another chapter in my Vegas adventures is set to begin. we have a few plans for this trip.

plan 1 - have fun!
plan 2 - win lots of money!
plan 3 - have more fun!

participants for this trip will be me and my friend Greg. just the 2 of us guys, wives are left home! this is going to be my first trip to Vegas without my wife in almost 2 years. i love when my wife comes and we always have a good time, but originally we were going to have another couple of guys going so it made more sense to leave the wives at home. but then the other guys dropped out and left just the 2 of us. but i will say there is something nice about a trip where we can do whatever we want and have no one to worry about.

the trip looks to start off nicely as i paid the upgrade fee for first class. he's a pretty big guy and i'm tall, so we both can use the extra space. not to mention lots of free drinks!

probably the part of the trip i'm looking forward to most is that i was able to score us a 2BR Skyloft. even though it's a big holiday weekend, i've had some good luck and been playing a lot higher my last couple of trips, so my host was able to make it happen. i will admit that 3000 sq ft for 2 guys is a bit excessive, but somebody's gotta do it! steamshower every morning here we come!

the main purpose of the trip is the UFC fights on Saturday night. we'll also be playing golf at Shadow on Saturday morning and seeing Drew Carey's Improv show on Thursday night. we may even hop over to Tabu on Saturday after the fights and hang out with some of the fighters that usually stop by.

dinner plans include a special Omakase menu from the Master Sushi Chef at Shibuya, tequila tasting and guacamole at Diego, Kobe burger at Nobhill and A5 Wagyu Filet at Craftsteak.

still looking for a 6 figure win ... without the wife, i should have the time to post some live updates each day, so stay tuned, this may be the trip!

just finishing up packing and leaving for the airport in an hour or so. ready to rape them at the tables and see how high i can build that stack of chocolates!

a quick update.

last night we got in and the flight was late because we sat on the plane for an hour waiting for baggage or something. the airport was the busiest i've ever seen it in my life and i guess they had some issues because of that. i breezed through security with my pre-check clearance, but it took my buddy 20 minutes to get through and meet up with me because they only had one lane open. they said they didn't have the staff for the other lane. WTF, memorial day weekend and you don't have enough staff to have all the lanes open???? thankfully the baggage came out pretty quickly and we were into the Rolls Ghost and off to the Skylofts fairly quickly. personally i much prefer the Rolls Phantoms that they have for the Mansion to the Ghosts. much bigger and really has that badass look. the Ghosts look a lot like the Chrysler 300C.

got into our Skyloft and it's huge. 3000 sq feet is just massive for 2 people. you could easily have 8-10 people here no problem. besides the 2 huge bedrooms upstairs, there's 2 living rooms, a dining room, entry, game room and a media room. the game room and media rooms can be closed off and turned into a 3rd bedroom. the one downside is i'm never high enough up the food chain to get a strip view in the Skylofts because there's so few of them, so we're looking out at the airport. but it's pretty cool to watch the planes land for a little while.

had just enough time to get changed and head down to Shibuya for dinner. we had a tight schedule because last minute i had decided to get us

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to the Drew Carey Improv-a-ganza show. we did the Omakase with the sake pairing and it was good, but wasn't like wow like some other tasting menus i've done. the food was excellent, but the flavors were subtle and i prefer food with lots of flavor and bang. i like my sushi with lots of sauce and wasabi, etc and the dishes were designed more to showcase the particular meat/fish. it was a very good meal, but next time i will stick with just ordering some rolls and sushi myself. the sake pairing, however, was excellent and we found 2 new sakes that we totally have to get next time. so that part was really cool.

we had to rush through desert in order to get to the show. we had the best booth in the house, front and center made for 4 people, but we were the only 2 in it. my host definitely came through on that for us. the show was very different than any Drew Carey stuff i've ever seen. the show started with some of his stand up and then moved on to the improv part. as far as the stand up i've never seen him uncensored and he's really funny, but kind of weird. some of his stuff was so hillarious i was falling off my seat laughing and other stuff i was like ... ummmm ... ok. but overall it was really funny. once the improv part started, though, it was less than stellar. the skits were the same stuff you've seen 1000 times on Who's Line and the Improv show on GSN, but none of the really good comics were there like Ryan Stiles, Colin Mocharie, Wayne Brady, etc. it was a bunch of new people and they were pretty good, but nowhere near as good as those guys. my buddy liked it, so i was glad we decided to see it, but it definitely wasn't as good as the old stuff.

