I'm gonna try to get this out in sequential order to attempt to accurately remember everything that happened during my time in Vegas.
Let's start at the beginning. I don't fly too much because I pretty much hate airplanes, not that I'm scared of flying, it's just absolutely the most uncomforatble experience ever. Usually I fly Orlando to Dulles pretty often which isn't bad because it's just a 2 hour flight, but getting ready for my Orlando to Vegas trip, I knew this 5 hour flight was gonna suck ass. Sure enough, my mom who booked the trip got me an aisle seat because that's what thought I would want....guess what mom, you're wrong. I don't particularly enjoy having people ram my shoulder every 4 seconds as they move their too large bodies/bevarage carts through the aisles for the entire flight. Next, I'm 6'2 so sitting in a non-exit row seat (strike 2 mom) is hellish enough without f****** people tilting their seat back as soon as we get in the air, not to be returned to its upright position until our final approach. Seriously, the seat tilting should be illegal somehow. Whoever designs airplanes is a f***** moron, the seat WILL NOT go back far enough to increase your comfort in any way shape or form but WILL ABSOLUTELY go back just far enough to piss the S*** out of the person sitting directly behind you (me). As soon as I become rich, hopefully soon, I am never flying coach again.....ever. Our flight took off at 9 PM so luckily we caught the entire WPT on the Song TV's compliments of DIsh Network. That was the most ridiculous episode of the WPT I have ever seen in my life, since this was a flight to Vegas, something like 127% of the people on the plane were watching this episode and you could hear the groans. Long story short, without incident we land in Vegas at 11:35PM, man, flying backwards in time is great. As soon as we (my roomate and I) get off the plane we are greeted by the sound of slot machines, and I'm liking Vegas already. We catch the shuttle to the Excalibur for like 5 bucks which seems pretty reasonable to me, especially with my not yet acquired knowledge of how much cabs are going to end up costing. I check into the hotel and head to my room which has a strong unplaceable odor, but I knew what I was in for when I decided on price over quality. In reality though, it wasn't that bad. Excalibur is mediocre in almost every aspect of a hotel/casino but for the price, its placement is excellent. Directly on the corner of Tropicana Ave. and Las Vegas Blvd, it shares the corner with the Tropicana, NY/NY, and MGM. Of course I immediately headed to the poker room and got into a NL game there. Excalibur now plays a 1/3 blinds 200 max buy-in game. I was expecting a 1/2 100-max given the research I had done before hand, but apparently that has been phased out. The game was pretty good, pretty much how I expected it to be but I just wasn't that comfortable playing for that kind of money since I had only taken $500 with me. So I left the NL game and played some 2-6 spread limit, which is absolutely the most fun game ever. The atmosphere is pretty laid back, everyone is having fun, and it's a little bit better for a low limit limit hater like me than straight limit because you can raise to 8 preflop, or 6 more than whatever the bet is to you. It also has the added bonus that any 4 of a kind or better or getting aces cracked gets to spin this "money wheel" with cash payouts from 20 to 300 bucks, and given the texture of the game, I planned on getting aces cracked a lot. I was thinking about it and I figured that it would probabally almost always be correct to limp-raise aces in this game in EP because given the ludicrously passive texture of the game, if you get no raise behind you, you're not going to lose more than 20 in the pot, thus the money wheel is guaranteed to AT LEAST pay back your loss. And if someone does raise to 6 or 8 behind you, you can make it 12 or 14 which should significantly reduce the field giving you the best shot to win the hand. Anyway, I played for a few hours lost maybe like 40 bucks, didn't get the opportunity to see what would happen when I got aces but it looked like par for the course was people trying their hardest to LOSE with their aces just so they could spin the damn wheel. I took the indoor walkway that runs between Excalibur/Luxor/Mandalay Bay all the way over to the mandalay bay poker room to check out what was the deal with the $30 tourney that was going on at 10 am the next day. The guy there told me that it was limit for the first hour and then no limit after that but that they only accept 30 players and it sells out real fast so I would have to register right at 7 am to get in. So we went and got some overpriced food at the sherwood forrest cafe back at Excalibur and got back to the room around 5 am, pretty excited about our 1 hour nap. Got back to Mandalay Bay at 7, registered for the tournament and headed over to the Luxor poker room, played some 2/4 limit which was possibly the most amusing thing I've ever seen in my life. These people were wasted out of their minds, 1 kid was soooo drunk and kept screaming about how Canada was the greatest country ever etc...and then the profanity started, which was hillarious. The dealer started by telling the cocktail waitress not to serve him anymore, which apparently did not please him. Then the dealer started going on about how it was day time now and he needed to tone it down. He wasn't having it, so eventually they brought security over, but when security showed up, some other guy started shooting his mouth off, so security was hassling the wrong guy and eventually they just gave up and left. The kid having been adequately scared quited down for a bit, but not for long. Eventually, they had enough of it and threatened to have him thrown out but he finally just got up and left. On my way over to Mandalay Bay for the tournament, I saw him passed out at a slot machine.
