Snattys unfeasibly long and banal Vegas posts

[boldie]

Well Carpe Diem as they say. Packing can wait. Richard and I battle the 10pm crowds on the strip. Get to Caesars and he goes off to change his glasses and I don’t see him again. Must be my light and witty repartee. Anyway not to worry. I buy in. Over 90 runners. 5000 chips. 30 minute clock. I played no better or worse than the rest of my visit. The maths held good. I got lucky when I was short chipped at the final table my Jacks sucked out on queens when all the chips went flying in on an 8 high flop. I also had a moment of class timing with Aces against Ace King and Queens. There were three Brits and an Irishman at the final table. The atmosphere throughout was good fun. At 4.50 am we sorted out a deal. Tired but immensely happy with my winnings, I strolled down the strip and got propositioned by three different prostitutes. Business must be bad.

So to bed and sleep, packing, and flight. I have my room booked until 1pm so no problem. Well that’s what I thought...............

 

[Geo the Sarge]

Brilliant Phil, just brilliant.

Geo

[AlexMartin]

Well Carpe Diem as they say. Packing can wait. Richard and I battle the 10pm crowds on the strip. Get to Caesars and he goes off to change his glasses and I don’t see him again. Must be my light and witty repartee. Anyway not to worry. I buy in. Over 90 runners. 5000 chips. 30 minute clock. I played no better or worse than the rest of my visit. The maths held good. I got lucky when I was short chipped at the final table my Jacks sucked out on queens when all the chips went flying in on an 8 high flop. I also had a moment of class timing with Aces against Ace King and Queens. There were three Brits and an Irishman at the final table. The atmosphere throughout was good fun. At 4.50 am we sorted out a deal. Tired but immensely happy with my winnings, I strolled down the strip and got propositioned by three different prostitutes. Business must be bad.

So to bed and sleep, packing, and flight. I have my room booked until 1pm so no problem. Well that’s what I thought...............

 

[tikay]

So my final day in Vegas and the shopping is still not done and on top of that I still haven’t played at the legendary Caesars Palace. Shopping first. I have to get an array of Abercrombie and Fitch, and Hollister attire for my poor hard done by kids and something nice for my long suffering poker widow of a wife.

Off to the fashion show mall. Five minute walk. Two pounds lost in body fluid. The heat is fierce but dry and I find it easier to deal with than in the UK. The last time I came here the place was heaving. This time it was not so busy and having chatted to lots of people that is a fairly common trend. No surprise really. I do what I normally do when shopping in a new place. Walk the whole place to see which shops I want to go in. This is done at pace. Okay the good news is there are only two stores I need to visit and they have already been named.

Exactly twenty five minutes after arriving I am leaving with four carrier bags full of goodies. Guilt pressies I know, but without Anne Marie and the kids I wouldn’t be nearly as happy a bloke as I am. After all here I am in Vegas playing poker and they are all grafting at home, I would suggest that makes me a little bit of a spoilt bunny. Talking of bunnies one of my favourite moments of the whole trip was turning round to a young man in seat one and saying in a massively over pronounced English accent  after he had raised for third hand running, “busy bunny aren’t you”. Table banter really took off after that moment of genius. Needless to say busy bunny knocked himself out early.
I have seen this a lot on this trip. People want to chip up or ship out. Maybe they think it is optimal play. Maybe it is. The key is spotting those that play like this and deciding whether you are going to dance or not.

Anyway quick as flash I have the bags stowed in my hotel room and I am off to Caesars. Caesars is great. Busy. Crazy. I mean where else can you have massive moving statues depicting old time Rome with a bright red Neon sign above. The shops at Caesars go on forever. There are fountains everywhere. If the Venetian smells of vanilla talcum powder, Caesar’s smells of chlorine. Honestly I kid you not, all the fountain areas smell of chlorine. Classy.

