Vive la (Faux) France!

I'VE BEEN A SLUG ABOUT recording my recent Las Vegas adventures here, but I do have three photos from the town of thematic interest on this Bastille Day:


Paris Las Vegas, Eiffel Tower by Schizohedron. Some rights reserved.

I blasted this one from my car while heading south on Las Vegas Boulevard. The need to keep half an eye on the stoplight explains the trimmed tower tip. You can go up the tower to a restuarant (whose logo is visible through the palms), which affords a great view of the Bellagio fountains across the street, or travel to the top for the second highest public view of the Vegas Valley in town.


Paris Las Vegas, south side by Schizohedron. Some rights reserved.

I don't know precisely which Paris structure the main façade of the hotel mimics — a university or library, I'd assume — but this shows some of the details. This is one of the more cohesively and pleasantly themed properties in town, and still holds up well after 10 years, which is an eternity in this town.

Should you stop by, the Le Village Buffet is excellent, one of the best I've had there. Your best bets are breakfast and lunch; they also offer a Champagne brunch on weekends.


Paris Las Vegas, Arc de Triomphe by Schizohedron. Some rights reserved.

This Arc de Triomphe stands in the center of a cobblestoned traffic circle. You enter the property to the left here, and the parking garage is to the right and straight on.

Note to poker fans: If you like the poker room at the Planet Hollywood casino one property south, but hate the ¼-mile trek through the mall that lies between the PH parking garage and the casino, park at Paris, walk out to the Strip, and enter through PH's main entrance; the poker room is just inside.

As I begin this day, my own thoughts are on the buttery, flaky, chewy croissants available just across the street. The demands of the weekly eating regimen, sad to report, forestall indulging in one of these Gallic belly bombs. Quel dommage.

I Wish This Were My Fault

SADLY, I CAN'T TAKE CREDIT for the recent news of casino stocks taking a tumble and Las Vegas suffering a slowdown. I barely played the table games where I could've done that sort of damage to the houses' bottom lines. Blame falls on the credit crunch and the rocket ride petroleum prices have taken, with a side order of the steep plunge in the Vegas real estate market:

A cut in the wages of sin (Economist)

Gambling stocks tumble on economic woes (Las Vegas Review-Journal)

This amid massive new construction in Vegas, and the recent or imminent unveiling of expansions at Foxwoods and the Borgata. The saw about gambling being recession proof appears false, though these surveys don't take into account the still-huge amount of online and Mob-run gambling that goes on each day.

Still, this news is good for me medium term. With Vegas enduring a post-9/11-style slowdown, the offers for cheap rooms should begin streaming in. I might be able to get back there a little sooner than I had anticipated. Maybe not to Wynn, although I did get a fairly restricted deal email from them (cheap room + restaurant credit, but said credit could only be used in one of the eateries) a week ago. Bellagio's already been sending mailers, according to a chat I had with premier poker reporter Dr. Pauly.

However long it takes, once things pick up in the economy, and the blood on the Street is swilled down by patient value investors, the itch to return to Sin City among America's gamble-mad masses will become irresistible, and the dollars will flow. In the best possible world, this brings a tide of awful poker dilettantes into town . . . where I will be waiting.

Las Vegas 2008: Flash-Forward to Present

I STILL NEED TO CHRONICLE my Vegas adventures, which the march of time has once again outstripped, but I figured I would drop a note here to all readers to let them know I've returned safe and sound, and that I had a fun trip, despite donating some money to the local poker economy.

Before departing for Sin City, I called a number of folks to bid them goodbye, though I haven't done the same to herald my return. I think I know why, and I have the recent and stunning death of legendary reporter, newscaster, and debate moderator Tim Russert to credit for the understanding. I believe I wanted to at least leave folks with a gentle parting and a kind word before heading off into the unknown, just in case this was the last opportunity.

