In honor of the big movie premier this past weekend, Mike and I ventured into Gotham's seedy underground to face the psychotic creatures of the night. Two dark knights facing the crazy and the insane. In the background, erie, ominous bone chilling music was playing:

"Mamma mia, here I go again
My my, how can I resist you
Mamma mis, does it show again
My my, just how much I missed you. "

I shreik in terror whenever I hear that.

ANYWAY, our latest adventure starts at the Paris hotel and casino at 8:30pm on Monday night. They have one live game and 2 tournament tables going. We get in on the start of a second live game, 1 - 2 no-limit hold'em. The Paris has a very unique quirk, they stay dark until 5pm. Then open the room. Meaning there are no games until the evening. They have one shift, swing.

Mike and I were the only locals in the game. I mentioned this and he said, "What local would come here?" I agree. Its gotta be hit or miss as to whether you find a game here. On top of strange hours, a dealer actually showed a winning hand to the losing player and said, "He checked this?!" I was speechless. I made $12 dollars and got out as soon as possible.

The next location we went to was the sister property, Bally's. These two are conected. Paris and Bally's show each others waiting lists, the dealers work in both rooms, when one has a game go down the players are sent to the other room. Its a strange arrangement. But it does lead to a lot of action in Bally's poker room. It was 9:15 on Monday night and they had 6 games going. Mike and I sat down in a 1-2 nl game. The action was good. It was mostly tourists. I made $150 dollars. We left at around 10:40 and headed north on the strip.

The next Harrah's property we went to was, Flamingo. This is a me too room with 11 tables. We sat in a 2-4 game and played for almost 20 minutes. It was an OK game in a nondescript room.
I won $2 dollars.

The Flamingo brings out the underlying theme of the evening. Mike and I felt that we had to cover these properties, all Harrah's, to complete seeing all poker rooms in Vegas. To give you an idea of our attitude, it was like that science class you had to take in college to graduate. "I'm a business major, what do I need chemistry (spelling) for?"

So we went on to see a new Harrah's poker room. This one, Harrahs.This room at least had a horse game going, 4-8 limit. We played the game for an hour, I won $8. The room is enclosed with 12 tables. Its across from the sports book and near the deli. The dealers were OK, the action in this game was bad, it was all locals. I'm sure the no-limits were better.

I try to come up with something nice about each of the rooms we see but these four rooms were very homogeneous and kind of boring. It seems that if you go to one or another you won't be able to tell the difference except for the name on the chips.

At 12:30 am Mike and I went to the Teahouse, the coffee shop at the IP, to have dinner. I had chicken parmagian, pretty good. It was a nice meal paid by Mike's comps. The IP gives you $2 per hour. Pretty great!

This brings us to the IP poker room. I have to admit I really like it. Its a small room right next to the blackjack pit. They bring out a plate of cookies for the players on each shift. They have a wheel to spin for high hands. They run our mixed game on Sunday nights. You all know how gratious they were for the last AVP meet. When you go into that room you feel they want your business. For example, we were 2nd and 3rd on the list so Mike talked them into letting us play heads up Badusi and double flop Omaha. Between us we lost $122 in one hour.

The IP was the highlight of the trip. It was a fun trip even with 4 mediocre rooms. We are finding it harder to go to "new" rooms that are exciting so we're hitting the rooms that are left. I think you would like the IP and the action at Bally's.

Good Luck,

SouthPoint Perry