So I woke up at 4 am local time and automatically wondered if I should get a tall latte at Starbucks and then find a game at either Venetian or Flamingo, and then realized - back to reality!
And now for a summary of the TR, as a first timer in Vegas.
Tourneys: -$2200 / no cashes
The very first tourney I entered at the Venetian probably defined the entire trip. To recap I managed to finish 17th out of 129 players with 15 places paid when I ran AK into QJ on AKTxx board against an older lady. Brutal start that basically continued the entire trip, every set ran into a bigger set and every big pair ran into AA. Nothing to do here really, just a big disappointment.
Cash games: Really feel good about this one, few ups and downs but generally ended up a couple of buyins. Really enjoyed playing and unless the game was full of regs it was fairly easy. Played at Aria, Venetian, Flamingo, Harrahs, PH, Bellagio and a couple of other places that I cannot remember and I think I booked a profit at all of them except Venetian where I more or less broke even.
Pits: It was really fun but also really cruel at times. Had the two hand pays, and other than that I had a few really huge swings at blackjack. Someone asked me a few pages back how I manage to book win after win, well here it is. At the end of the TR I am actually down a substantial amount at BJ, mainly thanks the incredible pressing at freebet blackjack. Did I enjoy it? Hell yeah! Do I regret it? Not the slightest. Add to that the loads of food and clothes I bought from the VP hit and I think we are good
Sure, would have been nice to book a profit and cash/win a few tourneys, but at the end of the day I set aside a bankroll that I would spend and was okay with it. My life does not depend on it and I can surely afford it, so it is whatever.
Vegas in general: Wow, what a crazy place! Specially as a first timer. It took a lot of time to get used to it, and I have to say you cannot really appreciate it the first time around. Now that we have all the touristy stuff and all the walking out of the way I will mainly focus on staying at one property per day the next trip. While it was fun moving around we did a ton of 16+ hours, waking up at 6-7-8 in the morning, grabbing breakfast and finding a cash game, then tourney, then another cash game until late at night. While it sure is possible it is extremely exhausting and resulted in me basically passing out second to last day and sleeping for 14 hours straight.
Anywho, next year we will definitely focus on going for at least 10 days. Most of that will be at a certain property with very minimal moving around. More chill.
We also plan to go an extra 3 days with S., hire a car and go out to Red Rock. It was an amazing experience with so much to see in so little time and would be really awesome to just camp out there for a few days. That also means we will go during March Madness, as it was a little bit too hot this time.
Overall it was a great experience, although it went really fast. Thanks again for reading and hopefully we will be back March next year! Main focus will be on cash games only then.