Flew out Thursday evening on Southwest, not a bad flight. Played some "intense" $1/$3 LHE at the Excalibur that night with my brother, where we ended up down about $40 and 15 drinks apiece in around 5 hours. The Ex is not a bad room, and had fairly accomodating staff. The dealers were all fine (nothing sticks out in my mind, unless you want to blame them for horrid bad beats on the river).

Highlight of the trip did come that night at the Ex, however, when a wonderfully mulleted (complete with feathered hair in the front) player with about $50, cheap sunglasses, needle tracks and bad tattoos sat at the table until going broke. I've never seen (nor heard) of anyone trying to intimidate a $1/$3 limit game before, but this guy gave it his best. He was a ton of fun for everyone, and we were all sorry to see him go. Bottom line, the Excalibur is great place to play cheaply, drink a lot (waitresses by every 10 to 15 most of the night), and still have a very good chance at winning a few bucks.

My next night, I played $2/$4 LHE at the Imperial Palace. Again had a good table, with a bunch of friendly players. The comepetition was again wild (as expected), with an amazing amount of J 4 offsuit suck outs for the entire table. A player that asked 20 questions to everyone about what to do was the recipient of a lot of good fortune, which was great. After all, that is the stuff that encourages new players.

Anyway, the IP is a very small "room" with attentive staff. Friendly, and happy to get you into their excellent comp system (I believe it was $3/hr). The NL game there looked like a great one, as there were several folks looking to throw a few hundred around the table. Still kicking myself for not getting involved...

Finally, played a Saturday tournament at the Sahara. As I recall, there were 106 entries for $42 with over half of those folks adding on $20 (2000 chips for the $42, another 1500 chips for the add on). Each table was, unfortunately, 11 handed. While the blinds moved every 20 minutes (started at 25/25, went to 25/50, 50/100, etc.), the lack of shufflers and general disorganization going on made it seem like the blinds moved every 10. While I got broke around 30th (tournament paid the top 11), the real problems with the tournament occurred after that. In short, it culminated with players yelling at the staff at the top of their lungs and the management doing nothing to really resolve the situation (everyone did calm down eventually). Despite the problems, I think I will return to the Sahara to play another tourny (folks were happy to go all in with pocket 5's in early position without a short stack).

All in all, it was a pretty relaxing trip.