after the show i was tired, but had to hit the tables because i couldn't go my first night without some action. how did it go? i will say there's some surprises in store, but you'll have to stay tuned because right now i need to head to the spa for my massage.

so the first night of gambling started very poorly. i was down about 10k pretty quickly as i couldn't do anything right, but finally hit a decent streak - 8 banker - and was on top about 10k. litterally the instant that streak ended, again i couldn't do anything right and proceeded to lose 6 in a row and was right back in the hole. i played a couple of hours seesawing back and forth, but never able to get on top. then i hit another terrible streak and lost 5-6 in a row and was going in the wrong direction. at one point i was down 30k, which is the worst way to start a trip. but i kept my head and stayed calm and very late in the night i finally ran into a good shoe that had some consistency. i managed to not only get out of the hole, but book a 5k winner for the first day. not a lot, but a win's a win and it's especially nice to manage to book a win the first night after such a terrible start.

unfortunately the first night i wasn't able to sleep very well and only got about 2 hours of sleep if that. so i had some breakfast and took a little nap and woke up just in time to head to the spa for my facial and massage. anybody who's had a facial knows how much they suck! god i hate extractions.

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my wife signed me up for one last year and i didn't know what i was getting into. after that experience i swore i'd never subject myself to such torture voluntarily again. but i promised my wife i would get another one this trip and it was just as bad as i remember. ah the things we do for our wives ... the only bright part was that after the facial was over, i had a 2 hour massage service that was some kind of Australian aborigines treatment. it was really pretty cool and i managed to nap for a while during the massage which really felt great after no sleep the night before.

after the massage i decided to hit the tables. at first it didn't start off very well and i was in the hole 10k, but then this dude sits down at my table. i just had to take another marker and the pit boss addressed me by name and the guy says, "are you shifter?". it was dunebug81 who had just gotten in to town. so we played together for a while and we both did really great. i manged to get back the 10k in the hole and finished the session up 16.5k. at that point i was hungry and Greg had come over from the BJ table, so we all decided to head to dinner at Diego.

more later, it's off to Shadow to play some golf now!

Golf was great as always. Saw a group with 2 stripper-like girls tagging along for eye candy bending over to help "read putts" and all sorts of fun stuff. That group was having a good time for sure.

At the UFC now, my host scored us some ringside

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.

Will continue yesterday's report later.

Only thing about the seats is the 2 european dudes next to us. They show up with more stuff than gypsies. They each have a purse, 2 full shopping bags, water, jackets. About the only thing they didn't bring is a midget slave.

Just a quick update. Headed to the airport now. Lots to tell, will write it up in the next couple of days. I played terrible this time at shadow. Not entirely sure what I shot but it was mid-80s.

so back to Friday night ...

after dinner dunebug and i went back to play some more Bacc. the shoe started good and he doubled his money and i was up another 10k pretty quickly. at that point, he decided to head out to meet the wife and i stuck around to keep playing. turns out i should have left with him ... right after he left i lost like 6 in a row and gave back most of my profit. then it went so so for a while longer and then another 4-5 in a row loser. losing 2 in a row or even 3 isn't bad, but 4-5 is where you can really start to get into trouble. at one point after being up 30k for the trip earlier in the night i found myself down 25k. but just as the night before, as soon as i was on my last leg, my luck turned around and i managed to climb all the way back out of the hole and end the day even and up 5k for the trip. it sure was a hell of a rollercoaster for an even day though!

at that point my blood was still pumping from the ride and i wasn't ready for bed, so i texted my host and he was over at Tabu, so i joined him. we hung out for a couple of hours and it's actually a pretty cool place. i liked that the tables were concrete so you could (and people did) dance on them. i went to Studio 54 before it closed and the VIP/table area was lame because everyone just sat there and if you wanted to dance you had to go out on the crowded dance floor. at Tabu the tables were in the middle near the dance floor so it was more integrated.

