Walked up the strip, ate some breakfast at Harrah's buffet (yay coupons! Actually, I came to realize a long time ago that I do not share my father's appreciation of the free-for-all that is the buffet. Yes, I acknowledge that I've eaten at a buffet about 6 times this trip, but frankly that's been for time (and economy's) sake) and then walked around the venetian for a bit.
Hopped in a cab and headed down to freemont street, to see binion's casino - the original home of the world series - as well as the location of the poker hall of fame. 20 mins later, I was back in a cab returning to the strip. Freemont St kinda sucks...
The cabbie dropped me off at circus circus, which also sucked, so I walked towards the strip some more, ducking into casinos whenever I could for the AC. Finally I ended up in treasure island, watching a game called "crazy poker 4".
Basically you get five cards, and you make your best poker hand out of four of 'em. After watching for a few hands, I decided to play for a bit. Simple rule for me - I pulled out $100, and whatever I had left would buy me dinner. 0 and I go hungry, $15 and I get denny's, $300 and I go to Michael Mina.
A few hours later (and a lot of fun with the dealers / table) I left with $175. So it's really making me question the "I play poker because it's a skill game and the pit is for suckers" mentality...
As for dinner, unfortunately, all of the really nice places have dress codes that don't allow shorts, and I've already checked out... So here I am, in the bellagio buffet, eating another assembly line creme brule, watching some of the most impressive feats of engineering I've ever seen. Did you know that 30 crab legs can be piled onto one plate? I guess the guy didn't know that he can make TWO TRIPS!
My plane leaves at about 11:30, so I'll walk around the bellagio some more then head to the airport.
As for the end-of-trip analysis, the verdict is good. Yes, I would have enjoyed cashing in the tourneys, but such is tournament poker. It's a high variance activity. This is why we play to win, not to simply cash. The top 3's are what make it profitable, not the top 23's. Just playing in the tourneys was a boatload of fun. The two that I bubbled showed me that I can do well in them.
What would I do next time differently?
1) Come for the venetian deep stacks series. The wsop was fun, but I actually think the venetian series is better value for me. The daily tourneys are basically $340 or $560. Compare that to the $1500 that the WSOP events start at. (Ignoring the 1k this year - that was a one time thing.) They get fields of 500 and more, with top prizes of 50k and more. Good value for sure.
2) Bring Kim. I'm glad that Shaun came for a few days - this would have been a really long week alone. If we arranged things next time that we came down with another couple - perhaps shaun and jana - we could mix in poker with touristy stuff quite easily. Kim's concern coming this time was that I'd spend the whole time playing. Well, realistically. I'm going to bust out of tourneys. That leaves the rest of the day / evening.
Anyways - I'm now at the airport waiting for my now-delayed-by-an-hour flight. I hope you enjoyed following along as much as I enjoyed writing about the trip. Apologies for all spelling / grammatical errors - I wrote the majority of these updates either late at night, or on my blackberry, or both.
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