We arrived in Vegas at around sundown on Thursday, November 9. I wanted to play in a poker tournament at 7 pm that evening over at the Sahara, but both Linda and I were catching a cold and I was tired from the trip down so I took a nap instead. Todd and Erika arrived about midnight, so I rallied and joined them on a trip to Casino Royale to play craps. I had some luck there last year, but it was slow death this time. Several rollers got right up to the beginnings of a nice roll, but would then seven out right when things were ready to get profitable. My dice rolling was pitiful -- I would seven out immediately after establishing a number.
Todd and Erika had enough of craps after about forty minutes or so of losing, then switched to blackjack. I stayed at the craps table and continued losing. After having a late meal at the Caribe Cafe at the Mirage, we returned to the Casino Royale to play some Blackjack Switch, which is a variation of blackjack wherein each player is dealt two hands (and must therefore make two bets of equal size) and is then allowed to switch the second card dealt to each hand. This option, of course, gives the players a big advantage, so the dealer is allowed to hit on a soft 17, blackjacks only pay even money, and a dealer 22 will push against any player who has 21 or less (that push on 22 rule is brutal, by the way). I'm not sure what all this means with regard to the house advantage, but Todd, Erika, and I got crushed at this game, so I switched back to craps and continued playing into the wee hours and ended up losing about $160 for the night.
Linda's Skydive
I made it back to the hotel room at about 6:00 am. Linda was just waking up as I was going to bed. She had to meet a shuttle bus to take her skydiving. At right is a picture of Linda as she's about to leave the airplane.
At left is a photo of Linda in freefall. As you can see, the weather was perfect that day. She said that they really didn't give you much of a chance to change your mind once events started in motion. If I were to try it, I have this image of me acting like that young soldier in Apocalypse Now who wouldn't get out of the chopper and kept yelling "I'm not going -- I'm not going . . ." until someone finally forced me out of the plane. Linda said that nothing like that happened with her.
At right is a picture taken after the chute has opened and they are approaching a landing. Linda got to take control of the parachute for a while after it opened and she put them in a power spin that Linda said made her feel a bit sick.
Here's a photo taken right at the moment of landing, which she described as being very soft.
And here is Linda back on the ground and unhooked from everything. The images seen here are actually still shots from a film which her instructor made on the way down. It's pretty fun to watch. Linda says she'll probably do it again one of these days.Those of us who weren't skydiving wanted to get some gambling in, except for Todd, who wanted to do the scary rides at the Stratosphere; so Erika and I went over to the Sahara to see if we could get in a no-limit ring game. We put our name on the list, then started playing blackjack (the normal kind, not the switch blackjack I played the night before). There wasn't enough interest at the Sahara in a no-limit money game, so we continued to play blackjack for a while, and we had a great time. Both Erika and I won money.
After a short afternoon nap, Linda and I joined Todd, Erika, Mike, and Mike's Linda for dinner at The Bellagio's Jasmine restaurant (after a fairly lengthy wait for a cab). The food was great and the table we had was one of the best settings I've ever been in for a meal (it was right up there setting-wise with the lunch Linda and I had last May in Maui at Mama's Fish House). We had a killer view of the Bellagio Fountains as well as the Eiffel Tower mock-up at Paris. It was very nice. Todd, Erika, Mike, and Mike's girlfriend Linda then went to see "O" and my Linda and I did some shopping. I had all these big plans to gamble late into Friday evening, but I was tired from only getting about 3 1/2 hours of sleep the "night" before that I went to bed instead and actually got eight full hours of uninterrupted sleep, a first for me in Vegas.
Tournament At The Sahara
I played poker only once on this trip, and it was in a tourney over at the Sahara on Saturday morning. It started out great for me. I won the first three hands at my table, mostly from positional play (I started on the button), then things quieted down for me until I got dealt pocket tens in late position. The waitress was bringing me a drink when I was dealt the pocket tens, so when the action got to me I was a bit distracted and I simply called with the tens instead of raising. The flop was all low cards with a possible straight draw but no flush draws yet. A player ahead of me raised it up, and I called and everyone else in the hand folded. The next card was also a low one, and this time the guy ahead of me checked and I put in a bet of about 1/2 the pot. He called. The last card was also low, but there were still no flush draws on the board. The guy ahead of me checked, and I put in a nice bet. He then raised me all-in, and I immediately called because I felt that my pocket tens were still good. They were, and I took down a nice pot.
A few hands later, I got dealt pocket sevens and limped in from early position. A player ahead of me went all-in short stacked. The guy across the table whom I pegged as a good, solid player called the all-in, as did I. A 5-7-9 hit on the flop, with two spades in the mix. The guy I pegged as a good player checked to me, and I moved all-in with my trip sevens because the board looked pretty scary to me. The guy across the table thought about it for quite a while -- he was clearly on a draw and a call would have used up all his remaining chips. He decided to fold then told the dealer that he better not put an 8 on the board because that would have given him his straight. Well, an 8 hit on the turn, and the guy was mad at himself for folding, and I thanked God that he folded because I would have been crippled had he stayed in the hand. I ended up taking down another good pot, and it gave me a chip stack of well over 10,000 as well as the chip lead at the table.