Before I left the Luxor, I signed up for their 12PM $25 buy-in tournament with the same structure as the other tournament. I figured it was a safe bet I would be out of my first tournament in time to get over to Luxor by noon (little did I know, I'd have time to stop for lunch too). The tournament- these low in buy-in tournaments are some kind of sick joke, you start with 300 in chips and the blinds increase every 15 minutes which with some of the 90 year old dealers that are working at some of the not-so-high-class places equals about 7 hands. By the time you even get to NL at the end of the first hour, the blinds are 100/200. There's only 9000 chips in play! The only hand I played in this tournament was my bust out hand in the 3rd level when the stakes were 50/100, i had Jacks, I raised....and that was it for my chips. I don't even remember what I got beat by. The Luxor tournament- same ridiculous structure, but by this time I've figured that the only way to possibly succeed is to have built your stack to like 2000 by the time you hit NL. So that's what I attempt to do, I build it up to about 900 by playing like a complete idiot with practically any suited cards in the first 45 minutes. Then I pick up a flush draw on the flop with 89s in 50-100 stakes and like 4 people calling in front of me, anyway, I don't make my flush and the pot ended up being like 2500 chips which is what I was going for, so I don't really care that I called off most of my stack with a flush draw, it's a crap shoot, either you are gonna get yourself a good stack before going into NL or you are going to lose, it's simple. I lose. My roomate ended up making it to 8th out of 83, they paid 7. I went back to the hotel room and slept until 5 when the phone rang and it was my parents, their plane was supposed to be landing in vegas at 6:30. Well, some thunderstorm in west bumf*** was prohibiting their takeoff from DC so they hadn't even got off the ground yet. Guess I got some time to play poker. As I'm leaving the room, my roomate is coming in to sleep, he apparently was playing in the 1-1-2 blinds 50 max NL at the luxor all day, which is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, but I guess the game was really soft. I go back to the old 2-6 spread limit game and end up winning with aces a couple of times to my great distress and finishing up like 37 bucks by the time my roomate calls and we head to get some dinner. Then back to poker, I call my parents at 1130 trying to find out where the hell they are and my dad answers and tells me they are standing in the taxi line at mccarran. I tell him he's an idiot and could have walked out the opposite side of the building and got the shuttle for 5 bucks. My parents and I head over to mandalay bay and have a couple drinks. A couple of my dads friends from work gave him money to gamble with in Vegas, I really don't understand this phenomenon, people will give you like 10 bucks and be like hey man, put this on 17 black, one time. But hey, whatever. So apparently this guy wants 20 bucks in a slot machine, 1 pull. So we go to high-limit slots, they have $10 and $25, so I figure, throw it in the $10 machine, and play the 2 credit max. The one pull wins 4 credits, thus doubling the money. Some other guy gave him 20 to play blackjack with, this one is not so simple, how do you play blackjack with 20 bucks? Does this guy want him to put 20 on one hand, double or nothing? He doesn't know, so he goes to a 5 dollar table gets 4 chips, and starts betting 5 at a time, he gets up to 35 and he's like "if I double his money I'm just gonna leave" so anyway, he proceeds to tie with the dealer literally 5 tiimes in a row, before going on a nice losing streak to lose all that guys money. Later on he calls the slot machine guy, who apparently wants to let it ride.......he should have taken the 40 bucks. The next day, I wanted to go downtown and get a taste of the "freemont street experience", my roomate did not. Anyway, my parents and I get up pretty early, go to the buffet for breakfast and start arguing about how we are going to get downtown. There are 3 options: 1.) The bus 2.) A cab 3.) the Monorail. Pros and cons: 1.) it only cost 2 bucks, but it's a bus 2.) get you there quick, but it's 20 bucks 3.) 