I have firm belief in the safety of air travel (though landings irrationally scare me a little), but there are many hazards in any travel, and definitely in Las Vegas. Though I feel safe transporting cash at midnight on the well-populated and policed Strip or walking the floor of just about any casino, there are dangers aplenty: hiking in the desert, driving along an alternate route away from the casinos' cameras, walking to my car in a vast parking garage, taking an elevator with two strangers. There are simple expedients to evade all these dangers, but it never hurts to keep one's guard up, as Vegas hosts many opportunists who don't fear a return to jail if a quick crime can fund their next hit or stave off a pimp-beating. Much as I love the town, it, like all major cities, requires discretion on the part of the solo traveler to avoid harm.

And harm might not be from a hostile source; it could be an accident, or a health problem, that makes a given goodbye one's last. I've read that Russert was under observation for a heart condition, but the sudden infarction still surprised most folks. Death can hit at any time, not just those with cardiac enlargement and coronary artery disease. It's best to part with friends and family in kindness and at peace. It's cliché by this point to hear folks say they wish they could've taken back an argument, or broken a festering silence, before losing someone.

I suspect that, and not the offer to throw a couple of bucks on a table as a proxy bettor in Vegas, was why I called around to bid my near and dear adieu. But I'm back now, and — again with Russert in mind — I've resumed my usual practice at the gym. I have a few Vegas calories to burn off, but also some stories to relate. Watch this space.

Las Vegas 2008: Stormbringer

I THINK IT'S ANOTHER ONE of those coincidences that, on my first day in Las Vegas, a rainstorm swept through the Valley. Some might say it was part of a nationwide system of turbulent weather. I claim that it was Vegas crying tears of joy at my return.

Okay, enough of that arty-egotistical horseshit. Back to the saga.

The flight out of Newark loaded on time but left a half hour late due to the tail end of a thunder-system sweeping out of the area. The captain seemed hopeful that we'd still hit McCarran in the allotted time, which leads me to believe that travel times now bake in some delays. Sure enough, we touched down exactly one minute late. The journey itself was uneventful. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on DVD and the iPod occupied me for the bulk of it. I may joke about Vegas getting lachrymose, but I definitely grew misty as I watched the familiar skyline sweep past my window.

The weather at 10:00 a.m. Vegas time was comfortably warm and dry, aided by a brisk wind, which would only increase as time went on. Before I exited McCarran, I snapped these photos from the terminal, part of a terrazzo inlay map of the area, these depicting some of the beasties you might encounter with enough desert wandering or mescaline:

Normally I expect to find lizards lounging upside a piano in a casino bar.

"There's a big snake in the airport, Jock!"

I think you need a fireball spell for this sort of monster, though nothing says love like a prismatic spray.

I grabbed my one checked bag amid a gaggle of tourists from all over America. Aside from trips to NYC, I don't often hear such a sampling of accents in one place. At one poker table, you can have the South, Texas, New Jersey, Canada, and any number of foreign lilts represented, to say nothing of what the dealers will add to the linguistic brew.

I took the usual shuttle to the Wynn. I prefer the scenic route when I roll off the plane; I've made it this far to any given hotel, so a guided tour for a little less than what a cab might cost, with the chance to scan the ever-changing Vegas skyline while other passengers are ferried to their destinations along the Strip, is a choice time to relax. This bus was sparsely filled, but included a black-haired girl with extensive black tribal tattoos on one arm who spent the ride fighting a losing battle against tears while saying an extended goodbye to someone on the other side of a cell call.

I didn't have much time to reflect on her plight, because — in my first win of the day — my dropoff was first. Though I was arriving far earlier than the usual 3 p.m. check-in, I decided to at least register. The lobby and registration area reflected the Wynn aesthetic toward floral decoration and artistry on every surface; if I'd had to wait, I'd have done so in splendid surroundings. This is a shot of the promenade nearby the registration desk (I will take some higher-quality shots soon; this is the first real workout I've given the camera.)

