a few ramblings from last weekend...

crowds:
- in terms of the crowds at MGM and size of the players in town, etc, it was everything it was billed to be.
- restaurants were busy, but didn't feel much busier than any other event weekend. service was still good and everything was smooth.
- transportation was a nightmare. it was consistently a 1hr+ wait for a drop-in

You must be a registered user with confirmed email address to view this content.
Register or Login

even on Sunday after supposedly everybody left.
- the crowd makeup was very different from any other weekend I've seen. honestly I have seen only a handful of black Bacc players in my life. I normally see a good number of Latinos and obviously Asians and a few white guys here and there. but evidently there's plenty of black guys that love Bacc.
- never saw any of the A-listers that were sitting ringside for the fight before or after. I'm sure they were whisked through back-alleys and private salons at all times.

casino:
- dice table limits on Thu night were 100-1k. the 100 tables were mostly full and the 1k table was empty, but they refused to lower it to 500. on Fri/Sat there were a couple of 1k tables and there were players on them.
- Bacc had tons of players 24 hours. I came down for breakfast at the Mansion at 730am before golf and most tables had players. at that hour on normal weekends there's not a single player anywhere.
- after the fight every table was full and nothing was lower than 1k. every single casino employee who was anybody including all the big hosts and even their bosses were wondering around the Mansion casino talking to players, dealing with issues, etc. this includes the big VP that runs everything who is never there past 5 and rarely talks directly to players.
- the one good thing was they still managed to have several open tables rather than everything reserved as I feared.
- they also were nice about letting you play on reserved tables if the player wasn't there, which they're normally fairly tight about.

gambling:
- it sure is fun to keep betting and getting paid and keep passing stacks of chips to your buddy standing behind you to keep safe and then when you decide to quit he pulls handful after handful of chocolates out of his pocket to color up. better than a serious wet dream.
- the other thing that's good about that is it keeps you focused on winning and not the size of your stack. too many times as my stack grows on a good run I start trying to guess when the run is going to end and betting scared not wanting to give it back. this way I really had absolutely no idea how much I was up and just kept playing my game.
- they really don't like when you bet table max and then have your buddy bet another 10k for you. I made the mistake of paying the first 10k we lost immediately and then the pit boss saw what was going on and stopped it. so you just have to keep track of your wins/losses and settle up away from the table so nobody is the wiser. of course they should have let me continue because of course I lost 2 out of 3 of those hands, lol.
- you sure can lose a lot of money in a hurry with come bets at a 1k min dice table when it isn't going your way. 4 rolls and you have 20k out there and then, bam, all gone.
- it's fun when you are playing BJ and see 2 straight hands where everybody has drawn 5-6 small cards, so you throw out a huge bet because the count has to be high and get a BJ.

wine:
- '88 is a wonderful vintage for La Tache.
- Grenache is a great occasional change of pace from Pinot
- it really sucks when you have tons of theo on the last day and the green light from your host to get whatever wine you want and then dinner comes around and that bottle of '10 La Tache is calling your name and you have a stomach bug and feel like puking and don't want to drink at all. the good news is that caviar and Hamachi crudo is good anytime!

misc:
- it was never more evident that money runs LV more than anywhere else. the bigger you bet (and lose) the less anybody cares what you do in terms of the "rules". and getting almost anything done is usually as simple as a 20 or 100 in the right person's hands.
- in-loft massage is totally the way to do it when not in the Mansion. no need to hoof it all the way over to the spa and back, just have to walk downstairs after a nice steam/soak and then walk back upstairs when done for another steam/soak. love it.

overall:
- fun weekend to experience, glad I went
- very profitable
- but was my first and last May fight weekend