Vegas 2011When i was writing these re-caps I felt sure I would have a lot to write about Vegas 2011. As it goes though I really can't remember much at all, I think it is fair to say my focus was not as sharp as it should have been, the distractions of sin city were too much for me...who would have thought! I stayed in a house with John Eames, Stu Rutter, Matt Frankland, Richard Finney, David Dial and later on in the trip Jamie Sykes and Dan Carter, we started off at one really nice house, after 3 days we got a knock on the door saying we had to move houses as for some reason he needed this one...was a little pissed as I didn't see how I could possibly move to a better house, but as was only to be expected we ended up in an absolute palace!!
The pool area was amazing, this all I really remember...
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I honestly have no idea how I did overall on the trip for poker, I think I was a tiny tiny winner, thanks mostly to success in NL games, I was much sharper at live NLHE back then than I was in later years, I might have lost though, I know I didn't do it in or win chunks as I'm sure I'll remember that!
This summer was when I really found my feet for partying, obviously I've always been a big fan of going out and drinking, these days I'm slightly less enthusiastic than I once was, hangovers are more severe and I tend to have a quality, not quantity approach to nights out. This summer I had one of the most memorable sessions of my life though...
It all started, as a lot of sillyness tends to, with some Rutter-Shenanigans, I was playing a 5/10 NL game at the Venetian where I'd won a little bit, and had been summounded home by Stu as we were all going out, on my way to the cash desk I stumbled in to Longy + James Atkin who I'd never previously met but knew off and had spoken to on here, after very little persuasion on my part they were involved in the night out. We went back to our house where stu initiated an "Apprentice drinking game" again I don't remember the rules or the episode of the apprentice, all I recall is that James Atkin got fucked over hard by a women candidate and ended up nailed as a result. If any members of James' family do read that sentence I urge you to read the whole paragraph and take it all in context
The first step on our night out was to Green Valley Ranch, a bit off the strip (Budget Valley Ranch as Stu called it
) to see The Steel Panthers (I hope that's right?!) a couple of memebers of the team had drivers licsenses and not passports and weren't allowed in, so we had a drink and set off back to the strip... again I've managed to find a photo from this night!!
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Slight problem though...
No way possible to get a taxi from this place, we must have spent 45 minutes trying to get a cab, then Stu hit upon a brilliant idea (tbf to him, the idea turned out not to be so brilliant but this is pretty results orientated, had it worked out then I would be reporting as a legitimate brilliant idea, or maybe still not reporting it all beccause lets face it, no-one wants to hear about brilliant ideas that work!) he flagged down a local, in a pick-up truck and asked the guy if he would take us to the strip, the guy said he would do it but only if we paid him. Stu asks how much and they guy replies $20, Stu accepts instantly, hands the guy $20...who then IMMEADIATELY drives off!
Despite raising my hopes, crushing them and brazenly stealing from a friend of mine, just a single atom in my body could have anything but love for that pick-up driver.
Eventually we get a taxi to the strip and head to XS, fearing we may not get a table Stu hatches yet another brilliant plan (you'd be forgiving for not having too much faith in the brilliance of this plan following the pick up truck disaster, but fair play this one actually worked) he rangg through to XS and informed them that Joe Hart, Man City and England goalkeeper (himself) and friends would be coming and would like a table...IDK if anyone there had a clue who Joe Hart is/was but we got skipped to the front of the tables queue and got a table really fast, obviously if they actually knew who he was they'd know apart from a similarity in height they actually look nothing like each other, so chances are this was just another hilarious detour on a hilarious evening...
Once inside the club (at which Pete Tong was
'ing) Stu insisted that we buy champange, and toast to Pete Tong, a fellow midlander, we got the champs headed to the
booth and toasted in the air proudly to our UK brother. half way through the toast, Stu's proud exterior shrank, he turned and ran away from the
booth, I ran after him, eventually catching him up and asking why we stopped toasting, he mumbled some sheepish excuse then I realised...
"That wasn't Pete Tong was it?"
"No."
And off he went
-On a sidenote- my favorite vegas mishap came the following year when we went to Stoneys for Stevie Devlin's birthday, 20 minutes into the night out drinks were flowing, good times were happening and then a confused and crestfallen Stevie suddenly figures out that actually he's got the date wrong, his birthday will be next week - that actually ended up being one of the best nights out of the summer!
I know it seems like currently in this post I'm just throwing everyone else under the bus, but worry not the spotlight will turn to my antics shortly!
