Back in November, I happened to talk to Rahul over e-mail, and he mentioned that he was taking his annual trip to Vegas with his boys over the weekend of Dec 10-12. This was the weekend before finals week at UW, but seeing as I had no finals this quarter... and also Lish was on her trip to Mexico, so I figured it was great timing! The surprising thing to me is that Rahul is generally against mixing his friends, so I felt really lucky to actually get an invite on this trip. The cast of characters for this trip was myself, Rahul, Dave (who I had actually met before), Danny, and Paolo.
Rahul actually arrived by himself on Thursday, a good 24 hours before anyone else got there so that he could get in some extra gambling time, haha. I seriously thought about joining him, but I couldn't take Friday off. So I got a flight out on Friday evening, scheduled to land in LAS around 11pm. As usual, I rented a car (I have perhaps an unhealthy hatred for taxis). Quick side-note though: the rental car desk for Enterprise closes at midnight, so it was already cutting it close. Turns out my flight was delayed, so that had me pretty stressed out. Couple of other things that happened at the airport:
BAD: Got my peanut butter confiscated at security. Bummer, I just like to have food with me on trips to try and minimize the need to eat out.
GOOD: Found a free Southwest drink voucher on the ground, and I was flying Southwest! So I considered myself even with the world at that point. Although I was still worried about making it to Vegas in time to pick up my car.
Fortunately, I made it. Not only that, but they gave me a convertible! For the price of an "Intermediate," too. That was super exciting.
The first night in Vegas wasn't too eventful; Danny was already in bed by the time I got to the Venetian, which is where we were staying. The other boys were playing/watching Craps. I wound up playing a little bit of poker that night and won a little bit (like $40).
On Saturday morning I woke up early (relatively, for Vegas -- like 9:30am) for a satellite into Venetian's $330 buy-in Deep Stack tournament. The satellite was $80 with top 2 getting seats. The play was nothing too notable, maybe a little weak-tight. I built up a decent stack early, by getting lucky with AQ against AK... but then my luck turned around. In another hand, I turned the nut-straight against two pair, we got it all-in, and he rivered the boat. I had him covered, but that took me down to about half the starting stack. Then just a few hands later, I had AA, got a couple of callers after I raised, got it in against a flush draw on the flop, which hit and I'm out. boo.
After this, I went to the Wynn for their noon tournament. $120 buy-in, and we had about 50 players for that. I don't really remember anything from this tournament except my bustout hand: I had AA, with a raise and a call in front of me. I was shallow enough to shove so I did... the raiser folded, but then the caller called, with 66. 6 on the river and I'm gone.
At this point I decided it was time to take the convertible for a drive. Oh! I almost forgot. I did drive from the Venetian to the Wynn (which are basically right next to each other, but Vegas blocks are really long)... anyways, for that drive I decided to put the top down even though it was just like 5 minutes. And it took me like 5-10 minutes to figure out how to put the top down in this thing! Turns out I had to move one of the parts in the trunk manually. Anyways, that drive up the strip with the top down was pure happiness :) It was just before noon, the sun was up, and it was about 60 degrees. A little chilly, but Seattle had been COLD before this! Here's a pic, can't remember if this is that drive or another one down the strip:
So anyways, after my bustout at the Wynn, I decided I wanted more. And I also hadn't eaten lunch yet. So, I decided to drive out to Red Rock Casino, where they have a Capriotti's :) For those who don't know, this is a small chain of sandwich shops, with locations in Newark, DE and Las Vegas, NV, among not many others. This drive may have been one of the highlights of the trip. This pic is from the parking lot of Red Rock Casino, with my rental car in the bottom-left corner:
The other highlight, though, was dinner that night. Somehow, because Dave is the man, his work was covering dinner that night at Del Frisco's, a fantastic steak house. I don't even fully understand the details about why his work was willing to pay for this, but it had something to do with collectors coins that the restaurant gives out and his office is collecting. Anyways, we ate like kings, with several appetizers and side dishes to share along with our steaks, and two bottles of wine. Total bill was about $600 with tip (for five guys), and I can honestly say that it was the best meal I've ever had in my entire life.
After dinner, we went back to the casino to all sit at a blackjack table together. This was super fun, but nothing really notable to report. I bought in for $200, lost that, bought in for another $200, lost about half of that, and then managed to break even before quitting.
Sunday all the boys left around noon for their flights back to NYC, and I was staying until Monday morning. So I had roughly a full 20 hours in Vegas by myself at this point. Word. My flight on Monday morning was at 6am, so I figured I would just stay up and drive to the airport around 4am. I also did some searching online for poker tournament schedules, and found that Caesars had a 10pm tournament that night. And also I needed to go to mass, which I would do at 7pm at the UNLV Newman Center. That was my schedule for the night, and if I busted out of the tournament early, I'd just play a cash game until it was time to go.
The afternoon actually was really nice, to have that to myself in Vegas with a convertible. I drove that around for a bit in search of a Starbucks, which actually took me a good 45 minutes (this would never happen in Seattle!) But I settled in there, and actually did some work for a bit.
The final bit of the story was the Caesar's 10pm tournament. It was an $80 buy-in, and we got just over 50 players, which made first place be just over $1000. There was nothing terribly notable about the play in this tournament either... but as I got pretty deep in this tournament, like around the break at 2am and we still had like 15 players left, I was definitely worrying about whether we were going to be done in time for me to make my flight. The top 6 were getting paid, and I was chip leader for a little while as we had about 15 down to about 10 players left. Some things were definitely going my way -- I was able to steal blinds at will, and I won a race with AK against TT. I did have one painful beat though as a short-stack shipped, I called with AJo, she turned over A5o and flopped a 5. But things still managed to go pretty well overall and we got down to 3 players around 3am. At that point, me and another guy had about the same chipstack, and then the 3rd guy had probably like 1.5 times that. We made a deal once we got down to 3: there was $2160 in prize money remaining, so we guaranteed everyone $600, and then winner would take another $360. The original payouts were something like $1040, $675 and $380 (although I see that doesn't quite add up right, so I'm a little off).
Anyways, long story short, I came in 2nd and took $600. And we finished right around 3:30am, just in time for me to drive to the airport. Perfect!
With all my other losses and gains (not all mentioned in this report), I finished this Vegas trip basically up about $600 even.
As I walked out to my car, it definitely felt a little surreal... it's not that I haven't been up this late in Vegas, but I was 100% sober, and my surroundings definitely were not. On our last couple of bathroom breaks, there were tons of drunk clubbers stumbling around (the poker room at Caesars is right next door to Pure), and as I was leaving after the tournament finished, there were drunk girls pole dancing on the PussyCat Dolls poles. So that was a bit of a sight for sure.
But I got to my car in the parking garage, and even though it was cold, I put the top down for one last drive as I went to the airport. Driving down the strip at that hour, completely sober, with all the lights and the cold air in your face was definitely was the perfect way to end one of the best Vegas trips I've ever had.
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