A Wynn clerk acting as a traffic cop of sorts pleasantly guided me to a desk clerk, who checked me in and took my cell number so she could call me when the room was prepped. I was primed to do some wandering to stretch my legs anyway. I read somewhere that Steve Wynn strove to arrange the space to let guests' curiosity guide them through his resort's many nooks and details. With this I agree. I spent about 15 minutes at a relaxed pace, soaking in all the little flourishes his designers had salted about the house. These sorts of mosaics are everywhere:

The beauty of the grounds is matched by the friendly and helpful staff. I've read isolated accounts of snooty attitudes from concierges, front desk staff, and the like, but everyone I've spoken to has been warm and congenial. I felt pampered. I can only imagine those reporting attitudes like the ones I did not find must've brought them in with them. Yoda had a thing or two on that way of being. Me, I found myself smiling from the moment I alighted from the shuttle bus.

Twenty minutes into my amblings about the place, my phone rang: The room was ready for me. The same staffer who routed me to the desk earlier took me around the substantial line and checked me the rest of the way in himself, handing me a key packet for my desired high, Strip-view nonsmoking room.

This is part of what you see from the 54th floor:

Incredibly, by mid-afternoon, this sky would plunge into threatening grey, as a cloudburst swept the area and drove gusts up to 60 mph against the curtain-wall of the hotel. Again, I'd lucked out; this weather no doubt snarled air traffic around the area. I can only imagine the agony of being stuck orbiting Vegas, having come so far only to be put in a holding pattern while rain lashed the desert below. (But the desert was in desperate need of the moisture, so this serves the greater purpose.)

Before the rain blasted in, I watched its heralding winds bend the foliage around the pool while eating lunch inside at the Terrace Pointe Café. After airline and airport food since 6 that morning, the burger with bacon, bleu cheese, and fries was a welcome change. It also acted like a sleeping potion, as an hour later, as the storm broke over Las Vegas, I felt the day catching up to me. I spent the next couple of hours napping on and off. Aside from getting a little walking in across the street at the Fashion Center Mall, and grabbing a strawberry ice cream, I spent the rest of the evening with my head still in Eastern Standard Time. Television and a stunning view of the Strip and the Las Vegas suburbs rolling out to the mountains were my evening diversion for the final couple of hours of consciousness.

With any luck, the late doses of Futurama, South Park, and the reel of Monty Python highlights on the Wynn's TV lineup (a Spamalot tie-in) were enough to drag my mind into Pacific time. As for Vegas time, where sleep is a weakness and dawn an unwelcome reminder of our vampiric devotion to the turn of the card, I'm sure I'll get there soon enough.

Las Vegas 2008: The Gathering Storm

TWENTY-FOUR MONTHS OF EXILE end today. With nearly all of the travel hurdles behind me, and a timely takeoff the final gauntlet to run, my return to Glitter Gulch, Sin City, the Neon Havens — Las Vegas, Nevada — lies scant hours away.

Once I escaped work yesterday, it was a downhill run to this morning. Nearly all packing was complete. My poker bankroll had been retrieved from its salt-mine redoubt, borne to my lair by vermillion-robed acolytes, swinging censers to smoke out all evil spirits. They also brought my laundry. (I can't be bothered.)

I set two clocks to arouse me from what brief, nervous slumber I managed to capture in nets of nonsensical dreams. A final check of the Continental website showed not only that my flight was on time, but that the center seat of my aisle was still open — an incredible break. I got downstairs 10 minutes early, where the car to the airport was already waiting, slick with rain. Colin, the Jamaican driver, welcomed me aboard and made for the Parkway. We had a fine chat that made the scant 35 minutes to Newark pass even more quickly.

The first challenge met, I checked one of my bags curbside and steeled myself for the security colonic within. I haven't flown since the current strictures were imposed, and I've listened to 2 years of civil-liberties infringement and aggro TSA horseshit since then. I'd bagged, tagged, and flagged what little I had in my backpack, but the proof would be served at the checkpoint.

