Long time, no Vegas!
I stopped in for a short bachelor party trip for a friend last weekend, and took a couple of pictures and played a little poker, so figured I'd update the thread. This won't be a fully detailed TR, just a brief entry to whet the appetite before next week's return trip to degen at VP and play the Monster Stack.
This trip was not a heavy VP degen trip, in fact I was purposely trying not to play at Cosmo as I wanted to save the BR for the trip with wifey in 2 weeks.
Here are a few highlights from the trip.
Landed in Vegas Thursday evening and headed out with Big Papi, Scott Davies, for some sushi. We went to Sen of Japan for some late night nigiri, the happy hour menu after 10:30 is the nuts.
Sen of Japan - Black snapper with garlic olive oil on right. I always just load up on this, one of my faves. The rice is definitely less good than I remember, but for a few bucks a piece, this is crazy value.
Unagi - Decent, nothing special.
Black cod in lettuce wrap - Solid black cod dish about a 6/10.
Overall Sen was good/very good, the value during happy hour is outstanding, and it's open really late. If I were paying full prices, I'd be a bit disappointed to go that far off strip though, and would probably just stick to somewhere closer.
Checked into a renovated room at Harrah's for the night and after a long week of conference organizing back in Calgary, fell asleep for 8 hours like a baby. First time I've ever gone to Vegas and not gambled on night one.
The newly renovated Harrah's rooms are way nicer than the old ones and the bed was super comfy. Since we were checking into Mirage the next day, I decided on the free Harrah's night so I could walk across the street in AM.
Across the street to Mirage the next morning to check into 2 bedroom tower suite for the Bachelor party.
The next three days were a blur, a complete and total **** show. The group was 13 guys, including the groom, his brother, his work bosses, his dad and a bunch of friends from school. For the most part it was cat herding, just getting them from place to place for dinner, strippers, etc. I won't post any pics of this at the bachelor's request (a good choice IMO).
There were several stories that I can't say on here, so it was obv a pretty wild party. The first night we ended up at Palomino, and I think the guys probably racked up an 8-10K tab there, and then did more damage at Sapphire's the next night.
Some funny stories that I can post:
1-After closing down Palomino on Thursday night at 5 AM, we went to the Sapphire Pool at noon on Friday. We had two cabanas and a bunch of booze, which nobody wanted because we were wrecked from night one. The strange thing was that everyone who showed up was topless at the pool, meaning all the customers. And they were mostly 35+ year old couples. There was the occasional decent looking one, but for the most part just 500 naked normal people.
Asking if this was the norm, we found out that it just so happened today was the "World's biggest orgy" day in Vegas,
For about 500 of the people planning on participating in this 1000 person orgy, they made the Sapphire pool party their daytime activity. We just happened to rent a cabana the same day, which made for a pretty strange party. The people participating in the orgy had pink wristbands to identify themselves as orgy members. We were basically the only people without pink wristbands. A few orgy-goers did end up in our cabanas though, with one lady asking for a bukkake session from all of our group, and other people who were being pulled around with neck collars and leashes.
One of the guys in our group ended up buying all the alcohol and our cabana became the life of the party, particularly for the strippers. There were only about 6 strippers working the pool that day, and pretty janky ones at that, because the party was all orgy people anyway. They would come drink our booze and then peace out when the booze was all gone.
One of our group members did manage to get involved in the orgy and disappeared later that night to participate in a fetish. His new nickname is Cuckles McChuckles if that allows you to figure out what happened. Fortunately he didn't get raped or killed either.
Here's a link
https://nypost.com/2018/05/11/swinge...-biggest-orgy/
2-JR Smith - FML
The first night we watched GSW vs. CLE at Twin Peaks, the bar up above PHo. First off, that place is a bit hard to find. Second, it was a perfect bachelor party place, being a mountain themed Hooters. Considering game 1 of the finals had gone under the last three years in a row, I put a few hundred on the under at 216.5. Lol at the feeling when JR Smith didn't shoot and it went to OT, guaranteeing the over. Thanks JR.
Our other meals during the bachelor party were:
Yardbird - really like their fried chicken and waffles. It's becoming a regular stop for me.
Scarpetta - Always great if you stick with spaghetti, agnolotti and stromboli bread.
