Anywayyyy enough of that, time for a summary of the trip....
HOTELS!!
We stayed in enough hotels to give you some do's & donts!
* Flamingo. we stayed here for the first 2 nights, not spectacular but still very nice. Comfy beds, decent shower & working modern TV. Good positioning in the middle ish of the strip, walking distance to Venetian, Bellagio, PH & Aria.
* Imperial Palace. we stayed here for 4-5 nights. My advice regarding this place would be to avoid it unless someone actually has a gun pointed at your head & insists that you stay there otherwise they will end your life ! Upon getting dropped off here by the taxi driver, it felt like we were being dropped into the middle of a horror movie. Not one sign for the actual hotel lobby, finding the lobby was like completing every level of Total Wipeout FFS!! When we DID find it, the queue was ridic long & the whole floor stunk & the carpet was sticky! It was also FULL of young annoying Americans. When we got to the 4 or 5 lifts to take us up to our floor, it literally took over 5 minutes for us to get into one of those lifts. Ohhhhhh and when we got up to our room, the TV was one of those old style ones with the massive backs on, and the remote control didnt work & the buttons on the TV itself were stuck !! Just friggin jog on Imperial Palace you absolute joker!! OH YEAH, and when we looked out of the window, all we could see was just a huge horrible, unstarted, building site! If you used your imagination a bit, we could actually imagine that we were like one of those TV reporters reporting from war-torn Afganistan, taking shelter from the bombs & gunfire! BUT IT IS CHEAP, so if you are on a budget then this could be the place for you !!!
* Bellagio. Wow, talk about one extreme to another. Jas said he was going to upgrade to a bigger room & therefore me & Gra moved into probably the most famous hotel in Vegas! It was amazing. They wont let you into the elevator lobby area without seeing your keycard for your room first. The room itself had a TV in it bigger than all the TV's in my house back at home, the bathroom had a huge bath & pretty sweet walk-in shower kinda thing! Bellagio we LOVE YOU !! We ended up staying here for over a week i think it was, however its pretty bloody expensive so unless you are loaded or go on a great winning streak out there then it might be best to put your money towards other things
* Circus Circus. My advice regarding this place would be to avoid it unless somebody has a knife to your throat & are threatening to end your life unless you stay there!! Once we eventually got checked in, we had to walk what seemed like about 19 miles in 40+ degree heat to some outbuilding. Getting into that building was like a level of the Crystal Maze, the electric card just wouldn't work unless you were born in Moscow Hospital on Friday 14th May 1976, and even then you had to have been a twin!! I mean how hard can it be to gain access to a friggin block of hotel rooms that you have PAID to stay in!! Once we got inside, we wished we hadn't, it absolutely stunk! I don't, to this day, know what it was. I think it was some sort of air freshener, but it must have been in the stock cupboard since about the 14th century cos it made me want to hurl every time i set foot in there. So, next step of the Crystal Maze is to hold your breath from the door of the block to your actual room. Once inside your room, the next bit is trying to not get devoured by all the bedbugs or whatever it was that was making my skin feel itchy as hell in there. . . . . . . I think you get the idea anyway, DONT stay there!!
Thank the absolute lord that we only had one night in there cos that night, Jas reappeared in Vegas after having flown home! Let me explain, we left the Bellagio cos Jas was flying back to England that day. So me & Gra went online & booked CC (Circus Circus) for the night followed by the last few nights at Flamingo again. However, having checked in to CC, we decided to have a powernap. When we woke up we had a message on Facebook off Jas saying "be at Planet Hollywood at midnight" which confused us as he should have been landing in Manchester about then! Anyway, we were going over there anyway & at about 1am Jas strolled in!!! He had reached his transfer in Chicago and thought "nah, i dont wanna go home yet" so then flew back to Vegas!! Hahahaaaaa, still makes me laugh !! However, his luggage was still on its way to Manchester so he lost that!! Anyway, he had booked into a single room at PH (Planet Hollywood) for first night then next few nights in one of their suites, which me & Gra could move into with him!! Which leads me onto the final hotel of our stay....
