The Trip Begins…

Paul is sitting at the airport on Thursday waiting for his flight to leave. There is a lot of commotion at the desk as the flight appears to be overbooked. The guy behind the desk shouts out on the mike, “Anyone who wants to take a later flight will be given a $200 credit.”. No responses from the crowd. “Anyone who wants to take a later flight will be given a credit towards their entire ticket cost.” No responses. “Anyone who takes this credit will save a lot of money as they will end up spending less time in Vegas!!!” Lots of laughter. So true… now on to the story.

Our main hero, Paul, arrives in Vegas 1pm local time. He takes the shuttle to his hotel and is ready to try the slick, www.frontdesktip.com move. Per the web site, as he checks in, he slips the $20 “tip” in between his credit card and driver’s license and asks, “Are there any complimentary upgrades available?”. Clerk nods his head appreciatively and starts typing away. Clerk replies, “We don’t have any suites but we do have a room with a view of the Bellagio fountain with two queen beds.” Paul asks if he can also get a late check out. “Sure. You can check out at 2pm.” Clerk also gives Paul a large coupon book containing a $25 match play (will explain later). All in all it appears the frontdesktip is a success… as our heros get a nice room upgrade. Go check out the site.

Paul hits the room, unpacks his stuff, and heads straight to the MGM poker room. As far as Las Vegas poker rooms go, the MGM is not the best ascetically. It is loud, due to being situated right next to a bar that pumps out club music all night. Also, the tables are poorly designed with the main center being higher than the area in front of your arms, which makes it hard to slide your cards back to pick up. However, what the MGM lacks in beauty and appeal, it more than makes up for in its clientele’s simplicity and sheer lack of poker skills. MGM players are amongst the weakest in Vegas. Even better, most of the players think they are better than they really are. They attribute their frequent coughing up of chips to bad luck instead of poor skill. This is a perfect place for Paul to prey on the weak.

Paul spends an uneventful 5 hours at the MGM until Barry shows up. There were some interesting hands but mostly uneventful compared to what I will eventually share with you. So… barry shows up and starts playing at another table. Paul is only down about $60 at this time, but it gets worse. He misreads his hand, not noticing two clubs, and folds only to see another club arrive on the river that will make him a flush. A few hands later he bluffs into the nuts (the best hand). A couple hands later Paul gets all in KK vs AK. An Ace hits on the river and Paul is now down about $260. Some of this is bad luck, but Paul is definitely not playing well. He decides to get up and move over to Barry’s table. He also decides that since he is tired, he is going to start playing tighter than a rock to limit his chances of making mistakes. Paul sits at Barry’s table for about 3 more hours and wins back $90 of his money. On to Barry…

Barry took the long route to Vegas by way of LA. He arrives around 9pm local time and heads to MGM to meet up with Paul. Barry gets seated at a different table than Paul and starts off nicely. He has built his stack up a couple hundred when a donkey joins the table and sits to his left. This donkey proceeds to make unfunny jokes, talks a lot about himself and then proceeds to fold the next ten hands. Suddenly, Barry realizes it is actually Paul that sat down next to him. Oh well, Paul’s still a donkey.

Barry is playing top notch poker. His opponents are calling when he has the best hand and folding when he’s bluffing. Barry continues this dominance until about 3am when Paul and Barry decide it is time to call it quits. First day action is over and Barry is up around $500 (I think) while Paul is down almost $200.

Paul and Barry decide to wake up early, get breakfast and then play the 10am $60 buyin tourney at Planet Hollywood. Steve Phillips decides to join them also. Barry and Paul are seated at the same table. First hand, Paul is dealt K-Q. he limps into the 50 chip pot along with two other players. Flop comes A-J-5 rainbow (rainbow means none of the suits match). Both players check to Paul who bets 100 to try and win the pot. One player calls. Next card is a Q. Jackpot, Paul has the nut straight, the best possible hand. Player checks and Paul bets 300 into the 350 pot. Player calls. Next card is a 9. Paul still has the nuts, the best possible hand. Player goes all in for 4000 into the 1000 pot. Paul laughs and calls. Player shows a complete bluff and loses to Paul’s dominating hand. “Who goes all in and loses on the very first hand of a tournament?” What an idiot. I hope he enjoyed his 60 seconds of fun. Rest of the tourney is uneventful as Barry busts out rather early. Steve busts out in the middle of the tourney and Paul busts out shortly thereafter. Nobody makes the money.

