This Week in Vegas marks the extreme hangovers from St. Patrick’s Day weekend softened by continuing college basketball madness, a gun show, and to top it all off, one of the largest death related tradeshows in the industry! The week of March 18th-24th is covered today for all of our Vegas trip planning needs, poker related and otherwise.

Starting off this week in Las Vegas is Big Game weekend, where the Chicago Cubs play the Texas Rangers at Cashman Field. Being that Las Vegas has yet to acquire any major league sports franchise, this game is actually a pretty big deal to the local community, often selling out. In other sports news, the Las Vegas casino sports books continue to see a flurry of activity with college basketball March Madness sweeping the betting lines and counters. This popular sport season fills the March calander and ends as quickly as it starts, with the final game being broadcast on April 1st. Fantasy sports and bracket enthusiasts can often be seen in poker rooms and in sports book lounges frustratingly changing their choices and tracking their progress. Sports books often find this to be the second busiest time of the year for them, second only to Super Bowl (with the Kentucky Derby being on that list as well).

In the convention and tradeshow front, action tends to get a bit quieter this week, with no huge conventions hitting the town, but instead several well dressed smaller ones fills the spaces at various hotels and centers on and off the Strip. The largest convention this week is the annual International Cemetery and Cremation, and Funeral Association convention and exposition. This is the one of the largest funeral conventions of the year in the world and is being held at Mandalay Bay for industry professionals. Over 1,200 professionals are expected to come to the convention center at Mandalay this week and visit with 450 different vendor booths. This convention also allows industry professionals to earn credits toward their professional certification program. This convention is known to have the most formally dressed attendees of all conventions held in Vegas.

Other conventions hitting the Strip this week include lawyers, doctors, and judges. The American Bar Association, yet another well dressed group, will have a number of attendees spreading out all over the Strip. In addition to the association that meets at Caesars Palace, many other state bars have separate meetings and breakout sessions around the city, including Nevada’s neighbor, New Mexico. The Uniformed Services Academy of Family Physicians will be meeting at Planet Hollywood, where 500 doctors come together. At Paris Las Vegas, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges will be attending their national conference with over 800 expected to attend.

The entertainment side of Las Vegas slows down a bit this week, with no major new headliners hitting the showrooms, but several returners come back some to new venues. Chazz Palminteri will be back at The Mirage performing his Bronx Tale this week, and Andrew Dice Clay is doing his special brand of raunch at The Riviera. After a bried hiatus, Penn and Teller are back at Rio performing their magic and comedy show, with Penn continuing to abide by his confidentiality agreement and not revealing whether or not he is one of the final two of this season’s Celebrity Apprentice. As of this writing, Penn was still an active cast member on the show, having won a recent task.

In the poker world, Caesars Palace is right in the middle of their Hoops and Hold’em tournament series, and the Tropicana has just started up their new event, entitled the March Mania Mega Stack. Poker rooms continue to see a flurry of activity due to college basketball, and the rooms offer several promotions during this time to drive you to their venue. Coming up is the next AVP Meet and the first ever All Vegas Poker Tour event! Stay tuned for that to hit the This Week in Vegas piece; it’s right around the corner! Good luck!

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--LasVegasMichael