As the end of this night out drew near I found myself with a group of roughly 10 girls, and 1 extremely camp gay guy (Marvin his name was - you'll find out why I remember this later on!) my first angle was to get them to come to ours for a jacuzzi party (swanky house, butler, jacuzzi if I can pull that off how would I ever fail!?) but correctly so none of them seemed keen, impressive sensible decision making after just how drunk I managed to get the whole lot of them
Turns out they are staying at the MGM so my final roll of the dice was I would accompany them back to the MGM where we would shoot dice together, at this stage in my life I would be shooting dice with or without the distraction of hitting on a 10-strong group of girls, so the glove fitted nicely, shall we say... Obviously, being a huge bellend I limo'd us all back to the MGM and started shooting dice with them all watching and drinking (they rolling ofc) i don't remember how much money I started the session with - I defo wrote a blog about this straight after, but I do recall going down to $60, before spinning it back up to a little over $6000, by this point we're all fucking wasted and it's 8.30...people are starting to want to go to bed so my targets are diminishing... eventually despite me throwing out all number of suggestions of things we could do I was left with Marvin, and the one girl who I had been getting along best with, put it this way, if I had a taser, I would have tasered Marvin
What happens next is...quite emabrrassing and I am not exactly sure how much of it I make up, if it's all true, I left things out or if it happened at all, but here is what I remember...
We go to the Spa in the MGM, the three of us and the MGM spa is split genders so we end up in a private massage room...and we're lying side by side on a big round puffy massage thing each being massaged, I dont remember anything else, except abruptly sitting up shaking my head at the absurdity of the scenario and looking down at the naked back of a gay man I'd met less than 6 hours ago and seeing a tattoo which says "Marvin <3's you" at the bottom of his spine. by the time this is over it's closing in on 10am and I am pretty shaken up by the experience, unable to get myself to bed like a normal person I decide I'm going to play blackjack, I have no idea how the BJ goes but nest thing I know I wake up in a hotel room in the MGM with a big pile of MGM chips, at about 1.30pm. I have a vague recollection of not being able to find the exit and ending up with a hotel room. Dazed, confused and still fucking wrecked I stumble out of the MGM side entrance and try to find a taxi on the strip, then this women comes up to me screaming to pull my trousers up, as I was "frightening her daughter" it turns out I had left my belt in the hotel, my trousers were pretty much round my knee's and my boxer shorts were under-performing in their role.
I don't think I've ever been more embarrassed than that in my whole life.
When I get back home finally its closing in on 2.30 and all the guys are in the pool, i have option 1) go to bed and sleep forever, or 2) grab a beer and jump in the pool. We chose option 2, not because we wanted too, but because maybe one day i'll be writing a blog, and it'll make for a cool story.
We go out for dinner (still no sleep) and then afterwards I meet up with JP (whollyflush) and a couple of other people - apologies to everyone else there but I can only remember JP for some reason and we got to Tao, get a table etc (such spews these tables) after a really fucking messy few hours I end up following two native american girls back to the Luxor hotel to play some roulette, I lost all my money until I was left with nothing but a $25 ceasers chip (this is going to sound like I am making it up!) I got it changed (for taxi money) put it on #8 and it rolled it for $1k... so I got another hotel room, why the hell not...
Some other shenanigans occured between me winning this $1,000 and going to bed - it involves nearly being arrested and causing $675 worth of damage to a crystal engraving stand, however as much as I'd like to I just CANNOT WRITE THE DETAILS IN PUBLIC. As a wise man once said...
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, BUT STUFF YOU WRITE ON THE INTERNET CAN END UP ON YOUR TOMBSTONE.
I returned home (without nearly getting myself on a register) about 5pm the next day, to a concerned and intrigued group of housemates and the news that we are having a BBQ, and going out AGAIN. Jon Spinks was there and he had for me $5,000 cash that I had previously leant him a few days prior, this was pretty much the only time in the whole summer I had any money in cash in my bedroom.
After the BBQ we went to Jet at the mirage, another table, and more drinks and another Rutter masterplan to get us better treatment in the club, he had informed the staff that he was the agent of Jermaine Jenas (the footballer - or Matty Lewis in this case, unlike the Rutter/Joe Hart weaze matty is actually quite the lookalike of JJ) and that Jermaine "Just wanted to enjoy himself with his friends" and "didn;t want any trouble" - one of the funniest moments of the trip was seeing Stu fly off the handle when the PR guy tried to take a picture for the website!!!
I have zero recolection of this evening past midnight, the next thing I know I wake up next day on my bed (finally!) with no pillows but one of the cushions from the sofa downstairs, im totally naked and a bottle of aftersun next to me. The first thing I did was throw up pearlescent yellow vommit for about 15 minutes, then went downstairs thinking VERY much that something was wrong... as I went downstairs I was greeted by a chorus of cheers and "good work mate" claims from the guys...
WTF is happening please...
They all assume im fucking about then inform me I returned home with a girl last night, she was sat round talking and laughing with us all then we went up to bed at about 3.30, i swear on my life I had zero memory of this girl whatsoever...then I get a bit of chilling feeling...THE MONEY IN MY drawer!!! Race upstairs and sure enough $5,000 had turned into $1,100 - why she left the $1,100 I'll never know, wtf the aftersun was about, and where my pillows went I also will never know - and I for one am pretty glad about that.
One final piece of goodwill from my pals was to take a picture of ~$4k in the fruitbowl and tell me it was "all a joke" I race downstairs only to discover that it wasn't all a joke at all...just that last bit about it being a joke.
Was quite the 72 hours I had!
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