Vegas, Baby...

A couple weeks ago, Todd and I had ourselves a little adventure. I had, as mentioned earlier, flown back to Colorado to participate in the DPT semi-finals, get myself a new tooth (in the form of a porcelain crown) and pick up my Firehawk. It was in the Firehawk that Todd and I would be driving back to California and Todd had a flight back to Colorado scheduled for the following Wednesday. Of course a road-trip from Colorado to southern California just wouldn’t be complete without a short stay at this quaint little city that we would be passing through on the way – Las Vegas! So we decided to book a room at the Knights Inn for Friday and Saturday nights.

It’s about a nine hour drive from Longmont to Vegas and we left bright and early Friday morning – I believe it was about 9:00am when we began the drive. I had gotten enough sleep the night before and was feeling pretty good – a large bonus as I would be the one driving. Todd, on the other hand, could’ve used a few more hours… It didn’t matter though, we were Vegas bound and there’s not much better for a couple of poker players on a mission…

Okay, so let me qualify that last statement a bit… I was more of the “poker player on a mission” than Todd. I’ve been earning a pretty good bankroll as of late with my job in California and figured that this might be a nice time to give some of the more substantial games a try … perhaps I would buy-in to a $500 tournament, maybe play some of the higher-stake ring games … you know, give this whole poker-for-a-living idea a real world test. You can’t go pro if you never actually start… As it ended up, however, I never really played anything big. In hind sight, this is probably a good thing – Todd’s bankroll was somewhat smaller than mine and he had the sense to stay within his means (as much as is possible in Vegas…). And since I didn’t want to abandon the guy in Vegas, I ended up staying within my means as well…

Our first stop on the journey ended up occurring at Copper Mountain, CO. We both were in need of a nicotine hit (no smoking is allowed in Precious…) and I figured I could top off the gas tank. Also, it was a nice place to pick up a Red Bull to keep my wits about me whilst driving through the wet and slushy portion of I-70 that we were currently traveling through – as fate would have it, a little snowstorm had just passed through this section the day before. Amazingly enough, my little sports car actually performed pretty well in these conditions – a nice surprise to a guy that had previously driven his old Z-28 into not one but two freeway dividing walls in the past during snowstorms… The only problem with this first stop was the realization that we didn’t dress appropriately for it – it was 29° F at that stop and we were basically wearing jeans and T-shirts, standing outside the vehicle, quickly sucking down cigarettes and risking frost bite. It was a pretty good way to wake up though…

After a quick stop in Glenwood Springs for a bite to eat at Burger King, it was just a bit of driving … and driving … and driving … through a rather large portion of Utah and a rather small portion of Arizona before our next meal stop in Mesquite, Nevada. There was a $4.99 prime rib dinner in Mesquite – how could we pass that up? The best part about this stop – apart from the surprisingly good cheap meal – was that I was finally able to get in touch with my newly acquired girlfriend. Okay, so we weren’t technically “boyfriend/girlfriend” yet … heck, we weren’t even officially dating; however after leaving a couple voice messages on a couple unsuccessful contact attempts and not getting the anticipated return call from my new female interest, I must admit that I was beginning to worry. That just seems to be my luck in the relationship department – I finally meet somebody that I honestly connect with and she dies in some horrible twist of fate before we’re even able to explore the possibilities… Turns out she left her cell phone at home and I was able to contact her at her place of employment after the prime rib dinner. I was relieved, recently fed and excited to complete the 80-some miles left to Vegas. We easily covered the remaining distance in less than an hour…

The sun was setting as we arrived in Vegas. Unfortunately, I was quite a bit worn from the drive. But that didn’t matter – we were in Vegas! The first task at hand was to check-in to our extravagant hotel. (Don’t let the sarcasm pass you by … the Knights Inn is basically a dive. When in Vegas though, a hotel usually becomes just a place to crash and, to a certain extent, pretty much anything will suffice. The Knights Inn approached this extent rather precariously…) After some poor navigation by myself, we found the hotel, checked in and – in what was obviously a bad choice due to my worn condition – headed out to the strip to find a ring game…

Now this was a bit of contention between me and Todd – not the poker game, but how we were going to get to the strip… You see, driving Precious around the mean streets of Vegas with all the insane, possibly drunk tourists was not – I’ll repeat that for emphasis, NOT! – something that I was looking forward to. Todd – having really nothing to lose in the ordeal – just didn’t seem to understand my concern. Okay, he probably understood it, but he sure as hell gave me shit for having it. I finally gave in when we checked the shuttle schedule at the Knights Inn – best described as “not very often nor very late”. That and the realization that my car would probably be much safer in one of the larger casino/hotel’s parking structures than in the parking lot of the Knights Inn eased my concern a bit. We parked Precious near the top of the Flamingo’s garage…

We then set off to find ourselves a game. The Flamingo had one seat open on a $1/$2, no-limit table however, rather than wait for a second seat to become available, we decided to head on over to Harrah’s. Todd had played there before and thought the game was pretty good. Here we were able to find a seat for each of us (on different tables – no sense taking each other’s money…) at their $1/$2, no-limit game and sat down with $300 (actually, I think Todd may have sat down with $200) in chips.

Todd did pretty well. I don’t remember the exact amount, but within an hour or so he got up from his seat and called it a day. I was down about half my stack at this point. What I should have done, of course, was “cut my losses” and get some sleep; unfortunately I chose to continue playing until I went broke. The worst part about it is that I know damn-well that one should never be playing poker when they aren’t well-rested and eager for the game. I was neither and was even considering not playing this night and opting for some sleep instead. BUT – I was in Vegas… So, as is usually the case with being in Vegas, decided instead to pay $300 to once again take a class that I thought I had already passed. Oh well, perhaps I will learn better with iterations – costly iterations … perhaps…?

After generously donating my money to the nice people at my table, I got in touch with Todd and we headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest. We checked the cached poker tournament information my computer – the Knights Inn does not have WiFi so cached sites were all we had – for the next day, selected a few possibilities to check out and got some shut-eye. It really wasn’t that late either – somewhere around midnight although neither of us had adjusted our watches so it may have only been 11:00… Whatever the case, we got some sleep…

Well, as is sometimes the case, this posting is getting a bit on the long side. I also have other tasks that currently require my attention; so I will be stopping here. I’ll try to get around to posting the remainder of this story sometime in the near future; however I received a package Todd recently sent me that might limit my available time for blog writing a bit. Check back in a little while if you’re interested in hearing the rest of this story…

bis später,

Coriolis