Vegas Trip Report - July 7-10 - Low Poker Content

[freekobe]

I like to document my Vegas trips, but I don’t feel like writing a 12-page recap right now. So I’m mailing it in. You get highlights. Basically, I am now ESPNnews when I used to be the 11PM SportsCenter.

- I take the 810pm Thursday night flight out of Newark, set to arrive at 1040pm in Vegas. We leave 90 minutes late. I hate being late, period, but being late when going to Vegas really bugs me. I am sitting in an aisle seat. I stake my claim to both armrests early in the flight. I am a firm believer that if you’re the sucker who got stuck with the middle seat, not only should you be miserable, but I should be as comfortable as I want to be. My arms didn’t move for five hours.

- The bachelor party was at Mandalay. Mandalay is the Shawn Marion of Vegas hotels. It’s been underrated for years. It never makes the top Vegas hotels list (Bellagio, Venetian for the older crowd, Hard Rock, Palms for the younger crowd), but yet year after year, it performs. This trip was no exception. Mandalay got it done. And the Island Bar….that’s a whole different story.

- Drop my things off and begin playing blackjack with my friend Jon, the bachelor of the bachelor party I’m attending. I quickly order up a jack and coke followed by a double jack and coke as I watch my $200 buyin turn into $400 really quickly. I make the obligatory “hey, maybe I should stop gambling now” jokes, then proceed to break-even as I watch Jon lose his buyin. Ah, the awkwardness of blackjack.

- Jon has golf at 8am the next morning so he goes to sleep. It’s 2am but I’m not ready to call it a night. I move to a blackjack table where a guy is betting yellow chips ($1000). Always makes for good entertainment. I’m still playing $25/hand. Yellow-chip guy is playing next to his wife and is clearly wasted. Every time he hits a big hand, he jumps out of his chair and does a Deion Sanders-esque end zone dance. We have a legitimate crowd at our table.

- Yellow-chip guy (from Texas) keeps winning and when his wife congratulates him, he whispers (or thinks he whispers), “more p*ssy for me tonight, right?” As always, you can’t make this stuff up. At $2000/hand, he hits a split and a double for a $6000 win, at which point, he jumps out of his chair, goes behind his wife, squeezes her breasts (quite hard, I might add), and yells, “yeah, mother******. I didn’t mind that I lost my earlier profit and then some. That’s a lie. I minded, but not as much as I normally would have.

- I decide to check out the Mandalay poker room. Dump. Waste of time. Played the 4-8 game with ½ kill there. Pretty sure that was the highest game going. Saw one guy raise with A3 after four limpers. I called in the SB with AQ and took down a fairly large pot. At this point, I was pretty wasted and had just played 74 suited on the button. Once I realized that, I headed upstairs and went to sleep, but not before passing the Island Bar at Mandalay. The pros were out tonight, and all I have to say is, thankfully Congress didn’t hold hearings on illegal injections for prostitutes.

- For the first time in my Vegas career, spanning 14 visits and 12 different hotels, I slept in late. I woke up at 1130 am. I had somewhere to be at 2pm and figured with breakfast and various lines, I couldn’t get a good session of poker in before my meeting. So, I slept late, grabbed a bagel, and headed over to the Rio to check out the scene at the World Series. I walked around the Poker Lifestyle show and wondered how many of these people I’ve cursed at while playing online poker.

- My meeting ended at 3pm and I headed over to the Bellagio to play some 15/30. No luck. Lines were ridiculous. I ran into a friend and we decided to go the Wynn to play there. The wait wasn’t too long and I found my way into a pretty good 15/30 game.

- 15/30 Wynn poker highlights. I spent the first 15 minutes trying to figure out if any 2+2ers were at my table. None that I know of. Two notable hands. One limper, I raise in MP with A Q. BB calls, limpers calls.. Flop is A Q 10. Checked to me, I bet, both call. Turn is a blank. Checked to me, I bet. BB calls. River is a J. BB leads out. I say “you sucked out on me, didn’t you” and then pay off his straight as he flips over K2. Awesome. Unclear why I called.

- Hand 2 – MP raises (good, aggressive player), loose player on the button cold calls, I call on the SB with AK (I’ve taken to calling with AK out of position), BB calls. Flop of K Q 10, two diamonds. I check, MP bets, LP calls, I check-raise, BB folds MP calls, LP calls. Turn is a Q. Not ideal. I bet, MP calls, LP raises (uh oh), I call, MP calls. River is the oh-so-beautiful K. My turn to suck out. I lead out, and amazingly (is that amazing? not sure), both players fold. With that big of a pot, I kind of expected one of them to call. MP turned over AA, LP turned over AJ for the flopped straight. Ah yes, the joy of being third on the flop and rivering a 13 BB pot. I leave the Wynn up about $250.

- I head back to Mandalay, freshen up (i.e. put on not-so-trendy-anymore striped long-sleeve shirt) and meet the rest of the bachelor party at Red Square. Talk about talent. Good lord. I got there late so I didn’t have the time to have a drink, but that place looked like the Yankees farm system circa 1995.

- Dinner is at CraftSteak at MGM. Good times. Expensive dinner. Almost worth it.

- We quickly decide to head over to Spearmint Rhino. I feel a little pressure because I’ve recommended it as the best strip club in Vegas (and so did a few others). It didn’t disappoint. On a dollar for dollar basis, it was probably the best value of the trip. Let’s leave it at that.