So my first visit to the Caesars card room and I instantly get grimmed for the massive amount of $15. I am putting the money back into my wallet when a hand reaches out from behind me and just nicks it. I turn round to have a fight, and there opposite is a nice little old man and to be honest I just did not have the heart to hit him. Needless to say Tikay on his day off had also come to play Caesars. With my $15 restored we sat down at adjacent tables. At this moment my favourite incident took place.
On Tikays table was an Oriental lady who I can only assume was of a slightly nervous disposition. I say this because somebody sneezed at this table and she instantly whipped out a surgical mask. I kid you not. Well cue outrageous coughing for the next fifteen minutes. He kept telling her that I was a butcher intimating that I might very well be a carrier for swine flu. It was a picture taking moment but unfortunately I missed it.

The tournament went badly. Knocked out. I decide to play the cheapy at the Venetian as my last event. Forty five minutes. What a bloody disaster. I am now going home without multi table cash. I know I caned the stt satellites but I really wanted an MTT cash. Just one. I head to the bar. It is at this point that a person I had not seen for so long I did not recognise him, approached me at the bar. Richard Pipe and I used to play at Luton but he plays less now and somehow our paths hadn’t crossed for a few years.

Anyway we go for dinner and have a good bitching session about poker and card rooms and faces. It was great fun. He is staying at Caesars. He tells me there is a $120 tourney at 11pm. I really should go and pack............

From a Blog entry I saw....



I entered the 7pm jobbie, & ended up sat next to a really strange lady. She heard a man cough about 4 Tables away, & suddenly said "I have to put my mask on", & immediately went rifling down her handbag, & out came this surgical mask, & on it went.

Handling dirty, germ-ridden chips never bothered her - but a man coughed 4 Tables away, & on went the mask. Sheesh.

I asked her if she always donned it when someone coughed, & she replied - "mmm mmmm, mmm, mmm" - or I think she did. It's tough to hear what people say through a mask.

Now, - stick with me please - at this moment, I heard raucous laughter from the next table, & recognized the deep chesty laugh of an old friend. It was Phil Cooklin, you will have seen him on the Channel, he's "snatiramas". You can just see him behind Miss Mask's right ear - hoodie, not much hair (I'm being polite here), & bins.

So I wandered across, "Hi Phil", hugs & kisses - we are very dear friends of long-standing - la de da. Then I told him about Miss Mask. Phil looked at her, & I could tell right away he had mischief in mind.

I was about to play my Button, when I heard "cough", "cough cough", "COUGH", "COUGH COUGH COUGH".

COUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Cough.
 
And I'm thinking "behave, Phil". But Phil is in full stride now, coughing, sneezing, & heaven know's what else-ing. I shot a look at him, his face was dead pan, but the look Miss Mask gave him would turn a man to stone.

And she turned to me & said - "you think I'm mad, but germs spread so easily". Well I was in stitches, Phil was too, now, & I fessed up.

[Snatiramas]

So there I was sleeping the sleep of angels when the maid crashes in and wakes me at 8am. Marvellous. Two and a half hours sleep and I am now totally disorientated. So I start to pack. Like a bloke. Hmm. Minor problem. Can’t get all the clothes in without folding some of them. I am in Vegas. My feminine side does not exist. It is all alpha male poker player. Take up screwed up t shirts and screw them up even more whilst managing to get them in the dirty washing holdall.

I am packed. It is 10am. Not planning to leave until 1pm. Go downstairs for one last breakfast. The queue is massive. Forget that. I go to the takeaway place. Vegas is in weekend mode. It is busy too. Eventually get served some very average food. Not what I had in mind for my final day. Not even a little bit. I go back to my room and look at the packed bags on my bed. Very depressing. So I do the only thing I can. I put the privacy sign back on the door and go back to sleep. Oh come on you didn’t expect me to go and play poker did you?

I sleep for a couple of hours. I feel a whole lot better. I go and pay my bill and get a refund. I left cash behind the desk and didn’t spend $85 of it. Result. Get a cab for the airport and whilst checking in find out that the flight has been delayed by three hours. Well bugger that for a game of soldiers. Drop off the bags. Check in. Straight into a cab and head for the Mandalay Bay. Not spending four hours in Las Vegas Terminal two. It is worse than Luton.