No worries were needed. I declared my > 3 oz. bottle of contact lens solution to the agent, who waved it through. All of my metal was in the backpack, the shoes and laptop were in bins, and neither I nor my bag dinged the X-ray gadgets. My record of evading a detailed search remained pristine. It took longer to get my shoes back on than it did to fly through the security bullshit.

The terminal here also has flights going to LA and Frisco, so it's fairly well populated. It's fun to try and spot those going to Vegas versus those other destinations. Tropical shirts and an absence of children is a good indicator. Your average planeload of Vegas visitors is a lot happier than those going to other places, with the possible exceptions of Hawaii and areas with Disney parks. By grim contrast, the return trip from Sin City is a tableau of downcast faces: laden with losses, aching from hangovers, or merely stricken on the day that marks the maximum stretch of time between the last trip to Vegas and the next.

That's been my last two years right there.

Sadly, Newark Airport lacks free Wi-Fi (unlike McCarran in Vegas), so posting this note will have to wait. I've got another hour before the scheduled takeoff, so I'm gonna snag a chunk of grease from the nearby noshery. Further pre-Vegas dispatches as they warrant.

Three Essential Las Vegas Guides

FOR SOME LAS VEGAS TIPS you won't find in any printed tourbook, I offer you three guides that may boost your fun, ease your losses, and keep you out of jail. Excerpts of each guide are included:

1. Dr. Pauly, Bloggers Invading Las Vegas Tips (scroll down to Nov. 19 entry)

The fifth version of this road map for the the world's poker bloggers as they gather periodically to donk it up in Sin City. Compiled by top poker journalist and kickass world-wandering writer Dr. Pauly, aka Pauly McGuire, who is combining both talents to cover the 2008 World Series of Poker on Tao of Poker in high style. Even those tips that are more inside-baseball for hardcore online hold'em addicts are worth scanning to see how a previously far-flung group of strangers bonded a few years ago via this crazy game and the Internet to become a community. An occasionally very, very drunk community.

10. Never underestimate the importance of a $20 tip.
Do you wanna get shit done in Vegas? Tip the hell out of every person you see. I'm from New York City and we tip everyone. In a town like Vegas, most of the people working in the service industry are not paid extravagantly. They rely on tips to supplement their wages. You would be surprised how much attention you can get with a simple $20 tip. Heck that's like one big bet for some of you. . . .

Now if you think $20 gets you a long way... try tipping $40 or $100.

2. Rands in Repose, The Rands Vegas System

My friend Matt brought this to my attention, and I declare this guide a solid addition to any Vegas warrior's stash of holy texts. Rands is a software-engineering manager, insightful tech-culture essayist, coiner of the term Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder — or NADD — and author of Managing Humans, which collects many of his most useful posts for helping managers treat their charges like people and not soulless 1s and 0s.

We’re all still laughing about the time when Vegas tried to convince the world that it was a family town. You remember this? This was back during the Internet boom, money was free, and Vegas was pretty full of itself as it’d as it had every instant multi-millionaire with huge amounts of disposible cash stumbling around the casinos literally bleeding cash.

With this new wad of cash, Vegas was wondering, What’s next? Where was the growth? Who were the new Vegas customers? What about families? In Sin City? Sure, why the hell not? If they can sell cat food on the Internet, why not get families to think of Vegas as Disneyland? Rollercoasters, yeah, that’s the ticket.

What a complete crock of shit.

3. AllVegasPoker.com, Drinking for Profit—Poker for the Casual Vegas Player

Not everyone totes sheaves of $100s to Vegas for the big hold'em tourneys or to score bottle service one table away from Jay-Z's posse. Some prefer to turn the city's poker rooms into a free-floating — and free-drinking — home game, and let Sin City serve them . . . until they can barely stand. Follow AllVegasPoker.com message board poster Grange95's detailed description (and sly parody of a zillion poker strategy books) to get the most top-shelf tipple for the smallest donation to waitresses and tablemates.