i didn't get to bed until after 330 and had to be up at 645 for golf, so yet another night of little sleep. but the steamshower came in very handy that morning and i felt pretty good actually. plus it's really nice that it gets light so early in Vegas. it makes it much easier to get up after a short night of sleep when it's super bright and the sun is already high in the sky.


golf was fun of course, but as i mentioned before i really played terribly. i hit the ball a long way, but played the shorter tees because that's where the other guys wanted to play, so i should have been able to score well. i didn't even really need to hit driver on many holes and i could reach all the par 5s in 2. one i had a 7 iron, another 9 iron and the other was straight into the wind, so i hit hybrid into it. but still all i could manage was a par on each one. and the last par 5 i mangled so bad i took a 9. the problem overall with my game was i would hit a few good shots, but just couldn't get anything going in terms of consistency.

after golf we had lunch at the course and then took a

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back to the Skylofts. we had just enough time to get changed and head down to the arena for the fights. on the way out i picked up the fight

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and that's when i noticed, floor section C, row B. damn, that sounded pretty good. so we rolled over there and for floor seats at the MGM arena they have a separate lounge-type area. that happens to be the place that all the fighters and celebrities come through so before we took our seats we just hung out there and my buddy was able to get pictures with half a dozen fighters. then the fights were getting ready to start, so we took our seats. honestly, there were only a handful of people in the arena that had a better seat than we did and most of them were media or UFC employees. a bunch of fighters were sitting around there, so my buddy got pictures with a few more of them.


overall the fights were great. a lot of finishes and only a couple of decisions makes for an entertaining card. i only remember 1 fight the whole night that really sucked. every other one was really good and really entertaining. the main card fights were all heavyweights and none of them went the distance. at the fights i met up with another VMBer avarice who was there with his buddies. after they were over we met up at the Mansion for some gambling. it was another up and down session, but not anywhere near as severe as the previous 2 days. mostly, though, it was good and i ended it with another 5k winner, so up 10k for the trip.

it was at that point i texted my host and then the night took a turn for the crazy. i've been to Vegas quite a few times and i will say that this night was the craziest that i've ever experienced ...

so as a background for this crazy night, my host had 2 10k CL dice players from NC. one trip last year, they decided to play Bacc. they went on a crazy heater and pretty soon were betting 20k table max every hand. they ended up winning over 1M together on that trip. in the last few trips since then their luck hasn't diminished. the one guy, we'll call him N, is now up 1.6M lifetime. he decided last minute to fly in on a private jet with 6 friends and arrived Friday morning.


evidently he had a rough start and was down about 70k in a heartbeat and only had 10k remaining. yes he has a ton of money now, but before the trip he agreed with my host that his max for the trip would be 80k. when i got to the table after the fights, he was playing. he was betting pretty small and grinding, but we started doing pretty well and he managed to string together a 5-6 hand winning streak and was pressing and got his 70k back. well then banker just went on a tear. for about 20 hands player never won 2 in a row and banker was winning 4-5 in a row every time. well he decides this would be a great time to bet player every hand. not only that, when he loses, he keeps pressing ... and losing ... and pressing ... and in about 10 hands he's lost his entire 80k and left.

after i finished playing, i texted my host and he said he was in the Mansion in N's villa. so Greg and i headed up there and hung out for a while. when we get there he's riding around on his “rascal” which is a scooter for old people. he's 25 years old or something and able bodied, but evidently he came in and told the Mansion people he needed a rascal and 10 minutes later my host was signing for the damn thing. the entire night he won't stop talking about his rascal. we all went to eat at Wolfgang’s and he couldn’t take the rascal into the restaurant so he parked it outside. the entire dinner all he did was talk nonstop about his rascal and people better not be messing with it and everything.


also, he kept busting my host's balls about not getting a 2BR Mansion with the pool like his buddy did last trip. on and on and on about where’s my damn pool. annoying as fuck. they even tried to call and see if any happened to have a no-show that they could put him in, but it just wasn’t available. he wanted my host to open up another 50k for him to gamble with but my host said not tonight. he was drunk as hell and my host is a good guy. he wanted him to sleep it off and he'd give him the 50k in the morning. but N wouldn't leave it alone. on and on he went about how he was going to go to

