because I don’t know what happened. It rained some (yeah, in the desert). We ate lunch at some point. We played cards.
We played a few hours at the Luxor. While the Monte Carlo’s game is a single $2 blind, the Luxor is the SB and BB structure I’m accustomed to. I never did work out the practical difference. I sat next to MJ and just relaxed. Didn’t play loose, didn’t play too tight. No more of the antics from last night. Can’t drink yet, still hung over from last night.
MJ gets pocket kings cracked, and when he sees the hand that rivered him he gets all quiet. Ten minutes later he looks up at the guy and says “nice hand.” I laughed for about half an hour about that. Then an asian guy sits next to us, and things get fun. “You in trouble now,” he’ll tell MJ. Who looks at his cards and gives it right back. The game wasn’t great, but it was good enough. The guy would check it down heads up, a practice I’m not a fan of and have never understood. When I hit my ace on the end, he’d simply call and show his flopped trips. I never understand it, but it’s fine by me. Patrick eventually goes bust in that game. I walked by and saw his cards, Q5s. “I think I’m on tilt,” he said, as he tossed in some chips. Everyone else broke even.
From there we hit the Excalibur for their spread limit game. The Excalibur is a terrible casino. Too loud, too weird, too everything. We play 1-3 and I think everyone sat down and immediately wished they hadn’t. The room is just too loud. But it’s an action game, for sure, because people are paying full bets to draw, and most pots are raised. They also spread 2-6, but that game gets too high for some of my friends. Last year the 2-6 was all I played all weekend, which was why I wanted to come back. Excalibur has expanded it’s room, but I don’t like it. More tables, but last year the staff was far friendlier and the room even a bit quieter.
Dave hit quad-queens. Small pot, no jackpot on it, but when he flips up his cards I give a little shout – something between “BAM!” and “Booyah!” I don’t know what it was. Patrick finally got aces, after complaining he hadn’t been dealt them yet. I’m not sure he understood how often he really should get them.
Tim finally gets to Vegas and shows up at our table. We leave shortly after, and head back to the hotel to change. At this point it’s about 8 p.m.. We do the Bellagio’s buffet, which was about $35 or something and worth it if you can eat nine pounds of food. The food is excellent, but from a value standpoint you really need to be hungry. Patrick decides next time he’s gonna come and spend the day, bring a small tv and nap under the table between courses. The hostess has an amazing body and the uniforms there are absurdly short skirts.
By the time we finish eating, it’s about 11 p.m. I’ve now slept two hours in a couple of days, and everyone is dragging. If we don’t get moving, we’re gonna crash. Simple. We split up – Tim and Patrick back to the hotel to shower, Patrick wants a 20 minute nap. Jon and Rob are going to stay at the Bellagio and play. MJ and Dave and I are hunting a bar called the Double Down Saloon. The plan is to meet up later.
The taxi takes us to Double Down Saloon, which immediately looks a bit odd. A friend suggested it to us, but the driver swears it’s a gay bar. At the very least, it’s next to gay bars. My friends look at me and I simply shrug. I have no idea, just following the suggestion of a friend. We opt elsewhere, and end up at the Hard Rock. Patrick and Tim find us an hour later, and we do a few rounds of shots and beers. Strip club time? Yes.
We don’t know where we’re going, but as we’re walking out the door a guy in a limo says he’ll take us wherever we want to go. Apparently he gets kicked money by the club, and while we’re all extremely wary of this deal (“Free? No, no, gimme $100,” we can imagine him saying at the end), in we go. Somehow we end up at Sapphire. Cover was $20, and eventually we end up getting a table and working our way through a drink minimum. Like most of the trip, it gets a little hazy, but I can safely say I walked out with a lot less cash than I came in with. No complaints, however, well worth it.
