Hey, We're Still Here!

After three weeks of blog silence, folks might wonder if Al and Helen vanished into the Nevada air. Well, no. I just got super-lazy and distracted from posting our adventure updates.

The last three weeks have been filled with gaming adventures, the Super Bowl and some dining out highlights. Helen's been healing her broken ankle and is looking forward to visiting the orthopedic doctor on Tuesday morning. We're hoping that she's declared officially healed and can resume walking with her walker. She's been restricted to a wheelchair for the past two months.

Super Bowl was super fun for me. I had two winning bets on the Pats -1 and over 49 points. What we typically do is that I find someplace to watch the game for the first half, then at halftime I drive home and watch the 2nd half with Helen. So I headed over to the nearby Suncoast where they were having a FREE SB party. Down on the Strip they were charging from $40 to $200 for parties. The game started here at 3:30 and the Suncoast opened the doors to their showroom, where the party was held, at 2:30.

I got there a few minutes before 3 and took a seat at the rear of the room in a nice padded booth that seated 3 comfortably. While the party entrance was free, they charged for food and drinks. A bucket of 5 Miller,Miller lite, Coors or Coors lite was $12. I couldn't drink 5, but ordered two Coor lite at $3 each to wash down my order of Wings ($4.50) and popcorn ($1). As I sat there sipping my beer and munching popcorn, the room started to fill up as game time approached.

A 30-ish couple came in looking for a place to sit, but wasn't having any luck. They asked if they could join me and I was glad for the company. Turns out Jack and Claudine both work for The Venetian and are not a couple, but just co-workers who ran a 10 mile race, then played 9 holes of golf before coming over to watch the game. Jack is in the Venetian's accounting department, while Claudine is the hotel's public relations manager. Both are from Canada, Jack from Mississauga near Toronto and Claudine from Vancouver. Jack's a BIG hockey fan and former player. We talked about the Wings and he gave me some tips on who will win the Cup. Claudine and I talked about PR issues and her former life as a TV reporter.

After a couple of hours of talking, drinking and rooting for the Pats (they both liked NE to win), I left at halftime, promising to keep in touch with them. So on Monday, I emailed them and told how much I enjoyed talking with them. In return, Claudine offered to hook us up with some show tickets. So on Wednesday night, Feb. 11, Helen and I are going to see Human Nature, an Australian act that does classic Motown sounds. I remember this group when they were at the Imperial Palace for $30 a ticket. Now at the Venetian the tickets are $100 and up. So I thanked Claudine profusely in a follow-up email and promised to give her my opinion of the show later.

Over the past week I've been played poker at Bally's and posted enough hours to play in their weekly free roll tourney on Thursday. If you log 12 hours of play from Thursday thru Thursday, you get to play in the free event. Bally's pays $300 to the final 20 players. Everyone who finishes in the top 20 wins the cash and the tourney end there. So on Thursday there were 58 players who qualified to play.
They seat 10 players at each table, so there were 6 tables in action.

My plan was to win a few hands early, build a stack, then sit back and let the other stacks be melted down by the rising blinds. We started with 5,000 in chips with blinds of 50 and 100. Every 15 minutes the blinds increased to 100 and 200, then 200 and 400, 400 and 800, 500 and 1000, 1000 and 2000. I hit a couple of good hands early, a flush and a full house to build my stack to about 16,000 chips at one point. After about an hour we took a 10 minute break and I had the 2nd biggest stack at our table. At that point the field had been trimmed down to 30 players!

I was feeling pretty good, but as the blinds grew, my stack shrunk. Meanwhile the field dwindled to 25, 23, 22, then 21. At that point my stack was down to 3 $1000 chips and the blinds were 2000/4000. I got dealt 5-5 and decided to go All In with my 3 chips. If I lost, I would be out of tourney as the last non-winner. But I won the hand and doubled my stack to 6 chips. Meanwhile at another table, the last woman in the tourney went all in and lost. Cheering erupted as the rest of us received $300. We were shaking hands and high fiving each other for our victory. The whole tourney took about 2 hours to complete and I look forward to playing in it a few more times before we return home. I had won $88 in a cash game before the tourney started, so for the day I won 388. It went into the bank the next morning to pay down a charge card. Not sexy, but still a nice win!

My luck turned bad yesterday as I visited the Suncoast in the morning and dropped $65 in blackjack. Then I came home and made us lunch - a turkey sandwich for Helen and leftover spaghetti for me. Then I rolled over to Red Rock, determined to get back some of my $$$ that I left at Suncoast. Well, it didn't go well. I dropped another $40 in BJ for a daily loss of $105.

Today I'll be getting a hockey parlay for my friend Terry and probably making a hoops bet. Tomorrow night Helen and I have tickets to a concert at The Orleans. We'll be seeing Kenny Wayne Shepherd, a blues guitarist. We've seen him there a couple of other times and it's always a great show.
And so our LV Adventure continues...