back from a wedding in Vegas

[EJXD2]

After 92 hours in Las Vegas, my wife and I arrived back in Kentucky on Saturday night with heavy wallets, stomachs, and hearts.

We traveled to Sin City for a wedding and stayed at the Flamingo. A budget crunch at the homestead reduced my gambling budget to $100. I've bet more than that on one horse race, so making the Benjamin stretch over nearly four days would be a challenge, but I had a plan.

The Flamingo poker room deals only low limit hold'em of both the limit ($2-$4) and no limit ($1-$2 blinds w/ $100-$300 buy in) varieties. My plan was to grind $2-$4 Tuesday-Thursday, build my stakes to > $300 and then play no limit on Friday. Amazingly, the plan worked.

The $2-$4 games at the Flamingo were juicier than they've ever been. Any concern that the poker boom is creating smarter players and tougher competition is unfounded. I won't call myself a "good" player (I was playing low limit, after all), but I will say that the key to playing this game as a better player than most others at the table is
to value bet, value bet, value bet.

People would stay in with any draw, and this includes an overcard or even a three-straight! I would routinely bet bottom pair on every street, get called three ways on the flop and turn, and watch everyone throw their hands away on the river. Or I would have middle pair, bet every street, and get called two ways on the river by two overcards and bottom pair. I played $2-$4 for 11 hours Wednesday-Thursday and won $150.

I earned my extra scratch courtesy of blackjack at Barbary Coast. My mom and I both signed up for a players card there, which between the two of us netted four match play coupons: one each for Pai Gow and one each for blackjack. The wait for our table in the Victorian Room was 45 minutes, so I played Pai Gow before dinner and broke even. I then hit up BJ and went on a tear to finish up $105 after about 30 minutes. Really, I was up $125 after 10 minutes and played about break even the rest of the time. I came in for a new shoe, and although I don't count cards, it was hard to ignore the fact that only two ten-point cards had surfaced after three rounds (about 45 total cards played). I
started betting $25 a hand and built a nice stack through the rest of the shoe. Even though I was up, I was proud of myself for going back down to the minimum when the new shoe started.

So between the Flamingo $2-$4 on Wednesday-Thursday and Barbary Coast blackjack on Wednesday, I was in perfect position to play the $1-$2 no limit at Flamingo, a game I have done well in during previous trips. I played four hours Friday and finished up $58, making my net during my
15 hours of play at a respectable $208.

Unfortunately, the food disappointed in spots. The Spice Market Buffet at Aladdin has long been touted as one of the city's best, but that can't possibly be the case anymore, as my experience Tuesday was among the worst I've ever had at any restaurant let alone one in Vegas.

The buffet is much smaller now than it used to be, but that worked out because there was less crap to choose from. Some of the food just tasted downright awful, but even some of the more edible stuff was tainted because of temperature. The ribs and sausage were lukewarm, and the rice with the vegetarian sushi (I wouldn't have dared tried anything raw there) was massively undercooked. This seriously was the worst meal I've ever had in Las Vegas.

The bride was staying at Monte Carlo, so the bachelorette party was in that area of the strip. They started at the brew pub in Monte Carlo and then went to the piano bar in NYNY. I wasn't there for dinner, but reports from the misses and two others in the bridal party indicated that it was a bust. The ceremony was at Victoria's on Sahara near
Palace Station, and the food there was mediocre as well but certainly tolerable thanks to the open bar and a DJ who knew how to work a crowd.

A special shout out to my mom who won about $2,500 playing the slots.

[killsadie]

is this a serious post?

[Grizwold]

[ QUOTE ]
A special shout out to my mom who won about $2,500 playing the slots.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your mom showed you up. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[RobTheDuck]

Nice, quick trip report, EJXD. Next time, put "trip report" and maybe the date in the title - more people will check out your post.