let’s just get into this.

on the flight over i flew song, which was a fun experience. i played trivia and watched wednesday night baseball as well as the entire first season of entourage (off my laptop). song is pretty damn fun. also, the guy sitting next to me asked me if i wanted hennessey within 5 minutes of take off, and i got a very reasonably priced jack and coke ($5!), my first drink on an airplane.

wednesday night we went to in-n-out, then dropped shit off at the hotel and walked around some, then we hit up that bar and got huge jack and cokes (well, thad/parker/myself did). These drinks combined to kill off 1.5 bottles of jack daniels. They were big. then we went to imperial palace and played craps and got more jack and cokes and then the night's a blur with me and asian and thad walking back alone from ... i think barbarry coast(?) and me making everyone stop in the venetian lobby for bowel-related reasons.

thursday we woke up and went to the paris for brunch, because thad had been talking about how great the paris is. we got there only to see the line stretched out for a bit too long… so we walked over to bally’s and had the buffet there. it was pretty damn good. i needed some money so we (sans parker) went downtown to a huge bank of america and then went onward to downtown vegas. at least, i think that’s the order in which things happened. so we get downtown to the golden nugget, and at the craps table the stickman asks if our group was a bachelor party or just escaping women in general. we said the latter. i believe he then said something about us not looking like homosexuals, and the three choices were bachelor party, homosexuals, or just a vacation. or something like that. stickmen are not necessarily the smartest people around. phil made the obligatory nick/parker jokes about 500 times until someone laughed at him, and then we went over to binions. binions was like a friggin old man’s club. dark, low ceilings, not nearly as fun as the strip casinos. i guess this is what people mean when they talk about how downtown vegas is different, though. we walked around some more and hit up one casino that offered fried twinkies, fried oreos, and large blue drinks. thad and phil got large blue drinks (actually, phil’s drink may have been red) and asian got himself, thad, and myself deep fried twinkies.

holy crap, those are good.

we walked around a little more but nothing too exciting happened until we got back to the car. phil and i found the car first, leading to phil calling shotgun and whatnot. thad thought he’d beat us to the car by going into the stairwell and going down a flight of stairs and coming back in, because he thought we went to the wrong floor of the parking garage. well, not only did we go to the right floor, those stairwells are one way doors in that particular parking garage, and thus thad was locked out of the parking garage. it was pretty hilarious. maybe you just had to be there.

thursday night was the first poker night. thad and i played at ballys until pretty damn late – 4am or so. we played 2-4 limit, which is a game thad is good at and i am terrible at. we both played pretty badly, but i had a fun hand with 69 of clubs, where i hit a straight flush on the turn and, for my efforts, got a free t-shirt that claims that i was treated royally at the bally’s poker room. this was far from true, but it was a fun tshirt.
the highlight of friday was the luxor poker room. thad and i engaged in 2-4 limit there (as did asian for a short while). parker and phil hung out at the pool, which by all accounts was very nice. the luxor was old and weird, and the poker room was tiny and not that nice, but i hit two more fun hands: my ten of spades completed a straight flush on the river (9-Q) and my pocket 5s were matched up with two more 5s on the flop, giving me quads. at the luxor, they pay you for hitting big hands, so i believe i got $20 each for those hands. of course, i lost all that money and then some. god i hate 2-4 limit.

friday night was kinda weak. i think everyone was kinda tired, especially after our huge meal at ruths chris. we walked around a bunch, really being indecisive about if we wanted to do anything more. phil and parker didn’t want to gamble, so we went to the outdoor bar we hit up the first night. the big differences - $7 cover for guys, dancing girls on platforms, and about 3 times the number of people. all 3 of those things lead me to go home and be in bed by around 2. i vaguely remember phil getting home around 2:30 and saying something about $2 craps. nothing wrong with $2 craps, so i made a mental note to push for that on saturday.

so yeah, friday night sucked. and really i was down on vegas a ton, but jon woke me up early on saturday and we went to a few sports books and then we went to in n out with parker/thad and went to ny-ny while phil was at the pool and hit up the arcade. parker had fun playing this crazy boxing game where the game senses how you move and you put on these boxing gloves... and really try and box. watching parker do it was really fun...ny. thad/asian/myself played a game that involved rolling balls into holes to make a taxicab move. the holes that were higher up made the cab move further (faster). it was like a game superimposed on tabletop skeeball. asian won, but i paid for his game so i got a mini stuffed homer doll out of it.

we went on to the casino royale, where the four of us played $2 craps and waited for phil to arrive. by the time phil made it, asian was ready to leave and headed over to the mirage sports book. pretty soon after, thad and parker and i all went to the mirage as well, to watch the games we betted on and whatnot. phil wanted to play craps a little longer, so we left him and he caught up with us about 30 minutes later, down only $25 from a stupid stupid bet he made by mistake - he put down a $25 chip instead of a $5 chip.

we got beers over at the mirage and the waitress laughed at me a lot when i asked for (consecutively) rolling rock, newcastle, and guinness. i finally was approved when i asked for a sam adams, but i don’t even like sam adams. thus, thad easily talked me into drinking jaegerbombs. jaegerbombs are the worst drink on earth. they make you jittery and drunk at the same time, its an awful combination in my opinion. i moved on to my classic jack and coke combination pretty soon after that. i even (stupidly) ordered a jack and coke with dinner at cpk. stupidly, because it cost $7 instead of fucking free, but clearly i was too drunk at this point to care. i yelled ‘fucking a’ really loud in CPK when the royals beat the a’s, making my +300 moneyline bet on the royals a winner (and breaking the royals 19 game losing streak), so that was nice too.