Introduction: The recent poker boom has brought forth a veritable cornucopia of books, manuals, treatises, and websites devoted to improving poker playing skills. These publications have fed the swarms of poker locusts who inhabit most Vegas poker rooms, stripping every last chip from the assorted donkeys, fish, sloths, wombats, platypi, and conventioneers who find themselves attracted to the olfactory siren song of cigarette breath, four day old underwear, and pieces of sandwiches putrefying in the fat rolls of the guy in the five—and six—seat.

But what about the casual poker player, the intrepid soul whose sole purpose for playing poker is that it seems like a “cool” way to get hammered while losing less money than playing $25 blackjack next to a tattoo-covered LA trust fund baby and looking more manly than playing nickel slots next to a chain-smoking granny? Although the poker-drinker is a common denizen of the Vegas poker scene, his (and he is male more than 98.62% of the time) unique poker strategies have not been subjected to rigorous mathematical and game theory analysis. The current poker-drinker is forced to live by his wits, learning by trial and error and the occasional “secret tip” from a degenerate fraternity brother.

Neon Glow on the Western Horizon

MY GRINDING EXILE FROM LAS VEGAS will end this coming June. After a delay from a return visit that began as a voluntary money-generating 2007 pause, which became mandatory in November 2006 when I got word that I'd be laid off in four months' time, my reentry into Sin City has, at last, been plotted.

One bit of good news facilitating the trip is that we've had success in making the first new hire in the Central City office. By the end of this month, I'll have a new editor-in-chief, as long as the person doesn't freak and back out. Though there will be an extended transition period between my current and future managing editors (MEs), and also some effort to bring this April hire (who will be my immediate boss) up to speed, having any help with production and editing will be most welcome.

To digress, the April issue went to press a week ago, three days sooner than the March one — and with the same staff. We had to cut a couple of articles for space purposes, which saved me writing time . . . which I ended up needed after 5:00 that day, when I cranked out two short columns in 40 minutes to complete the issue and get it out the door. I had a ton of well-timed help from the ME — with whom, I realize, I can actually work well in a fast-moving situation, far more easily than my former coworkers could — and our artist, who bounced everything we gave him out to prepress as soon as it hit his desk. By closing the issue Wednesday night, we dodged a huge markup on postage fees, which we'd only found out about that previous Monday. For avoiding this overcharge, the ME graciously gave the artist and me giftcards this week to thank us for our diligence. (She was particularly stunned I was able to pump out those two stories in such short notice. I hope the amazement carries forward onto my review!)

I think the measures I took after the chest pains a month and change ago to get the April issue launched earlier, and all parties concerned on board with what needed to be done in light of the short staff, were key to shaving three days off the schedule. We may be able to keep that momentum for the May issue; the content we bumped from April to May gave me a head start, and I've turned over a number of items to the artist thus far this week. I felt comfortable enough to book a personal day for next Thursday to put in some volunteer work down at WFMU.

But most important, I feel like I will have the freedom to return to my usual summer habit of spending a long week in Las Vegas.

I was shocked, when I booked the flight a few weeks ago, at how cheap it was. This was around when crude oil spurted past $100/barrel. I had expected Continental to have tacked on a fuel surcharge of anywhere from $20 to $50. Not so; with the fees and terror tax tacked on, $260 round trip from Newark. That's cheaper than a few years back. I guess the fuel-arbitrage desk at Continental HQ is earning its keep.

Besides, I had a better use for the leftover money:

Wynn Las Vegas by ping ping. Some rights reserved.

That's right. I've had enough of waiting for $39/$69 mail offers from the Golden Nugget or staying at the oddly smelling Plaza in Downtown to save a few extra bux for a rental car. I took 2007 off for a reason: to save bread for a full hotel experience. I can think of few better places to do so than Steve Wynn's mad chocolate Death Star in the desert.

Las Vegas - Wynn by CokeeOrg. Some rights reserved.

I've stayed in very nice chain hotels — the Doubletree properties in Philadelphia and Chicago, and a particularly attractive Hyatt in Morristown, NJ, for a wedding — and the rooms I had at the Golden Nugget and the Flamingo in Vegas were quite serviceable. But I am seeking an enveloping escape. I've walked through Wynn a number of times in past visits, and if the rooms are anything like the casino and other public areas, I should be all set.

