It's time for another trip report.

This one's a little unusual, because (a) I'm going solo and (b) I'm tacking it onto the front end of a loooong overseas business trip. Suffice it to say, six countries in six days is going to be killer. My theory is, it's better to get my sleep all messed up in Vegas first, so I can "avoid the jet lag."

I have a crazy work day on Wednesday, so much so that I have to book the next to last flight out in the evening. I rush home from busy meetings, change out of the clown suit into something more casual, jam six days worth of business clothes into my suitcase, make a quick calculation about whether I can afford to stop on the way to the airport and get a bite to eat (not really), and then... wait, did I pack my swimsuit? Oops, nope. Wait: is it going to be warm enough to bother? Better check the weather on the phone.

I travel a lot, so I'm normally pretty good about slinging everything together in a short timeframe and not ending up at my destination wondering where I'll buy underwear or a belt or whatever. But, this time, I was about to head out the door when I realized that I left the cash in the drawer! Almost a big oops.

To capture this trip fairly, let me back up a few days. On Friday the week before, I figured out that I would not have enough time on the day of departure to go to the bank and obtain cash. This is important, because as it happens, it is very difficult to get multiple tens of thousands of dollars in cash from my bank. (And I use one of the mega banks.) You can call ahead to order cash, but they require three business days to arrange the shipment, and, well, that would put me at the dreaded over-booked Wednesday.

So, on Friday afternoon, when I have a free hour, I go on a now-familiar "cash crawl." It's kind of like those stories you read here, where people go from casino to casino, drinking and gambling a little in each along the way, except my crawl has a lot more ID-checking, a lot more strange looks, way too many not-so-obliquely-put questions about "what are you going to DO with all that cash"?", and so on. I literally just drive down the road, stop at every branch of my bank, and ask them to "give me all the money you can."

Yes, it's kind of like a stick-up, and it even usually results in a pained expression, a consultation with a "manager", and then something along the lines of, "Mr. Neb, we can give you four thousand in large and two more thousand in twenties." Great, only 8 more banks to go and I'll get the 50k I'd like to have to begin this trip, and I can check an extra duffel bag to carry the thousands bills while I'm at it.

If it's not clear that I'm sick and tired of trying to manage this kind of cash, I'm stating it here, for the record. You'd guess it's a good problem to have, but in fact it's a huge pile of trouble, it creates unnecessary risk carrying all those funds around, I have one miserable experience now being accosted by the TSA when trying to board a domestic flight with that kind of cash, and... well, it's enough to drive me nuts.

Anyway, at branch #3 I hit the jackpot. They recently got a large deposit from a major retail account, so they were able to fulfill the remainder of my request for $30k.

Now, as it happens, the WPT is in town the following week -- the week of my trip. I don't play many tournaments, but with the tournaments come... cash games! I get a notification that we'll have a 25/50 NL spread on Sunday night, and as it happens I'm free, I have $50k to my name just ready to donate, and I figure this'll be good "practice" for the trip.

Game is filled with minor celebrities and various poker pros that I sometimes vaguely recognize but mostly don't know. Interestingly, it is a mixture of the regs and the traveling pros, and at the intersection of these parties lies exploitability, or at least I think so. I cover the table with $30k, we eventually end up with a mandatory straddle, and now we have a real Ring Game worth playing in, my friends.

I end up winning all three of my significant pots against the only women playing at my table.

One of them must be a tourney pro, and she'd run her stack up from short to a very decent size. We got involved in a weird hand that led to me shoving the river, and her calling with fourth pair, no kicker. I had third pair, and I guess some of you would say our "ranges merged." I think we both made good reads, played recklessly aggressively, and I ended up with the +14k.

I also won a couple of medium-sized pots off Jen Tilly. I'd not played with her, although I have played several times with her boyfriend. (He was at another table.) Jen seemed to be having a rough night of it, running well below average but also making some questionable plays in the steam.

Unfortunately, I lost one pot on my final orbit that was significant, trying to guess whether my top pair was good enough to beat what ended up being an overpair. I don't have any real regrets with my play in that hand, but it did take a big bit out of my profit. I end up cashing out for +$6611, which I decided would be like a "freeroll" for my adventures in Sin City.

Moar

I was told I should read this, so here I am!

