Sunday (4/18/10) - Arrived in LV around 10:30pm direct from Cedar Rapids via Allegiant Air. Quick cab ride to the Flamingo. Only stood in line for 5 minutes to check into my Go Luxury Room. Pretty cool room on the 21st floor facing south towards Bally's & the Bellagio fountains. Enjoyed the view for a couple minutes & decided to wander down to the MGM. The Country Music Awards were just getting done & I wanted to see if I could spot any celebrities. They must have all hopped into their limos right away since I didn't see anyone. Oh well. Maybe some other time. Back to the Flamingo to rest up for tomorrow.

Monday (4/19/10) - Slept in a bit & then headed over to the Mirage. I recognized LasVegasMichael playing in the poker room & introduced myself. We chatted for a bit & then I let him get back to his job. He is very nice & it was a pleasure to finally meet him.

I then headed up to the Tix4Tonight stand at Bill's to get tickets for the Beatles Love Cirque du Soleil show. Tickets were about $50 cheaper, so the 45 minutes waiting in line was worth it. That was my first visit to the Tix4Tonight stand, so I didn't realize that they just sold you a voucher that you had to take to the box office at the Mirage. I then headed back to the Mirage to get my actual tickets. No big deal, the wait was only about 5 minutes at the Mirage box office.

Now that I had that taken care of, I needed to get some food. Stopped in at that food court at O'Shea's for some quick pizza. Not the greatest pizza in the world, but it works for a quick lunch. It is also entertaining to watch the drunks playing beer pong at 11am.

For the afternoon, I wandered around like I always do my first day in Vegas. Just to check everything out again and to see what has changed since my last trip. Nothing too terribly exciting, but for me, it is nice to be able to take a couple hours to kind of clear my mind from work, etc.

Found myself on the south part of the strip around 4pm, so I decided to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe. When I'm by myself, I usually eat at the bar, but for some reason when the hostess asked if I wanted to sit at the bar or a table, I said table. There are very few people in here at 4pm & I'm just surfing the web on my iPhone. I look around after a while & notice a group of people a couple tables down. I think to myself, that guy kind of looks like Flavor Flav. Now I'm not a big rap fan my any stretch of the imagination, but I'm pretty sure I know who Flavor Flav is. Now from my table, all i can see is his head. After a couple minutes, one of the people at his table leaves & he moves over a bit. There it is! That d@mn clock! I text everyone I know & almost all of them tell me to ask him what time it is. I gotta find new friends! By the way, his clock is 10 minutes fast. Not sure why that is. I do not go over & try to get an autograph or picture, since I really don't care. I continued with my meal & headed back to my room to put out a couple fires at work.

Next stop, Mirage again. This time to see the Beatles Love show. Now I have never really wanted to see a Cirque show before, but I had heard that this one is a must see, even if you only kind of enjoy the Beatles. I was completely blown away! The sound was unreal. There was just so much to watch. I would highly recommend this show to anyone.

Now to get my poker on. Needed to warm up & get acclimated to the live scene first. I headed to where I first played live poker last year, the IP. Sat down to the $2/$4 LHE table. Enjoyed several bottles of Coors Light & walked out of there with a $4 profit! Can't beat that. I'm not in it for the money; I'm not nearly good enough yet.

Tuesday (4/20/10) - Got up & headed down to the pool at the Flamingo. I really needed some sun after this winter. Relaxed for a couple hours and got a nice little tan.

Later, I went over to Casino Royale for about 100 of their $1 margaritas (ok maybe not 100, but quite a few). I'm pretty sure there's very little alcohol in those things, because I didn't feel any effect. Well, now that I was in a margarita mood, I headed over to Margaritaville for dinner. Now these are real margaritas & they definitely have plenty of alcohol in them. Had a couple with dinner & got one to go. Walked south & was definitely beginning to feel the effects.