Mark arrives and joins Paul and Barry as they head over to MGM. Mark sits down at the same table as paul and buys in for $100. Paul buys in for the max $200. Table is crazy and most players have huge stacks of chips that they must have gained from earlier defeated foes who have since been cast out to the lions. 10 minutes into the action and Paul luckily gets an A high flush all in against a K high flush. He scoops the pot and now has $400 in chips. A few hands later Paul is dealt two Qs. He manages to get all of his money in pre-flop against someone with two 10s (no idea why he called Paul’s push with only 10s). Paul now has $800 in chips after just 20 minutes of play. Nice! Barry donks off $200 at another table then decides to join the fun at Paul and Mark’s table. Meanwhile, Mark has been leaking off small amounts of his buy in and is down to about $50. Mark buys in for another $100 and loses some of it back. Mark has around $120 when he and Barry are in a hand against each other. Barry bets all the way thru the hand forcing Mark all in who calls. With 5 cards exposed, barry shows a mere A-10 no pair. Mark shows A-Q no pair. Mark has called Barry with no pair and wins! Mark doubles up and has some breathing chips now.

Back to Barry… Barry is down about $400 for the day, but starts playing top notch poker again. He builds his stack up to about $450 when he and Paul face each other in a pot. Paul now has close to $1300 in chips as he has been streamrolling everyone. Paul has pocket 77s and raises preflop. Barry calls. Flop is J-5-5 rainbow. I think I have conveniently forgotten the details but Paul eventually pushes Barry all in trying to get him to fold a marginal hand. Barry shows trip J-10 and scoops $450 of Paul’s money. There are two nice pictures on Mark’s phone to detail this. First pic shows Paul with a horde of chips. 2nd pic shows many of those chips pushed over to Barry’s stack.

Anyways, our heros play until 1:30am when they head off to meet the other donkeys . At this one table alone, Barry has won almost $800, Paul has won almost $700 and Mark has won over $100. When you factor in the dealer rake and tips, this means the other players at this table lost nearly $2000 while Barry, Paul and Mark were seated. And this was only a $1/$2 no limit table!! Good stuff! Our heros make their way over to Paris only to discover Mike and Coach have gone to bed. Evan is playing Let it Ride. Paul would rather light his money on fire than play Let it Ride at this hour. Our heros go to sleep.

Day 2 is over and Barry is up over a $1000, Paul is up almost $500 and Mark even has extra cash.

Day 3 begins with Paul trying to talk everyone into playing the Ballys 11am $65 tourney. Paul suggests we all invest in each other where the winner will share 50% of his profits amongst the team. Evan, Coach, Mike, Mark, Barry agree to roll with it. Our heros drop like flies, Barry is out first, followed by Evan, who is followed by Mark. Mike lasts well over an hour and busts out. Coach hurts the team by knocking out Paul with K9 vs K5 preflop (thx Coach!). Coach lasts another hour and is in reach of the final table when he too is knocked out. Our team shares its profits of zero dollars with everyone and moves on to more fun. The team, minus Coach, spends the entire afternoon playing Pai Gow poker and downing drinks. Lots of fun, as with the exception of Mark, the team breaks even while getting severely annihilated. One memorable moment is when Barry who is the only down money at the time (about $150) decides to play the bank and beats almost all of us and wins about $200 in one hand.

