Vegas Trip 2008

Moving this blog

2009-11-19T17:43:00.001Z

For anyone who still looks over this and reads it I've moved it to my new site http://davey-g.co.uk

All the posts are there now as I've merged a few blogs together and that's where I'll be blogging about anything and everything from now on. I'll leave this up for about a week and then remove it.

Vegas Finale - The Summary

2008-09-11T09:14:00.002+01:00

Well today was the last full day in Vegas. We woke up and decided to do a buffet lunch and head down to Planet Hollywood for the last poker session of the trip.

We got ourselves into a $1/$2 no limit game pretty much straight away. I sat down with $200 and the table started off very conservative. This was great because I didn't really need good hands to take down pots. In the right spots I'd raise, and I'd bet when checked to on the flop and I'd be taking down the pots there and then. I quickly got my stack up to $220 within about 10 mins by doing this.

For the rest of the game the table remained pretty much a conservative table with one or two people playing a little more than the others. On the whole though it was an easy table to read. My stack was around $240 for quite a long period of the session until a new guy sat down to the table. He was from Belfast actually, and I hadn't seen him play much since he had only played about 3 or 4 hands before I got involved in a pot with him. Basically he raised preflop and I called in the big blind after 2 others had called too. The flop was K high and I had hit a K (holding KQ). The irish guy bet out and I decided to raise but he quickly got all his money in (about $300) and I was forced to fold. Thinking back I'm not sure the play was that wise on a new opponent. But hey, these are the things we learn from.

Our session lasted til about 7-8pm and then we left to go eat before heading down to freemont street. Ended up eating at a restaurant in a gaming arcade along the strip not far from the MGM. It was amazing. Really nice friendly service and the food was really good. A nice last meal in Vegas.

After this we got the bus down to downtown to go see the freemont street experience and an experience it was! Thanks to Maz for recommended I go check this out because it was amazing! A massive tunnel type thing over the street with loads of LEDs in it that displayes visual animation shows. It was really impressive. Well worth seeing. I got some good pictures of it to go along with the rest I've taken on this trip. I think I have over 800 photos from this trip so I have a lot of sorting to do back in the UK.

In summary this trip has been amazing! I've enjoyed every last minute of it from the second I arrived. Vegas is a fantastic place. Anything you want is here. There is absolutely plenty to see and do even if you haven't come for gambling/poker. The poker has gone really well for me. I've learnt plenty and managed to beat my goal of comming away with at least as much as I came with poker money wise. I'm about $750 to the good in terms of poker and I'm very pleased with that.

Thanks to everyone who's read the blog and followed my progress along the way. I hope you've enjoyed reading. I've thoroughly enjoyed myself this trip and I will be returning here in the future again for certain. For now though, thats all. Time to go do some pre packing, enjoy the rest of the night and then grab a little bit of sleep before the long journey back tomorrow. Take care everyone and I'll see you all back in the UK.

Day Fifteen - Night shots and poker

2008-09-10T11:04:00.002+01:00

Well today we woke up and walked up to Paris to get the free shuttle bus over to the Rio to check out that casino. Once there we grabbed some lunch and then went to check out the poker room with high expectations. Everyone we've talked to has said the poker room at the Rio is usually quite busy with plenty of the $1/$2 no limit games we like to play. That would make sense too since they host the World Series of Poker anually which gets around 6000 players so this is good marketting for the poker there.

However the poker room had exactly one table going and it was full. The Rio is a bit off the strip and we wondered if that combined with it being a Tuesday was the reason there was only one table going. Not to worry we thought though, we jumped on the shuttle back to Paris and planned to check out the Planet Hollywood games that we've always been able to rely on. However, today there was again one table going on and it was full! We started to wonder what was going on.

After this I decided to walk up to Excalibur to play the $0.50/$1 no limit tables until it darkened and then take my night shots of the strip. Josh didn't fancy hanging around while I spent a couple of hours taking snaps so decided to check out some different games at the MGM etc. My session at Excalibur went well. I got my stack up to about $80 and hung around that mark for a while. Some good hands got turned over but I got away from them incredibly cheaply. I then got my stack up a little higher to about $94 but then in my last two hands before I decided to leave I got QQ twice and couldnt make it work out so left with $75.

Oh well, $25 profit so far for the day I didn't complain. It was time to take the night shots of the strip. I've got some decent photos but I had to work for them. I needed the shutter to be open for a little longer than normal to get enough light into the camera so the pics weren't too dark. I can tell you this is SO hard to do without a tripod. Having to hold the camera damn near perfectly still since any slight movement messes up the focus etc. For about every 6-7 photos taken maybe 1 of them turned out decent. It was enjoyable though, I learnt a lot, like needing a tripod in future for things like this!

After this I got back to the IP and had a stir fry dinner then decided to check out the poker game downstairs. There were two $1/$2 no limit tables going and a seat quickly became available so I sat down. Put the usual $200 on the table and started playing. Picked up a couple of hands early on and got myself to about $225. Then held around this level for a while before slowly taking my stack up to about $240. Everything was pretty standard. I misplayed one hand I think and I'm currently going over it to check where I could have improved my play. The table was good though and I felt I could read every opponent at the table pretty well.

Eventually this table broke up so I was moved to the other $1/$2 table where I only stayed for about 1 hour. This table started off mad which would have been good had I caught some hands to play back against people with but I didnt. Any hand I did catch I just won small pots and eventually this table started to break too. I ended up leaving with $247 so again a nice little profit for a nice standard, nothing out of the ordinary day of poker.

Tomorrow is our final day and we've decided to go to freemont street tomorrow instead. We'll see that early evening as the light starts to go then come back and play poker for as long as the games are going. We've loved every minute of this trip and as you can imagine not too pleased about having to come back to the UK. If we could we'd stay here in Vegas! Its got everything you can imagine. I love the place.

Oh and one other thing I've been meaning to mention in other blogs but keep forgetting. Theres a new HUGE construction site between the Bellagio and Monte Carlo roughly in the centre of the strip. Its a MASSIVE structure going up there, apparently a city centre type thing with accommodation up for sale eventually. An estimated cost into the billions its going to be something epic! Here's a link for rough pics and ideas of what its going to be: http://www.citycenter.com/

Once completed it will look amazing I'm sure! I look forward to seeing it completed when I return to Vegas in the future! Anyway, I'm going to sleep now and look forward to enjoying my last day tomorrow to the max! I'll post one last blog tomorrow and then that will be it as we fly out of Vegas at 2:55 local time. Just add 8 hours for UK time. Anyway, bye for now.

Day Fourteen - Photo's and Show

2008-09-09T08:42:00.002+01:00

Today I planned to take more photo's of the strip starting from where I left off last night due to the light disappearing. I wanted to get photo's of the daytime and then take some other ones at night one evening (probably the same evening we decide to go see freemont street).

We woke up around 1pm today so got another room service breakfast (we've been lazy these past couple of days) and then I went off to do the photography. Qucik detour into the Miracle Mile shopping centre to pick up some stuff I needed and I was on my way.

Partway through taking my photos something strange happened that I didn't think I'd see in Vegas. It rained! Yes, I'm telling the truth I swear! It rained in the middle of the desert! It started off as drizzle, then went quite heave, then eased off. However, one more treat was in store and I got to see this in all its glory from one of the walkways over the strip. A storm started up and I got to see some beautiful lightning with the strip in the foreground. Unfortunately I haven't had any expereince trying to capture this on camera nor did I have the space on my memory card to leave it continuously taking snaps (nor the tripod to set it on) so I couldnt get any pics of the strip with lightning visible.

Oh well, I saw it anyway and it looked super cool! I also managed to get the last of the outdoor photos that I wanted so all I need to do now is briefly walk from one end of the strip to the other taking some snaps during the evening with all the lights etc, and a couple of other things I want to get pics of.

Got back to the room around 6pm and then just chilled for a while with some tv, then grabbed another fantastic chinese dinner at the chinese restaurant here in Imperial Palace. It was then time to set off for the Venetian to see the Blue Man Group. Our tickets were for the 10pm showing so we got to the Venetian for about 8:30pm and chilled in a little bar there for a while. They had a live band on from 9pm which killed some time. Not my usual thing, more of a jazzy type band doing covers but they weren't all that bad.