Got to the MGM at around 7pm with the intent on playing the $0.50/$1 NLHE. They only had an interest list at this time, so I headed over to Zuri, the little lounge/bar in the middle of the casino. Ordered a Grey Goose martini, my favorite. An hour or so later, and two martinis put away, I head back to the poker room. The interest list was almost full & I put my name in. They announce this as the "beginner" game, which I find kind of funny (in this state of inebriation, I find almost everything funny): "Ryan R, your seat at the $0.50/$1 no-limit beginners table is ready." All I can say about this game is that it was easy and fun. It was unbelievable how easy it was to read some people. I continued to get more & more drunk on Captain Morgan & Cokes. Three ladies in their early 20s sat down at some point in the night. They decided to play props at the $0.50/$1 NLHE game! They were real degenerates! A good time was had by all. At one point, one of their friends came over & said they saw Matthew McConaughey playing craps. They were all giddy. Unless he was over there wearing pink jeans leaning against a wall saying "That's what I love about Vegas, I get older & the chicks playing poker stay the same age", I could care less. Somehow it was now 3:30am & I look down at $150. I had tripled my buyin! All I had done is played solid poker & played position. Even in my drunken state I played really well. This built my confidence tremendously.

Wednesday (4/21/10) - Slept in until around 11 & got some quick pizza at O'Shea's again. Headed over to the Aria and registered for their 1pm tournament. Wandered around the City Center. This place is big & boring. I was not impressed. Just more stores that I can't afford. Aria's casino was nice. Just nice. Seemed to be really dark in there. Not sure why they couldn't turn a couple lights on. The poker room was pretty cool. I love the chairs. Very comfortable. They got 87 runners for this tournament. That kind of surprised them, since they had to call in a couple extra dealers. You could tell which dealers were called in since they didn't seem like they wanted to be there. They had been getting in the 40's before. I lasted a couple hours and busted out 44th, pretty much card dead the whole time.

Walked up to Le Burger Brasserie (between Bally's & Paris) for dinner. I ate there last time I was in Vegas & I will continue to eat there every chance I get, just for the scenery. If you are a guy & have a pulse, you know what I mean. Oh, and the food is good, too.

Headed back to the MGM for more $0.50/$1 NLHE action. Nothing really spectacular this session. Took some bad beats & worked my stack back up to $46 at midnight after three hours. Most people were still pretty easy to read, I just didn't get a lot of opportunities to take advantage of it this time.

Thursday (4/22/10) - Got up & headed over to Planet Dailies in Planet Hollywood for breakfast. This is a pretty nice place for breakfast. Food & service was very good. Went back to the Mirage & registered for their 11am tournament. Yet another tournament where I can't get any cards. 36 runners & I busted out 19th. Nice little tournament & very well run. I liked the room & when I get even more confident in my NLHE game, I will definitely play cash games here (and probably donate to LasVegasMichael's kids' college funds).

Pretty uneventful afternoon. I decided to try out the Hash House at the IP, after hearing all of the rave reviews. I got some sort of huge burger stuffed with mashed potatoes, among other things. It was awesome. I knew I would never be able to finish it, but I gave it all I had. I got 3/4 if it down. I definitely recommend this place.

I had planned on playing at O'Shea's tonight, but it was really cold and they had the doors closed. The only reason I like it is when the doors are open & you can really enjoy the scenery. So, once again I find myself heading to the MGM. Sat down at a $0.50/$1 NLHE table after about a 45 minute wait. Tonight we see a D-Bag who was Hollywooding on every hand. If someone bet before him, he would have to sit there & act like he couldn't believe they did that. Then he would stare you down & try to get information out of you. And he played about 80% of the hands. I would say we were getting around 12-15 hands an hour because of this guy. You could tell the dealers were annoyed. Someone finally called the clock on him. It wouldn't have been too long before I did. Now I understand that some decisions are hard to make & can take some extra time, but taking 3 minutes to call a $5 bet on every other hand at a $0.50/$1 game? Come on. That's a bit much. I didn't find many opportunities this night either. I cashed out with a $1 profit after about 3 hours. I can see why dealers may not like this game. With the $0.50 pieces out there, they got a lot of tips with these (or sometimes no tips from the people who obviously have never played live before). I decided before I sat down at this game a couple days ago that I was going to tip the dealers well to try to make up for some of the others. I tipped $2-$4 depending on the pot, which was way more than anyone else, and you could tell they appreciated it. Like I said before, I'm not in it for the money yet; just trying to get some experience and have a good time.

Friday (4/23/10) - Slept in until checkout and headed to the airport to catch my flight back to Cedar Rapids, and back to reality. Can't wait until this fall. I'm already planning my next trip! After getting my NLHE cash game feet wet at the $0.50/$1 tables, I feel a lot more confident in my abilities. I will be stepping it up to the $1/$2 tables next time. I can't wait!