Hmmm, WPT was at Commerce last week, Bay 101 this week, Sacramento this weekend and next week. The timing sounds like San Jose but I don't think 25/50 runs anywhere near here. And PhilJen wouldn't come up here until they had to. But maybe I'm mistaken...

Has potential.

Wednesday

Okay, so I'm packed up, I've shoved my cash into my bag, and Uber is on the way to get me. I hop in the nice car with the nice driver and decide to make a runtime decision on whether to stop and grab a bite to eat after all. It's going to be close, but I've already talked to United, and they have lots of open seats on the final flight of the evening, so I can cut it as close as I'd like without risk of not making to Vegas.

And then... my phone alerts me that my flight is delayed 2 hours. Turns out almost all of the flights are delayed about two hours, because we've had a weird wind out of the wrong direction today, and SFO loses half of its capacity if the wind is coming "sideways."

Brag: I get to relax and have a great meal before the airport.
Beat: my stay in Vegas won't officially commence until the wee hours of Thursday.

I get in to Vegas no problem, and the air is glassy-clear on the inbound. I love this time of year in the desert!

Awesome TR so far but needs pics!!

Subbed

MOAR please.

They were spreading the 25/50 game at Matrix during the Shooting Star. Confirmed Phill Laak was in the game but don't know about Tilly.

I heard he was in the game the week of the WPT, but surprised he would show up early when he could just stay at Bike/Commerce.

Wee Hours of Thursday

I'm already pretty tired, and to tell the truth I could just go right to bed after the limo drops me off at Cosmo around 1am. But, I also have a mandate to stay up later and later each night so that I am shifted around in time for my overseas leg on Saturday. Very-early-Thursday gambling it is.

Remember those winnings from the earlier high stakes action? I pop in to the high limit room at Cosmo and plunk down my $6400 free roll at the blackjack table. (I must've skimmed off $211 for spending money somewhere along the way.) Blackjack went absolutely great, I pretty much smoothly ran it up to $23k in a couple of hours, playing on and off with a few others who were in town for the basketball games.

Pleasantly surprised at my good fortune -- it seems like a rarity that I start a trip so solidly in the black -- I have a quick shower at 3am and fall out like a light.

@Neb take the winnings to the poker table!

subbed. more please.

Subbed. Question though. Why not just wire the money to your casino? Sounds like a pain to go to 8 banks to get cash.

is this the end? we are outside the dates..such potential

Cooooommmmooonnnnn

It's a good question, and I'm leaning towards doing it in the future. There are many potential downsides, too, thought:

(a) Wiring is not totally straightforward at my bank, and paperwork is required. I have to wait for a banker. I have had two of my last five wires messed up in some way or another. I know cash works.

(b) The casino can be somewhat picky about what one does with the wired funds. It is not as straightforward as simply carrying cash, especially if I want to play in multiple places.

(c) A wire would've prevented me from the spur-of-the-moment cash game described in this story! That kind of thing happens all the time, so I do like the flexibility.

I'll do some more complaining about cash later in this story, though.

Thursday

Up at noon, it's time for some catch-up on work email, a couple phone calls, some room service, and a trip to the pool. It's a touch too cool really to hit the regular one, but the hot tub is nice. A lot of people are out there on the sunning chairs, doing the opposite of catching rays: instead, they're wrapped up like mummies in five or six towels each. Um, yeah. I guess if you go to Vegas for the pool, you do what you have to do?

I end up deciding to visit the Cosmo spa, where I get a fantastic, deep tissue massage from the "strongest person on your team." I think this costs something like $300 after tip, for 80 minutes. I get a lot of massages, both at home and on the road, and I kind of think this one was roughly worth it despite paying more than twice what I would usually. I immediately rebook the same guy for tomorrow, soak for twenty more minutes in the hot tub to make sure I don't have bruised muscle tissue in the morning, and then I discover the "Cool Mist room."

For those of you who don't visit spas often, it is kind of fancy-pants for there to be a room dedicated to coldness. Some of the really nice ones even have ones that are below freezing, so that it "snows" in there. At Cosmo, they have a small, round room that's kept at something like refrigerator-temperature and, at the push of button, you can get cool mist to come out of the ceiling.

