vegas trip report

Well I said I would write a vegas trip report as some form of thanks to everyone who posted advice for the trip. Overall it was an unbelievable experience and I loved every second of it so yet again I appreciate everyone who posted advice in the first place.
We arrived in vegas at roughly 7pm on Friday evening - we rented a mustang because we intended to drive to the grand canyon and thought we might as well get a mustang as an economy car. Bit of self pwnage on the way to binnons hotel though as we tried to drag race against a dodge viper - just for the record automatic transmission isn’t worth a fcuk. It was a bit of a last minute decision but we decided to drive to the canyon over night so we could be there for sunrise so after checking into the hotel and getting some food we started the drive to grand canyon village (roughly 4 hours drive - 5 when you include the time change) we took turns driving but even still at 6am I was startin to feel a bit tired so I stopped into some refuelling station to get one of those 5 hour energy shots - im not sure if we have them back in Ireland yet but whatever is in them it works I was buzzing all through the morning.

We spent about 3 hours driving around the canyon being tourist noobs etc and then after some breakfast we headed back to vegas stopping off at hoover dam on the way home - wasn’t a bad drive home as the view is pretty good and the roads just make it easy to drive (perhaps too easy as 2 speeding tickets have to be paid now :P) - we didn’t do the skywalk though as it was another 60 miles out of the way and we wanted to get back to vegas. On arriving back the lads all decided to go to bed but I was thinking fcuk that time to play a little bit so I got myself another 5 hour energy shot and put my name down for a $1/$2 NL game in binnions. Standard was ridiculously bad with the standard opening raise being $17 LOL. It was a bit frustrating though as over the 2 hours I played I was completely card dead and felt like I was missing the boat with all the value floating about. I quit after 2 hours up a small amount but there weren’t even any interesting hands to report.

The lads had woken up at this stage so we decided to hit the strip - got the dinner buffet in the sahara which was great value at $9 dollars (you just had to sign up to their club which is free) we made another noob mistake and went on all the rides at the top of the stratosphere AFTER we had eaten. Done well to hold it down but the view alone is well worth it. We then spent a couple of hours walkin the strip seen the street show outside treasure island and the fountains at bellagio which I thought was pretty cool. We intended to be down at the MGM at the time of the fight as there might have been a little bit of atmosphere about the place but de la Hoey had already been knocked out when we got there. I headed back to the hotel after this though as I hadn’t slept in 40 hours which was startin to take its toll.

The next day (Sunday) we got the breakfast buffet in the bellagio before checkin out the gun range - fired a fully auto AK-47 and an uzi (the uzi was pretty fun - think mc lovin shootin the cop car in superbad ) the lads then hit the slots in binnions and I sat back down at the $1/$2 game - it had calmed down a small bit though with the standard opening raise now being $12. The players hadn’t improved much though and I doubled up pretty quick when a I got it AIPF with QQ against a middle aged English guy holding AJ soooooted. - his comment after the hand made me laugh though “well that hand played itself really” :eek: The defining hand of the weekend came roughly 2 hours into the session against a guy from texas - wearing cowboy hat the whole nine yards, more money than sense whos favourite word was “REBUY”. im playing circa $450 and hes $400 the amount he bought in for. he raises from late position to $12 and I repop to $35 on the button with QQ he calls as does the BB. Flop comes Q 7 4 all diamonds. checked to me and I lead out for $90 he calls BB folds - I know for a fact at this stage that he doesn’t have the flush as has played 2 made hands extremely aggressively so far raising at every opportunity. Turn comes the Kc and he checks to me again - pot is now ~$300 and I push all in for $320. He tanks for 5 minutes. At this stage im thinking at best he has a flush draw maybe with a pair of kings so I have 80% equity against that range. He finally comes to the conclusion that hes priced in to call???? And makes the call. I shout at the dealer not to put up another diamond and he obliges by rivering the Ad. My texas friend proudly tables 10 10 with the 10d and I ashamedly slam down my QQ onto the table as a $900 pot is shipped the wrong direction. :mad: Im more disappointed with how I took the beat than anything else as I really have been working on my emotions while playing. I topped up to $400 and decided to go for a walk to clear the head. When I came back about an hour later there was no sign of the guy who felted me - I was informed that he moved to the $3/6 game and had busted out after 25 minutes….didn’t really feel like playing much more after this so we all just hit the bar for the night and got pretty wasted - ended up in the strip club treasures; entry, drink and lapdance for $40 pretty standard really

