Strip Poker

Thursday is often a good day to play poker on the Las Vegas Strip, or Strip Poker.

Unlike Fridays and Saturdays when many of the good poker casinos are jammed with players, Thursday is just beginning to see the tourists roll into town, especially the young poker guns with their knock-off raybans and their ball caps on backwards.

So today I hit the Strip early, parking at Bill's Gambling Hall. BGH was pretty quiet, but I cashed a couple of hoops tickets (Akron crushed EMU and OSU-Purdue went well over 129) and pocketed $77 from them. Then I walked through the Flamingo, past O'Shea's and into the Imperial Palace. I got there around 9:30 a.m. and immediately got a seat in a $4-8 Limit Hold 'Em game, where only 4 other guys were playing. We played 5-handed for a while, then filled the 10-seat table within about 20 minutes.

I had some good early luck, hitting several flops and building up a profit of almost $70 at one point. There were no HUGE hands, but a number of small, steady pots kept me solvent. My plan was to play until around 3:30 or 4 p.m. then stop at a post office on the way home. So around 3 p.m., I was trying to build my pile up over $100. That didn't happen. In fact, I lost a couple of nice pots with the second best hands and finally walked with a profit of only $23...not great, but a profit still.

On the way home, I stopped at the Post Office to ship some Valentine's gifts to the grandkids in Rockford.

While I was playing poker, Helen was on the phone trying to straighten out a prescription problem she's having with Walgreen's. Ironically, the meds she was calling about arrived in today's mail. Walgreen's shipped them on Jan. 16 and they arrived in TC on Jan. 26, then they were forwarded here to LV, arriving 10 days later. She also spent a long time talking with Natalie in Traverse City and reading.

When I got home, we decided on a takeout dinner. After some discussion we opted for Italian cuisine, well actually pizza! We tried a place about a mile from our apt - "East Side Pizza" located surprisingly on the west side of LV. It's a New York Pizza style place and it's walls are full of New York Yankees and Mets photos. Pretty interesting and the pizza was tasty!

Now we're just relaxing, getting ready to enjoy the NBC comedy lineup - Earl, Kath & Kim, The Office and 30 Rock - a two-hour chuckle fest!

Tomorrow, the adventure continues...