First Night Bad Run and Some Redemption

After we arrived at around 1AM on Thursday night/Friday morning we decided to hit up the Mirage to see what kind of action was going. We got there and the room was bustling, so I jumped into a soft $10-20 game while Darsky took a seat at the $2-5NL.

I started off dumping a little bit to what I thought was an easy table. I was playing alright but after not playing since the first weekend of December I was a little rusty. I dumped off my first buy and rebought, knowing I could take down the whole table. Within an hour I got my whole buy-in back and was looking clean.

Then the table started dying and we ended up five-handed with a newcomer who went on a total heater. He ended up taking two racks off of the other four of us within an hour, and then the table broke. It was pretty disheartening after getting my shit together to win my buy-in back just to have a guy go on an hour long win. But that's poker.

I was suffering from TTT (Ten-Twenty Tilt) and jumped into an open seat next to Dar at the $2-5NL table. On about my third hand I donked off my buy to a crazy asian guy. I had no read and no reason to make the move I did on him, but I went for it and got boned. I then put myself on BPT and continued to bleed chips for the most part of the morning.

I headed over to the blackjack table with what I had left and after three hours was able to pick up $100 and a free comp to the buffet. It wasn't much, and wasn't even close to getting me even, but it was better than a total loss.


We checked into our hotel room after we ate breakfast, and passed out almost immediately. We woke up at around 7PM and grabbed a bite to eat at Gordon Beirsch. I've never been to GB before but Darsky had told me that I had to try it. There's a few out in LA that he's had the pleasure of enjoying, so I was pretty confident in his read that the one in Vegas was going to kick ass just as much as the SoCal locations.

We grabbed a delicious burger and a couple homemade brews, and were lucky enough to get served by the only hot bartender/server in the whole place (Vegas has a way of attracting the hottest women visitors you can find, yet most of the locals are just ass-ugly.) Needless to say I was impressed with the place and enjoyed both the food and the beer.

After we ate John called up and said he was down to hang out and play cards. We decided to go to Caesar's since when we here in December there was no action the day we stopped in. Again, we were pleased to find a buzzing room. It was interesting to see how much $1-2NL action was going on, and in talking with the dealers it seems that Caesar's has some of the most $1-2NL action on the strip.

Being low on funds and finding a bunch of action, I decided to jump into a $1-2 game while Dar took to the upper stage to play $2-5NL. John showed up a couple minutes after I got a seat, and he was able to snag a newly opened $1-2 table as well. After a little while he was able to come to my table and we had a pretty good table talk going.

I never really got anything big going, but was able to double my starting stack multiple times. Unfortunately playing $1-2NL will put you up against a lot of retards, so the swings in the game were a plenty. We had a lot of action though, so I stayed and played. Eventually I lost my whole built up stack in two big hands, and that was the end of the second night.

It wasn't a good couple nights for the record books and I was quite bitter and pissed off at Vegas. I was definitely tilting after dumping off a grand in two days.

Darsky's game closed up and we hit the bar with a couple cool 21-year-old pros while I quietly steamed off to the side. If Sean (sp?) and Brandon are reading this, post a comment up. You guys are badasses and we'll give you guys a call next time we're in town.

As the three of them were talking about their game, I tossed $20 into the quarter video poker machine as I pounded my Jack and Coke. The first hand up of Double Double Bonus I pulled the Js-2h-Jc-Ks-Qs, and instead of holding the instant winner of the pair of Jacks, I decided to donk off $1.25 and hold onto the KQJs for the Royal pull.

As.

10s.

FUCKING NO WAY!!! I pulled the royal flush on the first pull and watched as the machine took 40 seconds to pay off my $1,020. I quickly spread the word that I was getting paid 4,000 credits, and my night at that point turned around. We hung with the guys for a little bit more before they took off, and then Dar and I started drinking even more.

We met up with a couple crazy Mexican brothers who own a couple big restaurants, and were in town to spot locations on the strip to open one out here. No doubt these guys were big timers. They were way way drunk, but still fun. They were talking about inviting us to their four-bedroom suite, but Darsky was pretty sure that one of the two wanted to stick it in me, so we let them go on their way and we stayed put.

Dar and I also Keno battled, and while taking a strong lead to start and maxing out at a 5-point sprint, we ended up dead even on the final pull and I was once again dejected.

I quickly recovered from the Keno tie, and we took off from the bar at around...morning time? We grabbed a quick bite to eat from the nasty cafe downstairs, and made it up to the hotel room at around 11:30.

We woke up about an hour ago, and now it's time to head out again. With my newfound redemption at the video poker machine, I'm ready to play again. We'll probably hit up the Red8 at the Wynn and stick around there to play cards. If we don't like the action we'll head back to Caesar's, but we should be alright at the Wynn for a while.

Wish me good poker tonight.

Until next time.