Vegas TR: Budget Ballin' 8/19-8/21 (Harrah's, IP, Casino Royale)

[scotty-win]

Good stuff - you gotta do more to justify that Budget Ballin' title though. For example... Trip Report: Las Vegas Budget Ballin' 3/22-3/26

If you had been at IP on Saturday night, you could've joined me at the NL table with a guy on my right betting $50 blind preflop every hand. Good times.

Unfortunately, you might have also gotten shot if you were walking around Harrah's/IP/O'Shea's that night: article
Did you hear anything about that? I was walking from IP to Flamingo at that spot 30 minutes before it happened. I didn't find out about it though until Sunday night at Caesar's when some dealers were talking about it.

[Scorcho]

Yeah, I claim no originality in my insults or my thread titles. Honestly though, I actually did think I was being original this time, dammit!

Yeah, there was talk of the Margaritaville shooting the entire day of Sunday. My friends told me about it and they were staying all the way down at Luxor that night. Thankfully it was a few hours before I got there. Unfortunately Vegas draws those kinds of sketchy people (just like any major city with nightlife does) so these crazy events will happen and will continue to happen. However, LVPD does a wonderful job keeping these events to a minimum, especially with the millions of drunk people roaming the strip aimlessly every year.

Thanks for the comments, guys. I will try to post Day 2 tomorrow. Just a note, though -- Day 2 had less drunken antics and more poker.

[JJT]

This is a new word for me. Can someone tell me was the dictionary definition of "balla" is?

[Wolfram]

[ QUOTE ]
I remember one pot where I raised with KQs preflop and got 4 callers. Flop was JT2. I bet, got raised, got re-raised, and then, because I'm a fish, I capped. Turn was a 3. I bet, got called, got called. River was a K. Bet, call, call. I win the big pot with a pair of kings and the whole table starts making fun of me for capping with king-high on the flop.

[/ QUOTE ]
Lol at how bad live nits are. Since your K was good you had a minimum of 11 outs (~41% equity) and therefore you were making money on each bet that went into the pot on the flop 3-way. The turn bet is a bit more suspect tho. They're probably stupid enough to check behind if you check to them, fearing a check/raise.

[StevieG]

[ QUOTE ]
This is a new word for me. Can someone tell me was the dictionary definition of "balla" is?

[/ QUOTE ]

adj. extravagant

n. one of strong financial means with extravagant tastes. The original slang term "baller" referred to a gangster.

[toss]

[ QUOTE ]
He would have received more utility out of that $10 bill by wiping his ass with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

This line is just so great. I'd never come up with such a wonderful sentence in a million years.

[steamboatin]

[ QUOTE ]


Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He would have received more utility out of that $10 bill by wiping his ass with it.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



This line is just so great. I'd never come up with such a wonderful sentence in a million years.

[/ QUOTE ]

I respectfully disagree, you have some very quoteable quotes in your trip reports.

[Scorcho]

August 20 (morning/afternoon)

When we last left off, our Hero (that would be me -- I feel that referring to myself as a Hero would help my readers draw a personal connection to me, the protagonist in this story, thereby making it much more palatable and memorable as an epic tale) was passed out in his salty bed after becoming drunker than a busload of Indians (feather, not dot) and had recently completed a spectacular bender and terrorized dealers and patrons alike in various casinos.

(back to 1st person speak, I ain't typing 'Hero' the entire rest of the way)

So I wake up sometime later feeling my hungover, salty existence wondering what color the cat was that sh** in my mouth and if anyone managed to take down the license plate of the truck that hit me. I look over at the clock and it says 7:55am and I wonder how the hell I only managed to pass out for 2 hours and how I got that hungover that quickly. Turns out it was really noon (as proven by my trusty cell phone) and that some a-hole that stayed in the room before us left the alarm clock on (who the hell gets up at 7 am in Vegas? Gotta be a grayhair.) Being passed out and oblivious to the world, I didn't hear the alarm blaring at all and Chris managed to not only turn it off but completely f*** up the time on it in the process. Fine by me. So I eventually get up and stroll to the bathroom to assess any bodily damage that may have occurred. Thankfully there was none (doesn't happen often). I put down 3 glasses of Harrah's finest lukewarm tap.. err... mineral water and down some Advil like it was candy. Normally a bender like the one I was on the night before would put me in a catatonic state on my plush couch at home but nay! This is Vegas! Catatonic hangovers will have to wait. Rally time.

