This is the story of how two guys who love poker without much of a clue faired on a not-at-well planned trip to Vegas. In retrospect, I find most of it pretty hilarious. Despite the thematic trend, I'm going to go chronologically, as the adventure unfolded. It'll probably be a long one, but there are some classic moments so it should be worth the read! :)

Precursor: My friend and I were taking two weeks vacation. The first week was spent in Tahoe and Humboldt, the second in Vegas. We played poker one night in Tahoe, a tourney and some cash games. This is important info for later on. Tourney was horrible, cash game broke even, but there was this one guy our age (26 & 28) with a white hat on.....

Day 0: Our trip to Vegas wasn't scheduled to start until Sunday. We had reservations for Fitzgeralds Monday-Thursday, and Circus Circus Fri-Sun. Did I mention we were on a REALLY tight budget at this point? We each had at most $300 to gamble after alotting for return gas and cheapest motels possible. So we showed up a night early to get started.

Except of course, try finding a room in Vegas at 9PM on Saturday night. Wow. WOW. We settled on a roach motel about a mile down Fremont in scary town. The door had an old school key lock and no deadbolt. But for $30, we said OK, checked in and walked to Fremont to find a casino with a poker room ASAP.

I believe we went into Binions? One of those places right there at the intersection, I really don't remember at this point. I sat down at 1/2 NL, my buddy wasn't feeling it yet and walked around for awhile. Well, 20 minutes into my game I am dealt JJ. Flop brings 2 more J's. I slow play to the river, finally bet and everyone folds. I'm not going to show, but at the last second as the dealer is cleaning the table, I flip them over and everyone gasps. Apparently the high hand jackpot was at $750 for quad jacks! And I almost didn't get it at all! I leave the table an hour later, up $900 and very happy to have a bankroll for the next 7 days...

We crash out, and find an incredible deal on a suite at the Tuscany for a ridiculous $39 for the next four days (normally $150+), starting Monday. I of course forget to cancel the Fitzgeralds reservation, and get charged for a night unnecessarily.

On Monday we do visit the Venetian, which was by far my favorite place rating-wise, comfort-wise, drink-wise, and waitress-wise, although I did find it to be a bit intimidating due to the overly posh style even low limits were treated to. But we play poker for a few hours, I hold my own, and I keep looking at this guy at my table (1/2NL). After a long while, I put it together - it's the exact same guy we played in Tahoe the day before we left for Vegas! He remembers us and comments on the oddness of it. We were going to meet up later, but never did get around to it.

Over the next 4 days I try to play in as many rooms as possible...Venetian, Wynn, T.I., Planet Hollywood, Sahara, Stratosphere, even Hooters, Fremont casinos, anywhere at any hour. I don't think I did anything else at all really. but play play play. I did a T.I. tourney as well, $65 I think?

It was the worst 4 days of cards. At best I could break even at the tables, at worst I lost it all. Always a $100 buyin (big mistake), always obvious I was ignorant to real life casino play (almost strictly online at that point), and always horrible beats. Once I figured out how to identify fish from locals and sharks I thought it would get easier - but no, the sharks always ended up taking their money and I could never get a single dollar out of a drunk tourist anywhere. The few times I ended up were only miniscule and my newly acquired bankroll slowly bled for days...

I played PL, NL, it didn't matter...AA never held up, even full houses fell flat, the sets always beat by a rivered straight, and the straights beat by flushes. Sure, I had my hands, but they weren't enough. Old people robbed me, crazy Asian guys that seemed to morph into every poker room we went to (we kept wondering if it was the same guy though we knew it wasn't), Super shark I bet you fold mentalities making you question every legitimate hands, and drunken tourists playing worse than me sucking out left and right. Learning the hard way about string bets, live straddles, the whole nine yards.

Then came Thursday, the climactic day of the trip. I was back down to a BR of only about $200, my friend was down to about $150. We decide to totally split up for the night and go our seperate ways.

He calls me later, about 10PM and we meet up. He is soooooo blisteringly drunk he can barely walk. I, of course, am concerned. He keeps demanding to go to a restaurant, and I keep leading him in the direction of our hotel. He is in no condition to be in public. He figures out we aren't going to a restaurant, and takes off. Oh geez, I think, I wonder if I'll ever see him again???

I go lose another $100 at the tables at I think Bally's this time, and go back to the room. He calls me on my cell at 12:30AM, sounds super-duper awake suddenly (hmmm) and says don't go anywhere he'll be right there to the room. I fall asleep around 2 waiting for him to arrive. I wake up again at 6AM wondering what could have happened, and go back to sleep.

At 10AM I get "the call." It is my friend, and he's talking a mile a minute about how he's been at the MGM grand for 10 hours straight and has managed to turn $100 into over $1200. He's the star, everyone there is his friend, he owns this house, waitresses fighting to bring him drinks (of which he had consumed 20-30 of). Total madness.

Timmy I say. You have how much right now? Just about $1100. GET UP RIGHT NOW AND CASH OUT. JUST DO IT. No man, I can't, I can't, it's just too perfect, I have to go, but hurry up and get down here I'll give you $400 to come up on.

I hang up the phone, tired, hungover, and catch a taxi to the MGM which takes a total of about 40 minutes to get there from the time I hang up the phone. Everyone reading this probably know how the story ends: I show up, not entirely happy to begin with, and his bankroll is down to, yes, $150. He gives me $40 in chips, nothing left to share period, goes bankrupt and walks out the door and disappears till that afternoon.
Terrible.

So, we take our limited bankroll, check into to Circus Circus Friday (groan), make it till Saturday afternoon, check out and drive home. Yes I was a bit upset that he made enough to let us stay longer and blew it, but everybody's gotta learn that one I guess!

In all seriousness we had a ton of fun that week. Running around, getting drunk, being dumb, playing poker. And it certainly could've been worse - we should've been broke in less then 2 days, to have survived on nothing for 7 was a miracle!

I don't see him much these days, we had to fire him where I work, but have been thinking about this past trip a lot as a get ready for a much more serious poker-focussed trip this April. I think after learning all the "first-timers" lessons, and reading these forums quite a bit, perhaps I will have a much better chance of coming out ahead this time.

...at the very least, I'll be bringing a much larger bankroll to start. :) :) :)