Then we got outselves sat down and ready to take in the Blue Man Group. Well, oh my god I don't know what to say or how to explain it! The show was amazing and I absolutely loved it! It was weird, one of a kind, completely unique and it worked so well. Amazing visuals, amazing music, the whole show just worked so well. I don't know how to describe it to you anymore so if you want to check out more about it visit their website www.blueman.com for more info about the show.

Its now after middnight and we dont feel starting up a poker session now is a good idea. I've been walking the strip all day so feeling a little too tired to try playing but poker is deffinately on the cards (haha no pun I swear) tomorrow! We're going to head over to the Rio to check that place out, get lunch there and play poker too if there are decent games going on.

We're also planning to go see freemont street in the evening once the light disappears. Can't wait, it's meant to be an amazing experience. I can see myself, after seeing freemont, being in the mood to do my night time shots with the camera on the strip so I'll likely do that too.

With only 2 full days left in Vegas I'm starting to reflect on the holiday as a whole, I'll do a bigger summary in my last blog but basically I've loved this trip. I've thoroughly enjoyed every minute and Vegas is a fantastic place I'll be revisiting many times again. There is so much to do here. There are things to suit all tastes, whatever you want Vegas has it.
Some people seemed shocked when we told them how long we were in Vegas for, both back in the UK and some US citizens here too. I don't think our 17 days has been too long in the slightest. We've done plenty on top of all the poker playing and to be fair theres more we could have done too. To see every show here in Vegas you'd need to keep every evening free. Theres a couple of shows I'd go see next time I'm here but for now I'm happy with everything I'll have done and looking forward to spending my last two days doing what I described above and playing a load more poker before returning to the UK.

Anyway I'll blog more tomorrow. For now though, take care everyone and you'll read more from me tomorrow.

Day Thirteen - Photo Day

2008-09-08T08:50:00.002+01:00

Well today we woke up around the midday mark and ended up ordering a room service breakfast. It was amazing, came on this massive wheely tray. Absolutely delicious and was very reasonably priced too!

After this I got my camera ready and went out onto the strip to do a load of photography of hotels and various things that looked interesting. I walked down the road to the Wynn hotel and started from there and planned to work my way all the way up to Manadalay Bay the other end of the strip. When I got to the Wynn I got slighty distracted by the Fashion Show Mall and ended up wandering around there for a good hour to two hours. Lots of shops, a few decent priced ones and a few expensive ones. Didn't buy anything but there was lots of good stuff to look at.

After this I got back on track and started the photography properly. Starting with the Wynn, moving down to the Venetian, Treasure Island, The Mirage etc. I took loads of pics of Caesars Palace then worked my way up towards the Bellagio, Paris, Planet Hollywood. However, then I ran into a problem. I had spent way too much time on the Fashion Mall and photography further down the strip and the light was starting to disappear by the time I reached the Monte Carlo hotel.

I decided to cut it short here and continue photographing that end of the strip tomorrow or another day before I leave. It was about 7-7:30 so I walked back to the room to pick up a food voucher then worked my way back up the strip to the Excalibur where I was meeting Josh since he decided to go to a gig to see a band I wasnt too interested in. It ended up lasting til 10pm though so I sat down with $50 at the $0.50/$1 no limit game just to pass the time. Spent about 2 hours playing and left with exactly the $50 I sat down with! Not often that will happen but hey, it passed the time.

Met up with Josh then went to the restaurant here we like and had the most AMAZING turkey dinner. It was so tastey, so much flavour! Yum yum!

After this, about 11:30, we decided we weren't in a huge poker mood so decided to come back to our hotel room and lounge around watching TV. I'm happy with that since I've done nothing but walk around all day in the Vegas heat! So we're here, World Series of Poker on ESPN and just chilling!

Tomorrow I'm going to finish up with the photos and then probably play a little bit of poker. We've got the Blue Man Group show starting at 10pm tomorrow at the Venetian and I'm looking very forward to that.

Well, thats all for this blog so I'll speak more tomorrow. Take care all!

Day Twelve - Poker and Alcohol

2008-09-07T10:30:00.002+01:00

Today we woke up around the midday mark, did our showering and walked up to planet hollywood to grab a sandwhich from somewhere called Earl of Sandwhich. They do hot sandwhiches and they're very nice indeed!

After this we decided to have a session of poker, planning on taking it til about 6pm then head back to the Imperial Palace to eat and get ready for a night out at Pure over at Caesars Palace.

I sat down with $200 at the $1/$2 no limit game and today the session was tough! Nothing worked at all today. Every hand I got was beated by something better. I had trips that wasn't good, pairs that were beaten. Every hand was beaten by something else and it ended up as one of those sessions where you really struggle. My stack was taken down to $150, then to $130 then to $100. In the end I had my stack at around $90 and I was constantly battling to stay afloat. To be fair, this was one of those days where I could easily have lost $400. To leave at the end of the session with $90 was in my opinion a success. I can be pleased with myself knowing that the cards just weren't doing it and I wasn't making horrendous mistakes that were costing me my chips.

Variance like this will always occurr. I can still take valuable lessions from the session and I noted one or two mistakes in some of the hands I played but on the whole I don't feel I could have done too much differently.

The session ended when my table eventually broke up around about 5pm. I decided not to take the seat offered to me at a different table due to firstly only being able to spend another decent hour playing and also because to be fair I didnt feel my head was completely in it correctly after the kind of session I was having so I thought it best to cash out and have a go at it the next day refreshed and prepared. Sometimes its better to do that than to continue to play when conditions aren't just right, whatever those conditions may be.

After this I went back to meet Josh at our room since he had left a little earlier to go do some shopping he needed done. Back at the room we went for some food, deciding to grab a pizza at one of the restaurants here. After this it was prepare for Pure time. We got ourselves ready and went over to Pure for about 9:30 to queue for Pure since we expected a busy night and wanted to ensure we got in for free using our VIP passes.

While in the queue for Pure we expected to be waiting at least an hour so grabbed vodka and coke from one of the bars. $11.50 each and we thought hmmm, kinda expensive. However after tasting the vodka we also thought, hmmm, very strong. Later we'd discover the key!

Eventually we got into Pure and WOW. What a club, awesome venue, packs out really well and its jsut so nice inside! Theres lots of VIP areas that are only available to people who reserve them and the prices for these areas are hundreds of dollars plus! The areas available to general admissions are more restricted but you can still have a good night out there! When inside we ordered another vodka and coke. The girl at the bar got the glasses out and im not kidding poured them abou 3/4 full with pure vodka! We only asked for "vodka and coke" and in the UK thats a single 25ml measure of vodka with coke! This glass contained at LEAST 3 measures if not 4 maybe 5 and was well worth the $25 we paid for them! After drinking this we didn't need anymore!

We enjoyed the rest of the club, wandered around to see all the areas that we could access and as I said above I'm very impressed with the venue. It is an expensive night out though If you're going to go there from begining of the night til the end. As I said theres VIP areas that cost a lot and even if you're in general admission, the drinks are expenisve, although very powerful measures are used! You could easily drop a couple of hundred though on a good night out. After talking to a few random people in the club though we eventually soaked in enough of the atmosphere and decided to head back to our hotel room rather drunk!

Anyway I'm going to leave todays blog at that and go give my head a rest. Will be back with and update tomorrow. Not expecting a heavy day tomorrow. I'm planning on starting one end of the strip and working my way up with my SLR camera tomorrow getting loads of decent pictures of the strip itself and the casinos I go into. Then I'll play some poker in the evening and that should be that!

Bye bye for now everyone, talk more tomorrow!

Day Eleven - Downtown and Poker

2008-09-06T10:25:00.003+01:00

Hey everyone. Slept well last night after comming back from poker. Woke up around midday and grabbed a sandwhich lunch before taking the bus to downtown Las Vegas.

Downtown LV is about 2-3 miles off the strip and contains some of the older casinos such as the Binion's hotel/casino, the Golden Nugget and some other random casinos. On the way to downtown are casinos such as Circus Circus, the Saharah and of course the stratosphere, which we're yet to visit but we have down as a must see!