3 bucks, but it won't take you the whole way. Of course, we somehow decide on the bus which will end up making the flight look like childs play. So we pay our 2 bucks and get on this bus. 2 hours later, after 867 stops and 43823094 red lights in 4 miles, we get off the bus. We went into the Golden Nugget, and looked at the golden nugget, its gold, it's big, it's a nugget, what else can I say. Then we went over to Binions and checked out the wall of WSOP winners, it was kind of awkward because there were tables playing right next to it so you are kind of like standing behind these people looking at a wall, I don't know, it was weird. So my parents decided it's about time to start drinking, so we grab some slot machines to get hooked up with our "free" drinks. 2 hours of nickel slots, we got drinks alright, but we also relieved ourself of somehwere in the region of 120 bucks. It's nickel slots damnit, money shouldn't dissapear that fast. So my mom is like, hey lets walk up to the stratosphere, and I'm like do you have any idea how far that is, and she's all telling me noooo it's right there, and I'm like of course you can see it, it's f*****g tall but it's still far. But she insists, so like 20 minutes later when she realizes how far it is, we decide to get a cab and go back to the hotel. Well everytime we are trying to wave down a cab they just keep ignoring us, well eventually one stops, and as soon as we get in this motorcycle cop turns on his lights and rides up to the drivers side window of the cab. He says to the driver: "I'm writing you a ticket tomorrow" " I hope your working tomorrow because you are getting a ticket" "Tomorrow you're getting a ticket", I'm like you've spent so much time telling this guy how he's getting a ticket tomorrow that you could have just wrote one by now. Apparently the cab drivers are not supposed to stop on the street because of the traffic on Las vegas blvd. So anyway the cab driver suggests we take the interstate because it will be faster. He was right, but it also adds a couple miles to the trip and I'm sure he wasn't too upset about that either. That night we went to the Tournament of Kings dinner show at Excalibur (think Cable Guy, think Medieval Times) it was pretty cheesy but entertaining, when it got out at like 7:30 it was still light outside and we walked down to Bellagio, we watched the fountains and let me tell you, the fountains at Bellagio are one of the most impressive things ever, it's absolutely a must see in Vegas. We went inside to see what kind of experience we were missing out on by not paying $300 a night for a hotel. We went over to the poker room, unfortunately from the rail you can't really get a good look up into the high limit room but from what I saw, I didn't recognize anyone, which wasn't too surprising since most anybody who's anybody would be at Rio. My roomate said he was gonna go to Ballys or MGM to play some poker so he left. My parents and I watched some high limit roulette for a while which was pretty entertaining, it's great watching them spin 00 and clear everyone's bets off the table. It was dark by now and we watched the fountains again which was even better in the dark and from a different angle. We walked back to Excalibur and my mom the newly made slot machine addict wanted to go play slots and get some free drinks, my dad having been sufficiently humiliated by the slot machines earlier that day refused and said that it was cheaper to pay for drinks than play the slot machines, so we went to the bar, which conveniently, has slot machines built in. Then my parents went to bed, and my roomate didn't have his cell phone on him so I had no idea where he was and wasn't about to go looking so I went back to my 2-6 game. I made quad 5's with 5 2o out of the big blind and spun the wheel for 30 bucks. That was the highlight of my trip. I was getting pretty upset with poker because nothing much was really happening and I wanted to flop at least one set in Vegas which hadn't happened yet, and I had played quite a bit of poker. Well, it wasn't gonna happen tonight. Eventually I decided to go to bed at like 4am and my roomate still wasn't home. Well I was awaken at like 8 am when the cleaning people walked into my room (how the hell do they orchestrate cleaning in Vegas anyway, there is no TIME in Vegas!), well the thing that was surprising when I was awoken was that my roomate STILL hadn't come back to the room, WTF. So immediately I'm thinking, Jesus, did he get arrested in Vegas or something, because that would be bad. Anyway, I'm too tired to care right now, and also too tired to get up and put the do not disturb sign on the door so I will be awoken by the cleaning staff twice