Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[booder]

Whitey Bulger.
 Remember seeing a programme on the tellybox a while ago.
Bad man.


Safe journey Pops.

[Pompeynick]

Nice looking eggs benny, My flight leaves from Heathrow at 4.40pm.
 Looking forward to seeing you in Vegas Tony.

[Doobs]

Good luck Tony.   Got another 2 weeks and a bit to wait.

Meanwhile
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48532529

Some views on long term investing by 32 year olds.   I love how Hargreaves Landsdown have flapped too.   They are the absolute masters of perpetuating the myth that past performance is all that matters.  They should maybe cut him a bit of slack after the previous exceptional performance? 

Buy high, sell low fellas.

It must be a serious blow if you are at retirement and are 100% invested in this fund, but they don't seem to have found any of those.  Though if you are one of those, your investment strategy lead you here, not Neil Woodford.

[Machka]

Confirmation awaited from;

MACHKA

Newport Lad

MrDickie

bagel.

1% reserved for each if still wanted.

That apart, that's it.

Yes please, I'll send over the £69 now.  Here we go again...

[Geo the Sarge]

Monies sent, looking forward to early morning stories of coffee and sticky buns.

Geo

[MrDickie]

Transferred £100 over today. Have a great time !

[KarmaDope]

Paid today, glglglglglgl

[tikay]

Thanks lads.

Had a 29 hour day yesterday, all of it fun, & I've got my some work to do Next Door first, but I'll get all the Admin up to date soonest, either this afternoon or tomorrow.

[Tal]

Apologies to stakers.

Tikay is running behind partly because I was helping him hit his latte target for the day.

Strange thing: he's got a watch that's like a Fitbit, but rather than sending him data on steps and rewards for active minutes, it sends him messages like:

"You need two more grande lattes to reach peak perkiness"

"Congratulations, you've hit your choc ice goal for the week, even though it's only Tuesday"

"Mooving on up! With that burger, you've now consumed your second cow, so you get your Double Cow badge"

Says everything you need to know about the man that, when I got to the media center centre this morning, there were only two people there, the other being KevMath.

Well, KevMath is actually a set of octuplets working on a rota, but no one is allowed to know that.

My point is tikay is hard at work and behind schedule now. Mea maxima culpa, as Jacob Rees Mogg would say.

[tikay]

I've still got my little job to do Next Door whilst here & that includes a sort of Vegas Postcard.

So I'm gonna copy it onto here, but please bear in mind it's written for a different audience completely. It might be the only return my optimistic stakers get, so I hope you get a modicum of entertainment from them.

Oh, & I played a Limit O8 MTT last night, but it was off-schedule & off-Stake, obv. Did I win it? What do you think?......

[tikay]

London - Vegas - Orleans in a day.


Afternoon.

I'm now in Vegas for a few weeks, & thought I'd try & bring those of you less lucky than me a flavour of Vegas day-by-day.

Won't win any Pulitzer prizes, & might be a bit boring to many, but I'll give it a go, & will try & produce some kind of Daily Report whilst I'm here. Don't mind if there's no feedback or interaction, just hope it's mildly enjoyable to some of you.

Please remember that Vegas is 8 hours behind the UK so I'll be out of sync with those reading the Forum in the UK.

It's Friday today, & tonight is the Welcome Party, so I'll try & get some photos & chit chat about that in tomorrow's splurge.

Today's missive will be about Thursday, which started in London, & ended in Orleans, via Vegas.

[tikay]

Was up at 4am Thursday to finish packing, taxi arrived at 0615 & I was at Heathrow T3 for 7am.

Bumped into Essexphil in the Departure Lounge which was neat, & we chatted a bit on the 'plane as we were seated just 4 rows apart.

Had a lovely seat with a ton of leg-room, so a reasonably comfortable 10.5 hour flight.

Was a Boeing Dreamliner, my first flight on the magnificent beast, & what a piece of kit it is. Smooth, quiet & as flying goes a bearable experience. The wingspan on a 787 is 60 metres (a 747 is 64 metres), and it's a bit scary to watch how much they flex in flight. How much do they flex? This much. And if this does not impress you, nothing will. 
 




Flight left on time & arrived half hour early at McCarron. Was through immigration in 20 minutes (a record for Vegas where the wait can be 3 hours), my bag was waiting for me on the carousel, no queue at the cab rank or Rio check-in, & was in my room within an hour of landing.

Door-to-door though was 17 hours.

Unpacked, quick shower, & that's it, let the fun start.   

Normal folks would want to sleep after 17 hours, but Vegas is Adrenelin City, so no chance of being sensible.

Let's go play poker then.

[tikay]

There was a little $150 Limit O8 at The Orleans, starting at 6pm, so that'll do to wet the whistle.

And if you enter a Limit O8 MTT, believe me, it's well-nigh impossible to bust for hours, so a long night was in prospect.

I just wanted the buzz from felling the "snap" of real cards in my hands, & riffling chips, chilling with real people.

The average age of players in Limit O8 is about 127, so I fitted right in. All sorts play the game, but I think more female players - usually quite "mature -  play Limit O8 than any other game. Fiercely competitive they are, too. 

First though, a word about The Orleans.

 

[tikay]

Like all Vegas Hotels & Casinos, it's BIG.

It's not a major name in Vegas as it sits about a mile off-strip, but in poker terms it's pretty much the Vegas HQ of year-round PLO, PLO8 & Limit O8 cash & MTT's.

Bigger than any UK poker room, obv, but in Vegas terms it's not huge.

Always packed out though, & there was not a seat to spare last night, there was about 80 tables in use & not an empty seat to be had.  

Orleans is part of the Boyd Gaming portfolio of Casinos & Hotels, & they run a tight ship. The Group was founded by Sam Boyd 90 years ago, & is still run by the family under the leadership of Bill Boyd who is Sam's son. Their HQ is in Paradise, Nevada. Only in Nevada can a place be called Paradise.  

They also own 2 or 3 Downtown casinos, including Main St Station,  Fremont Hotel & California Hotel.

In Vegas proper, they own Gold Coast, Sam's Gambling Hall (is that a great name or what?) in addition to The Orleans.

The staff are all old, & many of them female, it's a bit like the staff at the Tote on British Racecourses, all the Blue Rinses work there.

[tikay]

As with all Vegas casinos, plenty of eateries.  They all have a few sit-down joints, TGI Friday, Frankie & Benny etc, plus a "Food Hall" where you can get pretty much anything to eat on the go.

 

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