Vegas - My New Itinerary

Ok, it's all mapped out. In August I hit Vegas for an 11 night trip and plan to visit all 25 casinos between Mandalay Bay and Wynn. Five of them don't have poker rooms but I still plan to pick up $1 chips from each of the 25 places for my collection. Now after a few enquiries, the good people on the 2+2 forums have eased my concerns about playing $1/$3 and sitting down at the $500 maximum buy-in games. As such my "Vegas 14" idea has been scrapped and now it's just about visiting all the rooms in the first 4 days, playing just a little bit, and thereafter deciding to play wherever the mood takes me.

As always the following list is colour coded with casinos in the south of the strip being in green, casinos in the central being in orange and those in the north of the central area being in blue:

Night 1 (Wednesday 18th - Thursday 19th)
After touching down in Vegas at about 2PM, it'll seem like 11PM to me so after checking in at Harrah's I'll need a sleep. I plan to sleep as much as I can until the evening when I can start my first exploration. At first I'll hang around Harrah's to get my bearings and then it'll be off for a walk to the south end of the strip to scope out these places:

1. Mandalay Bay

2. Luxor

3. Excalibur

4. New York-New York

5. Tropicana

6. MGM

I enjoy walking (especially exploring new places) and as this will be my first night, it'll be more about sight-seeing and recovering from jet-lag rather than playing poker. It seems like those in the south end of the strip are not that great for poker anyway, hence my decision to head off to this area first. MGM appears to be the best place for poker out of all these so if I'm not too knackered, or have a burning desire to play, I'll take me a seat at MGM for a few orbits.

Night 2 (Thursday 19th - Friday 20th)
On the second night it'll be time for me to play some proper poker sessions. It won't be time to jump into the big fancy rooms just yet so I plan to visit the cheaper rooms on the eastern side of the road first:

1. Harrah's

2. Imperial Palace

3. Flamingo 

4. O'Shea's

5. Bill's 

6. Bally's

7. Casino Royale

These are all fairly close to each other, generally allow lower buy-ins and may possibly be softer than the bigger games in the plusher establishments. This area sounds good as a relatively gentle introduction to the Vegas poker scene.

Night 3 (Friday 20th - Saturday 21st)
By now, I'll be into the swing of things and it'll be time to visit the more sophisticated poker rooms. It'll be the weekend, and no doubt busier, but despite what the 2+2 people say, I still think I need to be on my guard about jumping into a pool of sharks at these places:

1. Wynn

2. Venetian

3. Treasure Island

4. Mirage

5. Palazzo

6. Caesars Palace

If I've still got cold feet about playing at these so-called "tougher" places I can still return to some of the poker rooms I visited on the second night or even wander back over to the MGM.

Night 4 (Saturday 21st - Sunday 22nd)
This will be time to visit the final batch of poker rooms and if I haven't got my feet wet by playing proper sessions in any of the big rooms so far, then I'll definitely be diving in today. The last on the list are:

1. The Bellagio

2. Aria

3. Cosmopolitan

4. Monte Carlo

5. Paris

6. Planet Hollywood

Cosmopolitan and Paris don't do poker which means, out of this batch, Planet Hollywood is the only place on the east side of the road that does. I'll visit Planet Hollywood first, pop into Paris followed by Cosmopolitan for my souvenir $1 chip and then it'll be onto the final three poker rooms. It means that I'll probably save The Bellagio and Aria (arguably two of the best) till last.

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After I've got a general feel for all the places, it will then be a case of playing where the mood takes me during the rest of the week. As I say, I'd love to do trip reports while I'm there but I still need to find out about internet access and where the best places will be to blog.