Vegas Vegas

Where did you go, Vegas? Come baaacccckkkkkkk...

So, umm, yeah. Vegas > home.

But it is nice to be home. (That's my liver talking, not the rest of me.)

The gambling portion of the trip was a bit odd. I finished +$500 or so, which is always nice. $400 or so of that came from teh poker, where I ended up playing a mix of 4/8 half kill and 10/20. I only got in ten hours of poker or so, so I was more than happy with the results, especially since all my big starters got pretty much crushed across the board.

The odd part is that, for the first time, I was fairly bored playing live. Or, more accurately, found myself thinking for the first time that online poker > live poker, at least at lower limits. While it's nice to have a table with plenty of emus and leems, I almost felt like I was playing blackjack more than poker, as far as whether or not pots were pushed my way. And yes, absolutely, online play is exactly the same, but at least I can see a decent number of hands/hour and work on other things, etc. Folding for half an hour, then getting AA cracked by 38o, followed by not seeing a playable hand for another forty-five minutes = not so much fun.

But I'm sounding like a miserable grinch, and that's definitely not the case, as much fun was had playing poker. More than anything it confirmed by notion that a little of the pure joy of poker is lost upon me these days as I focus more on dollars and cents and profitability than enjoyment. I think it's hard, too, knowing that I only have a finite hours to play per trip, and trying to maximize the fun/cool/exciting factor, when sometimes you just sit at an uninteresting silent table and fold a bunch.

The highlight of the trip was definitely seeing the Corrales/Castillo rematch, as boxing was much more entertaining than I thought it'd be. The MGM is definitely > Stratosphere, although they definitely get dinged for managing to lose my wife's pillow that she's had since she was 5 (housekeeping took it, despite the fact that it looked nothing like the hotel pillows), and then displayed a complete lack of concern that anything whatsoever was missing from our room. Yes, granted, it's a pillow, but it's still our personal shit, which you took from the room, and should be able to locate if you spent fifteen minutes actually looking for it. Boo.

Watching Texas thump OU was nice, as well, especially on a screen the size of my house at the ESPN Zone. Winning $100 at the silly penny slots was nice, although video poker sucked some of it back.

ScurvyWife and I had much fun, did much walking around and sightseeing, and all that good stuff. She went with a friend to see Elton John *cough*, so I managed to dodge yet another bullet, as far as shows go.

All in all, Vegas is a pretty damn fun place. Highly recommended. Give it a try sometime.