2016 Off To a Nice Start

Four days into the New Year and I'm just getting around to catching up on the blog.

It's been a blur of blackjack, poker and football games for the first few days of January. New Year's Eve was a low-key celebration for Helen and I. At 9 p.m. we popped the cork on some champagne and welcomed 2016.

After all, it was already midnight in Michigan were so many of our friends and family were already celebrating. Earlier that day I visited the Albertsons market and loaded up on chicken wings, potato salad, edamame salad, chips, dips, summer sausage, cheeses, olives and more. That gave us plenty of snackables to last for a few days.

On New Year;s Day I went to Red Rock to watch football and play some blackjack. I dropped $35 at the bj table. A rare losing session. The following day, Saturday, I went to Bally's to log hours toward the freeroll tourney. I rebounded with a vengeance, posting a sweet $500 win in poker and $335 in blackjack. Had several nice poker hands, but one of the most memorable was one that wasn't a winner.

I got dealt the K-10 of clubs and the flop was two more clubs A-J. I needed the Queen of clubs for my first ever Royal Flush. But, sorry, it didn't come. Any Queen would give me a straight, or a King would have given me high pair, but in fact, none of them and no clubs hit the turn or the river and I ended up with only a King high...no pairs, no straight. Still, it was a GREAT profitable day.

On Sunday, I was back at Red Rock by 9 a.m. to get in some football action and play poker. I hit a couple of nice hands and posted a profit of $140, factoring in my losing fb bets. One nice hand occurred when I was dealt A-6 of Hearts and the flop came A-6-10. A guy at the end bet $10 and I raised it to $20. Everyone else folded, but the original better sat and thought about it. He'd been shoving All-In on almost every hand he played, so I expected him to do it again.

I was not disappointed. He made a dramatic show of stacking all his chips - about $115 - and slowly shoving them into the center of the table and announcing "All In." I immediately called. The turn and river were non-factors and I showed my two pair. He muttered and tossed his cards face down into the muck. That was a nice pot!

This morning I drove down to Mandalay Bay to get tickets for the Michael Jackson show, "One." Our friends the Edsons and Tunes are coming to visit in Feb. and we decided to see the show together. We're all set for 6 tickets for the Feb. 19 show. They didn't offer a "locals discount" but they did offer a MCard discount if I had a players club card, which I did. So that knocked about $25 off each ticket. All six cost $601 - not bad for a major Vegas show on a Friday night. We were lucky to get six seats close to each other, especially since one is handicapped access for Helen.

After buying the tickets, I drove to Ballys and played some poker. I wanted to log a few hours toward the freeroll. I played for about 3 hours, posting a profit of $160. I have 8 hours so far, and need to get 4 more in for the tourney. About 2:30 I took a break from poker and walked to the Ghiradelli shop to buy some chocolates. En route to the chocolate store, I ate an apple I had brought from home. Somehow having that solitary fruit for lunch seemed to offset the decision to buy a big bag of chocolates.

Then it was a hike back to Ballys. The poker room was pretty full and there was a wait, so I found a blackjack table and played for an hour, stacking a profit of $200. Then it was time to head home. For the day, I won $360, got the tickets and some chocolates. A pretty nice day!

When I got home I made dinner - wild rice and vegetables. And Helen and I sampled the chocolates, limiting ourselves to 3 each. She was a little under the weather today, so she logged some couch time and addressed birthday cards to go out tomorrow. 

And tomorrow our adventure continues...