When we got to downtown we were unfortunately greatly disappointed. Apart from freemont street, which looks very interesting indeed, theres not much there. To be honest, the whole place seemed tacky to me and not very nice. The casinos were disappointing, there was barely any poker going on and the poker that was going on looked uninteresting.

We got fed up and bored of downtown after about 30 minutes but it wouldnt get dark for the freemont street experience for another 5-6 hours at least. We decided to head back to the strip and come back purely for the freemont street experience another night. We're looking forward to seeing it, its basically a street under cover and the roof of the street has loads of LED lights in it which does light shows when its dark. I'm looking forward to seeing it and getting some pics for everyone to see too.

We got back to the strip and went into the Ventian hotel to book a show we've been wanting to see all trip. We booked tickets for the Blue Man Group. We have tickets right at the front in the 'poncho' area, apparently we'll be wearing a poncho because parts of the show they'll be spraying water based paint into the audience apparently. We're seeing that on Monday night so I'll review the show in that blog. Looking forward to it.

After wandering around loads we decided to go eat at a restaurant in the Miracle Mile by Planet Hollywood before sitting down to some poker. We went for an italian restaurant and it was lovely. Nice food and friendly staff. After this we took a quick stop at a chocolate shop that looked too tempting to resist and then headed off to the poker room for an evening session.

I sat down with $200 at the $1/$2 no limit game and the session was pretty normal for the first hour. Nothing much went on, I took stabs at pots when I could and for the most part sat tight not playing too many hands and not getting too out of line. Eventually I played 66 and hit a flop of K62. I checked hoping for someone to bet and one person did. I raised his $15 bet to $65 total. To my delight he reraised me all in for about $150 total. I made the call and he showed AK. Perfect, he overplayed his hand and I took down the pot. This increased my stack to about $375. Not too long after, about an hour maybe, the table started breaking up and I was moved to another $1/$2 table.

This table was a really good table, I sat down and noticed a rather drunk guy paying off big bets with not very strong hands at all. He didn't seem to care either, just having a good time and not bothering about losing his money. Perfect! I got involved in one hand with him where I raised with AQ, about 4 people called including the drunk guy. The flop came down KA9, I bet out $15 or so and just the drunk guy called me. I checked the turn and he checked too, it was something like an 8. The river was a blank, something like a 6 and I bet out $40 on the end. He called me and I won the pot with my top pair.

After this I just played solid poker, taking stabs at pots when I thought I could and playing my hands. I increased my $375 to about $460. This was taken down to $430 after I raised a couple of pots and ended up having to fold to bets on the turn when it was evident that my hands were no longer best. I left the session with $430 which I was very pleased with. I feel I played a solid game with only one hand that sticks in my mind as possibly being incorrectly played. I've gone over it in my head and I sorta knew at the time I may have misplayed it. I just have to make sure I thoroughly think through all my decisions at the table and make sure I'm making what I think is the absolute best play at the time.

Today, despite the disappointment of downtown has been a good day. I try and look at everything positively and ok we didn't really enjoy downtown but at least we saw it. We wanted to go see it and we did and we're still going to go back in an evening to see the freemont street experience. We'll also pay the stratosphere a visit. Oh and a shout out for dad! Passed the hilton hotel on our way towards downtown and on our way back from, it looks a really nice hotel! Won't go in and look around as its in an awkward spot but it looked really nice!

One other thing though to mention is the heat! On the first couple of days the heat was intense. We weren't used to anything like it and it was really hot. Then it was manageable after that, still very hot but we were getting used to it. Today and yesterday though its been extra hot! Very hard to manage and we cant spend too much time out in the heat as its that bad. Talking to the pilot on our grand canyon tour yesterday he said sometimes in the hottest parts of august it can be 110F or more by 9am! Thats some heat! No idea what temperatures have been doing here to be honest but its been really tough walking up and down the strip the past couple of days! Wouldn't change it for the UK though mind you! It makes a lovely change. The heat though is the only thing that reminds you that you're actually in the middle of a huge desert out here!

Anyway thats all for today. Will blog again tomorrow. The plan for tomorrow is to play some poker during the day again at Planet Hollywood (deffinately our favourite place to play poker now) and then in the evening we're going to go to club Pure at Caesars Palace. Bye for now!

Day Ten - Best day yet!

2008-09-05T10:18:00.002+01:00

Today we had our early wake up at 4:45am in order to get picked up at 5:50am for our chopper ride over the grand canyons. A quick shower and breakfast and we were on our way to the airport.

The company who did our tour are called Maverick. The whole tour cost us $359 for the chopper ride out to the canyons, a stop for about 30 mins with champagne and light snacks and a trip back to the airport.

Once at the Maverick centre we sorted out brief stuff such as showing our IDs etc and we met our pilot and ready to take off. Once in the air our super friendly and very helpful pilot started giving us our tour telling us all about the sights we were flying over. However, 20 mins into the flight a warning light shows on the chopper cockpit and FAA rules said we had to return and go back to the airport! Shit! On the way back though this slight misfortune turned into a blessing for us. They were able to arrange a new chopper for immediate re-take off once we landed so we were going to fly right back out in a new chopper. Not only that, the two others we were sharing the ride with couldnt spare the extra time so Josh and I ended up with a chopper all to ourselves!

The tour was simply fantastic! Absolutely unbelievable and if anyone ever gets the chance to do one then I would highly recommend that you do. The sights are just awe inspiring! Everything from seeing the vegas strip in the air, the desert itself and of course the canyons is something I'll never forget. I took so many photos so there will be plenty for you all to look over eventually once I have them all sorted out.

The canyons are something else. They're huge and there is so much detail to them. I struggle to put it into words. They are so deep and so high theres just so much to look at. We saw the hoover damn and lake mead as well as the canyons themselves. It was such an amazing experience and I'll never forget it. It gave you a very powerful feeling while flying over these awesome sights. I'm extremely pleased I took this tour and as stated already, I won't ever forget any of it!

Once back to our hotel (by about 11am) we decided to sleep for a couple of hours since we probably wouldn't be able to last til very late if we didnt. A couple of hours nap and we decided to grab a subway lunch and walk up to Excalibur for some poker. We ended up walking up the strip and checking our New York New York hotel and casino, then we briefly toured the Luxor and Mandalay Bay. They're three very good casinos and I'm looking forward to photographing them all on Sunday. I decided to postpone my photography of the strip til then as the heat from the sun today was immense. I'll also need a new SD card for my camera before then since I've left myself with only 100 pics left.

The poker at Excalibur went well, the table was pretty easy to read and after a couple of hours my $50 stack (was playing the $0.50/$1 no limit game) was up to about $85. At around 8:30 we got pretty hungry so left the game to go for dinner. I left $30 up which was nice.
Went to a restaurant in the Excalibur hotel and I tried a lightly battered chicken in tnagy orange sauce dish served with rice and veg. Super nice! Even nicer since we got it for free for playing enough hours in the poker room to earn $16 in comp vouchers each!

After this we went down to the Planet Hollywood cardroom to play our last session of the night. Starting around 10pm we played til about 1:30am. My session went pretty well. It was a pretty standard session. I hit a few hands and played them well so managed to get my stack of $200 (at the $1/$2 no limit game) up to $300 by the end of the session. I have however noticed from tonights session some problems in my game that I need to iron out. I'll be keeping a close eye on these in my future sessions to make sure im not constantly making the same mistakes. They're not major errors but they all count so I want to work on that and make sure I continue to develop my game. After all thats what this experience is all about.

Thats all for now. Its 2:30am here so I dont think we'll be up for much longer. Tomorrow we're going to downtown Las Vegas to check out some of the older casinos and freemont street in the evening which is meant to be fantastic! More on that in tomorrow's blog. Anyway, bye for now.

Day Nine - Easy Day

2008-09-04T08:37:00.002+01:00

Well after seeing Anthony Cools last night and then staying up to play poker til the early hours we didnt get to bed til about 5am and as a result didn't wake up today til 1:30pm. Ooops!

Anyway after waking up we walked down to Planet Hollywood to grab lunch there again. I really like Planet Hollywood, its probably one of my favourite hotels on the strip that we've spent a lot of time in. Its also where we've had the best food so far. Obviously theres casinos like the Bellagio, Mirage, Ceasars Palace which are all much more extravagent casinos but Planet Hollywood is a really nice looking casino and I love the poker room there.

