Vegas TR Sept. 6th-12th; Lots of drinking, some poker

[swede554]

Some short background info:
I’ve played poker for about 3 years, started in small college home games, found out about online poker, moved up and down in limits since then, and even though I’m an overall winner, since I can’t keep a fukin’ bankroll due to spending my dough on non-poker related [censored], nothing higher then 10-20 limit or 2-4 no-limit.

This was the 4th time I had been in or through Las Vegas in the last 12 months; 1st time- college graduation gift last summer from my parents, 2nd-3rd times- two short stays as I drove between Lake Tahoe and Florida this past winter. (I worked as a ski instructor/ski bum this winter at Squaw Valley just to take a break before I actually got a “real” job, which I’m still looking for by the way.)

It’s the first time I was there with a group larger than just me and girlfriend, and only one of my friends play poker, so needless to say, poker was going to have to take a backseat to drinking and partying this trip. All in all there were six of us, me, my gf, and three friends, one of which brought his girlfriend along. I was hoping to get most of my poker playing done during the day, while my gf was shopping and my friends were doing tourist crap, and in the early mornings after everyone had passed out.

Sept. 6th-
We fly out of Tampa at 9 p.m. eastern time, down a few beers and drinks at the airport before we have to board, I drink a couple of Jack and Cokes on the flight to get ready for our first night in Vegas. We get there, take a cab to the finest muthafucking hotel the strip has to offer, the Excalibur, and check in. Oh yeah, four of us are splitting a two queens bed room, to save some scratch, while the other couple decided to live balla-style at the Aladdin. [censored], for $400 a person for 6 night/7 days including our flight I’ll sleep on a bench somewhere, but if I can get a room on the strip for that kind of price, considering I don’t have a job right now, I’ll take it.

So we freshen up and head over to the Aladdin, and to keep things short, we had decided to take it easy the first night, so we have a few drinks at a bar over there, then I play some 3/6 because I’m drunk and I don’t want to blow to much money my first session, I have about five more Rum and Cokes, and leave around 5 a.m. to go pass out up $100 somehow.

Oh yeah, as I’m walking home two hookers try to pick me up, one was nasty, the other one was semi-nasty, I think about it for a 1/10th of a sec, decide it’s not worth getting herpes or my gf kicking me in the balls over so I politely tell them bitches to find business elsewhere.

Damn, to keep this report from being 10 pages long, from here on out, I’ll just mention the more interesting happenings and poker sessions.

Sept. 7th-
Get up early and take a cab over to Caesar’s to play in their noon tourney. By the way, I had planned on maybe spending $40-50 on cabs while here in Vegas. Try $150-200. Taking cabs everywhere gets expensive and I’m to lazy walk anywhere in that damn heat.

The tourney was great, first time I’ve played in it. Structure was good, allowed for plenty of play. About 90 runners. I’m card dead but I steal myself up to about 8,500 from my initial 4,500 starting stack (I rebought right away), then with blinds at 400-800/100 ante I get caught making a move when this really weak-passive player limps on the button and I move in with 59o in the SB. He thinks for about 30 seconds, then makes the call with 44 and I lose the flip to get knocked out 3 hours into the event in 25th place.

That night, we hit up Mandalay Bay, drink at some bar over there, can’t remember the name, and then we go and gamble at the Luxor. While my friends are playing blackjack I sit down at the $50(?!) max buy-in 1-2 nl game they have there. That’s a great drunken no-limit game. One hand the action goes UTG+1 raise to $10, MP1 reraise to $25, MP3 re-reraise to $70 and I look down at QQ in the CO having $120 behind, and not realizing yet that this is an insta-push in the game, I fold. All three other players end up all-in and I see JJ, A10, AK. I think “Fuuuuuck”, until the guy with JJ flops and rivers a J for quads. Not the first time I see quads Jacks this trip. More on that later. Anyhow I proceed to drop $135 before I call it a night.

Sept 8th-
We had decided before we left that Friday night we wanted to hit up Tao, the much talked about nightclub at the Venetian, and from what I hear, only Pure at Caesar’s compares to it in popularity. After some pre-drinking we roll up there around 11:30 p.m., and the line is probably a 100 people deep, if not more. Combine that with the fact that our group consists of four guys and two girls and this is looking bleak. Fortunately, my girlfriend is hot (way out of my league according to one guy I played cards with) and good with stuff like this, so she walks up to one of the bouncers with me in tow and says “Hey, I work in the business, I know how this works, so how much is it going to take for us not to wait in line” and he says he can’t help us, but grabs this other guy who works there. I in the meanwhile hold 3 $20’s in my hand that the other guy takes notice of, I slip them to him and he says “come here” and opens the rope to the VIP line and lets us through. No wait, no cover. To say the least we were all pretty stoked and ended up getting shitfaced. Be warned though, drinks are EXPENSIVE.

See Antonio Esfandiari in there, he’s dancing on some sort of stage, making out with a girl. That guy just comes of as a tool to me, but who knows, maybe he’s a nice guy. Anyhow the night ends with my girlfriend throwing a drink at me because she thought I was checking out some other girl (which I might or might not have), and we get kicked out of there. No big deal, I was drunk, she was wasted, I just took it in stride and was pretty calm about it, at least until she starts yelling at me in the staircase going to down to the casino floor. I ignore her so she starts punching me so we get kicked out of the Venetian too. Fun. I take a cab back to the hotel, she walks.

Drunken fights leads to good make-up sex though so it’s all good.

Sept 9th-12th will follow soon…...

Andy