2Tone Vegas Trip Report #16: Lost shirts

[2Tone]

Precursor: Thursday night

I’m researching what tournament I might want to play in Vegas. The Hard Rock has a Deep Stack event that sounds good, but it doesn’t run every week. I call the poker room to get more info.

2Tone: Hi, I have some questions about the tournament tomorrow night.
Floor: The crazy HORSE tournament?

2Tone (Surprised): It’s not hold ‘em?

Floor: It’s hold ‘em.

2Tone (Confused): Tomorrow’s Deep Stack Texas Hold’ Em poker tournament. Is it happening? Or are you having a mixed game HORSE tournament?

Floor: No. Tomorrow is a special Crazy Horse poker tournament. The Crazy Horse is a local gentlemen’s club. The entertainers will be participating.

2Tone (Salivating): Oh, I’m familiar with the Crazy Horse …

Friday:
Flew down from Seattle on Friday a.m. with my buddy who backed me for last year’s WSOP event. Despite landing at 10:30, because everything in Vegas takes a long time, it was past noon before we made it over to Wet Republic, the pool party at MGM. No cover, since I’d put us on the SpyOnVegas guest list.

Wet Republic was fun. Weather was great, 90 degrees and sunny. It’s a spacious, inviting salt water pool. The scene/atmosphere was energetic with plenty of eye candy , but considerably more sane than Rehab at the Hard Rock. This made it a much better fit for my friend, who likes to drink and gamble, but tends to act his age. As opposed to me, who can’t seem to comprehend that spring break bacchanalia should have been left behind 15 years ago.

Wet Republic was hosting the Hot 100 contest, so there were a few dozen contestants making the rounds, encouraging guys to cast votes for them. The overwhelming crowd favorite was this modest young woman from Brazil.

Later on, those musical geniuses The New Boys (Of “You’re A Jerk” and skinny jeans fame) performed. (Melioris, if you are still with us, it is going to take a whole lot of Avett Brothers and Two Cow Garage to make up for this abomination)

Got to love that the pool party with the bikini contest and rap concert is one of the less crazy in the city.

While at soaking up the sun, I gave some thought to my poker plans for the weekend. The WSOP was in town, but I had no desire to rail when last year I had been in on the action. I arrived in Vegas on a cold streak, having regularly been losing at my local 2/10 spread game, and I wasn’t feeling very confident about my game. This would not be the trip to try and make it all back.

Maybe what I need to get back on track was to play against strippers. My buddy was skeptical, but we headed over to the Hard Rock to check it out. Turns out he was right. The set up was weird - $40 buy-in, $10 add on, $5 staff bonus all added up to 4000 chips, but if at any point you fell below that, you could rebuy for another $40 for another 4000 chips. Huh? Worse yet, there was no cash prize money. All you could win were a 50% stripper bucks good at Crazy Horse, and 50% promotional Hard Rock chips, which had to be put in play at table games before they could be cashed out. One lone bored-looking dancer, looking worse for wear in the bright lights of the poker room as opposed to dark corners of the club, sat near the sign-up desk. We passed, and headed back to the strip to play in the $70 Planet Hollywood event.

I’d had good luck there in the past, and cashed the last time I played it. Not this time. Level three, I’m already relatively short, and call a limper with suited connectors. The flop brings my open-ended straight draw, and I bet half my stack in response to his check. He calls, then leads out on the turn. Do I have enough outs to justify a shove? It seemed so at the time. But the turn gave him top pair, Ace kicker. He calls, and scoops the pot when the river is a brick. My buddy lasted longer, but not enough to make it to the money.

We meander down the strip, during which I manage to drop $100 bucks playing NL cash games, which is a good reminder that I play that game like a retarded monkey. Position, pot odds, continuation bets – all are apparently foreign concepts to me in NL cash games.

Making our way back to the hotel at around 2 a.m. Friday, we witness a pretty nasty street fight outside of Caesars. I’m glad I’m a happy rather than a violent drunk.

Saturday
Up unfortunately early Saturday a.m., I wanted to hit the Paris breakfast buffet, but the line looked to be a solid hour, and I needed coffee sooner than that. Did a little shopping for the folks back home, before it was time to go over to Bare, the topless pool at the Mirage. This is one of my favorite Vegas spots. $40 to hang out among the bathing beauties was money well spent.

I ordered a $12 drink at the bar. Our clever, smoking hot waitress pointed out that for a $100 bar minimum, we could get a reclining chairs right by the pool. Best idea I heard all weekend. The only flaw with this plan was that as a total lightweight, even at inflated prices, $100 buys a hell of a lot of vodka and pineapple juice. So by the time we left at around four p.m, I was pretty trashed. In my condition I was overjoyed with my vanilla milkshake from Stacked (good if pricey restaurant in the Mirage) which served as dinner, then took a semi-voluntary two hour nap back at the hotel before heading back out for the evening.

Time for more poker. Bally’s had open seats at 3/6 limit game, in which few players saw the point in folding any two cards pre-flop. I was patient, and picked up some good hands, and made back a good chunk of the weekend’s losses so far, more than doubling my buy-in over the course of a long session that stretched into Sunday a.m. We also hit the 50 cent/$1 NL tables at Bill’s, where even I was able to win a little money. I saw the line forming for the after hours scene at Drai’s, and part of me wanted to do it, but my friend wasn’t interested, and just didn’t have it in me to go that hard that late.

Sunday
That’s OK, because it meant I was relatively well rested for Rehab. Yes, I waited nearly 90 minutes to get in. Yes, I paid a cover charge of $100, which is absurd. But you are not going to find a party like that in Seattle. As usual, the place was nuts, with a “reality” TV crew on hand filming the mayhem for the show.

DJ was excellent , at one point dropping a snippet of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” over a hard techno beat. On hand were a team of midget wrestlers and “A-Team” star Rampage Jackson, who made it rain, tossing fistfulls of cash from his cabana to the thongs and throngs below. I came home Sunday evening dehydrated but satisfied.

Sorry to have missed the potential TP meetup – next year, I’ll schedule accordingly.