After lunch I went round the Miracle Mile shopping centre while Josh went to play some poker as he didn't fancy a second day of shopping. I didn't buy anything but found a lot of nice stuff. I may buy some things later on in the trip if I fancy it, but for today I didnt as it was pricier than the Las Vegas Outlet Centre we went to yesterday. Plenty of jeans and shirts etc though. However, as I said, apart from one or two stores, jeans were at least $100 so I wont be buying much from these places.
The miracle mile is a good place though shopping wise. Plenty of choice, really nice looking place, and theres all sorts of shops to suit all tastes. I went into some art stores and there was some incredible stuff on sale in there too. Oh, and a chocolate shop that looked too good to not go back to before we leave!

After this I decided to join Josh in the Planet Hollywood poker room and play cards for the rest of the day. It was the $1/$2 game this time. I got my $200 in chips and sat down. The whole day was a weird stale day poker wise. Nothing major happened for me but I found my stack chopped down to $120 within the first hour or two. At this point it was pretty much staying around that level for a good portion of the session. No big hands to note really. Then I hit a good hand against an opponent with the second best hand and took my stack back up to $200.
I then got involved with a hand where I had to make an annoying fold. I had AA first to act and raised. Everyone folded except the big blind who called. The flop came T94, the big blind checked to me and I bet out $15 and he called. The turn came 7, he checked again and I bet out $25. This time the big blind min raised $25 more. I decided to call to see what he did on the river, planning to call a not too large bet if I got the feel I was ahead. The river came a Jack, this time the big blind bet out $100. I thought for a bit and decided to fold. The big blind showed me 99 for three of a kind.

Later on in the night I had to make another tough fold. I was in the small blind and about 5 people called, I called for $1 more with 56 and the big blind checked. The flop came 55A. I checked planning to raise a bet that I thought would be made on this flop. No one bet and the turn came 7. I bet out $12 this time and I got two callers. The river came K, there were no flush possibilities out there. I bet out $20 and the first guy min raisied $20 more. Then the second guy raised again about $80-$100 more! I was a bit shocked, I had completely expected to have the best hand here. I decided in the end my three 5's couldnt be good here and made the fold. It turned out to be the correct fold again, the first guy had 77 for a full house and the second guy A5 for a weaker full house.

The rest of the session nothing major happened, I was winning pots then loosing pots. Right before the end of the session I had about $150 left. I called with 55 and the flop came down 755. I hit four of a kind! I bet out and everyone folded! Damn, no money made from the certain best hand. Not to worry, I got a little bonus. Most casinos here have a high hand bonus where they'll pay players a cash bonus for hitting four of a kind or higher. Unfortunately it wasn't much of a bonus, only $50 due to someone earlier in the night already hitting quad 5s. But hey its $50 I wouldn't have earnt online or back in the UK. It put my stack back to around $200 and I left the game level!

I was happy with this. The session really was dull in terms of poker. Nothing major to note, just one of those sessions where nothing much happens and to be honest I could have lost a bit one the two hands I mentioned above so I'm happy to have come out with what I did. Enjoyed the game though, the table was real good and I'll be playing some more $1/$2 no limit at Planet Hollywood again.

Looking very forward to tomorrow! Its grand canyon trip time and we have a 4:45 wake up call, get ready and then get picked up at 6am to be taken to the airport for our 7am tour start. I can't wait. This is going to be a highlight of the trip. Batteries are on charge and the camera is at the ready. I'll blog all about it tomorrow.

Anyway thats all for now. Going to go get some sleep and look forward to seeing the canyons. Take care all.

Day Eight - Shopping and shows

2008-09-03T12:44:00.003+01:00

Well today we woke up and tried our the paradise gardens buffet at the Flamingo hotel. Its part of hte Harrah's group like the Imperial Palace so we had a $5 off coupon to use. It was an extremely tasta buffet with plenty of choice.

The plan today was to go shopping at the Miracle Mile next to Planet Hollywood. We didnt end up doing this in the end. Instead we decided to catch a bus to the Las Vegas Outlet Centre just off the strip. Its got 100+ shops in. It doesnt have too many modern clothing shops like Topshop or H&M etc, but it had quite a selection of clothes stores, jewllers, accessories etc. There was one store there called Hurley which is where I found a good selection of t-shirts that I ended up buying. They're really nice patterned t-shirts and not what I'd normally go for but they suit me well.

We're still going to go to the Miracle Mile but we decided to to the outlet centre first since its meant to be slightly cheaper so we wanted to go there first in case we found most stuff we wanted there. I'll still need some stuff from the Miracle Mile so looking forward to shopping there too.

This lasted most the day then we got back to the Imperial Palace and went to eat at a restaurant called Pizza Palace inside the hotel. Its really nice but we bot decided not to grab a pizza. I ended up taking a spaghetti bolognese which was really tasty.

It was then time to go to the Paris hotel and see the Anthony Cools Experience. Well what a show it was! It was absolutely amazing! We found it hilarious and a whole load of fun. He is basically a stage hypnotist that does funny rude stuff with the audience veolunteers. Things such as making the audience members have orgasms, doing things with a chair, and general other stuff too. It really is a show I'd recommend to anyone who has a chance to see it.

After this we decided to sit down to some poker at the excalibur. Just a light game ath the $0.50/$1 game with $50 sit down. The game went badly for me. I played good poker but just hit a tough run and one of the players who kept calling my bets caught the hands he was chasing so I ended up $50 down by the end of the night. Not much I could have done, just one of those things.

Did end up talking to some people at the table though who live locally in vegas and they were saying some very interesting stuff about salaries in vegas from different jobs. Things like vallets at medium-high medium hotels bringing in $100,000 or more after tips if they're really good. Shows how far tips go around this city.

Another strange thing happened the other day that I forgot about but just have to mention. The first night we were at the Excalibur card room playing we were at a table and a guy opposite us at the table and hit friend standing behind him suddenly say to us "you're from stafford right". We're taken back by this and ask them to elaborate as they didnt sound english. In the end it turns out they're french but were foreign students at staffordshire university when we were there and they were part of the poker society in year one when it was up and running. What are the odds that we run into those guys in that hotel in vegas of all places! It really is a small world out there!

Anyway thats all for now. The plan for tomorrow is unclear. We may go for another shopping day and check out the Miracle Mile or we may take a day of poker and do the Miracle Mile at the weekend. We have the grand canyon tour on Thurs from 7-11isih and then I plan to do some photography of the strip/hotels Thurs afternoon. We also want to check out downtown Las Vegas which has freemont street, the stratosphere, and some more of the older casinos like Golden Nugget and Binions. We'll probably do that friday. Anyway until tomorrows blog.... Take care and bye for now.

Day Seven - Tour booked!

2008-09-02T09:52:00.002+01:00

Well today was an exciting day. After waking up and preparing for the day we walked up the strip to Planet Hollywood to book our Grand Canyon tour. We got there and got the price we were promised the other day even though the rep who was on then wasnt today.

The trip we booked is a helicopter tour with a company called Maverick. In order to have the better price we booked an early morning tour but this is meant to be a good time to do the tour anyway. We get picked up from our hotel at 6:10am and leave the airport at 7am. Its about a 3 hour or so round trip taking us over: vegas, some sort of extinct volcano, lake mead, the hoover damn and of course the canyons themselves.

I'm really looking forward to this. For me its going to be one of the highlights of the trip and one of the things I've been most looking forward to doing ever since we started planning this holiday. I'll be sure to blog all about it. We take the tour on Thursday so just a couple of days wait!

After this we grabbed some lunch in Planet Hollywood too. We ate at the same place we did the other day we were there playing poker. Hada lovely sandwhich and it deffiniately is our favourite place for food at the moment.

Then it was off to excalibur for more poker using their pokerpro electronic tables. The session went alright for me. We were sat at the $0.05/$1 tables with $50 in front of us and I went down to about $25 very quickly. I wasnt hitting anything and struggling then just told myself to start changing my play. I knew exactly how the guys we were sitting at the table with played and I outplayed them completely for the next 20 mins to get back up to $37. After this I started hitting more hands, things went pretty standard and I ended up with $92 by the time we left for dinner.

