It’s Friday before the Super Bowl and we are caravanning across the Great Basin north to south. Not a lot between Sun Valley, ID and Sin City. After Twin Falls the largest town is Ely. Set the cruise control at eighty and kicked back to XM radio bouncing between ESPN and the Country Music my passenger likes. The kind that makes you cry and drink beer. Not my way to get up for Vegas, but whatever works!

We have a little home-game club and have been playing together for about six years now. We get two pretty full tables every Wednesday and a one table game a couple of other times a week. We play a lot in the northern Nevada town of Jackpot at Cactus Pete's. We take road trips from time to time, usually to a Tourney somewhere or to Mecca. This time we got six of us to a long Super Bowl Las Vegas weekend.

Our crew includes myself, son Kyle and five others from our poker club. We hit our destination-The Cold Coast- at about 4 o’clock local time. I play cell phone tag with the rest or our crew. I talk Kyle, Michelle and Gary into joining me at the Cortez Room for King Crab legs and Prime Rib. The others are to hyped up to eat and head right to the Venetian. I like the Cortez Room, it’s old school Vegas. You almost expect to see Sinatra and Joey Bishop at the next table. It hasn’t changed in twenty years and that’s just fine with me. I like consistency. My quests really enjoy the meal and we gobbled down about ten pounds of crableg.

By the way, the Gold Coast rooms are just fine. They were clean and quiet and had a cool little shower with a window that opens. One piece fiberglass, even the ceiling, looked like it would be more at home on a cruise ship. I have stayed here before during the WSOP so I knew it would work out OK. Sixty bucks a weekend night is not bad. Kyle and I are moving to the Orleans on Sunday to take advantage of two free nights I received as an internet offer.

So off we go to meet our friends at the V. Everyone signed up for 1-2NL as they had seats open and no real list. I want to try my hand at Omaha 8B but the list is long so it will wait till tomorrow.
My table was good. Most weren’t skilled players except Layla McCarter, the world’s number one women’s Jr Welterweight and her trainer were at the table. I’ve played with them before, and they both play well. They were the only locals at the table. Layla was just not hitting cards as well as she hits opponents chins and left early. I don’t want to head for the cash machine the first night in town, so I probably folded a couple of winners. I played cautiously and managed a $312 dollar win .All but two of our party finished in the black, not bad for our first night in town.. I called it a night at about 2:30 and headed to the parking lot, where I noticed a section of the lot label VIP poker only…I made a mental note to ask about this tomorrow.
The next morning it’s off to the MGM to play in the noon tourney. That is all but Gary, who can’t be found. He wasn’t answering his text messages. We knew that the Michele was going shopping so maybe he went with her. So we had four of us enter the tournament. It was a well run event, but luck was not with me. I was in with K’s against Q’s and lost the race. Kevin was the only one that cashed and he just got his entry back plus enough for a hot dog.
We finally get a text back from Gary, It seems, went down to Pawn Stars. Unbeknown to us he has a twenty dollar bill that he thinks was used as ransom money in the Lindberg kidnapping case. This picks up the interest of the producer and they want to film it, but the “expert”, that guy from the museum in the funny hat, isn’t around to verify it and they can’t get a crew to Monday. They never did get the crew on time but they are still interested so they might fly Gary back for another go at it if the bill checks out. Time will tell.

We all again converge on the Venetian for another session. I put my name on the list for 4-8 Omaha, but the list is long so I sit in a 1-2 table. I’m doing ok, up about a buck and a half when my name comes up for Omaha. When I get to my table I notice that I’m the youngest player at 66 years old. This could be a rough ride. The only hope I have is to only play the starting hands my book said to play. This probably saved me from utter disaster. A little voice in my head kept saying “ 8”B is a game of scoops and flushes” which I remembered from the book. I flopped quads twice and scooped with them once, which kept me in the game. The old guy next to me helped me out a bit as I would let him peek my hand when he wasn’t in the hand and he would tell me when the hand was over if I played it badly. On one hand he told me that I just folded the nuts that I missed the fact that I had broadway it was time to go. I finished the night up eleven dollars, though, and learned that’s easier to win at Omaha in my local home game than with the old farts at the V.
So there you have it, our first full day in Sin City…