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because they would give him 50k, etc, etc. really out of line to say that kind of stuff after how good my host has treated him.

after dinner my host was tired of hearing him complain, so he gave him another 10k to mess around with. N proceeded to play BJ about as dumb as I’ve ever seen anyone in my life. made every wrong move in the book, doubling 7 against an 8, not doubling 11 against a 6 and his betting patterns were way off, jumping between 1 and 4 hands, etc, etc. my host and I were standing off to the side watching him just commenting to each other about how stupid everything was. It wasn’t too long before he dwindled the 10k down to about 2k and was all in. We were hoping he would just lose and end the misery, but he won that hand and kept going. So we finally just left because I was getting sick of watching the stupidity.

my host tells me now that after we left he went on a tear and ran his money all the way up to 120k. Got all his 80k back and was 40k to the good. but instead of quitting he kept playing until he gave back the entire 120k. what a fucking moron.

so Greg heads to bed and my host's girlfriend and her friend in from out of town were there and the 4 of us jumped in my host's car to go to this club called Posh. evidently it's a new club that opened up next to the Crazy Horse strip club and my host knows a guy that's running it or something. well we get there about 1 and the place was deader than dead. i guess everybody was over at the strip club instead? anyway we sit down at this table with some other people and they were so boring it was insane. they just sat there not talking, not dancing, not even drinking really. i guess there were 2 couples and both of them were fighting with their SO and giving them the cold shoulder. great mood in the place! so we hung out for a little while and tried to drink away the misery, but finally we got out of there.

originally i was going to go back to Tabu saturday night because the fighters were doing a party and it was going to be pretty cool. so as we get back it's almost 3, but i say, let's go to Tabu and check it out. well my host and his GF said they were tired and wanted to go to bed, but his GF's friend from out of town, C, says she wants to go. ok, that's fine, i had met her last night at Tabu and she was pretty cool, so we'll go and check it out and then C can crash in our Skyloft and my host will pick her up in the morning. fine with me, there's 2 zip codes in the loft anyway.

we get to Tabu and it was pretty cool, but i guess they close down at 4, which i thought was pretty early, so we didn't have much time there before they kicked us out. so we headed up to the loft and i show C around the place because she had never been in a Skyloft before. she's hungry at this point, so i call the butler and get her some desert. keep in mind at this point i've had quite a few drinks tonight. so i say what the hell and try to order a $1000 bottle of desert wine, but it turns out they were out of it, so they brought a similar one that was 1/5 the price. good news for my host! so we sit there and eat and talk for a little while and it's starting to get light and i'm really ready for bed. well she's not tired. i'm thinking great, what did i get myself into here?


well my loft looked east towards the mountains and as it was getting lighter you could see that the sun was going to rise right where we could see it. so we sit there and watch it rise and ok, great, sun's up, i'm really ready for bed. no, she says, the sun's up now, it's time to go out on the town. WTF???? sure this would be any single dude's Vegas wet dream, but i'm married and happily so and want to stay that way and escorting some girl around town isn't what i signed up for! but at the same time, my host left her in my hands and i feel semi-responsible for her safety, so i'm not just going to send her out on the town by herself.

first she wants to go to Fremont street and ride the zipline. fuck that. then she says let's go check out the conservatory at the B. i'm like no way, i just want to go to sleep, but she won't let it go. well, i guess that bottle of wine was strong because at one point i just say fuck it and call the concierge for a

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over to

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. fuck me! so we get over to the B and it actually is really cool that time of the morning because the place is empty. there's only about 3 hours a day when the place clears out like that and we were the only ones in the conservatory. well she's hungry again, so we head over to Jean Phillipe for some crepes. they do make the best crepes and i don't get them very often, so it was nice. but with 4 hours of sleep total in the last 72, i'm so damn tired at one point waiting for the crepes i literally fell asleep standing up and started to stumble over and woke up. i was so miserable it wasn't funny.