We tried a restaurant in the Excalibur hotel for dinner and I had a lovely meal. Steamed vegetables with jasmain ricie and a soup started (the meal came with a starter) all for $11.50!!! Excellent prices.

After this we sat back down to the poker for a while. This session was a bit more flat for me. Not much happened, I hit a few hands and worked my chips up to $75 but then dwindled down to $60 and hung around that mark until we left. We left the session early tonight because the table conditions changed and there wasnt much money to be made from the players left at the table. They were all highly conservative and only playing when they had a monster of a hand. More profitable games can be found so we decided to leave early and take a walk back to the Imperial Palace.

Checked a few more games on the way but nothing much was going on so we've come back to the room early. Treated ourselves to a chocolate cake each which was absolutely amazing! Its now about 2am and we're actually going to get an early night now.

Tomorrow's plan is a poker free day. We have the Anthony Cools show tomorrow night which I'm really looking forward to seeing. So during the day we're going to go shopping at the Miracle Mile which is attached to Planet Hollywood. Then we're going to grab dinner at a restaurant in the Paris hotel before going to the show for 8 to get the better seats.
Anyway, take care everyone and bye for now. More from me tomorrow.

Day Six - Crazy Day

2008-09-01T13:40:00.003+01:00

Well today was a bit weird. We had a long day yesterday, bein up from 10am until about 6am we went to bed. Well today we woke up at 4pm!!! The first time the crazyness of Vegas has shown haha.

We got up and discussed what to do for food. Do we have a breakfast and then something later, a lunch or a meal? We decided to eat a main meal and grab something light early morning if we wanted it. So we went to Bill's again to go for the $14.95 steak offer but this time we were going to get money off. Most casino's in vegas have like a loyalty card where by in terms of poker you earn anywhere from $1-$2 for every hour you play. So Josh and I had $6 each on our Bill's card that we cashed in for the steak so we ended up paying $10 each after tips.

Then wen ent up to Planet Hollywood to see if we could book the Canyon trip but as we got up so late we couldnt do it today. Tomorrow morning we can get it booked so we're going to do that and book it for either Thurs or Fri, we're still not sure yet.

After this we decided to play some poker. We checked out the tables at Planet Hollywood and they were plentiful but with a combination of wanting to try somewhere new and not earning comp dollars in planet hollywood we decided to head over to Excalibur.

Excalibur have a new innovation in their poker room, they have tables called PokerPro tables, they're electronic and the game is basically played and dealt electronically. Its like a live/internet combination. They used to be installed in Aspers casino in Newcastle back home but they were removed after about 2 months due to something in the UK gambling laws.

The tables are pretty good, you have your own screen thats touch activated, you just cover with your hand, tap the screen and the corners of your face down cards flip so you can see them, then all the betting options are there for you and theres a bigger screen in the centre where all the chips go and the community cards etc.

We sat down to a lower game today because we didnt know how the play would differ and we we just fancied trying out the different stakes. We sat down to the 50c/$1 blinds game, which had a maximum sit down of $50. This is kinda low to be honest, usually a game wouldn't be great when you're only sitting down with 50 times the big blind but we gave it a go.

The session went well for me, over the 6 hours I played it was mostly a decent game. The players were really easy to read, it was easy to know what they were doing and what they likely held. I had a big hand where I had Q9 in the blinds. 4 people called and I checked. The flop came down 78T, everyone checked the flop and the turn card came 6 and made me a straight. There were no flush possibilities on there so I was pretty confident. I bet out somewhere around $5 and one player called, but then the guy behind him raised to $25. I had a think and decided I should go all in, then both called!. Player one held 77 for a set of 7s, the other guy held 89 for the same straight. Lucky for me a Jack hit on the river giving me the better straight and the whole pot which took me to something like $200. For the rest of the session things went pretty standard, I ran into a hand where I lost $60 with KK that I couldnt get away from and caught one crazy guy on two occassions making raises with weak hands and i took his stack twice there. Left with $279 for another good day. Was nice come away with a winning day straight after a challenging day.

So its been an easy day today, going to grab some sleep now in order to wake up around 11 tomorrow and head off to book the Canyon tour. We're then going to play poker in Excalibur again and tour the hotels up that end of the strip. We're going to see Mandalay Bay and the Luxor which I'm looking forward to. Anyway thats all for today, not much more to report on. Oh, except, this one's for mum. I've discovered by accident that tea without milk is nice too! I ordered a tea with sweetner at the table but forgot to ask for milk so it came without, I liked it though and haven't bothered with milk on a couple more of the cups I've had.

Anyway, everyone take care and I'll be blogging again tomorrow.

Day Five - First set of challenges

2008-08-31T13:13:00.003+01:00

Today was another poker day. We're going to pack this weekend with poker since its labour day weekend and the place is packed, the clubs are pumping up entry prices because of this so we'll get just as good nights out for normal prices next week.

After a breakfast we decided to take a walk down the strip and go book a show and browse prices for a grand canyon trip. As we walked down the strip we decided to stop off and have a look around the Bellagio again. The hotel is one of the flagship hotels on the strip. Its massive! On top of that, its posh! It look so nice I'm going to be taking lots of photos of the place outside and inside where I can. As I said in yesterdays blog there are the expensive shops there with the likes of georgio armani, prada, tiffany & Co, etc. We then browsed through the front desk/reception area, the gardens; which is like an indoor garden type thing, very nice looking and I'll have some pics of that too. The casino is super nice and their cardroom is amazing. Won't be playing poker here though as is the main spot for pro players and the top up and comming players. Their back private room behind the card room is where the big game goes on, top pro's buying in from anything from $100,000 upwards.

After this we popped across the road to Paris, a really nice looking hotel thats, guess what, french style. They have a massive replica of the Eiffle Tower out the front of the casino. We went in here not only to look around (and its nice!) but to book our first show. We booked tickets to go see the Anthony Cool Experience, a comedy stage hypnotist. I'm looking forward to it as I'm expecting it to be a lot of fun.

After this we decided to try some poker out at one of the hotels we've been wanting to browse. We went up the road a little bit to Planet Hollywood. There is the Miracle Mile shopping centre attached next to the hotel which we decided should be left to shopping day. Planet Hollywood is a really big and very nice looking hotel/casino. We also found a decent quote here for the grand canyon excursion. We're looking at $360 total for the trip. Thats lift to the airport, the 3 hour chopper ride over Lake Mead, hoover Damn, an extinct volcano and of course the canyon itself. It's a no brainer and we're booking it tomorrow. This is going to be one of my favourite activities we do while we're out here.

After this we sat down to some poker. $1/$2 no limit $200 in front of me. The session was slow and I sorta stayed around the $180 mark a lot of the day. Fluctuating here and there, going down to $160, then I made some hands and got up to about $225. This all over the course of about 4 hours and eventually Josh and I decided to grab some food in the hotel. We ate at a really nice cafe type place that was more like a restaurant. Can't remember its name but we had one of our best meals of the trip here. Great service too. Possibly also the best service of the trip.

After dinner we decided to walk back down the strip to the Imperial Palace to chill out for 30 mins or so before heading next door to Harrah's to play in some games there since we haven't cehcked that out yet. However, when we got to Imperial Palace there was a game going that we fancied playing so sat down with $200 (usual stakes game). This session was weird and tough for me. I had hands that made nothing on the flop. I couldn't hit anything and when I tried making plays too I would find myself up against people who were hitting hands. I couldn't make anyting work and my stack dwindled to $100. Decided eventually to call and end to this game as the table type changed, there wasnt as much betting going on with most the players being very conservative, so not much money to go after and people started leaving too.

