Bally the Beautiful!!!!

So our trip to Las Vegas was a blast! To say the least, most everybody made money on the trip. Our group consisted of quite a few of us, mainly Big O regulars and a few relatives: Rocky, Melissa, Clara, Mondo, Rico, Henry, Carol, Toby, Justin, Jim, Stacy, Stacy's mother and father, Toby's father, and last but hopefully not least, myself. That's right, 15 of us. I am unable to tell you the exact amount of cash people went positive or negative but I can give a vague and personal account for how I did and some others. First off, five of us got there on Monday(Rico, Justin, Toby,Toby's father, and me), all the others listed above got there a day before. By the time all five of us had made our way into Vegas people were deep into the tables at the MGM and Paris. My plane trip was a little more enjoyable with the help of Tanqueray. Those babies are 4 bucks a pop on the plane, not too too bad but in reality, it cost them maybe 1 buck a piece. Finally arriving in Vegas at about 5 o'clock on Monday, I had already racked up about 60 dollars worth of alcohol between the plane from Austin to Dallas, at the ABIA airport, and at the Dallas Love Field Bar. Oh well, supposed to be a fun trip right! However, when arriving in Vegas, both Henry and Rico picked me up in a rental. After dropping Henry off, the first thing me and Rico did was ordering up a few burgers from McDonald's. Then, we checked into the beautiful 2 star Imperial Palace. It actually wasn't to bad accept for our 4 mile hike to our room and the really slutty looking cocktail waitresses. Slutty meaning older looking with a pair the size of a couple Hindenburg's. Here's how it all went down............




So here's a casino chip from the places where most of our time was spent, accept, I am missing 2 from both El Cortez and Planet Hollywood.

(All the reviews are in order from the picture to the left top to bottom)

Luxor: This is where Henry and Carol stayed, I have to admit, the inside is pretty damn cool. However, the game I played most was 50 dollar max buyin no limit holdem game. As soon as you post a blind for 1 dollar you can buy in for another 50 so the most you can start out with is really 99 dollars. Not bad, strange but oh well. I did pretty well, probly made 100 after playing for around 4-5 hours.

MGM Grand: Largest casino in the world, huge building with over 5,000 rooms. In my opinion, the nicest building off the strip. Mondo and Clara stayed here I'm pretty sure. Personally, I got crushed with losing over 400 in the pokerroom(thanks to Mondo and Toby) and about 300 in blackjack, thats called getting an ass whippin. So to ease the pain, I went and looked at the Lions inside the MGM casino. They were really tame and ate from the trainers hands, unreal! The animals are inside of a glass dome in a section of MGM.

Bally's: Oh baby baby!! My favorite only because it put me back up for the entire trip just before I headed off to the airport to depart for Austin. This is also where Justin and Toby stayed and where I stayed the last night. I was even on the entire trip, I'm talking dead even, had 600 dollars in my pocket. I told Justin that its not everyday I get to come play poker in the hottest city in the world for holdem. We had about 5 hours till we left so I decided to buy in for a hundred bucks into their 200 dollar max buyin 1/2 game. The guys at the table told me the guy who left just before me cashed in over 15 hundred dollars. Yeah 15 not 5, wow!! I was hoping the seat was still hot. After 2 hours, I had a chip stack of 625 dollars. I profited 525 in 2 hours of play, so I guess the seat was still hot. This put me back up 600 dollars for the trip because I let Justin borrow some because he was having a rough time in Vegas. He's usually lucky, lucky, lucky btw....... but anyway, I picked up a t-shirt that says Bally's Las Vegas on it. Bally's is attached to Paris for those of you who didn't know.

Paris: This is where Jim, Stacy, and Stacy's Parents stayed. Really neat place! However, its where I almost had a heart attack....twice!!!! Freakin roulette(thats why theres a picture of a roulette table chip from Paris in the pic). Thanks to Rocky, everybody started this system that almost killed me. Here's his philosophy layed out right here: If a color has hit 4 times in a row, then on the 5th spin, bet the other color, starting with a minimum bet. So on the 5th spin put out 10 bucks(ten is the minimum) either on red or black...the one that hasn't hit in 4 spins. If it misses again for the 5th time, double your money on the 6th spin to 20 dollars. If it misses a 6th time, then you have to put out 40 dollars, when you hit you only get all the money you put in plus an additional 10 dollars. Here's a nightmare that really happened 3 times...twice at Paris and once at Planet Hollywood.



I'm not exact, the colors could be switched but here's how it went down to me and carol 2 times.

1st spin: Black
2nd spin: Black
3rd spin: Black
4th spin: Black
5th spin: (time to put out $10 bet on RED) Black
6th spin: (time to put out $20 bet on RED) Black
7th spin: (time to put out $40 bet on RED) Black
8th spin: (time to put out $80 bet on RED) Black
9th spin: (time to put out $160 bet on RED) Black
10th spin: (time to put out $320 bet on RED) finally......RED


After all that.........we had $630 dollars of our own money into the table until we hit on the 10th spin. We got all our money back plus 10. Not worth it for 10 bucks. I think I'm done with that system after watching one table run up 11 spins of the same color until finally hitting the other color on the 12th spin. I would have been broke, thank God I wasn't sitting at that table. Instead I was playing Pai Gow poker with Toby where I played off the same 50 bucks for an hour not winning but one hand(its because I pushed most of the other hands)...I won't get into detail about the game but its a game where you could just sit and get drunk.