well the crepes finally came and they were great and she says, so what should be do now? i'm like WTF, doesn't this girl ever get fucking tired? she brings up the Fremont zipline again and i'm still like fuck that. then she says she's never played any table games. ok, now we're starting to talk my language here, so we head over to the blackjack table. i take a marker for $2k just to have enough to mess around and give her a stack of green chips to play with. the dealer at first was really cold, but she buttered him up and he was putty in her hands before long. which was nice because i hate playing with cold dealers. we didn't do too well and pretty soon i'm in for another $2k marker. but we did a little better with that one, but it was up and down. pretty soon i look at the clock and it's like 10am. damn 2 hours at the table went by fast. gambling always gets my blood flowing and at that point i wasn't tired at all anymore, which was nice because i was damn miserable earlier. well, we finally get a good shoe and hit a little run and i hit 2 hands at $300 each with 2 splits and a double for $1500 to get back to even and actually a little ahead. i pay off the marker, head to the cage with $275 in chips. i decided beforehand that if we won anything i was just going to give it to C since i was just happy we didn't lose. and anyway if it weren't for her buttering up the dealer and pit boss, i probably would have lost my ass.

at this point C says she needs to get back to my host's house because her flight back home is later that day, so i call my host to come pick her up. we limp [thanks nate!] it back to the Skylofts and wait for my host. he just woke up and he lives in Hendertucky, so it's going to be a little while. i go upstairs for something and come back down and there's C fast asleep on the couch. it's about damn time!

my host gets there and we have a rousing game of foosball. he goes up 6-0 on me quickly, but i come roaring back to take the lead at 9-8. he ties it at 9 and we have a sudden death point for the win. i get close a couple of times, but he finally scores it for the win. actually the most fun playing foosball i've had. they leave and i finally head to bed. at this point it was past noon, so i just took a couple hour nap because i wanted to gamble later and knew if i didn't sleep at least some my mind wasn't going to be where it needed to be to make good gambling decisions.

and that's my crazy night in Vegas.

yep, this is the craziest night for me because i'm generally very boring! my normal Vegas trips are eat, gamble, sleep, repeat. and after this experience, i'm pretty sure i'm cured of any desire to expand my horizons on future trips.

i actually called my wife the next morning and told her all about my night. i know i could have just not said anything, but stuff like that always comes back to bite you in the ass. if something comes up later and she finds out about it and i didn't tell her, it would seem like i had some reason to hide it, which i really didn't. she was understandably pissed at first, but got over it quickly because she knows me. though the next time i get an idea for a guys trip to Vegas it may be met with less than excitement, lol.

after i woke up from my nap, it was almost time for dinner and then the Van Halen concert, but we were about 15 minutes early for dinner and we found out the concert was actually later than we anticipated. so i decided to head down to check out the Bacc room and see if i could do a little hit and run. it started off pretty well, but kind of back and forth, up 5k then down 5k then back up 5k. at one point i had just won a hand and was up 5k and it was time for dinner and i thought about leaving. but i didn't ...

i decided to put 5k on a hand. lost. ok, 5k again. lose. ok 5k again. lose. damn, ok, 10k now. lose. 10k again. lose. 10k again. lose. fuck, i just went from up 15k for the trip to down 30k in 6 hands. so much for the hit and run idea.

i walked around for a little while to clear my head, then i had the bright idea to get my last 15k and put it all on one hand. i found this table with this old asian lady and banker was running. 15k call bet on bank. first card monkey. second card, 4 side. i squeeze and ... 9! winner! ok, i'm back in the game. unfortunately that was the last hand of the shoe. and every other table was also shuffling at the time or was empty. so no active shoes were going. i really wanted to find an active shoe that looked good to continue, but it wasn't there. that was when i should have gone to dinner yet again, but no. i sit down at a new shoe. 5k lose. 5k lose. 5k lose. damn now i'm back where i started. ok, fuck it. 15k call bet on player. first card is 3-sider, second card is no-sider. ok i've got a good chance. no-sider is a 2, now i have 67% chance for natural. squeeze the first end of the 3-sider and no ding, i have natural 8 or 9. boom! turn over banker .... natural 9. shit. now i squeeze the other end hoping for a ding and a tie, but no, it was empty and i lost 9 to 8. fuck. at least if i'm going to lose the bet let me lose 9-0 or something. 9-8 is cruel.

