Back in January, my parents offered to take our children (10 and 6) to their NYC apartment over the kids spring break. I said "great!" and asked if they minded if I planned a trip with my wife Sue. They thought it was fine, and after running it past my wife, I booked our flights using miles to where else?

I booked the Bellagio, wanting to stay at a nice place, center strip, with easy access to the major points of interest to me, which means as far as Wynn to the north, and MGM/Mandalay Bay to the South. I also pre-booked all of our dinners, and Spa appointments for my wife and a massage for me.

I'll mix in the poker, as well as the entertainment, broken down by each day;

Wednesday March 26th

Our flight leaves Newark at 4:15pm. Talk about being ineffective at work. All I can do to not check the Vegas weather every 15 minutes, see what VegasRex.com has to say and check out every poker blog (PokerGrump...aka Rakewell, and TheVegasYear are among my favorites). Finally, we leave for the airport, and miracle of all, the flight is on time, we board, get our bags in the overheads and settle in for the 5 hour 30 minute journey. Charged iPod-check, bevy of 2+2 books-check, sushi lunch to avoid Continental's mystery meat disaster luch-check SWEET, and we're off. We land perfectly on time, 7:15 pm local time, get to the cab line, breeze through that and are at the check-in at the B by 7:45. I "expertly" execute the $20 maneuver, and we are upgraded to a lakeview room on the 21st floor. Things are looking up already!

We head down to Fix at 8:30 for our 9:00 reservations, and they shoo us away until 9:00, so we head to the bar by the sports book, put a $100 in a video poker machine and get a drink from the bar. 20 minutes later, we cash out for $150. Sweet, we'll pay for the appetizers at Fix...

I don't know why I picked Fix, I guess I thought it would be good to just graze, as that's late for us to eat a big dinner. Service there is indifferent at best, and while some of the food was tasy, we ordered waaayy too much. After dinner, we were tired, and opted to head up to the room for some errr....sexy time!

Thursday March 27th

We awoke early trying to not get too stuck on Pacific time least our return home was horribly jet laggy. Headed down to the Bellagio Cafe, had a nice breakfast, walk around the hotel to get the lay of the land, walk around outside for a bit, then head back to the room, change into workout clothes and head to the spa. We both worked out, then head to the men's and women's areas respectively to shower and change for our massages. My wife agreed to go to Vegas despite not really being a gambler as long as she could have access to a nice spa. Little did she know my nefarious plan to get her hooked on poker to make my life (err, gambling life) easier. I'm sinister...sweet but sinister...

After the spa, we head head back to the room and change for our lunch reservations at Wynn Country Club with a friend of my sister's (and 2/5-5/10nl player). Lunch was terrific sitting on the balcony watching the groups come in and putt. After lunch, we walked to the Venetian and Sue signed up for the 4/8 limit game, and I for the 1/3 nl game. Now, as I said, I planned to get Sue to play poker, and since she's pretty bright, and grew up playing cards (mostly pepper and such with her family), i knew she'd be fine at limit. Plus, on the way out, I lent her Ed Miller's "Getting Started at Hold'em". Little did I know I should have been re-reading it too (errr...foreshadowing here...). Anyway, I sat down at a pretty passive 1/3 game with some locals (notably "Ed") a nice 50ish guy with an English/Scottish accent and a few people in town on conferences, or to watch the second round of the NCAA's. Sadly, my first session was horrid in that I was completely card dead, and if I did pick up a hand, it was easily dominated post flop. I should also say that while I've been playing micro NL online, my post-flop game is still fairly poor, and I've much more experience at limit than no limit. I end up -$136 after ~ 2 hours or so, having and my wife had picked up after losing ~$90. But, she had fun, and felt she played well, despite losing. She was pretty nervous, but felt she understood the concept of starting hands, pot odds etc well enough. Plus, she figured she could play the dumb (hot in my opinion) blond and slowplay monsters for solid profit if the cards came. They didn't, but she had fun anyway.

Back to the B for some sexy time, get ready for dinner, and we're back on the strip Tao for our reservations at 7:30. Dinner was great, lobster wontons, Chef's special sushi roll, filet and sea bass. Yum. Great service too, highly recommended. After dinner, we head over to the TI, and we play some craps. We drop $100 at the craps table, but wind up having drinks, so it was like an expensive bar with entertainment :-)

We then find the poker room, and I convince Sue to register for the 10pm tourny. Sue wound up going out in 14th of 45, and won our last longer bet, as I held her bag after going out in 20th. totally card dead run continues...

Next Installment,: How to play like a complete donkey at NL....coming soon