Vegas 2012 - Part 5: Poker & Parlay Tickets

Good morning everyone.  This entry is the fifth part in the series of reports about my holiday trip to Las Vegas.  To start out the "day" (it's around midnight), I played the only no-limit hold 'em session that I would be playing during this trip.  I was already tired when I left San Marcos, America to begin this trip, and I wasn't setting alarm clocks when I was in the desert.  When I woke up, if I wasn't still tired, I was off to do something...

Now I played this no-limit session just to say that I did it really.  We are now at Bill's Gamblin' Hall & Saloon, the home of .50/$1.00 no-limit Texas hold 'em (I kid you not)...  The buy-in for this game was $20.00.  I had played for somewhere in the neighborhood of half an hour when I was sitting in middle position with about $17.00 in front of me.  The player under-the-gun raised the action to $2.00, the minimum raise.  I looked down to find pocket jacks (oh joy), and I flat-called the raise when the action got to me.  There were no other raises and we went to the flop, which came 9 7 4.  By the way, there may have been a couple of other players in the hand in addition to myself and the preflop raiser, but they aren't important...  :)  After the flop, the preflop raiser SHOVES.  His shove covers the rest of my stack, and there are no other callers when the action gets to me.  I figure that if this guy has aces, kings, queens, or has just hit a set of 9's, 7's, or 4's, then so be it, and I call my remaining stack.  When the action is complete, the preflop raiser says something like, "OH CRAP..."  My opponent then tables his king-nine, showing that he has hit top pair with a king kicker.  I lay my jacks on the table, and for some unexplained reason, my hand HOLDS UP and I double up.  My 20/20 hindsight tells me that I should have played no-limit hold 'em at Bill's Gamblin' Hall for the remainder of my stay...  :)  Oh well...

Shortly after my win, I left the table and went to the restaurant at Bill's, where I enjoyed the free breakfast that I had earned less than 24 hours previously by signing up for the Bill's players card.  Again, signing up for the card gave me a $5.00 comp, and they run a breakfast special for $4.99.  After eating, I noticed something when I reached the exit to the Strip which reminded me of San Marcos, America.  As I exited the casino, off to my right I noticed eight beer-pong tables.  I know that there were eight tables because I actually stepped back into the casino to COUNT THEM so that I would be accurate when reporting the total here and on my facebook account...  :)  And YES, there were people playing.  "What did you do in Las Vegas?"...  "Oh man, you won't believe this, but they had BEER PONG!!!"...

ANYWAY, from Bill's I headed over to the Flamingo to get into the 2/4 limit game again.  Now keep in mind that it's after midnight, and at this time of night you usually get seated with some young players, some old players, some sober players, and some not-so-sober players.  Well, somehow I managed to get seated at a table with some old rocks (i.e., tight players).  For those of you who have played poker with me, you realize that for ME to be calling other players rocks...  Yeah, this was a bad table, but I somehow managed to win $2.00 in an orbit, said the heck with this, and made my way out of the poker room.    

I walked down to The Mirage to grab a STACK of football parlay cards (after inspecting the cards that I had picked up previously, I realized that the ones at The Mirage gave better odds than the ones at The Flamingo).  I grabbed my pile of parlay cards, visited the fish tank behind the registration desk (which is my favorite spot in the desert to clear my head), and then I returned to my hotel room (it's about 4:30 a.m. at this point).

After sleeping, I spent about SIX HOURS of my day on Friday watching t.v. while studying and studying and studying football before filling out about $300.00 worth of parlay cards.  I spent SO MUCH TIME coloring in SO MANY BUBBLES with my little "casino golf pencils..."  When I reached The Mirage, I was only able to purchase about half of the tickets that I had filled out because they had removed a game from the cards.  Since the cards had been printed, the Jets had announced that neither Sanchez nor Tebow would be starting against the Chargers, so the 'under' that I had intended to bet had dropped by about another three points.  The funny thing is, that game ended up going 'over'.  The unfunny thing is that I still managed to lose PLENTY of bets anyway, as chronicled in one of my earlier posts in this series...

As I'm walking back to my hotel, I pass a guy on the sidewalk who is peddling passes to some club.  He notices my jacket and says, "hey, Red Sox!"  I nod at him and I keep walking...  This is when I hear a SHOUT from behind me:  "YOU'RE NOT A REAL RED SOX FAN, YOU DIDN'T RESPOND TO ME!!!"  Out of sheer instinct, I turn and SHOUT BACK, "YOU'RE A HACK!!!"  I then proceed to my hotel (The Quad), where I feel sorry for the group of guests who are checking in on this Friday night, as the check-in line is LITERALLY fifty yards long...

I then snacked on some junk food in my room before returning to The Flamingo for some more poker.  Upon reaching The Flamingo, I saw a girl stumbling on high heels, which is something that you NEVER SEE in San Marcos, America...  ;)  I played poker through midnight, but made sure to make my "Civilization 1  Mayans 0  But thanks for playing..." facebook post when the calendar flipped over to December 22nd.

Okay, when I do post Part 6 of this trip next week, it will be Saturday, December 22nd...  I will be back here tomorrow with my predictions for this Sunday's NFL Conference Championship Games (San Francisco @ Atlanta and Baltimore @ New England).  I hope that you have a great day and I'll see you again tomorrow!