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Trip Report 4 Days with a Great Crew Date: 06/30/09 Player: J For Rooms: Flamingo,Hard Rock,Treasure Island (TI),Venetian, Summary: Great trip including a cash at the Hard Rock and walking around with a dude wearing a 100-ounce beverage. Content: This report was written chronologically and ended up being extremely long. I broke it into poker and non-poker sections for those interested in poker only. The trip was from Saturday June 20 – Wednesday June 24. On the plane were my wife and three guy friends – two of them are brothers. My poker buddy and his girlfriend had some extended business they needed to handle in AZ so they drove from Peoria, IL to LV and met us there. From here on we will refer to my poker buddy as “The Machine” (TM). Machines do not need sleep and apparently this dude doesn’t either. The five flyers arrive at the Flamingo at about 4:00 p.m. To save money the three guys did not get a room for Saturday night, by the time my wife and I got checked into our room it was about 5:30 p.m. (unsuccessful $20 sandwich due to Saturday arrival). TM leaves from Peoria at about 6:30 p.m. the night before for his 24+ hour drive to LV. No stops, straight through. TM also did not have a room Saturday night (originally did not plan on arriving until 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning). TM arrives in LV at about 6:00 p.m. and we all exchange man hugs outside the Flamingo before heading toward O’Shea’s for some food. TM has now been awake for approximately 30 hours. After grabbing a bite at O’Shea’s its Vegas time!! We head up to Casino Royale to throw dice. My wife and the brothers slide over to Harrah’s for $5 blackjack. I lose money on the craps table as usual (not sure how I love a game so much that I lose at every time). I cash out from the Royale and watch the wife and bros for a bit. I then take TM and his girl on a little tour of The Mirage, TI, and The V. Get a call from my wife while we are outside The V, the rest of the crew is heading up to meet us. They catch up to us at about 9:00 p.m. and we head to TI. *** POKER I had my eye on the $65 10 p.m. tourney at TI as my inaugural poker play. I was shaky as to whether I was going to play because I didn’t want to break off from the group on the first night, but what can I say, I love poker. Once I saw the TI poker room I knew I was in, it was just a matter of whether TM was playing with me. We already had Monday booked for all-day poker while the girls were going to hang at the pool. I ask him if he’s going to play the TI and he is absolutely torn. He does not want to leave his girl alone on the first night but he is about 10 times more of a poker degenerate than I am. He decides he is going to sit this one out, I bid farewell to everyone for a few hours and head to the poker room to register. As I turn around from registering in walks TM, “I heard there was a good tournament here.” Freakin classic. Prior to the trip TM and I decided to share 10% of each other in all tourneys we play together. Also, inspired by a previous trip report, I convince him to do a “first one out must play one hour of $2/4 limit hold ‘em” last longer bet. He is a young aggressive player and forcing him to play one hour of 2/4 is nothing short of torture. Tourney starts, 65 entries including busted re-entries. I don’t get involved in any big hands for a while. An alternate comes to our table – a French Canadian lady. First hand she is dealt she fires big on all streets and turns over A4o. I peg her as loose cannon playing with her husband’s money. 20 minutes or so later we are at 100/200 blinds and I get 99. Raise to 600, lady raises me 600 more. Alarm goes off and I have about 1800 left. Against my better judgment I decide to call. Flop is 7 4 2 all spades (no spade here). I check, she all-ins, I just pick up my small pile of chips and fist them into the middle to call. She has KK no spades. The 9 of spades hits the turn, blank on the river and I double up. She mutters something in French and then walks over to her husband at the other table and throws out more French. Not exactly sure what she said but I think I now know how to say “stupid mf’er” in French. She then tells me that I played bad, which I know but am not in the mood to discuss. I just tell her “you’re better than me” in the most ambiguous way possible which shut it down. A little later I get QQ, get called by an all-inner with 88. Karma brings the 8 on the turn and I am crippled, go out a few hands later to a Rio dealer, my A3 vs. A9. I immediately head over to 2/4 limit to serve my penalty. I decided I was going to play until TM went out of the tourney. Not sure if any AVPers played the TI 10 pm on Saturday 6/20, but TM was the young kid in the Cubs shirt who talked non-stop and made the final table. I played the 2/4 table for about 1.5 hours and actually enjoyed myself. TM ends up getting rivered out of the tourney in 4th place which got me back the $20 that I lost playing 2/4 due to our 10% deal. *** NON-POKER No more poker for the rest of the night. Head back to O’Shea’s to meet the rest of the crew who are annihilated by this time. TM’s girlfriend is not holding up well as she has been awake as long as