So it’s up the next morning and Kyle and I decide to go to the Venetian and do the Deep Stack noon event. It’s a hike from the V poker room to the tournament area at the Palazzo. I think they are remodeling the poker room at the V to accommodate larger tournaments. The Venetian seems to take poker more seriously than most casinos do.. I don’t get the feeling that we are bastard stepchildren that permeates most casinos. Why some casino’s snub their noses at a steady profit is beyond me. I guess that they make so much on the slots that the poker room rake is chicken feed to them. The Venetian seems to be an exception to this rule and we were treated very well.
I don’t know if it’s my Karma or what but if there is one obnoxious drunk in a tournament he ends up sitting next to me. Today it was some loud cracker from N. Carolina. He was on my right and making these off the wall bets. Impossible to read this guy and he knew just enough about the game to be dangerous. I just couldn’t get any good trap hands and couldn’t concentrate. This clown must have been spending big bucks in the place as the floor tolerated his behavior. I only lasted till the forth level and was not a happy camper. I went over to a Godzilla slot machine and played that while Kyle finished the tourney.
The Godzilla slot machine is a marvel of twenty-first century technology. This thing has multiple levels, surround sound, and it shakes and quakes. I was having a sixties acid flashback and was easily amused for over an hour for twenty bucks. Kyle was still in the tourney so I headed back to the V. I cashed in my players points for a little food at the Lux Café and spent a couple of hours people watching before the rest of our crew showed up. The people you see wandering around Las Vegas casinos never cease to amaze me. I always wonder how many of them even survive in the real world. I get mesmerized by this display of humanity and can watch for hours. Kyle lasts till the second break, goes in with Queens and lost the race to A,K. So much for taking sown a LV tourney, maybe next time.

Everyone shows up and we put our names on the 1-2 list. Dick gets called first and is seated at table 29 or maybe 30 toward the rear of the room.. They then call for a new table and five of us all get sent to table 32. We really didn’t come to LV to sit in our home game but we decided to let it stand for awhile. We thought we could help the Michele and Gary who have been losing. The Michele is just too timid and a calling station and Gary is too loose and plays hunches. We told the table that we all knew each other and played in the same home game in Idaho. They knew something was up anyway by the way we publically berated each other in a way you wouldn’t do with strangers unless you wanted an ass kicking.
Then the best hand of the night happened. Kyle called a twelve dollar pre-flop raise with 5,6 off as did three others. The flop came 3,4,7 with two diamonds. Kyle was first act and bet forty bucks to end it right there and take the others off any flush draw. It didn’t work, villain to his left had two pair, 3’s and 4’s and re-raised. The next player flopped a set of 7’s and went all in. The other had two diamonds and called the all in. Kyle took a deep breath, and pushed. His straight held up and he scooped the largest pot any of us had all weekend, a little over a grand and felted two players in the process.
All of a sudden there is a large commotion at Dick’s table. Everybody is standing up and there is lots of screaming and some cursing. Not the kind of stuff that is game related but more panicky. It seems that when Dick raised this guy he went into some kind of an epileptic fit. Nothing takes one off his game more than having someone in convulsions on the table in front of you. The guy came to about the time they were loading him on the gurney and was screaming loudly as he exited the room. Of course, poker players being the kind souls they are, started cracking jokes. Things like “They should change the name of this place to Seizers Palace”, were popping up everywhere. I had enough excitement for one night and headed back to the parking lot, smoked a joint to relax and drove the strip down to West. Trop and back to the Orleans, tomorrow is the Super Bowl and I need some sleep.
Kyle had a bunch of his college buddies in town for the game. They come every year and are about fifty strong, All engineers that graduated from Boise State. Not the most exciting crowd to walk the face of the earth but they had rented half a sports bar about ten miles out in suburbia and I was offered to tag along. It had to be better than on overcrowded sports book so I went along. I had a good time, ogled a few younger women, ate pizza and drank beer. I bet $100 on the Pats and under which didn’t work out. We had dinner at the Prime Rib Shack in the Orleans, played a little 1-2, with the locals at the Orleans and called it an early night
We dick around most of the next day checking out Pawn Stars and Gamblers Suppy where we get a few needed items for the home game. Dick actually runs into Mitt Romney at the Bellagio fountain. He sees guys in suits with mini cams and microphones all around him and is a little paranoid until he sees Romney pop out of a limo. He was giving the people at the fountain a photo op. John passes on the photo and goes to the Bellagio for an afternoon session. After supper we head to the MGM for our last night in town.
Before I get on about our MGM experience let me say a word about the Orleans. This is a Boyd hotel, founded by Sam Boyd, another colorful character of Vegas past. The Silverbowl is named after him. The Silverbowl hosted some of the best Grateful Dead Shows of the nineties. I remember Garcia playing “Standing on the Moon” as the real moon rose above the stadium on a hot June night. Anyway, I think someone said they’re still a privately held company. But “Old School” Las Vegas. I just like the feel of the place and get to play a little “holdem” with the locals. Last trip I was even propositioned by a rather hot black practitioner of the world’s oldest profession. I asked her why the Orleans and not Wynn, Venetian etc. She said she preferred the old farts,” They all want a senior discount but they always pay up and don’t wear me out.” Ya learn something new every day.