Saturday morning. I slept another 90 minutes last night/this morning after a stint at roulette. I got up big (at least, for starting with $50 in chips). The dealer is being an ass though (ok, not dealer, whatever he’s called). So I look at him as he sends about $100 in chips my way and say “Charlie, I feel like your rooting against me.” He glares. He is indeed hoping I lose. And I do. Fun time though, and somehow “Charlie, I feel like you’re rooting against me” becomes some sort of catch phrase for the trip.
It’s sports today. Sports, all sports. It takes us a while to work out time zone changes, but it appears the D.C. United game is on at 1 p.m., followed by NCAA. We’re running late, and by the time we get to a TV, D.C. United leads San Jose 1-0. We’re cheering and downing beer and generally making a scene at the small bar in the Monte Carlo. Soccer, apparently, is not huge in this town. At half-time we leave and hit the ESPN Zone, where there are more soccer fans. A few, anyways. When Freddy Adu comes onto the field we cheer. One other waiter cheers. Ok, us plus one. That’s big for this sport.
You can’t bet on soccer in Vegas, at least nowhere we looked. But you can bet on NCAA. I took Connecticut -2.5 and a parlay with Okla. And Conn. I like betting sports, though I admit I suck at it. It’s definitely negative EV for me, if slightly, but it’s also a cost of entertainment thing.
United holds on to win the game and we order another round. ESPN Zone has a $10/person/hour minimum, and that’s not going to be a problem. I head out to the NYNY sports book to bet the under on the Tech game. After I bet it, I realize either the line has moved or NYNY and Monte Carlo have different lines. Damn. I think a bit, decide the 3-point difference is more than I want to deal with, and go back and bet it the other way. I’ll eat the juice.
We sat in ESPN Zone for six hours. You can drink a lot of beer in that time. I make halftime bets, all of which win. Tech wins, killing my parlay, and then that damn Duke 3-pointer to kill my Connecticut bet. Funny reaction to that one. Half the bar is cheering as UConn is up 4, half are pissed. He launches the shot, game over, it counts, and now there’s the same amount of elation and depression, only on exactly opposite people. Except for Bright, who went to Duke and could care less about the spread. Devestating finish though – I’m hugging MJ and cheering and counting the money and then, BAM, three-points. Get me out of here…
Back to Monte Carlo, to meet Lebron James. We’re playing, and a tall white kid in a headband is getting wasted. The kid is hilarious. Whenever he cursed at the table, a dealer would mention “house rule nine,” and ask us to stop. So Lebron (he said call him that, no idea…) starts subbing in “nine” for whatever word.
“Cocktails! I’m gonna get nine’d up!”
“Shut the nine up, you mother-niner.”
Granted, you had to be there. Yes, we were obnoxious and loud. On my way out on our last day I went around and thanked the dealers for putting up with us and told the manager he ran a great room. Some of the dealers did seem annoyed at times, but others were more than happy to keep the jokes flowing and make sure we had fun. Truth is, they’ve seen it all before, and while these jokes are new to us they certainly aren’t to the staff.
I never did play higher than 6-12 this trip, and that was when the 4-8 had the half-kill. Finally at a table with some decent experience under my belt, I realized the games ran absurdly slow compared to online and if I wasn’t having a good time there was no reason to be there. The people who sat alone, looking miserable, like they were trying to make rent at 2-4, they amazed me. More than once I left a good 4-8 to play lower with friends or simply at a more jovial table. My priorities were not +EV on this trip, but in its own way this was massively +EV.
Late Saturday night, and we’re out of ideas. No one wants to crash, though we’re dragging. Where to? No one knows. Finally I say, ok, lets get in a cab. Where? Binions. We gotta see it.
Binions smells like urine, for the record, and this may be by design. I never worked that out. The room really is as dingy as people say. You can buy 5 or 6 coors light there for $5, and the “wall of champions” is really similar to that cork board in elementary school where your teacher hung papers that got an ‘A.’ That said, we had to see it. The entire downtown area is weird, like a cheap version of the strip. Football-sized-and-shaped beers for $6, and somewhere you can apparently buy a fried twinkee. I was drunkenly eating a chili dog when an old woman comes up to me, as I finish my last bite, and says “I wouldn’t eat that. I had a friend get sick from that once.” Great, thanks… Dave is eating one also, so I wait until he’s on his last bite and tell the story. If we die of food poisoning, at least we die together.
