The Hangover
Just got back from Vegas, and after sleeping all day to recover I’m up at 3am with nothing better to do than write an update.
This trip wasn’t really for poker, it was to hang out and have fun for a couple days but things didn’t go exactly according to that plan. We got there Thursday afternoon and hung out at the hotel a bit. After ordering room service I actually got a bit sick and ended up staying in the first night. Not the best way to start off a Vegas trip.
Friday Shiva and I went to Aria to check out the poker room and find lunch. That place is nice, but the poker room isn’t very impressive. They were preparing for the Million Dollar freeroll that was being hosted Saturday to promote the opening of Ivey’s room. We decided to look around for food and found a upscale sportsbar called Skybox to eat. They had a burger on their menu called the Firecracker Burger that if you finished it you got a free beer. The waitress went on and on about how hot it was and how everyone who eats it breaks out in a sweat and tears up. Shiva off course thinks this is great as he is always bitching about how nothing is spicy enough.
So when this burger gets served our waitress stands there to watch his reaction to the first few bites, which he goes through easily. When he gets done he said he was impressed that it was legitimately hot but he had eaten hotter things before. The waitress was shocked he wasn’t breaking out in a sweat and that his nose wasn’t running. As for overall food, I think the burger bar at the Mandalay Bay was better but this wasn’t bad. Tried a butterscotch pizza for desert which was pretty good though.
Butterscotch Pizza @ Skybox in Aria
After lunch we walked around the strip checking out card rooms to find action. After checking the Bellagio and Venetian, we ended up at the Wynn were a 5/10 feeder game was just starting. The thing about the 5/10 games at the Wynn is they are uncapped buy-ins, so there is always someone who buys in really deep. At our table a young kid bought in for 5k while everyone else was buying in for 1k-1500. One other guy bought in for 4k, and this became an interesting dynamic later as the young kid lost an all in pot to him with set over set and decided to reload with about 20k so he could cover the table. I have no idea why he felt the need to be in the game 2000 big blinds deep when no one else had even 1/2 of that but whatever works for him I guess.
The talk at our table though was prop bets, as this girl sat down to play who had apparently just lost a chocolate eating prop bet for 6k when she couldn’t eat 12 large Hershey’s chocolate bars in an hour. Turns out that there was a 2+2 thread covering this prop bet while it was going on. This lead to a bunch of eating prop bets taking place at the table that kept things entertaining for a while. I’m not going to detail them all here, because I plan on using some of them later.
The game itself was decent for me. I doubled up pretty early on, but then lost a big pot when I flopped a set of jacks vs another guys top and bottom pair when we both made full houses on the turn. I didn’t play a ton of huge pots though and mostly chipped up here and there and ended up winning $2500 (and a candy bar) after 8 hours of play. By this time it was pretty late, and I headed back to get some sleep. before she left the girl who lost the prop bet gave me one of her leftover chocolate bars. How many times do you see someone sitting at a table with a stack like this?
Yes, the chocolate was in play!
Saturday was going to be my last day in Vegas for this trip since I was flying out at 8am Sunday morning. Since Shiva was still passed out when I got up, I got a hold of some other people we came to hang out with (but hadn’t done so to this point) and went to kick it with them. On the cab ride over to Aria our cab driver was telling us how you shouldn’t get drunk there because they have sensors in the toilets to analyze your urine and alert security if you were drunk. It’s amazing how silly some of the local myth’s are in Vegas. We ended up chilling at the Aria pool for a bit which is pretty nice place to relax. It’s a huge area and they have three pools and some other amenities though the drinks are way overpriced.
Some of the girls we were with posing at the pool
After getting back from the pool Jake, Souk and I went to Chinatown to have some Korean BBQ while everyone else we were with went to have prime rib someplace. This was my first time trying Korean BBQ so it was an interesting experience. We had some ribs and a bunch of side dishes, and I actually liked everything I tried which was a little surprising. After the meal we ran around looking for some buns from a Asian bakery for some reason, and Jake and I bought a couple bottles to start the night off with before going to a club.
Shiva called and since he was finally getting up at 8pm we swing by to pick him up. Back at the hotel, a group of about eight of us started drinking. We tore through a bottle of Hennessy and Patron in about 40 minutes. Most of which I was calling Shiva a pussy for because he kept drinking with a chaser while I was tossing back shots faster than they could be poured. A decission and some trash talk I would come to regret later.
Things I learned in the hotel room.
1. MIT grads get tongue piercings with their degrees.
2. Red Bull and tequila don’t mix.
3. Never doubt the intelligence of Asian girls named Marilyn. Oh my god!
I’m not going to explain all of those, but trust me they are absolutely true.
We went out to catch a cab but I stopped that plan and got us a limo instead. A lot of obnoxious things happened in the limo, of which there are apparently plenty of photos I haven’t seen yet so I may have to update this later with pics. I remember sitting on the bar in the limo for some reason, and everything else is a bit blurry. We got to the club and headed in, where we had a table reserved and bottle service was being provided. We started off with bottles of Grey Goose and Patron.
After this, things got a bit fuzzy for me. I remember having a conversation with a really hot girl where I mostly just nodded and agreed because I couldn’t understand anything she said, posing for some pics with friends, getting escorted to the bathroom because I was too drunk to stand, and Shiva yelling at me for ordering more bottles which I don’t recall doing at all. I remember looking around at one point and deciding I needed to leave because I wasn’t feeling well. I told Shiva to get me back to the hotel, and I remember getting in a cab and him yelling at the driver to take me straight to the hotel and him paying for the cab after I gave him some money for the tab at the club. I sort of remember walking back through the casino floor to find the elevator. I also had problems getting to my room because the elevator required you to use your room key to get to your floor, and I couldn’t tell my cards apart so I was sticking every players card I had in trying to find one that worked. Somehow I managed my way back.
I woke up 3 hours later, still drunk, face down on my bed and as far as I could tell everything intact. Nick was knocking on the door to get me up to catch the shuttle, so I rushed around to get ready while Shiva enjoyed making fun of me my last few minutes for getting so trashed. At the airport I was filled in on some things I had missed, at was slightly embarrassed about, but hey… it’s Vegas so some of the details have to stay there.
I didn’t notice it before, but on the drive home I realized my jeans had stains on one side of them apparently from whatever I didn’t hold down the night before. Travis pointed out a stain on my shirt which looked like a nice streak of blood that I also had missed. There was also a small cut on my face which I can’t figure out how it got there though it wasn’t large enough to account for the bloodstain on my shirt. So while some of the details are still a bit fuzzy, I’m pretty sure I had a lot of fun that last night and I came back home ahead for the trip even though I only played one session. All in all, fun weekend despite the killer hangover.