The three of us head downtown to kick it old school and use another restaurant.com $25 coupon at Hennessey's down there for lunch. Needing copious amount of sugar to re-energize me, I opt for a soft drink instead of beer at lunch, much to the chagrin of my cohorts and 6-out-of-10 waitress (that's real world 6, not internet message board 6). Finally after downing a 7/10 teriyaki burger and getting pissed off that it only came with potato chips instead of actual fried potatoes of some variety, we headed off to do some gambling.

We tried to find some cheap pai gow (read: "cheap drinking") tables somewhere but that game seems to be heading off to extinction in a hurry. Thus, we end up at a $3 blackjack table at Las Vegas Club Casino trying to fend off our hangovers with an endless supply of silver bullets. On my first one I notice the fancy new label that turns the mountains blue when the bottle is cold. I make sure I alert everyone in a 20 foot radius of this: "LOOK I CAN TELL ITS COLD BECAUSE IT CHANGED COLOR. IF I HAD NO NERVE ENDINGS IN MY HANDS I COULD USE THIS LABEL TO DETERMINE THE COLDNESS OF MY BEER!" For some reason, I find myself really amusing right now (probably the hangover). Not many other people do for some reason. Losers. This doesn't stop me from repeating the same thing at Geoff every single time a Coors Light is brought to me the rest of the day. Eventually it became really funny. We just had to get drunk first.

After breaking even and leaving the table after Ms. All-Personality-All-The-Time kept dealing herself 20 after 20, I got up and left and thought I'd play some penny slots for some free beer and to pass the time. Normally people laugh at me when I mention my fetish for stupid penny slots but they stop laughing when I regale them my tales of large slot wins I've luckboxed into the last few years. This doesn't happen this time but I manage to put down 5 beers in the process so that's like an average of $16 per beer. Kinda like being in a club in New York City.

Next it's off to the Plaza for some pai gow if we can find it, else some 2/4 limit retard poker. When we first arrive I head straight to the pisser and on my way back, notice a bank of World Poker Tour slot machines featuring Doyle Brunson and Evelyn Ng. I think to myself, "I love poker, I love Doyle Brunson, and I love asian horses, I'm in!" $20 and 4 minutes later, I just realized I probably helped pay a tiny bit of Vince Van Patten's salary and start hating myself.

Another couple twenties get burned in the Wheel of Fortune quarter machine (nobody manages to hit the Spin symbol and end up on 20 quarters every time like I do) and finally we're off to the $2/$4 table at the Plaza.

We're lucky. 3 of us and the game is currently playing 5 handed so we all get seats. For the 2nd time I manage to sit a few seats to the left of my 2 friends because I always want position on them (they're huge nits that play $2/$4 live like it's $10/$20 online so having them to my right makes all my decisions really easy when they're in a pot compared to some other morons). I survey the table and after about 10 hands I notice this cast of characters:

* 300 lb whale (not casino-style whale) on my right from Alabama who hasn't STFU since we all sat down

* A drunk but humorous 20-something kid in a Yankee hat and Soriano Cubs t-shirt that is drinking vodka-cranberries like they're water

* Colonel Sanders

* Troy Polamalu look-alike (we called him Troy to ourselves the whole time)

* Some bearded middle-aged big guy who loved capping preflop for no apparent reason and continually failed at the art of comedy with original gems like, "I was on a pair draw!", "I guess I shouldn't have folded my pair of 8s (when the flop was 88x)!" and so on.

Game on. I take down a few pots by cashing in some serious Sklansky bucks and realize that I'm horribly stuck in the middle of Alabama Whale and unfunny middle-aged guy and their terrible banter back and forth. This is when I noticed something -- I always thought that southern accents on girls were oh-so-sexy until this particular day. It was then I realized that those accents are only sexy on girls that are already sexy and grossly annoying on ones that aren't. Consider my world rocked at this point.