we all headed over to the mgm grand eventually, where thad and i played poker well into the night. actually, i only played poker for 3 hours or so, but thad played poker for quite a while. instead of sticking with 2-4 limit, i signed up for the 1-2 no limit table. no limit is much more my game than limit, as thad and i had discussed pretty much after every one of my bad sessions of limit. i bought in for $200, and within 2 hours i had doubled up, and at the 3 hour mark i was up $350. i was hitting straights, catching great cards, and most importantly folding every time it was the right time to fold. looking back at the last few sessions i’ve had of live no-limit poker, i've won money every time, in both tournaments and cash games. i just love no limit poker. this win plus the winnings from the sportsbook from the day (overall on the trip, 7/8 on baseball games) put me at down only $50 or so. really, not bad at all

sunday was lazy, even in vegas. i'm pretty sure thad didn’t sleep at all saturday night between playing at the mgm and playing at excalibur, but we dragged his tired ass to the wynn. asian had left really early because he had to fly back up to school, so it was just parker/phil/myself/thaddeus. at the wynn, i watched the tribe win their game and then went over to play some blackjack with parker and some guys who were big clemson backers, while phil and thad sorta napped in the sportsbook. the clemson guys were pretty funny, and parker and i were having a pretty damn good time with the dealer and everything. the wynn was my personal favorite casino/hotel, just because its straight class, no filler. parker and i won some money, and when we got up from the table, parker started yelling something about "i'm up money at the fucking wynn" or something. we told him to shut up, but he said he was stockholder so it was ok.

we went and got phil some gelato, because all he did the whole damn trip was talk about gelato. it became shtick, i suppose. we got gelato in the wynn, which was regretted for reasons that will became apparent shortly. we saw the nice waterfall, and then decided that we wanted to play cheap stupid table games. thus, we went over to the barbarry coast.

i lost back some money in blackjack, but that was not the real story. the real story was the idiot sitting to thad's left, the guy who was doubling his bet every time he lost. in theory, this seems to be a decent system - you recoup your losses by winning the doubled bet. however, without infinite money and sitting at a table where you cannot bet more than $500, the system falls apart pretty quickly. furthermore, when you're betting $500 to win back $5 (which is what the system boils down to), it seems pretty damn stupid. there are things written about this system, the martingale system, such as this wikipedia entry. anyways, we saw this guy blow $1500 in three hands and supposedly end up down overall only $700... which i didn't buy at all. but yea, he was a moron. but at least he played blackjack by the books!

parker found a craps table that was not being used but was available so he started playing craps by himself and won, but other people came to the table and he started losing. phil showed up from wherever the hell he was and we all went and got food at the venetian. their food court in the casino has a damn fine $7 burger and a very very healthy portion of cheese fries. we sent thad off, which was sad and stinky. then we walked through the venetian’s mall and saw the gondola rides and whatnot. we got to the recreation of st. mark's square and saw gelato that was much, much nicer looking than the stuff we saw at the wynn. thus, phil regretted his hasty gelato purchase from earlier. parker and i played blackjack at the venetian and parker got all silly and i talked phil into going and gambling more so he went over to imperial palace and won more money playing craps.

niv (3:59:57 PM): god fucking parker
niv (4:00:08 PM): he's such a jackass
niv (4:00:10 PM): so he's at his table
niv (4:00:17 PM): and he's up like 200
niv (4:00:22 PM): then he's back down
niv (4:00:31 PM): and then his table gets real cold and he busts
niv (4:00:45 PM): and i'm over at my table, i started with 90 and i was fluctuating between 100 and 200 pretty regularly
niv (4:00:56 PM): so parker puts down 200 in cash on his table
niv (4:01:04 PM): and he gets a goddamn 16 against an ace
niv (4:01:07 PM): and the dealer shows blackjack
niv (4:01:13 PM): right about this time
niv (4:01:15 PM): i hit a blackjack
niv (4:01:18 PM): then a twenty against a bust
niv (4:01:22 PM): and i'm up to like 175
niv (4:01:30 PM): next hand i put down 25
niv (4:01:40 PM): parker comes over and he friggin puts down 200, money plays
niv (4:01:44 PM): and ruins my entire hand
niv (4:01:54 PM): we both get 15 against a 10
niv (4:01:57 PM): we both bust
niv (4:02:07 PM): i put down 25 again, parker puts down 100 in cash, money plays
niv (4:02:10 PM): i'm yelling at him
niv (4:02:16 PM): "this shoe was good, what the fuck are you doing"
niv (4:02:24 PM): we both bust
niv (4:02:32 PM): so parker blows $500 in three straight hands
niv (4:02:42 PM): and i go from up 75 to up 10 or something
niv (4:02:45 PM): it was real stupid
thad (4:02:49 PM): god
thad (4:02:53 PM): now thats a story
niv (4:02:58 PM): hehe
niv (4:03:09 PM): it was so dumb
niv (4:03:13 PM): he told me "hey hows your table"
niv (4:03:17 PM): i said "god it just got real good"
niv (4:03:23 PM): and then he throws down 200 and i'm like WHAT ARE YOU DOING
niv (4:03:31 PM): what an ass


apparently he won back $100 playing slots in the airport while waiting for his delayed flight, so that’s something.