more before 10 am when my roomate finally gets back and tells me he's been playing NL at the MGM all night, we sleep till noon and then I call the degenerate gamblers (my parents) who have been blowing some more money on slot machines. We grab a cab and head over to the Rio, the place is massive, it's like a 15 minute walk inside the building to get to the convention area where the WSOP is taking place. When we walked into that room, I was completely blown away, it is the biggest room I HAVE EVER SEEN and it is filled wall to wall with poker tables. I immediately want to know where famous people are at so I just look for where the biggest crowds of people are, the first table I look in on has Erik Seidel at it, the next table has Marcel Luske, then I spot Chris Ferguson and head over to watch him play, I'm standing behind his table when I see Daniel Negraneu at the next table over. Ferguson gets up from his seat to talk to his girlfriend between every hand, at this point I feel like a schoolgirl, CHRIS FERGUSON is standing like 6 inches from me. I don't know why I'm so impressed, they are just people, but it's somewhat surreal to have these people that you only know from TV to be standing right there. I head around the room some more and see Howard Lederer, Johnny Chan and Phil Hellmuth. Here's where it gets interesting, the WSOP events are NOTHING compared to the side games that they are spreading. I hear them calling games that are starting 100/200 limit HE, 25/50 PLO, 50/100 NO LIMIT HE. Yeah, 50/100 NL, ok I've got to see this. So I go to the table where the game is starting and it's 2 guys I don't know playing heads up to start. 1 of these guys has a 5000 dollar chip in front of him and they are for the most part just playing with 100 dollar bills. It's sick, more money than I've ever seen in my life is sitting on the table, some other guy sits down and casually pulls 10,000 out of his pocket. Quickly this game gathers attention and DiAgostino comes over and starts playing. About 5 minutes later Antonio Esfandari casually walks up wearing a pink shirt and asks what game they are playing, when they tell him it's 50/100 he asks "No lImit?" they say yes, and he sits down. It's the sickest thing I've ever seen. Shortly thereafter we leave because I can't stand to be in that room and not be able to play poker. That night we have dinner at the Camelot Steakhouse at Excalibur, it was awesome, really good stuff, it was like 300 bucks for the 4 of us, but luckily my parents were paying for that. After dinner we walked over to the MGM which is awesome, the poker room at MGM is absolutely immaculate, it's the greatest thing EVER and it's HUGE. My roomate jumps right into a 1/2 NL game even on a saturday night. I decide to hang out with the parents for a while so we walk around a while, eventually, I tell them I'm going to play poker and put my name on the list for 3/6 limit. The list system is amazing, they have these huge TV screens everywhere that have the list on them, and on the tables they have buttons and when a seat is open, the dealer simply pushes the button corresponding to that seat, signaling that it is open, and your name is called from the list. I didn't have to wait long because they opened a new 3/6 game so I went and sat down. One thing I havent mentioned yet is the built in card shufflers that all the places are using these days, they are great, but from what I hear they are very expensive, and can only be leased, not bought. But none the less, they are great. My roomate had to catch a flight at 9 the next morning for Ireland because he is going to go do some eurotrip thing or whatever so he planned on playing all night until about 5 or so, I figured that sounds good to me. On the first hand, I pick up AK and take down the blinds with a raise, the tradgic story of that night is that it would be the last pot I would win, yes, you read that correctly. I finally got that set I was hoping for, here's how it went down. You tell me how I played. Me
![The Seven of Hearts [7h]](https://pofex.com/images/smilies/7h.gif)
![The Seven of Diamonds [7d]](https://pofex.com/images/smilies/7d.gif)
![The Ace of Diamonds [Ad]](https://pofex.com/images/smilies/Ad.gif)
![The King of Diamonds [Kd]](https://pofex.com/images/smilies/Kd.gif)
![The Seven of Clubs [7c]](https://pofex.com/images/smilies/7c.gif)
![The Queen of Spades [Qs]](https://pofex.com/images/smilies/Qs.gif)
![The Three of Clubs [3c]](https://pofex.com/images/smilies/3c.gif)