So I get to the Mandalay Bay and the build up for The Ultimate Fight Club championship fight is in full swing. The place is hopping with a huge number of muscle bound tattooed lunatics. If you think poker players are weird, this lot are a completely different class. So I have a nice meal and decide to spin my $85. I play one of the casino games and start chatting to a delightful young man who keeps getting interrupted for autographs. He tells me his name but my memory leaves something to be desired so I can’t remember it. Apparently he is the Oscar De La Hoya of UFC. That makes him one hard SOB in my book. Nothing was too much trouble. He was class with the fans.

I get it to $200 and decide to play $1/$2 No limit cash. I have an hour and a half. If I lose, so what. Well I finally get up at 5.45pm with an extra $500 in my pocket. I love cash. Well the dozen times I have played it in the last six years. So back to the airport. The plane leaves with lots of people who have been sitting in the airport for a long time. I buy an expensive bottle of perfume for Anne Marie. I watch Gran Torino over dinner. Enjoyed it a lot. The movie that is, not dinner. I then fall asleep and do not wake up until inedible snack time. An hour and a half to go. I had slept for about six hours.

Pick up my bags and go home. Anne Marie and the kids met me in. It was great. So that was that.

Now in no particular order a few Vegas observations.
The people I met who live there love it. No dissenters. They love the sunshine and lifestyle.
Vegas is a mental city. Apparently all gambling towns are. That would be Vegas then.
Do slip a highish denomination note into your passport when checking in to see what sort of room is available. It works.
I did not mind tipping as the service was so good.
Doing well in a Vegas tournament, no matter how small, is the best fun.
The STT’s are immensely soft and should be used at every opportunity.
The big hotels are tremendous. All of them.
The cardroom at The Venetian is amazing though I would say if you are visiting for the first time they can be a little frosty at first on the front desk.
The payout structures are too top heavy.
You can never have enough $1 bills.
The food downtown can do bad things to a nervous stomach.
The American people are warm and courteous and will have a conversation with a perfect stranger. They genuinely love the British particularly when we behave differently to a fight fan or football supporter.
No matter how many bad beats you get, losing with good grace makes a lot of friends. I chatted for hours with people just for the sheer common joy of playing poker.

So as I sit here back in the swing already Vegas is already sliding into a distant memory. It was great fun. I would do it again tomorrow. I would loved to have won more money but didn’t. That’s poker.
This evening I took Ads to the doctors. Nothing serious. An infected toenail needed clipping. Whilst we were there my eye was drawn to the following sign....apparently it is not a porno movie. It would have been in Vegas. TYGG

The End

[celtic]

Great thread Phil.

[Geo the Sarge]

 

Many thanks Phil

Geo

[Chompy]

WP Snat, splendid diary work imo. The second best Vegas blog I've read this year.

That'll be that until November then...

I'm currently working on MDD to try and get him out there at the same time. I want to see just how far his curmudgeonly dial will spin to when he's faced with Vegas donks for a week. I reckon he'll get up to a Spinal Tap-like 11. Before exploding.

[Simon Galloway]

+1 on Gran Torino on the flight home.  Not quite what I expected, but enjoyable.  shame I fogot headphones, Virgin's are the worst.

Why a maid wants to get into your room early on check-out day I have no idea. A decent verbal volley and tip revoked imo.  Last day, food needs to be planned so you get a repeat of your fav meal, avoid random cafe let downs and are full enough not to want to eat on the plane imo.  Current favourite is Town Square, salad and chops in Brio or salad and pizza in the new CPK there.  Quick mosey around the shops and a short ride to the airport.

[boldie]

top thread Snatty, thanks very much.

[booder]

top thread Snatty, thanks very much.

[Rod Paradise]

top thread Snatty, thanks very much.

+1

Really enjoyed this Diary Snatty!!!

[Karabiner]

Yet another terrific diary Phil, I thoroughly enjoyed savouring each and every post.

Now you are one person who really ought to make the time and write a book.

PS BA's sale ends at midnight tonight if you were considering going back in November. £379  return.

[cia260895]

Cheers Snatty 

[the sicilian]

Class as always Phil...