Later that night, Coach schedules a limo to Spearmint Rhino. There are 9 of us now as three of Coach’s male lovers have joined us (he said they were grad school buddies but you never know with Coach). Ok… maybe they were grad school buddies as these guys were amusing. So we’re heading to SR. SR normally costs $30 per person to get in. We end up paying $45 total for all of us to the limo driver and are given free access to SR. We are escorted to the VIP room, which costs two bottles to use. What a great deal! No cover. Unfort. Each bottle costs $400 so we each pay a $100. Paul has lots of petrone shots and spends a good $240 here counting the shots and bottles. Lots of fun.

Day 3 ends with our heros still doing well at the tables, but much less cash on hand due to SR.

Day 4 . Paul is up early and ready to go. The plan is to play the 10am Planet Hollywood tournament with Barry. Barry is not up yet so Paul and Mark agree to meet Barry down in the poker room to grab breakfast when he is ready. Paul makes a couple sports bets with Mark and heads over to the poker table. He gets seated and buys in for the max $300. He is in the big blind and last to act. Player to his left acts first and limps in for $2. Another player raises to $10, Player on dealer button calls $10. Paul looks down and sees AK. He decides to play it as a draw and evaluate after the flop. He calls $10. Player to his left who originally limped raises to $20. Original raiser folds and player on dealer button calls the extra $10. Pot is now $60 and $10 more for Paul to call. He thinks. Paul must have the best hand. The guy on his left would not make such a small raise with a monster like AAs or KKs. Paul decides to try and win the pot right now. He re-raises to $95. Player on his left eventually folds. Player on the dealer button pauses a long time and then calls. Pot is now about $260 and Paul only has $200 left. He decides he is going to push any flop. Lucky for him flop comes K-8-6. Paul pushes all in. Other player pauses a long time and calls. Paul shows A-K for a pair of Ks with two cards to come. Other player shows 6-9 for a pair of 6s. what???? He called a 3 bet raise of $95 with 6-9. Paul’s hand holds up and he wins the pot. The player next to him on his left almost falls out of his seat claiming he also had A-K. Too bad he played his A-K like a girl!! Ha! Ha! One hand later Barry and Mark walk up to go get breakfast. Paul gets up and leaves. He plays two hands in five minutes and walks away with $340 of extra cash. The table is bitter he is leaving. Oh well.

Breakfast is done and the tourney has begun. Barry gets knocked out in the middle stages. We are down to about 15 people and paul is dealt JJ. Blinds are 300/600 and paul is second in overall chips with about 32000. Under the gun raises to 3000, paul re-raises to 9000. The chip leader calls the 9000. Under the gun folds. About 21000 in the pot and the flop is J 10 9 with two diamonds. Beautiful!! Paul has a set of JJs. Almost the best possible hand. He shoves all in for the rest of his chips. The chip leader pauses and then calls. Chip leader shows A-K no diamonds and no pair. What???? Chip leader is dead to a Q. The turn comes 8 for J-10-9-8 Uh oh!. A 7 will now split the pot. Here’s the river! Wait for it…. aAnd the 5% long shot hits as a Q is rolled over. Paul is knocked out of the tourney. What a bummer as Paul would have had twice as many chips as everyone else. I’m very confident Paul would’ve taken down this tourney…

The rest of the day is spent with the crew playing more pai gow and some craps. Not sure how everyone else did on these table games, but Paul forks out about $100 on pai gow and almost $300 on craps. Though craps is fun, Paul should stick to poker. Barry and Mark call it an early night at midnight. Paul plays some late night poker and does poorly. He manages to bluff all in to someone else’s nuts and loses about $300. Paul plays a little longer and then calls it a night around 2am.

Final day of the trip… Coach and Barry leave early for their flights. Mark has time to kill till 1pm while Evan, Mike and Paul are on the 11:30pm red eye. Mark and Mike try to visit the Eiffel tower only to find it is closed due to high winds. Instead they walk up to the craps table and take less than 15 minutes to each quickly lose $200. Meanwhile, Paul decides to sit down at the 11am $65 Ballys tourney.