*Planet Hollywood. This was on a par with Bellagio, mainly cos we had a suite. It was just awesome, our own pool table & Fussball table, several tables in the lounge, huge TV, two bathrooms etc etc..... Oh and an amazing view of the strip, Bellagio etc.
 |
| Our view of The Bellagio from our room at PH |
Where To Play Poker
Well, this is kind of down to personal preference! Personally I found the Bellagio the toughest game anywhere! A lot of very good players at even the lowest stakes, we didnt play here very often after the first few days. Also, i found that all the tables were too close together. Was always getting my chair banged by waitresses & anybody walking past! Highly annoying after first few times. We did see lots of famous poker faces in here though, most of which were playing in Bobby's Room there. Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson, David Benyamine, Sammy Farha, Eli Elezra, Ming Li. I'm sure there were others but i cant remember right now!!! We also played at The Aria during the afternoons on the first 2 or 3 days, mainly cos we went into their Sports Bar for a Sky Burger (which were gorgeous). Aria was well organised & a good room, but we found it pretty sharky again so stopped going there. Next up is Riviera, its a pretty mingin hotel & i dont actually know why we ended up in here during the afternoon one day. They only really ever had one table during the full 2 days we played here, $1/3, but it was ridic soft!! There was one maniac playing in there (called "Pizza", and yes he was fat) but the rest were either tourists or just shit players basically. The second day there were 3 super-dooper-UBER nits there but rest of the table was again terrible! Due to there only ever being the one table though, we decided our 2 trips there were enough! The Venetian was one of our favourite places to play, however after 2am ish the standard seemed to get much better (probably all the regs arriving i'd imagine). So, the best times to play there are from late afternoon til about 1am i reckon. My personal favourite place to play, and we only found it towards the end of the trip, was Planet Hollywood. It seemed to be mainly tourists in there playing which is always good. The only other place we tried was MGM but we stayed for a grand total of about 20 minutes i think. The 3 of us were all on different $2/5 tables & all felt that it was completely Reg-infested, lots of metagame stuff going on and that we had probably arrived there too late. We only went there that night cos it was the Pacquiao fight so we thought it'd be full of tourists wanting a game of poker, but we were very wrong!! Aaaaah well !! Ohhhh, we also played in the Rio. In all honesty, again we barely played cash in there at all, but we did play a WSOP Event..... Did i mention that at all ?!!
Jas bought the 3 of us into Event 33 of WSOP, and it was amazing! Even queuing up to buy in we were stood in front of Kara Scott !! Just bizarre! Gra said she was even hotter in real life, I personally didn't notice cos i was looking at the picture of my girlfriend on my phone (Hiya Laura if you are reading! hahahahaaa). Playing in the WSOP Main Event is every poker players dream. Sorry, i'm lying.... WINNING the WSOP Main Event is. But playing in it would be awesome, but it costs $10k. So playing in any WSOP event is like next on the list of dreams & I got to do it on this trip! The atmosphere in there is pretty surreal, excitement & a buzz just engulfs the place. When you are not playing, if you walk around it wont be long before you spot one of your poker heroes playing or even just walking around.
 |
| Phil Ivey playing a $10k HORSE Event |
 |
| Negreanu playing $5k PLO 6-Max |
I also met Sam Trickett when I was there for Day 2, and had a bit of a chat with him. Considering how much he's won playing poker, he was very grounded & down to earth, nice guy. He only bloody went on to win $10million in the $1mill "Big One for One Drop" event a few weeks later. Nice one!! Myself & Gra actually had a conversation about all the pros we seen at the Rio during the WSOP. Not a single one of the "recognisable faces" seemed to think they were like superstars or anything, just generally chilling-out in shorts & t-shirts or jogging bottoms/hoodies etc! Dunno what we really expected to be honest, guess we are comparing them to footballers over here who just never seem approachable etc and always seem to think they are above the average person. I guess thats one of the ways how poker is different from any other sports in the world, you can literally buy into an event & could end up sat next to one of your heroes!
Another thing that did come out of the WSOP experience is just how easy it is to cash in one. I mean, if Gra can do it then anyone can! Jokesssss! But in all seriousness, I did say to Gra that he wasn't making moves and playing crazy & getting lucky or anything. He did just play ABC poker, and ended up outlasting about 2200 other players by just playing the strength of his cards. If someday we could afford to just go and play the EPT's, WPT's etc etc then i honestly think we would reasonably quickly be able to start cashing in them. There were a LOT of bad players in that WSOP event, more than I expected anyway.
I am aware that I am dragging on a bit now & that this blog is WAY longer than all my others, so if you are bored then just read the rest later. I don't think i'm going to be going on for much longer, but i cannot guarantee that for you!! Allllllright, i will bring it to an end now. The only other thing i want to mention to anybody going to Vegas is that you HAVE to go to Earl Of Sandwich. Its in the shopping mall attached to Planet Hollywood and is literally a 2minute walk from the poker room in there! Its a little bit like Subway but approximately 7,309,109,482 times nicer! If you go to Vegas & don't try an Earl then you are missing out!!!
Finally I just want to say thanks to Jas for making the whole trip possible, absolutely unbelievable experience & one that I will never forget !! I just want to go back SOOOOOOOOOOOO badly its unreal !
(Going to be getting another blog out within the next day or two hopefully as I'm looking for some staking for the next few months, more on that soon.... watch this space)
