I went to Vegas to get married and the day before we left I caught a wicked sinus infection that lasted the whole week. I spent the first 2 days in bed resting and medicating myself to be well enough for the wedding, and finally ventured out to play some poker on day 4 of the week long trip. Despite feeling so awful that I actually fell asleep at the tables twice, I managed to make an easy profit.

Before the trip, I did a lot of research here and at other sites on where the soft rooms were. I had planned to make my way down to Excalibur and MGM, but never made it out that far. We stayed at Bill's so most of my play was centered around that location.

Here are the rooms I did play at:

Bally's: 1-2NL. Very loose action, almost maniac levels. I played ABC and doubled up in about and hour, but then dumped it all when my AA went up against a rivered flush draw. I saw this type of loss several times and was amazed at the poor level of play and high level of luck on the average players. Result -200

Bill's: .50-1 NL. I tried this room out twice and was very disappointed in the play. Again, it was the home of the rivered flush/straight and all ins happened every 4th hand or so. I managed to break even here. One morning there was a know it all playing who liked to read everyone's hands aloud. The problem was he was only right 1 time the whole morning. He was extremely obnoxious and when he finally left (after busting for the second time) the whole table sighed in relief. Result 0

Bill's Tournament: Not much to say here really. The structure is so fast that if you don't push your mediocre hands you will go broke on the blinds. 15 players and I finished 5th.
Result -30

Imperial Palace: This one was at the top of my list of fish ponds. Sadly, I called on 2 different days inquiring about a 1-2 and was told there was an interest list and it should be running in about 30 min. After walking down there on both days, I find the list was 2 people and no imminent game in sight. The staff was very rude and didn't seem too concerned about getting games going. I waited around 30 min one day before deciding to move along.

Harrah's 1-2: Once I found this room, I never played anywhere else. Of course, finding the room was a chore since it is tucked away in the back and signage is not adequate. I found the floor staff to be very helpful and the dealers were very friendly. Talk about a fish tank. Wow. The first day I played here, I was really too sick to be playing but wanted to get out of the room for a while. I sat down to what looked like a table of locals at first, so I locked my game down tight and watched for about an hour. What I mistook for locals were actually tourists that had no idea at all what they were doing. Once I got the rhythm of the game down, it was easy to take down $550 in profit in 3 hours. The second day I went here was exactly the same. I played for 3 hours, made another $500, and then took a break to grab some dinner and came back for the evening shift. This was a harder game, but not by much. There were 2 guys at the table who knew what they were doing, and the rest were fish. I ran some hands into the 2 good guys and dropped back a little before finishing that session even.
Result +1150

Sahara BJ: My wife likes blackjack, so we went down to the Sahara and had a great time playing $1 BJ with some friends. I played $5 to get rated and turned my initial 200 into 450. The second time we went I made another 100.
Result +350

All in all it was a good trip money-wise, but I wish I had been able to enjoy it more. I'm already looking forward to the next trip later this year.