I decided at that point to do a little bullying, and I managed to take down a few more smaller-sized pots. But pretty soon, some of the shorter stacks started moving all-in, and I started calling them. A guy with about 2000 in chips moved all-in when I had an A-8, so I called him. He had a Q-J, meaning that I was ahead in the hand pre-flop. Nothing hit on the flop, but he ended up getting a jack on the turn and beating me. The same thing happened a couple more times, and pretty soon my chip stack was cut in half and the blinds were going up fast.
My cards went dead for an appreciable amount of time, and the guy two players to my left started going on a nice roll. He took a player out with pocket kings, then a few hands later took two players out when he got pocket aces. Two hands after he got his pocket aces (and about three hours into the tournament), I got dealt KQ suited on the button -- which was the best hand I'd seen in quite a while -- and everyone folded to me. Although that's a pretty good hand to raise with on the button when only the blinds are left, I decided to simply limp in (the big blind at that point was 1000). The small blind folded, but the guy in the big blind who had just got dealt pocket aces a couple hands earlier raised with enough chips in to put me all-in if I called with my KQ suited.
I thought about it for a long time, and concluded that he was weak and was simply trying to play the rush. I called and he turned over yet another pair of aces in the pocket! It was his third big pair in about ten minutes and his second AA in the last three hands. When he turned em over, I said "again?" in a tone of disbelief. His aces held up and I was out of the tournament. I probably shouldn't have called him with just a KQ suited, but my gut told me he was weak and hold 'em is a game where you oftentimes have to go with what your gut tells you because that's all the information you have. Oh well. He made a nice move because he probably figured that I wouldn't have put him on yet another high pair, and he was right.
The Last Night In Vegas
I went back to the hotel room, then we all made our way to Caesar's Forum. We stopped in a Fat Tuesday's, and I got one of their orangy drinks which featured Everclear as the booze. In fact, I ordered an extra shot of Everclear -- they put the extra shots in test tube-like things and then place them upside down in the slushy drink so you can "release" the extra shot at your leisure. Anyway, the drink got me fairly intoxicated (good Everclear will do that, you know). Linda and I went back to the hotel room -- we waited in line for a cab for about 40 minutes -- and took a little nap prior to the Tenacious D show. Given our problems with getting a cab, we went down nice and early, but the line in front of the hotel was very long and very few cabs were showing up. We ended up waiting 55 minutes for a cab, which is nothing short of an outrage. Vegas really needs to do something about the taxi situation. I've been going there since the early nineties, and catching a cab used to be a pretty easy thing to do.
We missed the opening act of the Tenacious D show, but got to our seats just as Jack Black and Kyle were starting their performance. We almost didn't make it, though. Linda and I, after gaining admittance to the venue, got lost in the bowels of The House of Blues trying to find our seats. As we were looking around for the door to the concert area, I felt like we were in that scene from Spinal Tap -- the one where the group couldn't find the stage and wandered around back stage for quite a while. We went through one set of doors and actually ended up outside the theater. According to the staff at the House of Blues, that should have been impossible and nobody there believed that we had actually presented our ticket, submitted to the search, and gone inside. Anyway, we finally convinced them that we had, in fact, already gone inside and they let us go back in.
The concert was a lot of fun. Tenacious D has some hysterical songs, and I was pretty much laughing all the way throughout the concert. And the House of Blues is a truly great venue. I definitely want to catch more shows there on future Vegas trips.
After the show, Todd, Erika, Mike, and Mike's Linda went to play hold 'em at the Mandalay Bay poker room. I, however, wanted to play more craps, so I went in search of a cheap craps table, which was kind of a bummer because I missed Jack Black. He showed up at the Mandalay Bay poker room and Linda and Erika got a picture with him. They had some trouble operating the camera, and Jack Black said something like, "You don't know how to operate your own f#%king camera?" Linda replied, "You use the 'F' word way too much." Black's reply was "You're f#%king right."
I regret that I missed that whole exchange, but, as I noted, I was on a quest for a cheap craps table and I ended up back on a $3 table at the Casino Royale. I decided to play more aggressively than usual since it was our last night there and since I did very little gambling the day before, but after four hours of play I was down $200 so I decided to call it a night. I did, however, finally have a halfways decent roll with the dice at one point. I actually hit three numbers before sevening out.
Except for my double Everclear drink, I laid off of the booze pretty much all that last day and evening. So even though I was out until 4 am that night and was tired for the trip home on Sunday, I wasn't hung over and that made the trip home bearable despite the two hour delay at McCarran, the two hour delay at PDX, and the fact that they lost my luggage.
Last year I stayed up all night on the last evening there and I drank a lot, so I felt like crap on the trip home. But not this year, which made a big difference in my attitude. After the last trip (Nov. 2005), I figured I needed a whole year to recover. Now I'm ready to go back immediately.
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