After my trip to the Bahamas for the PCA I decided to make a slight de-tour before coming home by chilling in Vegas for 8 days. This was my third trip to Vegas. Previously I've just visited Sin City during the WSOP in the Summer for extended 6 week stays primarily with grind-on-the-mind so it was quite refreshing to come to Vegas just to relax and enjoy everything the city has to offer outside of the abundance of card-rooms.
I was staying with one of my American friends, Kenny, who had relocated and moved into a pretty sweet bungalow just south of the strip with a big pool, garden and huge rooms with an impressive looking kitchen. Unfortunately over the "festive" period some local pikeys burgled him when he was back home in Miami seeing family so the house was looking pretty bare. My other good friend Zach made the flight down from Michigan for the week. Our trip was probably quite good timing as it would allow us to give Kenny a good moral boost and have fun Vegas-style.
One of my favourite things about Vegas is the food. Being a fat bastard this is always pretty much a highlight of the trip. If anyones interested I can recommend a whole host of restaurants/bars/fast food places I could recommend and I'm no way near sampling all the city has to offer. The thing about Vegas food that I think a lot of tourists don't realise is that in my opinion just a short drive off the strip you can get some incredible restaurants/diners/fast food joints and everything is so much cheaper! I won't actually go on too much more about the food as it's literally making me hungry as I type this but here's a photo below. Mmmmm :)
I decided to hire a convertible Ford Mustang for the week which was on offer by Hertz rentals for my stay so inevitably couldn't wait to get out of the city and try this piece of all American Muscle out on the desert roads. Just a side note, after a whole week of doing wheel-spins and bombing around from place to place my fuel bill for the trip was only $40, must be nice to be American! Alas, back to the story. One of the first trips we did was making the 50 minute drive-out to the snow-capped mountains just outside of the city. Our destination was mount Charleston where you can actually go skiing and snow-boarding. How weird is that? Just outside of this incredibly hot desert there are ski resorts within an hours drive. Pretty cool regardless. The hike up to the top of the mountain is incredible. Dark blue skies with the sun shining off the icy snow patches. Really scenically beautiful and most likely the best hike I've ever had. At the end of the walk which took us to a great frozen water-fall which flows in the Summer months there's a huge frozen icicles hanging from the rock face. It didn't take us long to start sliding down the ice until we almost got crushed by some falling ice from the cliff face above. Ooops :p
We also had another great night out seeing the dubstep group 'Skrillex' at Surrender in the Wynn. Lot's of pre-gaming beer pong with hidden shots of various liquors and an awesome atmosphere at the club resorted in an amazing night out. I've not actually had that many nights out in the past on my Vegas trips. I used to do a lot of clubbing as a student at uni, but since graduating other than on holidays I really very rarely go. In Vegas in previous years we've always stuck to the bars rather than the somewhat pricey clubs but after seeing Skrillex I really think I've got to try hitting the clubs again especially on my next Vegas trip in the Summer.
Now to the gambling, what the city's famous for. I did very little pit-gambling just spewing off a couple of $100 messing around having drinks playing video poker. We did manage to get a few sessions in at the poker tables though. In total I played 3 sessions of $1/$2 and predominantly $2/$5 coming out with a $1000 profit on the trip. Unfortunately this could have been a bit more if I didn't lose a $2400 pot spazzing queens into Aces in a $2/$5/$10 game with a missippi straddle but what do you do. I enjoy playing cash in Vegas way way more than in England. I'm not sure why, maybe the lower rake, nicer scenery, efficiency and softness of the games. Who knows. Maybe it's just I like to sub-conciously gamble in Vegas but feel retarded if I spew money at the craps or roulette table. Anyway it was nice to run good over this short sample and book a tidy cash win. Zach and I also decided to flick it in for a couple of $1ks happening at the Red Rock casino a few miles off from the main strip (awesome casino btw I really liked the vibe in there). It was a $1k/$250k gtd re-entry tournament with 3 flights. My day 1a table was hilarious. I was the youngest guy on there by 30-40 years and the play was a joke. I guess it was mainly just old locals as there seemed to be almost no advertising for the tournament series and obviously no online satelittes and I feel that most of the sicko tournament guys that live in Vegas were in Australia or in LA for their respective series. The table talk did get very interesting though and with the addition of Dave Sands (Doc_Sands) I found out that 3 of my 8 table mates had played the PCA $100k super-high roller a week earlier. Sickos! 2 of them were 60+ billionaires that were both planning on playing the $1m WSOP 2012 tournament too and Doc_Sands the very good tournament pro that managed to get 2nd in the PCA $100k. Why he didn't make the trip to Australia I don't know but he certainly made the table tougher. I didn't get much going in either of my entries running AK into Aces and doing my stack off to Doc_Sands with AhTx on KhJh7x flop in a 3bet pot. #OntoTheNextDonation right?
So overall I had an incredible time. It's kind of weird seeing Vegas not in the peak of the Summer, but even in their winter-time it's just like a British Summer. Blue skies and you can get away with a t-shirt/shorts combo in the day and wearing a jumper at night as the temperature drops. Although I'm just at Vegas airport at the moment, I'm already looking forward to my next trip over in the Summer for the world series. I think this upcoming trip will be shorter than previous years. I aim to go up to Montana for a few days prior to the WSOP trip hunting/camping/fishing and enjoying the great natural outdoors before plumetting myself in the Artificial wonderland that is Vegas for a couple of weeks. First priority though is to bink another WSOP package, and hopefully this time get the money for it :)
GL at the tables guys.
that is a mighty tasty looking burger.
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