Carnevino - It's closing in July because Batali couldn't keep his greasy mittens off the staff, as are the other Batali restaurants in Venetian.
But I was able to get one last 3 inch, 220 day aged rib eye, and it was glorious!
220-day aged rib eye. I was sharing, but the $344 price tag for one steak was definitely the most of my life, so far
During a washroom break mid-dinner I was able to almost freeroll my steak though.
Can't fight the VP itch.
Post bachelor party
After a heavy weekend of drinking, partying, etc. I was super happy to be staying in Vegas just to chill out and play a bit of poker before heading back home. After the guys headed out Sunday afternoon, I checked into the Rio and then promptly headed over to Aria to play the $470 mix triple draw event (A-5, 2-7, Badugi)
Admittedly I haven't played much of these games in a few months, and A-5 is not my strongest game, but I've played enough online 2-7 and Badugi to know that I can hold my own in those two.
My starting table included Aria poker floor and nice guy Sean McCormack (@thepokerboss), another Aria dealer named Mark, a female dealer from Wynn/Bellagio and one rec player. For the first 7 levels I took a few hits (almost all in the A-5 rounds) and pretty much hovered around half of starting stack. By the end of late reg, I had recovered to exactly starting stack, strong play
2 of the 4 players at this table were limping into pots all the time, including UTG, and one of these players told me they were on a freeroll playing this tournament.
There is also very little if any snowing in live Badugi/TD, so combining this with the passive play in general, it was time to ramp up the aggression and bluffing frequencies.
By the next break things were looking up.
I think 100% of bluffs got through in this tournament, which was pretty amazing. At one point I got a K773 badugi snow through
which sounds like suicide, I know. But this was fit or fold badugi all the way.
I don't have all the HH's, but I made a wheel in 2-7 at the right time, got some bluffs through in badugi and tightened up my range in A-5. Things ultimately went pretty well and I decided to just ship the tourney for 5K.
The tournament was a ton of fun, good chat with all the tables from the start right to the end, awesome dealers, just a great time.
The next day I played the $470 NL 2-7 SD at Aria but couldn't get much going and busted shortly after late reg when I bricked an 8742x draw against a 9 draw that hit.
Also played a few STTs at the Rio and chopped one of them for $750 a piece, so another little bink.
Walking around the Rio, WTF is with this pic of Jesus? They put some dogs in the pic to make us hate him less I think.
I also threw in a Kabuto meal (no pics) and it was actually one of the more disappointing Kabuto trips ever. The kuruma-ebi tasted borderline dirty and both my chu-toro and o-toro were metallic. Other pieces were very good, but even the servers and chefs asked me if something was wrong when I stopped at 15 pieces.
Other meals:
Ichiza - Solid late night poker food, best dish was agedashi tofu. The black cod was very salty and the char siu roll is a bust.
Ping Pang Pong - Ate here twice, once after triple draw tourney and once before leaving. Day time dim sum is def solid.
Mian - Really enjoyed their noodles, with the dumplings and mushroom dish also being very good. Some people found this too spicy though, so ymmv. The mung bean soup is very cooling though.
They also have the best placemats - Step one: Take a picture of your noodle
On returning home, I received this freeroll offer from TI, it's apparently only for pit game players and with 25K up top, I am pretty tempted to go play in this.
Overall a short but successful trip, made a little cash to donk off at the VP next time with Mrs. Ferguson. The only bummer was that I didn't play the $1500 DC at the WSOP because I had to leave on what would be day 2.
The next trip will actually have some type of structure to it, and I'm pretty excited as we'll be doing Robuchon, Kabuto, staying at Cosmo and playing the Monster Stack. Unfortunately most of the mix game tourneys will be over by then, so prolly gonna grind some STTs in my spare time.
For those of you who missed out on wine pics this trip, here are some wines from dinner when we got back
Double mag of 01 Solaia, 05 Tondonia, 06 La Conseillante and 89 Alzero were highlights from this night.
Brunello tasting
01 Soldera, 06 Poggio di Sotto, 01 Valdicava Madonna del Piano, 01 Terralsole Normale and 01 Tenuta Nuova were highlights from this night. 04s were just not ready in most cases, though still great wines.
Cheers,
TF