Somewhere downtown we manage to meet a boxer who claims he’s a lightweight champion. He is apparently asking Dave for advice on his marriage (like us, he’s obviously drunk). The conversation goes on for 12 minutes until MJ and Bright send me into rescue Dave. I get closer and hear Dave say, “Man, you just gotta do what makes you happy. Take care of your kids and divorce her if that’s what you want.” “I know, I know,” he says, and they’re both slurring, so you can imagine that this is high comedy.
Somehow I slept another 2 hours. I wake up realizing this is my last day in Vegas. Dave and I play roulette for a bit and then walk outside talking about the trip. It’s a blur, over so quick. How weird it will be to get back to D.C., to your own life, minus constant stimulation, where being drunk at 11 a.m. and again at 6 p.m. and again at midnight isn’t normal, where women wear clothes, where you can’t play poker for 10 hours straight, where…
Jon showed up, finally. He’d played 15-30 at the Bellagio last night and got killed. Oops.
How does anyone live in Vegas? Obviosuly, there’s more to the city than tourists see. Are there normal, low-key bars? Coffee shops? Is there a weird hippy contingent? I don’t know. Maybe Vegas is just what we saw, and maybe there’s much more. No idea. But I guess no one comes to see the “real” Vegas, assuming that’s markedly different from what we saw. What I mean is, how different is the life of the people who live in Vegas different from that of the tourist? I would assume
I had a lot of strange, melancholy thoughts that morning. But most of all, this: After spending this long a time with my friends, constantly, constantly, I’d miss them – even if I still saw them all the time. The trip had been, and was still, one big party.
Back upstairs, we pack and check out. Lunch at Palms in Ceasars. Good food, but not great, and we wander a bit. Bright and I are going bungee jumping. We’re joking the whole way, three guys under us, watching, and Bright and I and 11 others on top of this tower. Joking, but nervous, but not. You wouldn’t do it if you really doubted anything would go wrong. So in that respect, you know all will be fine. But at the same time, involuntarily, your legs lock.
It was a rush, that’s all I can say. I don’t know which was more interesting though – the free fall, or at moment, standing there, on the edge, toes over, waiting to fall. Look down, look out, and simply fall.
We played some cards for the rest of the day, but really, that was the end of the trip. We made it to the airport, straightened out some ticket problems, got on a plane and I passed out. By the time I got on the plane, I was borderline ill with sleep deprivation. Ready to land, ready to be back. Our flight left around midnight and got back in to D.C. at 7 a.m. I went home, showered, and went straight to work. Today, Wednesday, is the first time I’ve felt anything close to normal.
Already though, I kind of miss it.
I waited a couple of days before going to work on this, just trying to let events settle in my head, recover, get some sleep, and so on. This will be, I think, fairly long. It will also be short on poker content. I went to Vegas with six friends last week with the intention of playing higher, maybe from 6-12 to 10-20. I got there and realized that it was infinitely more fun to sit in the 2-4 games with my friends and get drunk and have a blast. I was, after all, on vacation.
So that’s what I did. Serious playing went out the window, with a couple of exceptions, and the seven of us spent four days in Vegas gambling and drinking and eating and drinking and gambling and going out and getting loud and rowdy and doing just about anything except play serious poker.
It was the right choice, no doubt.
Thursday, 6 a.m. The phone rings. “You’re awake?” “Yeah. See you at the airport.” Only I wasn’t awake. We’d all gone out the night before to celebrate the trip, and everyone had left the bar trashed. I remember dinner, and the 10 bottles of wine, and the after-dinner drinks, and darts and the bar next door, and a round of deserts, and vodka tonics, and then… Well, and then the phone rang, that’s all I can recall, and I was leaping out of bed to pack, screw the shower, no time, call a cab, flight leaves in less than two hours, toss in extra socks and some clothes and go.
