Sorry, wasn't planning on doing a live report until Shifter started one for me. Knew I was going to have a hectic schedule, so will recap later today

 

Ok, I'll try to get as much in as quickly as possible.

So, got in later than planned Thursday night, and after sharing a bottle of wine at Craftsteak with my wife, I was pretty tired and burnt out after a long day, so did not want to start gambling at midnight after a long day, (we all know that gambling when tired is not a good thing) so straight to the room for a nice steam shower, and then about 5 hours of sleep before having to grab the limo out to Shadow for a practice round before the golf event the next day. Had an early round (8 am) booked to beat the heat for the day as it was scheduled to be 105-106 that day.

Earlier in the day, my host had contacted me and said that one of his players (actually the player has another host but my host was covering for the real host who was out of town) also wanted to golf at Shadow the next day using the same caddie I had already booked, so he wanted to know if it was Ok if that player joined me for the round. I said it was no problem as I have met this guy several times before as he plays BJ in the Mansion, has a locker out at Shadow, so I have met him several times and we get along so it would not be like playing with a complete stranger. However, the other player didn't want to get out to the course until about 9 am, so we agreed that he would meet me on the course whenever he managed to get out there.

Course was pretty crowded that morning as everyone wanted to get their practice round in before the heat and high winds started. The winds were also supposed to be 20-25 mph later in the day.

Also, as reported earlier, heard the news about the GM at Shadow leaving. I have more gossip / news about this if anyone is interested, but I do not want to post if here in a general T/R thread.

to be continued................

 

Was playing real well during the round, and the other player caught me on hole 8 after I had teed off an hour earlier. He said it took him a while to find me as he wasn't expecting me to be that far along after just an hour of play, lol.
Front nine I had 7 pars and 2 bogeys. I must say it was probably one of my best rounds ever as far as ball striking goes. Was hitting the greens from 215 out with my hybrid on the longer par 4's which would usually be only about a 30% chance of that.
The new player who joined me is also about the same ability level on the course as our handicaps are similar and we both use the same caddie, so the caddie vouched that we are close in ability. So he wanted to bet $5 a hole just for giggles. A small bet so neither one of us gets hurt by the bet, but something to shoot for.
One disclaimer - my handicap at Shadow I claim is 18 because we always play the 7100 yds tees in the tournaments there, and that is a really long course for me. The other player said he was a 14 handicap, but the caddy advised us to play even. We were playing the 6600-6700 yd tees for this round.
So we started this bet on the back nine, and then on hole 10 I made par. Hole 11 I birdied by making a 30' putt. Other guy starts with the "your not an 18 handicap" which he would repeat almost every shot I took, lol.

 

Hole 12 I made par. Another comment. Hole 13 - the long par 3 - I made bogey, but still beat him. Long story short for this back nine, I was playing really well, making some good putts and beat him each of the nine holes.
Since he arrived late, he wanted to get some more holes in, so we played another 9 holes (27 total for me), and I beat him each hole on that nine as well. I didn't bother collecting as we had a good time out there and it really was just for fun. Heard the handicap comment almost every shot. "An 18 can't do that, blah blah blah. He said he wants me to be on his team with that handicap for every tournament. It's nice to hear, and I was playing way better than usual. Definitely not a normal round for me. I think with my just getting over a severe ankle sprain I was not over swinging and just trying to be smooth, which turns out says a lot about the best way to swing your club.

 

And that's why we love golf - those days where you shoot lights out! Gl on keeping it up throughout the trip.

 

so after the round of golf, I hustled back to the MGM as we were scheduled to have dinner that night with our host and his family, as he has a new addition to the family that we wanted / needed to meet. We needed to do a quick shopping for a gift for the newborn and had scheduled a limo for just an hour later after I had arrived back to the hotel. As I took a quick steam, my wife ordered room service for lunch as we would not have had time to go downstairs, order, wait, etc with only 1 total hour to spare. She ordered me the Angus burger, and she ordered a Hummus tray that came with all kinds of spreads, flavored hummus, fresh pita bread, veggies, etc. It was all real good and came within 30 minutes. Scarfed down lunch, headed by limo over to the Fashion Show Mall, and did a quick shopping at Nordstrom's and got some nice things for the baby.

In the meantime, we had a cabana at Wet Republic for the day, which the rest of our group was enjoying since it was my friend's 40th birthday this weekend as well. I never ended up making it over there as by the time we got back from the mall it was around 4 pm. I guess the group had a good time as the food / drink bill alone from Wet was around $2000 that got charged to the room (later comped off). We were iffy as to whether we would have had a chance to make it over there at all, but just ran out of time as we had to go upstairs to change for dinner as we had a 6 pm dinner scheduled as the younger members of our dinner party needed to have an early dinner time so their sleep schedule would not get off track.

 

so we met up for dinner at Hecho, the Mexican restaurant inside the MGM, as we felt it would be the most kid friendly with two young ones in tow. Ordered two orders of the tableside Guac, one spicy and one mild. Also ordered a pitcher of Sangria, and some appetizers as well as main courses. everyone had a great time, and it was great to meet the new addition to the family.

We went to Whiskey Down to visit one of the cocktail waitresses we know there, and had another couple drinks before heading over to the nearby craps tables to do our first gambling of the trip.

All the tables were packed, so we were not immediately able to convert one of the tables to a $100 limit table. They had one $25 table that was also packed, and one that was not so busy. I mentioned to the pit supervisor that if that table emptied out, to hold it for me and make it $100. We wandered around a little bit, and at that point my wife was getting tired as we had a lot of drinks between dinner and at WD, so I walked her up to the room and headed back down. By that point, the craps table was empty and waiting for me. First roll 8, loaded up my $900 across and $300 hardway, and very next roll - hard 8! Off to a great start. Next roll was a point of 4, and then proceeed to knock off the All tall and all small in almost consecutive rolls. That was like a + $24k hit. I think there were only a couple rolls that did not pick off a new number. My last number to get was a 3, and I got that two rolls after hitting the second to last number. So, the pount was still 4, and the very next roll after hitting the ATS, I rolled a hard 4! The first few minutes could literally have not gone any better!

Then, of course the craps gods said that was enough, and I trended down until I had lost back about $10k, so I ended up cashing out almost +$15k. I wanted to take a little break, so I went to UTH, and was playing $100 / $200 / $200 for an hour or so, until I hit a few hands in a row where the dealer made some great hands, so I quit losing back $3k or so. Then figured I could kill some time playing Blackjack switch, and I was going to play small, so I played for a while at either $200 or $300 bets without pressing too much. The problem with this game as everyone who has played it knows, your best hands with doubles / splits often do not get paid when the dealer hits that 22 and everything pushes. So, you lose your bad hands, push on your good hands, and hard to get a streak going in between. So, I lost about $4k playing this, and just wasn't having any fun playing this game, so quit for the night up about $7k. Had to get up early for the golf tournament, so hit the sack around 1 am or so

 

great start to the gambling and I hope the trend continues for you, my friend.

 

Nice and busy trip. Nice craps run. Good luck in the tournament. You don't need luck as an 18 though. Sandbagger! Lol. Take pics of the girls that I know will be there. I want to know about brenneman by the way?

 

Good start sir!