The Orleans has good low fee tourneys and a good place to take a country cousin for a little low stakes 1-2 limit. No Gucci at the Orleans, more Jack Daniels than Padrone. Feel right at home in your flannel shirt and Cardhart’s plus they have a great burger joint, with a name that sounds like a strip club, seventy feet away from the tables. They do spread 8B but the game is filled with really old retired guys who patiently wait for the occasional tourist to sit down, definitely shark infested waters. The 1-2NL game is like a home game with a dealer and a rake. They do have some gimmick pots like a Royale and rake for that. I don’t find that all that offensive and a lot of rooms that have a mostly local crowd do it. It gets the tourists and out of towners to chip in a little. I digress, back to our last day at the MGM.

First of all the interior lights on the town car get stuck on. I’m in the MGM lot and afraid to leave the car as the battery will be dead when I come back. I ask the security guard if he knows, he doesn’t. After reading the manual and not finding it I pull the fuse. I have to piss like a race horse—all that free Fiji Water at the V. Not a great start. ( It turns out that the find your car button had locked it on.) So I make my way the rest room in the knick of time and then the long hike to the poker room Later the dealer tells me just to park at the Trop and wake the walkway, it’s shorter. Now I find this out, after my bladder went to Devcon-Five.
The MGM poker room-let’s say- it’s not the Venetian, Aria, or Wynn. We went there because one of our club members said the game was loose and a lot of foreign and young players. We did the tournament there on our first day but didn’t stay after that. I wanted to play Omaha but one look at the table told me otherwise. They are playing Omaha High looked like 4-8. Just the opposite texture of the game at the V, These were all young, and they looked like a cross between internet players and video game geeks. They seemed to all know each other, more like a home game. The most interesting thing to me was the mountains of dollar player checks they had in front of each won. The chip leader had this architectural masterpiece that resembled the Empire State Building, complete with a tower of $25 checks and a little parasol on top, maybe fifteen hundred bucks in one’s. All were making some kind of statement with their chip stacks, from pyramids to guard towers, solid to fragile, all forms represented. Now this was a 4-8 game out of a Fellini movie and I passed. I certainly didn’t want to break up a Star Trek convention. Later on the floor manager told me they buy-in for those large amounts to discourage tourists from joining the game. Go Figure!

So off I go to the 1-2 NL game. My friends were right, my set of villains were from all over the world and two young Americans. Poker heaven. Patience pays off in these settings and if you get a little lucky and a couple of trap hands you can usually make out really well. I was salivating like Pavlov’s dog when the bell rang. It’s POKER time-deal me in!

And wouldn’t you know it. Card Dead, 7.3, 5,9, 8,3…..hand after hand of pure sh**! When I would get paint and come in, all low cards would flop,. When I got connectors all paint flopped. Add that to the noise from the Disco and the fan blowing cold air on the back of my neck and I could see it wasn’t going to be my night. The only hands I won were small pots when I had position. I folded lots of hands on the flop. My buddies were doing better at the other tables so I decided to stick it out. Kevin was up a couple of hundred, Kyle was making a comeback on the 2-5 table and Dick was down a little also. Here I was at a perfect table and not getting cards. At about 2AM I at started to get a few decent hands and got back all but fifty bucks before calling it a night at 2:30.

So it’s back to the Orleans and a good night sleep before we travel. I decide to not fool with the fuse until home and I thank the Ford Motor Company for using a separate fuse for the interior lights. So that’s about the end of my story. All in all we had a real good time. My Poker cash game winnings covered almost all my tournament entry fees and expenses; everything but the gas for the ride down and back. We are already in the early planning stages for our next trip which will be June 18th to 21st .