Chapter 23: Sin City
Not even two months into being employed full-time at my new job, I took a week and a half vacation, because Elaine was taking her vacation at this time. We decided to take a trip to Las Vegas. Neither of us have been there since a very long time ago with our families. We booked a four night, four day package that came out to be almost CDN$1300, with the accomodations at The Orleans. We did a hell of a lot of research for the entire trip, and The Orleans sounded like by far the best deal. We compared the prices at a lot of different travel sites, and most of them had the exact same packages available, and in the end, Travel Savings Today had the best prices. The Orleans is a little bit off the strip, but everything I’ve read about this place was very favourable, and in the end, I have no regrets about choosing this hotel.
I won’t bother going into great detail about everything we did there, but we basically jam-packed our schedule for the entire duration of our stay.
In the 96 hours or so we were there, we visited and played at 20 casinos: Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Tropicana, MGM Grand, Aladdin, Paris, New York New York, Monte Carlo, Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Flamingo, Mirage, Venetian, Wynn, Stardust, Riviera, Slots-a-Fun, Circus Circus, Stratosphere, and of course The Orleans. We watched three shows: Fantasy at Luxor, Bite at Stratosphere, and Rick Thomas at Stardust. We also watched the Deep Sea 3D IMAX show, and rode the Dracula’s Haunted Castle IMAX ride at Luxor. Asides from all this, we still managed to go to three outlet malls: Fashion Outlets Las Vegas, Las Vegas Outlet Center, and Las Vegas Premium Outlets. We also walked through The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace.
The Orleans has a 70-lane, 24-hour bowling alley, and on weeknights between midnight and 8am, it’s a buck per game. We brought our bowling shoes, and decided to bowl one game just for the sake of bowling at 2am.
We visited the four-story M&M’s World where they had all sorts of merchandise and collectibles. They also had 21 colours of M&M’s for you to choose from! We also went to the World of Coca Cola next door, where they have a 4-story Coke bottle.
We went to three buffets: On the first day, we went to the French Market Buffet at The Orleans, and this was by far the best value. We went for the $7.45 lunch, and the sheer amount of different food available was just incredible. They had sections for BBQ, American, Italian, Mongolian, Mexican, Chinese, seafood and dessert. The food was all very good, and I wish I could have eaten more, as I wasn’t even close to being able to eat everything I wanted to there. On the second day, we went for the breakfast at Le Village Buffet at Paris. At $12.95, it was quite a bit more expensive, as it was more on the upscale side. They had made-to-order stations for crepes, omelettes and waffles. We went fairly late, so we actually ended up staying around for the lunch items to appear. I didn’t find the main items all that enticing, but their desserts were fabulous and quite exquisite. On the third day, we went for some Japanese all-you-can-eat at Aladdin’s Todai. I’ve heard of others talk about Todai, so we decided to try it out. We went for the $14.95 lunch, and I think their dinner might be a better value, since for five bucks more you get sashimi and crab legs and such. But the lunch was still not bad at all, with a decent selection of different sushi available. I particularly liked their unagi sushi, where the unagi was very large, and the rice ball very small. I also had a lot of their ebi tempura. For dessert, they had made-to-order crepes as well, and I went crazy on their chocolate mousse. I first got a chocolate mousse crepe, and after that, got another big plate of just chocolate mousse. I just love that stuff.
As for gambling, both Elaine and I ended in the black overall, but not with any significant amounts. I swear I have the most terrible luck. I played $17 on one cent slots and couldn’t win a damn thing. The most I was ever up on a machine was like 10 cents. Elaine, on the other hand, had fairly good luck. Her favorite machine was Lighthouse Loot. Overall, she actually finished up over $50 playing penny slots.
My winnings came from the poker table. I played my first live cash game ever at Luxor where they had a $1/$1/$2 NL blind structure and $50 min/max buy-in. I didn’t have very good luck here. In particular, on one hand, I was the big blind. There were four limpers, and then one of the small blinds raised it to $10. I had pocket tens, so I smooth called, as did three others, so the pot was already over $50. The flop was terrific, something like T73 with two spades. So I hit top set… beautiful. But with a board like that, I wasn’t going to mess around so as second to act, I went all in with my remaining $40 or so. I got one caller that had like $25 left. Of course, I knew I had to be dodging spades… and of course, the guy hits his flush on the river. If I had won that hand as the 2:1 favorite, I would have been up like $65 instead of being down $35. I couldn’t get anything going for the remainder of the session, and lost the rest of the first buy-in, plus another whole buy-in, to end $100 down. Not a great start for my live cash game career.
The next day, I sat down at the Wynn where it was $1/$3 NL and $100 buy-in. I prefer this structure way more than Luxor’s. I finally got a good run of cards. I played for just 40 minutes and cashed out $272. I won pots with two-pair, a set of fours, and a flopped straight. A bunch of my winnings came from a calling station two to my right that was very weak-passive. I was quite happy after this session.
Lastly, both Elaine and I played in a $30 + $10 NL tournament at Monte Carlo at 9am on Thursday, our last day in Vegas. I got only about 4 hours of sleep, and Elaine probably just 2 hours. There were about 45 entries, and Elaine finished 12th while I barely made final table and finished 9th. Only top three cashed, with first place paying over $600. Elaine flopped quad kings on a hand with her cowboys for her one and only big win. I only had one decent hand as well, with my fish hooks holding up on a AA9 flop against someone holding K9.
All in all, it was a very good trip. We did as much as we possibly could in our time there, and had some really sore feet to show for it! I’m really glad we made a late decision to actually get a rental car. We originally were planning to take the shuttles and buses to get around, but we probably wouldn’t have been able to do half the things we did.
Alas, all great things must come to an end, and it’s now time to get back to reality…