We popped down to Harrah's and sat in their $1/$2 no limit game with a $200 stack. This game started off badly for me too. I got TT third to act, the second player to act raised the pot to $10 and I decide just to call. I don't mind other people calling too as it gets more money in there if I'm going to hit another T on the flop for my trips and due to the other players there I didn't expect anyone to get fancy and reraise the $10 unless they had my TT beaten anyway. Two other people called and the flop came down something like 479. I'm liking this flop. The original raiser bets out $20 and thats expected. He's most likely trying to take the pot there and I make a raise here to try win it there and then. I raise to $6o making it $40 more. The other two players fold and the $20 guy calls for $40 more. Not really what I wanted to see to be honest. The next card I can't remember what it came but he ends up betting $100 at me and now I'm in a tough spot. The table has only been going about 15mins so I don't know much details about his game and how he plays. I try and figure out a range of hands that he can have and a lot have me beaten. He can be trying an aggressive play with a worse pair, or trying a second push trough with a hand that missed like AK but thats very unlikely since my raise on the flop tells him I have a hand. What would make sense with his $100 bet is a pair like JJ upwards or 3 of a kind. In the end I figure theres much more chance I'm behind here and I'm forced to fold the hand. Thats my stack down to $130 early on and from there on its tough all the way.
The same sorta thing that happened at Imperial Palace happened here. My hands weren't hitting, I couldnt get many plays to work. It was a slow night and I was staying afloat where I could holding my stack at around the $100 mark. Sometimes I'd get it around $130 and sometimes it went to about $90. By the end of the session my stack still stood at around $110. Eventually the table started to break and it was time to leave with not enough players to make the game playable.

Poker wise it was a tough day. However, that can be taken as a positve. I knew I'd have tough days. To go on a poker holiday and play every day without days where nothing happens and nothing works is extremely unlikely. I don't think I played badly. I noticed a few hands where I do think I could have played differently and I'll try and watch that in my play in the comming sessions. On the whole though it was just one of those days where things aren't working out.
For the trip the poker is still going well with me sitting at about $400 in front.

As for the other parts of the day, I'm really looking forward to the Anthony Cools show which we're seeing on Tuesday night. Also more than excited about going and booking the Grand Canyon trip. That really is going to be awesome. Not sure what day we'll set that for. Possibly thurs or fri.

Oh, one other thing I almost forgot. When we visted the Bellagio, we went out the front and watched their water fountains show. Every half hour outside the Bellagio (theres like a pond type thing in front of the hotel, photo's will explain it better than I can in words) their water fountains perform to music being played. Its a fantastic thing to see. Water being fired many feet into the air in perfect lines. There must be a lot of power involved in achieving this. It was great to watch. I'll show pics that I eventually take of it when I get back or if I can get then up before this trip is over. But here's a link for now to a pic of the fountains for anyone who wants to see what I've tried to explain:

http://www.virginmedia.com/microsites/playbetwin/slideshow/vegas/img_1.jpg

Anyway thats all for now. Will post up a blog again tomorrow. Not sure what our plans are other than booking our Grand Canyon trip. Will probably check out poker games at the MGM or Excalibur just a bit further up from Planet Hollywood. Or we could end up playing at Planet Hollywood again since it was a lovely cardroom to play in.
Hope everything is going well for everyone back home. Take care and I'll blog again tomorrow.

Day Four - Nice and easy

2008-08-30T10:08:00.002+01:00

Well today we decided to not do an awful lot during the day. The plan was to play poker throughout the day and to then go to club Pure in Caesars Palace in the evening.

So got up and went for breakfast at the Teahouse again in Imperial Palace. Very nice once again, got served a really tasty fruit platter with yoghurt and some toast.

Then we went off to the Venetian to try out the poker there. We walked down the strip and detoured into the Venetian card room via the Grand Canal Shoppes at the same place. Wow its a nice complex, plenty of shops, mainly big expensive brands but I'd love to browse round them one of the days and just look at all the big price tags :P.

The card room in the Venetian is one of the nicest I've seen so far. Really comfortable, big, lots of games going all at once and the casino itself, as well as the hotel actually is just superb! One other thing we're going to do at the Venetian one day during this trip is to take a Gondala ride because they're meant to be pretty cool.

As for the poker in the Venetian it was a long and slow session. We started at around 1:30pm and finished around about 5:30-6:00pm. Not much happened for me. It was the usual $1/$2 no limit game (the only cash game I'll play while I'm here) and I baught in for $200. I didnt get much going, not many decent situations and I sat for a long time at around $150 just keeping afloat every time I managed to get a little something in the way of hands or situations to bet at. Eventually, towards the end of the session, I hit a hand that I got paid off on. I was in the small blind and 3 people called before the flop, I called $1 in the small blind with 92 and the big blind checked. The flop came 927. Very sweet, I've hit two pair, but even with 4 others in the pot I'm not sure if anyone else has made a hand to play against me with here. I decide to check hoping someone bets, it goes check, check, then the last guy to act fires $10 at the pot. I think sweet but I decide to raise here, since I took a risk checking because the board had two of the same suit on it making flush draws possible. I raised to $40. The big blind folds, then the other guy who checked goes all in for $56 total. The guy who bet $10 folds and I make the call for his last $16. He turns over J9 for just the pair and I end up winning the hand.
This took me to about $220 and I left around about that amount. So a small profit, which I'm happy with after a slow session.

After this we went to the Imperial Palace and decided to play another small 2 hour session before dinner. This session went slowly too. Not much happening. A slow tight table and I didnt get too much going in this game too. My $200 stood at around $180 for a while then I got a couple of hands that I took some pots with and ended up with my stack at $225. At around 8:00pm we left for dinner so I recorded another small profit.

We decided to eat at the Emperor's buffet for dinner and what a good choice that turned out to be! So much choice for a $17 all you can eat buffet. I had a slice of prime rib and a slice of turkey (the americans give you massive slices by the way), a little bit of rice and a little bit of veg with a lovely bread roll. Very tasty! Follwed up with a bit of jelly to finish the meal off nicely. The food on this holiday so far has been second to none! Its very good value too.

After this it was time to go to Pure. However, this didnt end up going to plan. We ended up queing for 2 hours with our VIP passes to Pure which plenty of people before us had used to get in. When we got to the door and tried to use the free pass ourselves they told us because its like a bank holiday weekend here, management had decided halfway through the night that they were no longer accepting the passes and were wanting $40 per entry into the club. Josh and I had a decision here. Although I was happy to just pay the $40 and then whatever else on drinks and have the experience, we decided that why not hold back, use the passes next weekend when they'll be valid since it wont be a holiday weekend, and then enjoy some other nights out on between. So we decided to leave it and go browse the bellagio before we headed back to the Imperial Palace.

The bellagio is an awesome place and we'll be going back there to spend more time in it and to see the fountains out the front during the day. The shopping part of the Bellagio is sweet, Georgio Armani, Tiffany & Co., Channel, Prada, all the expensive shops you could think off. More huge price tags no doubt. We did however notice a nice looking restaurant that we thought man thats going to be expensive to eat at. Well, no, steaks are $30 so we're going to eat there so we can say we ate at the Bellagio haha :P.
Oh yeah, also ran into this pretty drunk girl while walking through the Bellagio. She turns, notices me, then comes over and links arms with me and goes "hey where's the bathroom". Well, sorta says it, in a drunk kinda way. Then says im her new BFS. Im puzzled and she goes "thats best friends forever". Poor girl can't spell, alcohol really must have got to her.

After this and a quick tour of the VERY nice casino and look over the card room we decided to head back to the IP and chill out a bit with a drink. Tomorrow we haven't decided what we're going to do. We could either play poker, browse the Miracle Mile shops at Planet Hollywood, or something totally different. We might go round booking some shows tomorrow too since we're planning what we want to see next week. As well as this we'll decide what nights out we want to experience.

Oh yeah, before I head off, funny thing happened in the elevator going down to dinner. One of the elevators is kinda broken, it ALWAYS stops at floor 13 no matter what floor you request, its like the 13th floor button is stuck and will stop there before taking you to your floor. So Josh and I are in the elevator, it stops at another floor to pick this woman up, then it does its floor 13 trick, then on its way down to the main floor. I explain all this to the woman how its funny that it does that and its annoying and then after all that she looks at me puzzled and goes "oh me no speak english" haha! Opps.

Oh well, to summarise, this is a blast. Vegas is awesome. Its like a totally different world out here. Meeting some great people from all places. Some from London, some from Ireland, plenty from all over the US, some from Canada, Austrailia, all super friendly all taking in the Vegas experience together. I know its just going to be more like this as the next 13 days roll by. Cant wait for the rest of the week! Well, see you all soon.