What got me, though, was that while I'm standing there naked and mesmerized by these chilly dew drops fogging the air, there are two vividly-blinking red buttons on the wall:



Yes, these are "emergency" buttons. And, as you can see, there is one at waist level and one about four inches off the floor. I guess they figure, if you waltz in there and have a heart attack because your body can't take the thermal shock, you'll be crawling around on the floor in the fog and need a bright, red, blinking thing to push to get some help. I dunno, seemed a little over the top to me, but maybe some government agency saw this thing and told 'em to put it in. (No such floor-level self-destruct button in the steam room, btw.) Funny.

good luck

LMAO

First-world probs gonna first-world prob.

Thursday evening

Next, I elect to try a meal at the Hakkasan restaurant's bar. This was good for two reasons: first, the food was delicious. And, second, I happened to sit next to another solo traveler who was eager to strike up conversation. As it happens, he has a small company that designs kitchens for large restaurants, like Hakkasan. And, indeed, it turns out he designed the kitchen and bar for them. It was really interesting to learn about all kinds of little details involved in crafting an architecturally-reasonable but also efficient kitchen that flows well, some of which he pointed out live while the bartenders worked in the space. But, let's get back to the gambling.

Next, I stroll over to the Bellagio, where the only 10/20 NL tables in Vegas are going on this particular Thursday evening. Hmmm...

I only had $20k on me, which didn't come close to covering a couple of the players at the table, but that's okay. I get zero playable hands for the first hour, which is hard for me, because I am pretty aggressive and need to play a wide range. But, then things pick up a bit, and I start connecting with some flops and winning a few small pots here and there. I probably make it up to $25k, including a fun snap-call on a small ($300?) river bet with ten-high on something like an AQJ87 board. I love goofing off like that.

Then I have two miserable hands in a row. I end up firing on every street in the first one, with a small pocket pair, and I get called all the way down by a turned TPTK. The very next hand, my opponent flops a flush and I flop a straight. We see a blank on the turn and get it all in. I pay off another $4k like a slot machine, decide the game is not especially entertaining or profitable anyway, and so I pack it up and call it a night.

As I get up to leave, my genuine, "you all have a good night", is met with silence as eight zombies stare into roughly eight mobile computing devices. These things remind me that the community does a little bit more harm to the game at every missed opportunity to be cordial and act like regular human beings. It's possible this choice -- or, rather, the apathy of making no choice at all -- is a locally-optimal decision. But it's probably just too bad for poker, in the long run.

More Thursday evening

Having gotten my fill of considerably lower-stakes poker -- because, really, dumping $13k into the 10/20 feels pretty trivial compared to playing 50/100, doesn't it? -- it's time to get back to a game with cards, on felt, where the other players have a decent chance of being there to have fun and goof off just like me. You know, blackjack.

I meander back over to the Cosmo and start out playing some heads-up with the dealer in the high limit room, betting a minimum of $200 a hand out of my remaining $7k that was leftover from my two-hand poker meltdown. It takes only 1.5 shoes to run this down to a perilously low amount, and somehow I find myself betting one yellow, thousand-dollar chip when I have two yellow, thousand-dollar chips at hand. Even I know that, should I wish to keep playing, I should always keep that bet to no more than half my stack, because so much of the player expectation comes from the ability to double and split.

Welp, sure enough, I get a pair of fours versus a dealer 6. Now I have a conundrum. If I split my fours, I probably get at one non-stiff hand that I'd want to double on. If I keep them together, I can double and likely end up with a reasonable holding even if the dealer doesn't have a hand that can bust right away.

I ask the boss if I'm allowed to get up and go get more money from my room, and I'm told that "that would tie up the table for another player who might come along"... no matter that there are only two other players in the room right now and also one other unoccupied shoe-dealt game with the same limit right next to mine, completely empty. I decide that I don't have the experience nor the mental energy to argue with that ruling (but I do know of situations where others have been allowed time to secure additional funds to complete a hand), so I just run with it and split them anyway.

Sure enough, I get one hand that I can double. I have one black chip left on the table, and I scrounge another $250 out of my wallet to double for less on that handle. Dealer busts, and I conclude that I just lost $1,300 because of my dumbness. Awesome.

After reducing my bet size substantially, slow learner that I am, I need only a few more minutes to lose "everything" down to $600, or three units at this $200 table. NOW it is time to get up and go get some more cash!

"Save my seat, dealer."