The (Comic) Strip Presents - One Goes Mad in Vegas

I'm not really one for diary writing (witness the death of my blog) but I thought I'd do a temporary, ten-day only special, about AndrewT in Vegas. It might be fun.

After spending Wednesday night down at the Empire Casino, watching my horses having a good time with my money, I awoke fairly bright and definitely early at 5.30am. The airlines say to get to the airport three hours before your flight if it's a long haul one. My flight was at 10.05am so I aimed to get there about 7ish. Due to some faffing by the trains I got to Heathrow at 7.25. I was checked in by 7.30 and through security by 7.40, leaving me over two hours to kill in the soulless capitalist fly-trap of the terminal shops.

Scored my first instance of running good at Eat. Ordered two sausage muffins and, once sat at a table to eat them, found I'd actually been given two full English muffins - with sausage, bacon and scrambled eggs. The fact I'm such an anti-glutton meant I could only eat one, however hopefully it meant that Lady Luck was up for a good time with me.

I flew with Air Canada via Vancouver, which managed to get me into Vegas quicker than any number of other flights via US cities, even though Vancouver is further from London that Vegas is, so I was going the long way round.

I'm usually quite the hermit on flights (on all public transport actually). I will never initiate conversation with the person I've been assigned to sit next to (unless they're an attractive woman ldo), as I'm a rubbish conversationalist with someone I don't know quite well. Ted from San Francisco didn't know this, so he asked me who I was and what I did and that. We chatted a bit about poker (he played a bit for quarters) and was very happy when I said I'd seen Phil Hellmuth get knocked out of the WSOPE the night before by one of my stable of horses I had in the event, as he didn't like him.

He told me I should stop biting my nails as I had 'beautiful hands'.

Hmmmm, a 50 year old guy living in San Francisco, wearing no wedding ring, told me I had beautiful hands. I think Lady Luck is getting her wires crossed as to what I might be after.

As I'd landed a nice touch recently, I decided to eschew the bargain basement hotels and instead booked a room in the West Wing tower at the MGM Grand. It was my favourite place to play cash the last time I was here, so I thought I'd stay here as I'll be able to play enough to get the poker rate discount on the room. The room is great. It's not massively big (which has led some people on review sites to criticise them) but the perfect size for me. It has a very modern feel to it (frosted glass doors, TV in the bathroom mirror) along with the two most important things for me (comfy bed and good shower) so I'd definitely recommend it.

As I was so exhausted I went to bed last night at 8pm (4am in my head) and woke up today at 5.50am. Managed to actually have a breakfast at breakfast time and decided to play the noon comp at Caesars Palace. Very good tourney - $340 gets you 12,500 chips and a 40 minute clock. There were 53 runners and after getting a few small pots early on, everything went to cock.

I missed every flop, every continuation bet was called and few of the other players were that strong. As an example, I raised with AQ from the cut off and just the button called. Flop is K93 with 2 clubs. I cont bet and he insta-calls in a very flush-drawy way. Turn is a red 5 so I fire again, again he calls. On the river I actually hit with a Q and bet again (not a good bet as what worse hand calls, but I was loath to check once I'd hit). He ums and ahs and eventually makes what looks like a crying call.

'Queen', says I.

'Straight' says he, and turns over JT clubs. I curse my luck, say 'nice hand' and move on. Only halfway through the next hand, as I'm replaying the previous hand in my head, that I realise on a K935Q board, with no flush, JT is the stone cold nuts. Now, I wasn't slow-rolled - he genuinely didn't know the strength of his hand. As the comp progressed, it quickly became apparant the guy was a complete station, who a couple of other players spewed chips at by bluffing.

I barely won a pot after the first level and went out in about 40th after pushing when short stacked with T9 and running into AK. Going to play cash downstairs later on, but the Presidential debate is starting in 20mins so I might watch that first.

On my list of topics to discuss in further posts - Apostrophes and Breasts.