so we finally head to dinner. my "hit and run" session turned into 1.5 hours of misery and a 60k losing session. i had a great A5 australian wagyu at Craftsteak and a great bottle of Pinot, but it didn't taste very good after that. after dinner i texted my host and asked him for a last 5k to see if i could do something to turn the trip around. he agrees and i say "just want to let you know right now i'm getting even tonight". he says "atta boy. so it is said, so it shall be done!"

then we went to the Van Halen concert, which was good, but i'm not a huge Van Halen fan. we had perfect seats 3 rows up on the side right next to the stage. they put on a very good show, but all their songs sounded the same to me. nonstop power guitar every song. i did recognize a couple of songs that i'd heard on the radio over the years, but that's it. but my buddy really liked it, so that was cool.

after the show, i head back to the tables and i get to the same table of my ill-fated hit and run earlier and the shoe is very chopping. player has chopped to bank 10 in a row and banker has chopped to player almost every time. a couple of times it went 2 in a row, but that's it. so banker has just won so i put my 5k on player. lose. fuck that was quick. but damn this shoe was so good, i just really didn't want to miss it. so i have 5k cash on me that i brought, so i buy in. banker hasn't gone more than 2, so i put 5k player. natural winner. boom, ok i'm back in the game. i continue to bet 5k on the chop for the next several hands and it continues. i run that 5k up to 30k in a hurry. now i'm really in business. it got off the chop and i started to lose more than i was winning and at the end of the shoe i had 20k. definitely enough to make a run at getting back to 55k. so i check the next table over and it's choppy too. wow this is a choppy night. so i take 5k in chips and start to bet the chop. i hit a couple and started pressing. 8k winner. 12k winner. damn now i'm really close to even. with the 15k left at the other table, i have almost 50k. so i decide to back off the pressing at that point because i really didn't want to lose a huge hand. so i just do 6k the next hand and lose. felt really good that i had backed it off instead of pressing. but then i lost 3 more in a row and pretty soon i was back in the danger zone. i took a little walk and cleared my head. i went and got my chips at the other table, but not before i bet 5k on that shoe and lost. damn. ok, now i have 30k, only 25k from getting even, but at 5k a hand 30k can go very fast if you go on a bad streak. i need a good streak. i look up at the shoe and second line player was hitting. ok 5k player. hit. sit out the next hand and player wins again. now player hasn't gone more than 3, so 5k bank. win. now bank has been chopping the last several lines, so 5k player, win. sweet, 3 wins in a row and i'm 10k from being even. second line player is still looking great, so do i continue betting 5k and hope to win 2 in a row or try to take a swing. i decide, fuck it, i'm betting 10k on player and if i win, i'm even and done. i get a monkey and a 3-sider. very good chance of something good. i have the dealer turn over banker and jackpot! they have 6. i can't lose. all i need is one ding and i win. first end is blank. damn. squeeze the second end and ..... ding! 7-6 barbeque winner! they pay me the 10k, and before they can blink i push all the chips in the middle and say "marker redemption". i text my host, "i just got fucking even". best feeling in the world for sure and the second trip in a row that i made a miracle comeback with my last money on the felt. i'd much rather have a trip where i'm never down, but any trip that ends even is a good one.

after i tear up the 50k in markers and get my 5k cash from the cage, Greg says he wants to play some BJ. ok, cool, i'm done gambling for the trip, but i can play some $25k BJ with him for fun. so we played for a couple of hours and he actually won $200 and i lost $60. at one point i was down $500, which is really hard to do at $25/hand! but i hit a good run and started pressing and hit a couple of double downs and got most of it back.

so for my trip i ended up with 35k theo. picked up $2900 in airfare for the second trip in a row. that was way more than my airfare, so i actually did make money on the trip, lol. i gave Greg the money for his airfare, which i didn't have to do, but coming out ahead i was glad to do.

 

what a roller coaster.