More Viva Las Vegas 2006!

thurs | fri | sat | sun | mon | tues | wed | thurs2 | fri2 | sat2

It was a fairly straight shot from utah down interstate 15 and into vegas. We arrived at our hotel (the legendary flamingo of bugsy siegel fame), checked in and had a simple dinner in the casino. After dinner we headed over to the bellagio for some poker action. I held my own and won a little (playing only a couple of hours). In the windowed room in the center of the poker room, legends such as sammy farha and phil ivey were plying their craft. Nice!

day 8: thursday, october 19 — maybe 10 miles
Today was going to be a little different from our usual vegas trip. We were heading downtown for some comps I had read about in the travel section of my local newspaper, and going to try our luck with these free rolls and such. First stop: the golden nugget. We signed up for the frequent player card, which gave us each $10 in credits to play on a special slot machine. Ten pulls each, and we’re up about $14. We take this over to the roulette table and place a few bets on red or black. Up, down, up, down, and down, and we’re done. On to the next stop.

I tried my hand at some low priced blackjack at binion’s, where they used to host the world series of poker championship. After just 10 hands or so, I’m up a little. We head over to the fremont casino for a 99 cent shrimp cocktail. These are the tiny shrimp you sometimes get on a salad. Believe it or not, this was pretty tasty!

We left downtown and stopped in at the stratosphere. Again, we signed up for the frequent player cards, which gave us a chance to double our winnings if we hit a blackjack or win at craps. I headed over to the blackjack table, put down $5 and my coupon, and on the first hand, I get the blackjack, which pays $15 instead of the usual $7.50 (3 to 2). Sweet! The same thing happened at craps, where we lost one (-$10) and won one (+$20 with the doubling coupon). I then settled down in the small poker room, where on the third or fourth hand I’m sitting on quad 4s and the other guy is betting into me. Man, I love the stratosphere! We finished up here with the early bird dinner special, and headed over for our first and last look at the stardust (read an article about the closing; see my mid strip pics), and then over to the mgm grand. Once again I’m banging the poker tables, holding my own with almost no cards, and watching the cardinals knock off the mets in game 7 of the NLCS. This was just an all around tremendous day!

day 9: friday, October 20 — 245 miles
Our last vegas stop this trip is the aladdin. We had breakfast here, but their small poker room isn’t even open until some daily tournament later in the day. Oh well. I leave vegas ahead of the game, and we head out of town and once again toward arizona . . .