We land in Vegas, four of us on the same flight, and walk out into the terminal. Vegas is paradise b/c you can even gamble in the airport. I drop $1.25 in slots as we wait for everyone to get off the plane. From there we get a car to our hotel, paid something like $35, which may or may not have been a good deal. But I hate the shuttle, since you never know how long it will take, and your first hour in Vegas just doesn’t seem like the time to be standing in lines.
Our hotel was the Boardwalk, which boasts on its website “Next to the Bellagio!” Only in Vegas is the selling point of one hotel how close it is to the next one. We dropped our bags and went for a walk, as we were too early to check in. Wandered through the Monte Carlo, Paris, Bellagio. When we finally get back to the hotel, three (Patrick, Dave and Bright) of us are looking to take a nap and hit the hotel pool. My body wont let me do that, and I wander over to the Monte Carlo.
Funny aside. Giving our bags to the bellhop guy, or whatever he’s called, Dave reaches for a tip. He pulls out cash, and accidentally drops it. A bunch of 50s and 100s hits the floor. We all stare and the burst out laughing. Back home, it’s all credit cards and 20s, and to see this, really, looked absurd coming from us. There’s about a second pause while it sinks in, yeah, we are in Vegas, Dave picks up his money and we all head out, laughing.
The Monte Carlo is a nice poker room. Small, and they don’t spread many games, but if you’re looking to play some low limit hold’em you should be happy. They spread 2-4 and 4-8, each with or without a half kill, and a no-limit game on the weekends. The room is small, with dark walls, and relatively quiet when compared with the rest of the casino. The sounds of the slot machines are still there, but are at least not as bad as the Taj or Excalibur. Odd about the Monte Carlo is they take a high hand jackpot drop, which they talk nonstop about, but no bad beat drop. For the record, I think 2/4 with a half-kill is silly.
I’ve been playing in the 4-8 for about 90 minutes when my friends walk in. The pool was awful, they say. This is just after my KK chops three ways when the board finishes 45678r. Awesome. The 4-8 is weak and loose, but I put my name down for a transfer anyways to my friends’ table, and pick up QQ. Flop a set and go a couple of bets against a decent player who had trips on a Q5835 board. I move to the 2-4 with Dave, and go card dead. Card dead for the next three days. No worries though.
A word of advice – never sit at the short blackjack tables (the ones for wheelchairs). They may be sitting there, empty, the only seats around, but they’re bad luck. As if the game wasn’t negative EV enough. Down $100 in about 45 minutes. Only Patrick wins, $3, and comments he’s won back 1/3 of his overpriced sandwich. Not surprisingly, it’s Patrick who has the least idea of how to play. I tried to work out my hourly rate at blackjack based on this and got depressed.
That night we hit the Piano Bar at New York New York. I’ve only been in town 14 hours, so I’ve yet to adjust to the type of woman Vegas attracts. I spent the first four days (of a 4 day trip) absolutely floored by breasts. Breasts breasts breasts. Why don’t they dress this way in D.C.? Damn… We leave the piano bar around 2 a.m., hammered, and Dave demands we try Pai Gow. I lose $10, but somehow propose to the dealer who graciously declined. Dave, who had obsessed over the game for weeks, for some reason, won $10. Jon hit the craps table and apparently hit it big. I couldn’t see straight by the end of the night, but while I’m cashing out $5 chips I notice his chips have several zeros on the end.
Back to the poker room. Sleep? Hell no. Drunk, laughing, a bit rowdy, we get a new game started at the Monte Carlo, which would prove to be our room for the next few days. Five of us sit for the next three hours with a few others. The rake kills us.
