Black Hat - Day 1 - The trip in

When you're headed for Vegas, you want the trip to start off lucky. Unfortunately, mine didn't. A maintenance problem on the plane caused us to leave over 1 hour late. Grr.

My first order of business, after check-in was to walk from my hotel (NYNY) to Caesar's so I would know how early I have to leave in the morning. Well, let me tell you, I'll be cabbing it. The walk turns out to be over a mile, and when you figure in the detours you have to take to use the walkways over major roads, it's probably closer to 2 miles. And Holy Cow, is it a tough walk in 106 degrees. I had to stop along the way to buy water.

Next, I headed down to Luxor, to sign up for their nightly 8:30pm No Limit Hold 'em tournament. I got there at 6:35pm, only to discover that all seats were taken ? they start taking names at 6, and they're full by 6:10, every day. Damn.

Oh... I should mention that there is a benefit to the 106 degree weather. I've seen a number of women that apparently went somewhere to get skirts made that are the exact length of their butt cracks. I'm taking no margin of error here. A millimeter up or down on these skirts, and something is showing that's not supposed to be. I love Vegas.

Back to NYNY. They recently changed their players club card over to a unified system for all MGM properties. At the booth where I turned in my old one for a new one, the woman looked at the screen and say "Today is your birthday? Large or XL?" Apparently, you get a free t-shirt if you're in the hotel on your birthday. My luck is finally looking up.

I spent a few hours alternating between Blackjack and Craps. I won't bore you with the details, other than to say that I won $100 early, then managed to hold onto it all night. So, I finished my first day $100 up. And, now I've just set a bad precedent by telling you how my gambling goes, so I'll be compelled to share with you all the losses. Hmmm. Maybe I won't post this.

Now, here's where I admit just how pathetic I am. I couldn't sleep right away, so I fired up my PC and played a little poker on Poker School Online. So, yes, I'm in Vegas, but I spent some time in my hotel room on the Internet playing Poker for fake money. I'm glad no one reads this blog.