When you arrive in Vegas at 10:30pm Vegas time, which is past midnight your time, you have a decision to make. You can sleep, or you can gamble.
Not really a decision, right? KingLucky and I didn't think so. After finding our new digs and dropping off our bags, we headed to the Palms for some late-night poker madness. The only games they had going that late were $2/$4 limit and $4/$8 limit. We sat at the $4/$8 limit, mini blinds, half kill game. Is that confusing enough for you? Big Blind is two dollars, unless you are on a kill, then it's three. The raise is $4, so expect to pay $6 to play. Aggro city, but once I established myself as a rock by actually folding a few hands pre-flop, I could take almost any pot at any time by using the word "raise." One hammer went down in flames when some sucker turned broadway with his AJ. How dare he.
That game broke up around dawn, so we moved to the MGM Grand. My first time at the room, and I can see why some people like it. The only thing that annoyed me was the Rainforest Cafe next door, with their fake thunderstorm. When it's sunny and 102 outside, I don't like hearing fake thunder. It was just barely less annoying than the slot machines at the Wynn harassing you to join their slot club every 30 seconds. The geniuses there actually came up with a way to stop me from playing slots when I didn't want to.
I got a nice card rush at the MGM, made a few lucky draws and doubled my buy-in. Around noon we went to check out the Bellagio but we didn't sit there, the list was too long. We tried the Wynn too, but by the afternoon that place was jammed. It was funny to see the extremely posh surroundings, with some scumbag poker player walking around in flip-flops, dirty sweatpants and a torn T-shirt. At least now I know there's no dress code. Maybe that guy was an eccentric billionaire?
We visited a ton of casinos, and I was most surprised by the fact that they all have card rooms. It used to be the odd casino here and there spread poker, but now almost every single casino, be it rinky-dink or huge resort, spreads some poker. Boom indeed.
At some point I realized that the $2500 WSOP event starts at noon on Friday, and I hadn't slept since Tuesday night, so I insisted we head back to the house. After watching most of a movie got to sleep around 11pm.