I concede, we were annoying. Laughing, telling jokes, a few serious looking players at the end try and out-tight us and a couple others are at least partly joining in the fun. I straddle the big blind a few times, raise blind, bet dark, all of which I’d never do in another game. Somehow I manage to end even by the time the game breaks, and everyone had a great time.
Jon and I play on a while and end up getting breakfast with a guy we met. We talk poker, about the difference between Party’s 3-6 and 2-4 and 5-10, and I get his email and promptly lose it. When I see him three days later he has to remind me who he is. Who’s the ass? Yeah, me. Sorry.
So I slept two hours, and it’s time to get up. Friday morning in Vegas. Who sleeps here?
Eventually, all of us are awake. Which means it’s time to play some cards. I think we did a couple hours at the Monte Carlo, though I’m not certain. Time has a way of blending in Vegas, and what happened on what day I’m not sure of. This report may well be out of order and twisted around, but I think it’s largely accurate. Skip the day, because I don’t know what happened. It rained some (yeah, in the desert). We ate lunch at some point. We played cards.
We played a few hours at the Luxor. While the Monte Carlo’s game is a single $2 blind, the Luxor is the SB and BB structure I’m accustomed to. I never did work out the practical difference. I sat next to MJ and just relaxed. Didn’t play loose, didn’t play too tight. No more of the antics from last night. Can’t drink yet, still hung over from last night.
MJ gets pocket kings cracked, and when he sees the hand that rivered him he gets all quiet. Ten minutes later he looks up at the guy and says “nice hand.” I laughed for about half an hour about that. Then an asian guy sits next to us, and things get fun. “You in trouble now,” he’ll tell MJ. Who looks at his cards and gives it right back. The game wasn’t great, but it was good enough. The guy would check it down heads up, a practice I’m not a fan of and have never understood. When I hit my ace on the end, he’d simply call and show his flopped trips. I never understand it, but it’s fine by me. Patrick eventually goes bust in that game. I walked by and saw his cards, Q5s. “I think I’m on tilt,” he said, as he tossed in some chips. Everyone else broke even.
From there we hit the Excalibur for their spread limit game. The Excalibur is a terrible casino. Too loud, too weird, too everything. We play 1-3 and I think everyone sat down and immediately wished they hadn’t. The room is just too loud. But it’s an action game, for sure, because people are paying full bets to draw, and most pots are raised. They also spread 2-6, but that game gets too high for some of my friends. Last year the 2-6 was all I played all weekend, which was why I wanted to come back. Excalibur has expanded it’s room, but I don’t like it. More tables, but last year the staff was far friendlier and the room even a bit quieter.
Dave hit quad-queens. Small pot, no jackpot on it, but when he flips up his cards I give a little shout – something between “BAM!” and “Booyah!” I don’t know what it was. Patrick finally got aces, after complaining he hadn’t been dealt them yet. I’m not sure he understood how often he really should get them.
Tim finally gets to Vegas and shows up at our table. We leave shortly after, and head back to the hotel to change. At this point it’s about 8 p.m.. We do the Bellagio’s buffet, which was about $35 or something and worth it if you can eat nine pounds of food. The food is excellent, but from a value standpoint you really need to be hungry. Patrick decides next time he’s gonna come and spend the day, bring a small tv and nap under the table between courses. The hostess has an amazing body and the uniforms there are absurdly short skirts.
By the time we finish eating, it’s about 11 p.m. I’ve now slept two hours in a couple of days, and everyone is dragging. If we don’t get moving, we’re gonna crash. Simple. We split up – Tim and Patrick back to the hotel to shower, Patrick wants a 20 minute nap. Jon and Rob are going to stay at the Bellagio and play. MJ and Dave and I are hunting a bar called the Double Down Saloon. The plan is to meet up later.