Imperial Palace: Wow, I'll tell you what, really old casino. But, there were still people all throughout that place in all hours of the night. Overall, I spent the least amount of time in their casino even though I stayed there for 2 nights, thanks to Rico btw. Overall, I was up about 200 in there from Blackjack alone. other than that, didn't play 2 much. However, the worse thing about it, the walk to our room. Here were the directions from the lady at the front desk.

Go down the casino floor until you reach the first set of elevators. Take those elevators up to the second floor, turn right, go down the hallway until you get to another set of elevators, take those elevators down until you get to the base floor, once the elevator door opens, turn right into the hallway.....walk down that hallway until you reach your first cross way....make that right go down to the end of the hall and your room is the last door on the left.......ask Rico...I SWEAR!!


El Cortez and Planet Hollywood were places that we also visited, I just forgot to get chips from both.

El Cortez: The old part of Las Vegas...Rico, Jim, and I went and had breakfast over there!! UNBELIEVABLE breakfast. I had steak and eggs, so did Rico..Jim missed out. We played some craps over there....mimimum 3 dollar table..crazy! We had a little fun, I made 32 bucks profit from that craps table. Paid for breakfast anyway.

Planet Hollywood: By far the nicest pokerroom I had seen out of the places we visited. Comfortable seats with a very nice look. The play was relatively good and the people were nice. In fact, come to think of it, I didn't run into bad play anywhere in Vegas, hmmm, weird.Here's the pokerroom at a glimpse......

It was nice but one thing that sucked is that I missed "The Grinder"..Michael Mizrachi. I missed him by 3 minutes in the PH pokerroom. Rico had to go to the airport and was finishing up a tournament. My stuff was in his car and he was in a hurry so I had to go get all my crap. But anyway, Rocky was still in the tournament and was being watched by Mizrachi. Pretty cool.....I was the only one who missed him, dang. He plays in a promotional tournament on Wednsdays there for a 110 dollar buyin. I thought about playing in it but said forget it, the group was doin other stuff.


Anyway..........we had a blast and I hope to go back later this year when Joel returns from Iraq. We're already talking about another trip for October or November after his return. But for now, thats it. Its back to the cheapy 10 dollar tournaments on the weekends at the Winter and Big O pokerrooms. I have to say with 3 nights free hotel and a 297 dollar plane ticket, I payed for my plane ticket and had an additional 400 dollars in profit. Not bad for my first "real" trip to Vegas!!

So Imperial Palace it is...........


Thanks to Rico for letting me reside with him for a couple of days, I now fixed my problem of finding a vacation PACKAGE. Man does everything get expensive the last minute! Unfortunately for Stuart, a regular at Jim and Stacy's pokerroom, a family emergency erupted making him unable to travel with the group to Vegas. Sorry about that Stuart, next time my friend. Anyway, a special thanks to Rico again for the offer. Don't worry Rico, I don't snore.




The last few tourneys have been average, or one could say, just a little blahhhh!! For example, playing seven hours at Jim's just to take 5th place in his Jackpot tourney, almost 2 bucks an hour profit, woohoo, but its all for fun right. I guess I was lucky to get that, in fact, very lucky. Here's why.........

It was after the rebuy period had ended, I had around 24 or 25 k, average chip stack of around 40k-45k(not sure what), but anyway, I was gettin on the low side. I picked up AA under the gun when blinds were at 600/1200 i think. I limped in, the flop was K 7 J all different suites. Noone raised preflop which sucked because obviously thats what I was looking for. So anyway, both blinds checked I moved all-in because there were around 6 people in, as soon as I push...Justin starts laughing his butt off at me, the jackass hit 2 pair, so of course he called. He flipped over, he had top 2 pair, a king and a jack, I needed runner runner ace ace or another 7 at that point...........wouldn't you know both the turn and river were the remaining aces in the deck......QUADS IT IS BABY...gotta love those quad aces, it'll teach him not to laugh again! Bastard...........

So after being as low as 11k at one point...aka...a blue and black chip, I crawled my way back up to 5th place, decent i guess...could have been worse.

I wont go into detail about the last Big O tournament but I would like some feedback on a had between me and Henry. It was down to 5 players..........blinds were capped I believe or almost anyway and me and Henry were big and small blind, me being the BB. We were in the money at that point but the flop was A x x all hearts, I had the King of hearts and no pair, just the nut flush draw. Henry had me outchipped almost 2 to 1 but not quite. Henry bet out with a pretty large bet obviously protecting his ace at that point late in the game. It was just me and him in the hand, I pushed all-in with my stack, to make his call would have been most of my stack anyway, but, I either needed a fold or an all in. I ended up hitting a heart on the river for the nut flush. Was that a bad move?? I would love feedback if anybody has time to answer.......

Anyway, I guess I'll see everybody Monday in Vegas. Later guys and gals!!