VEGAS: 22nd August (General)

Day/Night 6: Monday 22nd August (General)

After the best night's sleep of the trip so far (10PM-6AM) I'm up and refreshed and looking for some cash game action in Vegas. However, there is one thing I have started to learn about poker in this town and that is that from the morning up until about midday, a $1/$2 cash game is actually quite difficult to find outside of the Big 6 poker rooms. It seems that if you really do want to play a little poker outside of those six rooms, in the morning-time, then you might just have to settle for a tourney. Unfortunately most, if not ALL, are fast-structured donkfests and personally if I'd wanted to sit at a table to play something resembling a lottery then I would have played a lot more blackjack!

Anyway, after a little bit of searching, I do see a couple of cash tables under way at Bally's and so settle in for a relatively long 3 hour session (Session #15). At 2:15PM I'm back at Harrah's to freshen up and it's then up to the Venetian for another session but I only sit for 80 minutes due to the ding-dong sitting next to me who gives me an excuse to bring my session to a premature halt (Session #16).

At 6PM, I'm ready for some evening play and, with nothing doing at Harrah's poker room (again), I stride out in a southerly direction for a 4 session / 4 room poker-crawl with the added extra of downing lots of beer to give it that added pazzing and pazazz. First up, it's 3 or 4 cups of Miller's at O'Shea's bringing me a little bit of merriment but unfortunately no luck of the Irish - I suffer my biggest loss of the trip so far (Session #17). However I do manage to spin up the $35, I left the poker table with, into $40 at the blackjack table to turn that into a $5 profit - Hurrah!

After this, it's 3 or 4 bottles of Budweiser at Planet Hollywood for a further 90 minutes of poker (Session #18) and, with a small profit, my faith in my ability a little bit restored. It was then another one of those huge cans of lager - that'll be a Coors Light - as I strolled down for a very short 30 minuter at the MGM (Session #19) and far too many decent players at the table for my liking. Finally, with the time around midnight and another big can of lager later, I make it just one more session - and that's a very drunken little pop at Bill's (Session #20). 'Tis a small world, I'll tell you. I sit down and start yapping with this guy next to me and find out he's from London. Not only that, it turns out that he's the dad of a kid I used to teach at school! Far out man!!

With lots of walking and lots of poker sessions done, I'm pretty exhausted by the time I get back to Harrah's at about 2AM. Funnily enough, as I try to cash my $5 voucher (that I made at Flamingo after a baller video poker session the day before) a rather attractive young lady asks if I'm all right which was considerate of her. I tell her that I'm OK but then she goes and asks me if I want to go and party!? Well, I'm a 43 year-old chubby bloke with glasses who was feeling worse for wear with drink and she was this beautiful and stunning girl in her 20s all on her ownsome. I picture the absurdity of me going out to "party" with this young lady and politely turn her down. I'm sure she was after something else. I wonder what it was?