The taxi takes us to Double Down Saloon, which immediately looks a bit odd. A friend suggested it to us, but the driver swears it’s a gay bar. At the very least, it’s next to gay bars. My friends look at me and I simply shrug. I have no idea, just following the suggestion of a friend. We opt elsewhere, and end up at the Hard Rock. Patrick and Tim find us an hour later, and we do a few rounds of shots and beers. Strip club time? Yes.
We don’t know where we’re going, but as we’re walking out the door a guy in a limo says he’ll take us wherever we want to go. Apparently he gets kicked money by the club, and while we’re all extremely wary of this deal (“Free? No, no, gimme $100,” we can imagine him saying at the end), in we go. Somehow we end up at Sapphire. Cover was $20, and eventually we end up getting a table and working our way through a drink minimum. Like most of the trip, it gets a little hazy, but I can safely say I walked out with a lot less cash than I came in with. No complaints, however, well worth it.
Saturday morning. I slept another 90 minutes last night/this morning after a stint at roulette. I got up big (at least, for starting with $50 in chips). The dealer is being an ass though (ok, not dealer, whatever he’s called). So I look at him as he sends about $100 in chips my way and say “Charlie, I feel like your rooting against me.” He glares. He is indeed hoping I lose. And I do. Fun time though, and somehow “Charlie, I feel like you’re rooting against me” becomes some sort of catch phrase for the trip.
It’s sports today. Sports, all sports. It takes us a while to work out time zone changes, but it appears the D.C. United game is on at 1 p.m., followed by NCAA. We’re running late, and by the time we get to a TV, D.C. United leads San Jose 1-0. We’re cheering and downing beer and generally making a scene at the small bar in the Monte Carlo. Soccer, apparently, is not huge in this town. At half-time we leave and hit the ESPN Zone, where there are more soccer fans. A few, anyways. When Freddy Adu comes onto the field we cheer. One other waiter cheers. Ok, us plus one. That’s big for this sport.
You can’t bet on soccer in Vegas, at least nowhere we looked. But you can bet on NCAA. I took Connecticut -2.5 and a parlay with Okla. And Conn. I like betting sports, though I admit I suck at it. It’s definitely negative EV for me, if slightly, but it’s also a cost of entertainment thing.
United holds on to win the game and we order another round. ESPN Zone has a $10/person/hour minimum, and that’s not going to be a problem. I head out to the NYNY sports book to bet the under on the Tech game. After I bet it, I realize either the line has moved or NYNY and Monte Carlo have different lines. Damn. I think a bit, decide the 3-point difference is more than I want to deal with, and go back and bet it the other way. I’ll eat the juice.
We sat in ESPN Zone for six hours. You can drink a lot of beer in that time. I make halftime bets, all of which win. Tech wins, killing my parlay, and then that damn Duke 3-pointer to kill my Connecticut bet. Funny reaction to that one. Half the bar is cheering as UConn is up 4, half are pissed. He launches the shot, game over, it counts, and now there’s the same amount of elation and depression, only on exactly opposite people. Except for Bright, who went to Duke and could care less about the spread. Devestating finish though – I’m hugging MJ and cheering and counting the money and then, BAM, three-points. Get me out of here…
Back to Monte Carlo, to meet Lebron James. We’re playing, and a tall white kid in a headband is getting wasted. The kid is hilarious. Whenever he cursed at the table, a dealer would mention “house rule nine,” and ask us to stop. So Lebron (he said call him that, no idea…) starts subbing in “nine” for whatever word.
“Cocktails! I’m gonna get nine’d up!”
“Shut the nine up, you mother-niner.”
Granted, you had to be there. Yes, we were obnoxious and loud. On my way out on our last day I went around and thanked the dealers for putting up with us and told the manager he ran a great room. Some of the dealers did seem annoyed at times, but others were more than happy to keep the jokes flowing and make sure we had fun. Truth is, they’ve seen it all before, and while these jokes are new to us they certainly aren’t to the staff.