- At 200am, I’m pretty sure that I’ve spent enough money at the strip club and want to gamble it up. The party moves back to the Mandalay. Random celebrity sighting #1: Kwame Brown. I can’t do justice to how tall this guy is. It was totally ridiculous. You can’t help but stop and stare. I sit down with $200 at the blackjack table. I am so impatient to gamble that we choose a table with the automatic shuffler. I’ve come to hate those things, not because things move too fast, but because there’s never a good time to get up. I quickly go down $100, battle for a bit, then bust. Awesome. Nothing better than going to sleep after busting out at a blackjack table. My only solace was that I had poker at the Bellagio all set for tomorrow.

- I woke up at 9am on Saturday. My friend and I ate breakfast at the Rio (he was playing on Day 3 of the WSOP – for those who read David Williams’ blog, the same guy who busted David in the $2500 NL event with a rivered two-outer). Anyway, we eat at the Rio, talk strategy, then I go the Bellagio.

- I sit down with $600 at the 15/30 after a short wait. Not 15 minutes into my session, this hand comes up. I have 33 in the BB. EP raiser, three callers, and me. Flop comes 10 10 3. Thank youuuuuuu. It’s checked around. Turn puts a diamond draw on the board. I bet. Two callers, including EP raiser. River is a third diamond that doesn’t put two pair on the board. I bet, EP raises, other guy folds. I think for a minute, put him on a flush, and re-raise. He quickly re-raises. I shake my head and call. He flips over 10 10 for flopped quads. Lovely way to start the day.
- I got down to $180 in front of me, but after a maniac joined the table (Middle Eastern guy with a Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf twitch), things turned around. When I left at 8pm, I cashed out for $1450 and had turned a $850 profit. I was amazed at the level of play at this game. I don’t think I saw one tricky play all day. From time to time, players would semi-bluff their flush draws. That was about it. On the weekends, I bet that’s a great game to play. During the week, probably just a lot of local rocks.

- My friend busted out of the WSOP at 4pm. He came over to the Bellagio and proceeded to tilt away real money at the 10/20 NL game after destroying that game on his previous three trips Bad times.

- I make my way back to Mandalay and prepare for the entertainment of the evening in the Mandalay suite. Shockingly, this is my first real bachelor party, so I am amazed that when the “strippers” finally show up, the following happens

- (1) the first person undressed is the bachelor (boxers). Hmm….this isn’t going as planned. Hopefully things turn around soon

- (2) we’re not nearly as drunk as we should be. there needs to be some bachelor party rule about drinking. I’m not one to create that rule, having only been to one bachelor party, but I get the feeling those things can only be fun if there’s inappropriate touching and rowdy behavior. Quiet lap dances in the corner don’t cut it.

- (3) the strippers try to humiliate the bachelor, making him bark like a dog (can you bark like anything else?) and making him, with a blindfold on, put a dildo in his mouth. Bad times. The bachelor was not pleased. In so many words, he told the “strippers” that they were whores and that they should be humiliated, not him. Once that awkward moment passed (it shouldn’t have been awkward – he was calling like it is), the girls started doing their thing. The wait was well worth it, despite the fact that the bachelor might’ve been too drunk to realize that he was still in his boxers.

- Finally, after begging and pleading, we make our way down to the casino so I can lose money playing craps. I do that, but with many vodka/tonics in my system, the pain is not that great. With a guy playing “don’t pass” next to me, I had a decent roll where I probably broke even. Afterwards, when I sevened out, he said “man, what a tease.” I couldn’t tell if he was f*cking with me or not, and since I had no friends at the table, I opted not to engage him. Reflecting on it now, I should’ve said something to him. I’m pretty sure the people who play “don’t pass” were big losers in high school and now want to get some attention by being “different.” I feel confident in saying that there is an EXTRMELEY high correlation between being a loser and playing don’t pass.

- I spot my blackjack buddy from the night before. I head over to his table, quickly win back what I lost playing craps and decide to call it a night. After grinding it out at the poker table for 9 hours, losing it all playing table games isn’t particularly appealing.

- I walk into my room and am knocked out faster than Mike Tyson against Buster Douglas. It’s been a ridiculously long weekend, and, notwithstanding a complete meltdown at the Wheel of Fortune slots at the airport, a profitable one. I won somewhere between $500-$600. That is borderline miraculous given my Vegas history.

- Four weeks til I get to add my Vegas trips (and list of hotels) – Caesars on August 18….

[Drewboy22]

Nice report.

Raise w/AK. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[midas]

Great report - I'll be at MB (THe Hotel) late September. It is my preferred hotel in LV. BTW - if you haven't been to the N9NES Steakhouse at the Palms it is definitely worth a visit for the food and the views [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img].

[freekobe]

One shameless bump...

[nbb]

Good report, but did you really play BJ on a CSM (Continuous Shuffling Machine) table? You were lucky to make any $$$ playing BJ then. CSM tables are barely one notch above playing a slot machine.

Cheers,
NBB

[freekobe]

[ QUOTE ]
Good report, but did you really play BJ on a CSM (Continuous Shuffling Machine) table? You were lucky to make any $$$ playing BJ then. CSM tables are barely one notch above playing a slot machine.

Cheers,
NBB

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I did, and it sucked. I have taken to choosing blackjack tables based solely on whether there are hot chicks at or near the table. It's not as easy as it sounds.