First hand of the tourney, Paul is dealt KK. A couple players limp and Paul raises to 300. The big blind moves all in. “you gotta be kidding me?” says Paul. “does this guy have AAs?” says Paul. You can’t ever fold KKs (see previous story with our hero, Chris Gehring). These tournaments play so fast that people can have anything. Paul looks over at his opponent, typical 20-something goofball. Paul decides to call. Goofball shows AA. Pocket AAs hold up and Paul is out of the tourney. As I wrote earlier, “Who goes all in and loses on the very first hand of a tournament?” Paul is an idiot. He walks over to the desk and asks if he is allowed to buy back into the tourney. The answer is yes so Paul sits back down at a different table. Paul is doing well until he decides to bluff all of his chips into a calling station. Paul has absolutely nothing and gets called by someone with a pair of 9s. Horrible play!!! Paul gets up to leave the table and starts to walk away. The dealer tells him to stop, he has one chip left. Really? All he needs is a chip and a chair, right? Paul has one 100 chip and the blinds are 200/400. He is in the small blind so he is forced to put the chip in. Two other players are in the pot. Paul hits a straight on the river and wins the side pot of 300. Paul does not have enough for a big blind, but he is still alive. He folds his next hand. The hand after two people limp in and Paul looks down at 7-6. He decides this is his best shot as most people don’t play cards this low. Maybe he can get lucky? He throws in the 300. One other person calls. Flop comes K-8-6. Paul has a prayer. Turn comes a 9 and the river comes another 6. Paul hits trip 6s and quadruples up. He now has 1200 and can play a while. His chip and a chair is now 12 chips and a chair. Paul asks the dealer if anyone has ever come back and won with just one chip. The head dealer says it did happen a couple years ago, but not recently.

Two hours later, Paul has built his stack up to about 40,000. The blinds are now 1000/2000 and there are about 8 people are left. Only five people make the money. Paul is dealt pocket JJs and raises to 8000. Goofball, who is short stacked, re-raises Paul all in. Easy call. Will Paul get his revenge against the goofball who had pocket aces? Paul flips over his pocket jjs. Goofball flips over pocket 10s. The JJs hold up and Goofball is gone. Sweet revenge for Paul!! Goofball is knocked out! Fast forward several hands… Paul has been pushing around the table and has an average stack with just five people left. He pushes all in with 4-3 of diamonds. Yes, 4-3 of diamonds. Paul was playing aggressively as everyone kept folding trying to creep up the money line. Paul has only one goal. 1st place or nothing. Paul gets called by K-10. Flop comes K-10-5 two diamonds. Opponent has two pair, but Paul has a flush draw. The turn comes a 7 of diamonds. Paul has hit the flush. Paul could have the biggest chip stack if it holds up…Could he turn one chip into one big victory? Is it possible??? Apparently not, as another K comes on the river and Paul’s flush is knocked out by a full house.

Paul plays a little more poker and heads home for his flight. After getting to the airport, he opens his wallet to tally the final figures. Paul arrived in Vegas with $1620 in cash. Paul is leaving Vegas with $1637 in cash. Not a bad result considering he paid cash for everything and had a great time. Final numbers for Paul are as follows:
+$800 on poker, -$400 on other table games, appx $400 spent in cash on food, drinks and SR. Not a bad result and well worth the time.

Our other heros tallied approximately as follows:
- Barry up big on poker, down on table games and other expenses. Estimated expenses for trip were only $400
- Mark was the only one who won money on craps, but took a hit at Pai Gow then gave back his craps money at the end. Mark did well and lost very little at SR. I believe Mark ended up losing $450 while gambling.
- Coach did well on blackjack and at the sports book, but gave his money back on craps, pai Gow and Let it Ride. Apparently Coach only lost a total of $75 gambling.
- Mike had the worst luck. I believe he spent his budget, but had a blast. Craps was his nemesis also.
- Evan… not sure. Evan had big swings with crazy side bets in Pai Gow and Let it Ride. Evan was up and down the whole trip so not sure where he ended up. I do know he had a blast also though.
- Phillips??? Unknown… We did not see Phillips after Saturday night. Hopefully he is not sitting locked up in a Vegas jail!

58 days until Paul returns to Vegas!!! Not that he is counting.