I never did play higher than 6-12 this trip, and that was when the 4-8 had the half-kill. Finally at a table with some decent experience under my belt, I realized the games ran absurdly slow compared to online and if I wasn’t having a good time there was no reason to be there. The people who sat alone, looking miserable, like they were trying to make rent at 2-4, they amazed me. More than once I left a good 4-8 to play lower with friends or simply at a more jovial table. My priorities were not +EV on this trip, but in its own way this was massively +EV.
Late Saturday night, and we’re out of ideas. No one wants to crash, though we’re dragging. Where to? No one knows. Finally I say, ok, lets get in a cab. Where? Binions. We gotta see it.
Binions smells like urine, for the record, and this may be by design. I never worked that out. The room really is as dingy as people say. You can buy 5 or 6 coors light there for $5, and the “wall of champions” is really similar to that cork board in elementary school where your teacher hung papers that got an ‘A.’ That said, we had to see it. The entire downtown area is weird, like a cheap version of the strip. Football-sized-and-shaped beers for $6, and somewhere you can apparently buy a fried twinkee. I was drunkenly eating a chili dog when an old woman comes up to me, as I finish my last bite, and says “I wouldn’t eat that. I had a friend get sick from that once.” Great, thanks… Dave is eating one also, so I wait until he’s on his last bite and tell the story. If we die of food poisoning, at least we die together.
Somewhere downtown we manage to meet a boxer who claims he’s a lightweight champion. He is apparently asking Dave for advice on his marriage (like us, he’s obviously drunk). The conversation goes on for 12 minutes until MJ and Bright send me into rescue Dave. I get closer and hear Dave say, “Man, you just gotta do what makes you happy. Take care of your kids and divorce her if that’s what you want.” “I know, I know,” he says, and they’re both slurring, so you can imagine that this is high comedy.
Somehow I slept another 2 hours. I wake up realizing this is my last day in Vegas. Dave and I play roulette for a bit and then walk outside talking about the trip. It’s a blur, over so quick. How weird it will be to get back to D.C., to your own life, minus constant stimulation, where being drunk at 11 a.m. and again at 6 p.m. and again at midnight isn’t normal, where women wear clothes, where you can’t play poker for 10 hours straight, where…
Jon showed up, finally. He’d played 15-30 at the Bellagio last night and got killed. Oops.
How does anyone live in Vegas? Obviosuly, there’s more to the city than tourists see. Are there normal, low-key bars? Coffee shops? Is there a weird hippy contingent? I don’t know. Maybe Vegas is just what we saw, and maybe there’s much more. No idea. But I guess no one comes to see the “real” Vegas, assuming that’s markedly different from what we saw. What I mean is, how different is the life of the people who live in Vegas different from that of the tourist? I would assume
I had a lot of strange, melancholy thoughts that morning. But most of all, this: After spending this long a time with my friends, constantly, constantly, I’d miss them – even if I still saw them all the time. The trip had been, and was still, one big party.
Back upstairs, we pack and check out. Lunch at Palms in Ceasars. Good food, but not great, and we wander a bit. Bright and I are going bungee jumping. We’re joking the whole way, three guys under us, watching, and Bright and I and 11 others on top of this tower. Joking, but nervous, but not. You wouldn’t do it if you really doubted anything would go wrong. So in that respect, you know all will be fine. But at the same time, involuntarily, your legs lock.
It was a rush, that’s all I can say. I don’t know which was more interesting though – the free fall, or at moment, standing there, on the edge, toes over, waiting to fall. Look down, look out, and simply fall.
We played some cards for the rest of the day, but really, that was the end of the trip. We made it to the airport, straightened out some ticket problems, got on a plane and I passed out. By the time I got on the plane, I was borderline ill with sleep deprivation. Ready to land, ready to be back. Our flight left around midnight and got back in to D.C. at 7 a.m. I went home, showered, and went straight to work. Today, Wednesday, is the first time I’ve felt anything close to normal.
Already though, I kind of miss it.