him. He leaves to find them a room, I figure he is done for the night. Wife and I head back to Flamingo at about 3:30 a.m. Get up the next day around noon, meet TM and his girl at Flamingo café for lunch around 2:00 p.m. Find out that after taking her back to the room the night before TM met up with the other 3 guys. The two brothers were done for at about 6:00 a.m. and had to crash in TM’s Envoy. One broken cooler and a back bumper covered in vomit later and they are refreshed. TM stays up playing craps at Royale with the other buddy until they can check into the Flamingo at 11:00 a.m. They both have successful sandwiches, TM gets the holy grail of sandwich hook-ups and heads off to his Go Room. Rather than sleep for 12 hours like I would have he heads down to the Flamingo pool with his girl and crashes in a lounge chair for about 1.5 hours before meeting with us for lunch. Over the past 50 hours TM has driven across the country and spent a night in Vegas and stopped for 1.5 hours of sleep outdoors. No poker for me on Sunday. We head downtown for the night and tour the casinos there. My wife really likes the nightly Fitzgerald’s tourney (she chopped for $300+ last trip). I walked over with her to get her registered, hung with the guy’s and met up with her again at break. She ended up finishing 7th with 4 paid, a little disappointed but she was happy with how she played and I was really proud of her. Back to the Flamingo at about 1:00 a.m. *** POKER Woke up at about 10 a.m. Monday ready to play poker all day. Text TM who of course is up and ready to go. We cab to the Hard Rock at about 11 a.m. to get our one hour of cash play in before 1 p.m. tourney. Nothing notable for me during cash play but I realize the HR dealers are very sharp. I absolutely loved their poker room but due to the location there is a noted lack of players. Earned my 1,000 chips at the cash table and ate some awesome and reasonably priced sliders. Played the tourney, 20 players. TM went out before final table. Notable tourney hands: 100/200 blinds, call min. raise in SB with 56o. Flop is 4 7 8. Check call 1k. 8 turn. Check, 2k bet, I shove, he folds with only 1k left. Must have had complete air. Played solid poker, winning small pots without showdowns the entire way. 3 get paid, down to 5 players. Two players go out on one hand putting us in the money. I’m short stack but not on life support. Tight player limps in SB against my BB, I have 22. I shove to take the blinds. To my surprise he insta-calls, I think I have a 2-outer but he has K4s. By some miracle my 22 survives even after the turn paired the board. A few hands later tight player goes out against chip leader with flopped set over set, leaving us heads-up. I mentioned a chop but he wasn’t interested so I was ready to play ball for the whole thing. After a few hands I limp with J4s. Flop is Q 4 3 rainbow. He puts in a big enough white stack to cover me, I insta-call. He has 25o and rivers an A for the wheel. Won $216 for 2nd and gave TM his 10%. Meanwhile he tells me about a huge 4-way all-in pot he won at the cash table with quad 9’s. Our time at the Hard Rock is over, we head back to Flamingo to grab the girls. The next poker stop is The V for the 7 p.m. $120. We stop at Chipotle along the way for awesome burritos. We then head to The V, get our players cards and register for the tourney. We have about 20 minutes to burn so we take in the surroundings. Just as everyone on this site has led me to believe, The Venetian poker room atmosphere was amazing. The room was completely packed and due to the DSE there were tables overflowing everywhere. Only other time I had seen that many tables was when I went to the 2004 WSOP. Cocktail service was the best of any of the 24 places we hit on the trip. The scent they pump into the Venetian is definitely noticeable and could be overwhelming for those that are sensitive to that kind of thing, but I found that I got used to it after about 30 minutes. The 7 p.m. tourney gets started smoothly and by this time there are 3 tourneys running (a DSE Day 1, DSE Day 2, and 7 p.m.). The 7 p.m. had 326 players (!!!) and I have no idea where they fit all of us. I had a great table draw, mostly predictable players and one player of “very questionable skill” (its not nice to call someone straight up bad). I ran a bit card dead to start, ended up getting down to do or die time about 2 hours in. I had two tight older ladies to my left, action folds to me on the button. 