Woke up the next morning a combination of hungover and still drunk so I strolled across the street to the golden nugget for their $60 tournament - I was too tired/hungover to realise how bad the tournament actually was 3000 starting stack blinds double every 15 minutes. I was chip leader for awhile with about 12 left but crashed out when my JJ ran into 33 AIPF (river 3) leaving me crippled with K10 finally knocking me out for my last 6 BB - my A10 obviously no good. I finally had some good variance when I sat down at blackjack - im not sure if our lovely asian dealer knew what she was doing though as she asked me did I want to split KQ against her 6 - I said id split if I could double down which she allowed??? And a couple of nice hits and I make over $100 in one hand!!! I didn’t hang around too long though as if the same situation came up and someone competent seen it I didn’t want them checking the tapes. :P that night we got food in the French style restaurant across from the bellagio and went to the bodies exibition - I chose this to go to as I am studying sports physiotherapy and its something I was really interested in. it was really interesting but the foetal exhibit was a small bit disturbing (for those who don’t know this exhibition it uses real bodies that have been donated and persevered so we can see muscles, bones, organs etc) after that we went to the bar in NYNY “9 fine Irishman” which just like any irish bar in the states is about as irish as a queen of England appreciation meeting!! I got talking to an old guy there and he asked me was I in vegas to gambooool? I said I was mostly there to play poker :P he told me poker was a suckers game and then proceeded to explain to me his winning roulette strategy - he puts one bet on 2 out of the 3 lines and if he hits he wins 1 more bet than he started with - and he had a 66 percent chance of winning I.e. the odds were in his favour. . . .I know major LOL but he was in his twilight years and I didn’t have the heart to point out the flaws in his maths.

On our last day I went down to the strip again mostly to do some shopping but decided to go into the bellagio to rail on some of the bigger cash games ($25/$50). I was there for about an hour just being a noob really trying to pick up some tips and that and then this hand comes up. Guy who has his back to me raises and is reraised by big Russian looking guy who literally hasn’t played a hand in the hour I was there. Original raiser raises again - long story short they end up getting it AIPF Russian has AA which hold up against 77???? For a 10k pot. Maybe there was some metagame stuff going on but I thought it was terrible to get it AI in that spot at best 77 guy was 50/50. Then the guy who had his back to me turns around and just goes off at me. Roaring that I cant be there and he wants me removed…..it was a bit of a case of dear caught in the headlights and in fairness I prob wasn’t supposed to be there (about 3 metres away from the table leaning against the wall) but the cardroom manager had seen me there and didn’t think it was a problem. Anyway I didn’t want to cause a scene because now the whole table was looking at me so I just smiled said “nice call, unlucky he had you there” and walked away - I could hear him really hit the roof when I walked away which I was pretty happy about I thought guys playing $25/50 would have a bit more sense than to look for a scapegoat when they play a bad hand.

Roller coaster in NYNY is the nuts

So that was pretty much our few days in vegas minus a few more hours drinkin that we did before we headed to the airport J id really like to come back here and play in a big live event so in the new year im gonna try and sat my way into the WSOP - so anyone with advice on how to do that would be great. Oh and one negative thing - now don’t get me wrong im not anti hookers in fact quite the opposite :pac: but whoever regulates vegas really should look to crack down on all the Mexicans handing out them cards along the strip I hate the way they funnel you into a line of them on either side and then its like trying to run a gauntlet of them. They serve no purpose only to be a pain in the arse and really bring down the quality of the strip IMO. But apart from that I loved everything about vegas Thanks again to everyone who provided advice.