Day Three - More poker

2008-08-29T12:33:00.002+01:00

Well today Josh and I woke up and went for a breakfast at a cafe/tearoom type place here in Imperial Palace. Its quite nice, it does all day breakfasts along with soups, salads, bit of grill stuff, pasta and others general things like that. Oh, it also is the place responsible for that amazing stir fry I had on the first night through room service. I had a very tasty fruit salad with toast for breakfast then that was us ready to hit the tables.

We played three sessions of poker today. First we went to the Flamingo. I baught in for $200 again at the $1/$2 no limit game. Started off pretty well again, had a crazy guy doing a lot of betting and managed to take a few chips off him. Then I managed to take a few other good pots and worked my stack up to $300 and held at this level for around an hour or so. Then for the next 3-4 hours of the session things went slow, I stopped hitting hands and everytime I tried a few moves I couldnt make them work and my stack started to dwindle a bit. By the end of the session (around 5:30pm) my stack was at $225. At this point we decided to leave to go for dinner.

We went next door to Bill's Gambling Hall & Saloon for their steak offer. It was a steak for $14.95. I had a rare 8oz new york strip with mash, salad and veg. It was amazing, extremely tasty. Looking forward now to trying more steaks in Vegas over the next two weeks.

After this we went over to the Imperial palace and started playing in the $1/$2 no limit game there. I baught in for the usual $200 and this session went really well for me. I was on form, playing really well and reading the other players really well. Quite a few players were conservative types who didnt play many hands and only really played when they had something. Then there were a selection of players playing more hands and betting a lot more. Over the course of a couple of hours I worked my stack up to $400. Then over the next hour I managed to increase it to $550. I had the biggest stack at the table and one of the conservative players even moved seats to be on my direct left where he felt he might have an advantage over me. However, this suited me too since I'm happy having the players who arent going to get involved in too many hands to my left, I want the active players on my right so I know what they're doing before I need to make my decisions.
This session lasted til about 1am when I left with about $520. Amazing session, but at the end it tailed off in terms of action at the table with not many hands being played for much money so we decided to quit this game and check out one other to last us til the early hours.

We popped back down the road to Bill's where we had the steak and played the other night. We sat down at the $1 no limit game. This one is a strange game cause its just one blind for $1 instead of the usual two blinds game. I prefer the other games to be honest but this one is good for a bit of a less active game. I baught in for $200 and tonight there were three guys being totally crazy. Betting lots every hand and often while not looking at their cards. This was good news because it meant all we needed to do was hit our hands and clean up. Unfortunately for the 2 hours or so we spent at the table I didnt hit much, couldnt make much happen and ended up lossing a little bit. At the end of this session I cashed out $170 so $30 down on this one.

However poker on a whole went really well today. I had an amazing run in the Imperial Palace game and learnt things from hands where I realised I had made mistakes and I also learnt from mistakes on a whole in the Flamingo game when my $300 went down to $225 and Bill's when I couldn't make anything happen.

I'm optimistic and looking forward to more poker tomorrow and over the comming days as my confidence is high and I have faith in my ability, while also recognising I can learn a lot while playing here.

As for non poker related stuff, well today was pure poker and tomorrow is likely to be the same for the most part. Tomorrow evening we're most likely going to use one of our free entry for one person and a guest coupons at club Pure in Caesars Palace (meant to be a really nice place) and then over the weekend we're going to do some sight seeing, I'll probably do some photography and we're going to book a couple of shows for next week too. So plenty of stuff comming up to keep you updated on.

for now though its about 5am here and we're going to head off to catch some sleep ready for another day at the tables tomorrow.

Take care everyone, hope you're all doing well! Talk to everyone soon.

Day Two - The Poker Begins

2008-08-28T10:54:00.005+01:00

Hey everyone!

Well last night I left of by saying Josh and I were going to grab some dinner and then head down to the poker tables to play our first session. This was about 9:30pm on the Tuesday. Since I had been up since 8:00am on the Monday and not really slept apart from an hour on the plane over, we were feeling extremely tired. In the end we decided we should order some room service, chill in the room for a bit and then perhaps just go down and grab some drinks then bed ready for a decent day today.

It turned out to be a great choice because I ordered a vegetable stir fry on a bed of rice and it was the most amazing stir fry I've ever tasted. So much flavour! I'll deffinately be having one again. After this we chilled for a bit but ended up falling asleep so didnt do anything else Tues night.

Weds morning we got up late, the plan being not to be up much of the mornings so we're staying up til 3am and more in the evenings which is how we want to spend the time here. We got up and went for a brunch buffet in the Imperial Palace. For $14 it was good value. There was so much choice! Lots of meats, pasta, fruits, salads, toast, semi breakfast stuff like bacon, eggs etc, ribs. Then the most amazing selection of deserts/cakes you've ever seen! It was very nice. We left the buffet around 11:30 I think.

After this we decided to go browse the strip some more. We went and looked round some more casinos starting with the Mirage then on to Caesars Palace, Treasure Island, The Venetian and Harrahs. All were really nice with The Mirage, Ceasars Palace and the Venetian being particularly large and posh! The poker in the Mirage looked good and we'll check that out one day, Caesars didnt offer the games we wanted though. The others werent offering games we fancied palying, except for Treasure Island which did offer the game we wanted.
We also looked round a shopping place called The Forum, which is linked to Caesars. Very posh inside with loads of shopping. Quite a few expensive places but theres something for everyone in there. We looked on just the first floor because we've got a day or two set where we're going to go shopping and shopping only :P.

After this we decided to go and play some poker here in the Imperial Palace. The games we're playing are $1/$2 no limit cash poker. Josh and I both sat down to the same table and baught in for $200. The game started slow for me and about 30 mins in I took a couple of hits and was down to about $140. However, I was feeling rather good because the table was turning out quite easy in terms of the quality of the other players so I was optimistic. A while longer I was getting myself back up to around $170 and I was dealt QQ. I raised it up to about $6 and got calls from 3 other people. The flop came down JQ7 so I hit 3 of a kind! I decided to check, expecting one of the other guys to bet which they did, about $10 I think, I just called so 3 of us stayed in the pot. The turn was a T, and I bet out $20. I got raised another $20 and I decided at this point to go all in for about I think $100 more. My opponent called me and turned over JT for two pair, the river came blank and I took down the pot of about $350.
The rest of the session went well, I took down small pots here and there, then another hand came up where I had TT. I cant remember the specifics of the hand but by the turn I had put in $50 and ended up facing a large river bet and I figured I probably wasnt winning the hand so I had to fold. I'll never know either way but I didnt feel like calling was great there.
At the end of the session I left with about $315 so up $115 on my first ever poker session in Vegas. Sweet! The game was really soft too, the players weren't all that great and I found it a comfortable game to play in, able to read my opponents well. I'll deffinately play more here throughout my stay.

We started this session around 1pm I think it was and we finished around about 6pm. So we decided to grab some dinner before wandering around and then more poker. We couldnt decided what to eat. We ended up outside Pizza Palace and Ming's chinese restaurant. We really didnt know which one to eat at so in true Vegas style, asked the waitress for a coin and flipped for it! The result was eat at Ming's so we went there. It was lovely inside, small but very nice. Super friendly staff and I had a sweet & sour chicken with rice. It was amazing! Really tasty and plenty of it!

Once dinner was done we decided to go round the casino's we browsed earlier to find some poker as we fancied playing somewhere different. Unfortunately there still wasnt our game going in the casinos that didnt offer it earlier, and there was a big wait for our game in Treasure Island so we decided to head further up the strip and try some other places.
We went down to a place called Bill's Gambling Hall & Saloon, this was one of the hotels we were thinking of staying in and we had heard the poker wasnt bad here. We ended up sitting down at the $1 no limit game. I baught in for $200 again and made a fantastic start! I got AA second hand and managed to win about $30 on that pot. Then the very next hand I had JJ and raised. About 4 people called and the flop came QJ4. One of the guys bet and I decided to raise it up. Can't remember how the rest of the betting went on this hand but I won a nice pot and ended up with my stack at about $320 in the first 20 mins!
The rest of the session went slow for me. I went down a little, then back up a little and kept fluctuating on a small scale around the $300 level. We decided to call it a night at 1:30am after about 4 hours of poker. The game had really slowed down so we thought it was best to leave and find a more juicy game tomorrow.