400/800 blinds, I have 2300. One of my online moves is to raise “almost all-in”, I find that the all-in bet triggers the gamble in people and they are more willing to call. I raise to 2000 with J5o trying not to trigger any gamble, BB calls. Flop is K 5 2, she checks and I put in my last 300. She calls and has QJ and my hand holds up. Another orbit later and I’m short again, action folds to my SB with KJo. I have about 4800 and raise the tight lady to 2k. She calls, flop is all low. She checks, I bet 2k again, she calls. Turn is low, she checks, I put in my last 800 and she calls. She has AQo, neither of us has hit yet. K on the river allows me to survive again. About 10 minutes later I finally catch KK. 600/1200 blinds, I raise to 3000. Small blind re-pops to isolate me, I insta-shove. He only needs another 1k or so to call, turns up AJo. Flop is 7 8 9, Q on turn to give him the double-gutter, I “hit” trip K’s on the river giving him the straight. Tough way to go out but had to get lucky to make it that far. Texted TM to tell him good luck and headed back to Casino Royale to meet the girls. After turning a 10-minute walk into an hour by walking the wrong way behind The Mirage I finally get to Casino Royale. TM called me on my way and told me he was having a great run and was over 70k in the tourney. I gave him a little inspirational speech and told him to check in with me later. I get a couple texts in the next hour that say things like “not good” and “i should be there shortly.” I then get a call from TM telling me he’s back in business with about 50 players left paying 27. The final call comes at about 1:00 a.m. telling me he went out 30th. He caught up with us at Royale in very good spirits for someone that just bubbled out and is running on no sleep. During this visit to the Royale I finally saw something that I had always wanted to see but never witnessed on any of my previous 6 trips. Playing at the $3 craps table a 27ish year old walks up and throws down 20 $100 bills. He takes his $2000 and bets $5 on the pass line. After a point is made he backs it up with $500 odds and makes another come bet, backed again by $500 odds. He goes down to about $1000 but still makes his bets like nothing happened. He hits a few points, gets up to $4150 and bails after 10 minutes. It was truly beautiful. I heard him tell the guy next to him that he was in town to play the WSOP, which made perfect sense because only a poker player can gamble like that. Literally 5 minutes after this guy leaves another guy walks up, throws down $3000 and does the exact same thing. It made me wonder how many poker players hit the Casino Royale during the WSOP to take $500 coin flips. We then head back to the Flamingo and make our way to the cash table at 2:00 a.m. There aren’t any $1/2 NL seats available so I convince TM to sit at the $2/4 limit game. There are 6 guys playing, all of them looking absolutely miserable like they wanted to be anywhere else in the world at that time. TM sits down, straddles, talks about “coming here to gamble” and 3 guys promptly rack up and leave. We play a few uneventful hands before 2 seats at the same NL table open up. My first hand at the $1/2 table I have the BB. I look down and wouldn’t you know, its AA. TM limps, English dude raises to $7, action gets to me and I flick in five $5 chips with an “I just got here and I’m the table captain” attitude. English dude calls. Flop is 3 7 T. I bet $20, English dude asks how much I have left. I begin to count my $120 and before I get the chips cut out he pushes in a $125 stack of red. I insta-call and turn up the Aces, his head drops like he just got caught. Turn is 2, he tells his friend “I only have a straight draw.” River is 6 and he turns over his 89 for the rivered straight. I pull out $140 more and don’t win or lose much before the table breaks up 20 minutes later. TM and I cashed out and caught up with two others for some late night Pai Gow. *** NON-POKER This brings us to the final day. No poker today, instead we took a casino tour along the strip. I noticed that TM was especially chatty and wired today and found out from his girl that he got 7 hours of sleep the night before. I knew right then that it would be a looooong day. We headed south and stopped at the Harley Davidson Café so that TM could get the $32 100-ounce Long Island Iced Tea. Watching him walk around LV with a 4-foot tall drink strapped around his neck is something I will never forget. We walked down to MGM Grand and made our way back to Caesar’s crisscrossing the strip and visiting almost every casino along the way. The rule for each visit was to sit down at a pit game with $50 and play until one of the following conditions are met: a) Double up, b) Lose the $50, c) Play for 20 minutes. We checked out about 8 casinos this way and had a great time, even though I didn’t participate in the $50 challenge at each place. After we got back to Caesar’s we cabbed it to Ellis Island and met the brothers for dinner. The restaurant wasn’t busy but we were told there would be an hour and a half wait for a table. I thought that was strange but oh well, the craps table was 40 feet away. After losing a bill at the table in an hour I realized that this is a casino first, restaurant and brewery second. They easily could have sat us in 15 minutes but because of their brilliance I paid $166 for my $6 sirloin special. Even though the gambling could have gone better it certainly could have been worse, and I have absolutely no bad memories after the trip. I really believe this was one of those once-in-a-lifetime trips with my wife and the crew I was with and couldn’t think of a better group to spend 4 days in Vegas with. *** Also, does anyone else have the “Vegas hangover” after getting back home? I was itching to have action around me all night the first day back. I didn’t necessarily want to get in any action, I just wanted to have the option of getting action... Hoping I’m not alone here. |
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