Things take a turn for the greatest when my buddy Chris takes a few pots from Ms. Alabama by flopping sets every 3rd hand and she starts fuming like she's not going to have any Waffle House money if this trend keeps up. Finally she talks some smack to him when she 2 outs him with QQ against his AA. The very next hand he raises with AK and she calls like the fish she is with K2s and pays him off the whole way on a K-high flop. I start talking about how he's a luckbox with a horseshoe up his ass and he agrees and also says he's just a legendary card player. Ms. Alabama snottily replies, "Listen, some of us are losing a lot of money to you here and we don't want to hear about it." Being the prick my friend is (this is why I'm friends with him), he snaps back, "Well I'll make sure to spend it wisely then!" Golden. She huffs a few times and hastily puts on her iPod-wannabe. I giggle to myself uncontrollably a few times. This finally shut her up as she had been boring me with endless bad beat stories the entire time. "Did you know that I lost with both KK and AA last night!?!" I couldn't believe that and told her that it's such a rarity that it'll never happen again.

A couple notable hands:

I get A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 4[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] and limp in UTG, (told you I was a fish), Troy raises and like 92 people call. Flop brings 5[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 2[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. I check and surprisingly Troy checks as well and everyone else does also. Dammit. Turn brings the 6[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] and all I can dream about is Vegas and the f***ing Casino Royale. Normally I'd bet this but I have 1 out for the high hand 5-high spade straight flush jackpot which was at about $300 so I check again, wanting to give myself a chance at the jackpot in case the entire world decided to fold against me. No dice, as the river brought 3[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]. I finally bet out and get raised by Troy. My buddy Geoff cold-calls and I 3-bet with the nuts. Troy calls, buddy calls. I show the nut flush, Troy shows a set of 9s, buddy shows 74 for the nut straight.

A couple hands later, unfunny middle aged man 3-bets blind against my AQ and I cap him because I know what equity means. Board goes 42563 and he flips over A6 for the chop. Figures.

Later it's 6-handed and everyone folds to the button, my buddy Chris. He raises and I'm like "F U A-hole" and call his raise in the big blind with K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. Flop is A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] T[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 3[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] . I check and look up at the board and notice the heart royal pays $1860. He bets $2 and I do some quick math. $1860 plus what's in the pot gives me about 310-to-1 odds to call down with the royal draw and I'm about 19-to-1 to hit it. I HAS POT ODDS I CALL. Brick. I HAS POT ODDS AGAIN I CALL AGAIN. Brick. Thanks for the d*cktease, poker gods.

Ms. Alabama then decided to show off her impressive card protector that listed the odds of each poker hand and then quoted it as saying that I was 660,000+ to 1 on hitting my royal flush (or whatever it was). Fully well knowing the odds of hitting my royal flush (it was more like 19 or 20-to-1 after that flop) I smart-assedly tell her that her card protector is wrong and that I was 50/50 to hit it -- either I was going to hit it or I wasn't. Then I laugh uncontrollably as about 3 other people at the table nod their heads in approval. This is why I play 2/4. Unintentional comedy at its finest.

Several uneventful hands go by and Ms. Alabama has started talking to nobody in particular again and I give Chris and Geoff the "let's GTFO of here" look (with accompanying upward-and-outward head nod) and we bolt from there. $23 in profit baby. 2/4 limit is my bitch.

Next up will be the night of August 20th and morning of August 21st, coming tomorrow or Saturday.

[cmoke]

I Love these! Your writing really makes me miss Vegas.

<nit>
[ QUOTE ]

I show the nut flush, Troy shows a set of 9s, buddy shows 74 for the nut straight.


[/ QUOTE ]

With the board listed, Buddy's hand is not the nut straight. DUCY
</nit>

these are my favs

[ QUOTE ]

**Eventually it became really funny. We just had to get drunk first.

**"I love poker, I love Doyle Brunson, and I love asian horses, I'm in!"

**she starts fuming like she's not going to have any Waffle House money

**all I can dream about is Vegas and the f***ing Casino Royale.

**"Listen, some of us are losing a lot of money to you here and we don't want to hear about it."



[/ QUOTE ]

But that last one is just gold, I wish i coulda heard her say that. I love when people get pissed and start fuming. Especially over 2/4. Alot of money! hahahah. Good stuff! Keep 'em coming.

[Scorcho]

Oops, yeah, I realize that it's not the nut straight. Told you I was a fish.

And yeah, I just can't see how someone could get so pissed off over stakes that can't really hurt you. Seriously, what's the worst you could lose at 2/4 in a sitting? $100? $150? Christ, who cares!