The poker today though went really well. It was nice to have the poker start on a high. I ended up with $200 profit today which is great! Looking foward to more poker in the comming days!

A couple of things to mention that I missed out from yesterdays update. Firstly, I can't wait til we go to see the grand canyon because as the plane was comming into Vegas it was banking left and right to get the correct landing course, this gave you some AMAZING views of the desert/canyons from the plane. It was just awesome to look at!

Another thing is the people here. Everyone is so friendly and helpful. It's easy to think up reasons why of course, the fact that they get more tips that way etc, but anyone who's ever been to the US will know what I mean. You just don't get service like this in the UK. You never do. People here can never help enough, they're so friendly and will chat to you about where you're from, how you're enjoying your stay, what you've been doing etc. Its just really nice!

Oh yeah, we also managed to pick up some free admission coupons on the strip to some clubs over the weekend. We got free admission to Pure, a really nice $30 admission club in Caesars Palace. We have two coupons for 1 free admission + 1 guest, so basically two nights in there for free! Looking foward to that.

Oh one other thing I forgot. All casinos have sportsbooks here and oh my god, they're unbelievable! Ladbrokes needs to take note. Think of the size of a Vue cinema room, and the sportsbooks are about that size! Absolutely huge, MASSIVE screens displaying sports and the odds. Loads of comfy seats and computer terminals for betting and watching your events on. They're amazing! Thats how bookies should be :P.

Well thats it for now. Going to chill a little bit and then head to bed ready for another packed day tomorrow. Absolutley loving it here. Its amazing, everything about it is amazing, walking up and down the strip, looking round the casinos, the poker, the people. Im having such a blast!

Anyway, will update more tomorrow, for now though take care and I'll speak soon.

Vegas Day 1 - Incredible!

2008-08-27T04:47:00.001+01:00

Well we took off from Manchester airport on time and the 10hr flight wasnt too bad to be honest. It was pretty smooth with minimal turbulance and the meal and service on the flight was really nice too. It was suprising to find out that the plane taking us to Vegas was not a Jumbo (Boeing 747), instead an Airbus A330. It was a nice craft though, the leg room wasnt terrible, managable, I ended up reading and watching a couple of in flight films.

Anyway thats now what this post is about. When we landed in Vegas the first thing I noticed stepping out of the airport to the taxis was the heat. It just completely hits you. The temperature today was 36 degrees C, and its meant to get up to 42 over the next couple of days before an apparent storm over the weekend.

While enjoying the taxi ride into Vegas and down the strip to our hotel (the Imperial Palace) all that we could say and think was "wow!". The place is incredible and no amount of looking at pictures or seeing it on TV can prepare you for seeing it all up close and personal. Everything is just so big! The hotels are massive as are the casinos too.

Our hotel isnt the biggest around, its still quite big but its not the supersized ones such as the likes of The Bellagio, The Rio, The MGM etc. But its very nice here and for Josh's 21st we got a free upgrade to a strip view Deluxe room which is very nice indeed. The view is great and I've taken a few pics already that I'll try and get posted up soon if I can.

After getting settled down we wandered around the Imperial Palace casino which is a nice place. Lots of space and a nice poker room too. Also, an interesting addition was extra tables with what they call "dealertainers" which is basically dealers dressed up as celebs such as elvis and others. After this we decided to take a walk down the strip to the MGM hotel and casino, and then to the Excalibur hotel and casino as these two places, as well as our own Imperial Palace, have been recommended highly to us for the poker side of things.

Taking the short 20 minute walk down the strip, at around 3-3:30 was really hard! The heat was immense and we weren't really prepared for it right there and then. I had a bottle of water to hand that I finished before we got to the MGM. Then when we got into the casino we had a pint of water each again and were glad to be under the roofs of air-conditioned casinos/hotels.

The bar we went to in the MGM was really nice. Very modern posh looking circular bar and while we were having our drinks we had an interesting suprise. Randomly and all of a sudden the 4 bar workers got up onto the bar and did a 30 second dance to music. It was quite funny and out of the blue, but entertaining all the same. You dont get anything like that anywhere in the UK! Only in Vegas!

The MGM as a place, casino wise and hotel wise, is HUGE. I cant describe it, but we could have got lost in there and apparently people do. It just keeps going and going, then you get to the shopping bits which was really nice with some expensive looking shops around. There were a really nice selection of clubs and bars too that we're going to go check out as well as the poker when we next return there.
After this we headed over the road to the Excalibur which is smaller but still very nice and very spacious. When I say smaller, in Vegas thats still very big! The card rooms for poker in the MGM was amazing, and in Excalibur looked really good too and we're going to deffinately play a lot in these two venues.
One note about walking down the strip, although its a very nice experience there is a strange side to parts of it, loads of guys standing around handing out little flyers for prostitutes. Its something we didn't expect and found a bit strange, but they're not pushy if you ignore them they dont try and force them into your hands.

No specifics on poker to report though today, we're going to grab dinner now (its 9pm here) and then we're going to head downstairs for some poker in the Imperial Palace where we're staying. I'll update on how we got on with this tomorrow.

To summarise, Vegas is amazing. We're loving it here so far and cant wait to get out and explore the place more. We have loads of casinos to visit and shopping malls to go to.

Anyway, time for me to go. Hope everyone back home is fine. Take care and I'll speak to you all soon.

The Night Before

2008-08-26T01:12:00.003+01:00

Well its now 1:10am with Josh and I in the process of our all night stay up since we have a taxi to catch to Leeds train station at 5am. From there we have a train direct to Manchester airport and we'll get checked in, then probably grab coffee and breakfast while waiting for our departure at 9:55.

We decided theres no point in sleeping and staying up all night seemed like a fun decision. So its xbox, TV etc and espresso to keep us going! The plan will be to be completely out of it enough to sleep a good amount on the plane.

I'm all packed up and ready to go. I have my hand luggage with the reading materials on for the 11hr flight over. Thanks though to time differences, we'll get into Vegas just after midday so plenty of time left to start exploring and having a load of fun :D!

Our excitement levels are the highest they've been and we're non stop talking about the trip! Discussions have turned from general vegas stuff to the poker. We plan to play a good amount of poker on this trip, since this was the primary reason we decided to go in the firstp place. After doing readying around on the best places to play it seems we'll most likely check out the MGM and the Excalibur casinos as they offer the $1/$2 NL game's we're after with some of the weaker players around.

I'm really looking foward to putting in some solid poker playing time. I haven't had as much time as I'd have liked lately to play on line and I haven't played live poker in a few months so this trip will be refreshing in that respect.

Well now its time to continue feeling excited about the trip, drinking espresso to stay up, playing xbox and watching TV. So bye for now, the next post you read will be from Vegas!

Take care all x

Introduction

2008-08-24T16:16:00.001+01:00

Hey everyone!

Well the time is finally here! On Tuesday morning Josh and I will be taking off from Manchester and 11 hours later (although only 3 hours later in time differences :P) landing at McCarren Intl airport right next to the vegas strip!

We're looking foward to this so much you can't put it into words! Since we booked it back in February we haven't stopped talking about it. Two weeks of vegas! Although primarily we decided to go due to our love of poker, we'll be doing much more than that. We'll see everything there is to see and do as much as we can in the time we're there. I'm sure we'll return to the UK wanting to hop straight on the next plane back out!

We're booked into the Imperial Palace hotel and casino and this is where we'll be staying for the whole trip. As for the poker playing, we wont be limiting ourself to one cardroom. The plan is to check out as many of the recommended casinos and use the places we enjoy the most.

I plan to update this blog every day as Josh is with his. We'll probably write an update before we go to bed every night. For those nights where we're too drunk to write an update or we're not actually going to be sleeping much, well, we'll sort something out :P.

If you want to check out Josh's blog too, his link is: http://suggyinvegas.blogspot.com/

Feel free to comment and leave messages on this blog as I update it. All comments and messages are more than welcome :).

If time allows I might upload a few photos I take on the trip as well as these standard updates.

Anyway, thats all for now. Time to go finish the rest of the packing and sit around soaking up all the excitement before we leave. My next post will be from Vegas so check back on the 26th for the first update.

See you all soon!