I also wouldn't mind picking up a few of these from the Wynn Poker Room —
— or perhaps their red-hued $5 cousins. I'll see what I can do. I didn't tie myself down to the 6 hours the poker room would've wanted to get a discounted room, as the competition there is supposed to be tough. I want the freedom to rove around to other poker rooms and not be forced to grind it out at Wynn, which altogether makes the game more like a job. And that is precisely the one word I don't want to use while out in Vegas.

So I will spend the next two months or so in a mounting frenzy, with the liberating plane flight drawing closer with agonizing slothfulness, with the glowing reward of Las Vegas awaiting me seemingly just out of reach. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to it.

Golden Clouds by sbisson. Some rights reserved.

How Not to Deliver Good News

SOMEWHERE IN THE PHANTOM CEO handbook, which manifests only to those with the keys to the executive brothel washroom, it ought to say something about not having the Human Resources director in the conference room after you've invited an entire department in to inform them of a couple of promotions. I guarantee you'll have a roomful of people thinking one or all of them are going to be laid off. This scene — played out today in my office — had me flashing back to last November's layoff meeting. I tensed mentally for the news, which fortunately didn't come, but between the HR person and the exec, they reeeeeeally needed to see the staging of this announcement through our eyes for a moment.

I'm certainly glad I don't have to look for work a second time this year, but, as always, I had a plan. If this had turned out to be a replay of last year's meeting, I'd finish out my time gracefully, accept whatever package (if any), sign up for unemployment and COBRA . . . and then book my ass a week in Las Vegas.

I had planned, well before the November layoff news, to take 2007 off in anticipation of a Strip-hotel stay in the grim bastinado session of a year that Decision 2008 will be. The layoff made such a delay mandatory, but I still hated to lose even the option of a last-minute long weekend in Sin City while digging around for a new source of buffet money. News of a second layoff would trigger my recessive "fuck it" gene as it relates to money, and I guarantee the trip would have been booked within an hour. Face it: I'd be just as unemployed while throwing chips across the felt at the Venetian as I would here, renovating my CareerBuilder profile and emailing my former-former coworkers to expect a new round of reference checks from future potential employers. Why not take a real vacation before descending into that madness again?

Fortunately, the chance to book the next Vegas trip still appears a calmer affair, to be done at greater leisure, albeit in a year where I'll only get 10 days off aside from company holidays. Assuming, of course, inept delivery of another departmental promotion doesn't cause me to enter a coma.

Thawing the Poker Cold War at the Venetian

MANY FOLKS VIEW POKER as a war, especially poker of the tournament or no-limit variety. Every player is an enemy general, every chip on the felt a soldier. Ground is ceded or conquered at the flip of a card. From a distance, a Vegas poker table can look like a hostile parley among several military strongmen, eyes walled off by mirrorshades and obscured by caps or visors, arms folded, the silence only split by terse pronouncements of bets and the crash of chips across the green field of battle, and your only ally an unbeatable hand.

The truth is far more complex. Given the right blend of players, game conditions, dealers, and alcohol, a poker table can rival in spirit even the most convivial craps game. Amid the forbidding silence of an all-in bet awaiting a call, and the reluctant creak of a player’s joints as he rises, chipless, from his seat, the anonymous bettors to one’s left and right can turn out to be comrades by the last deal of the night.

One night during my last trip to Las Vegas, I played at the regal poker room of the Venetian Hotel and Casino. This room was designed for serious, comfortable play: lush seats, gorgeous new chips and tables, cocktail waitresses both toothsome and swift with the firewater, and a highly skilled cadre of dealers. Without capturing the interest of the local Vegas players, no poker room will thrive, and the way to keep locals happy is to give them a comfortable space, a generous comp program, tableside food, and a constant flow of rich fish from the schools of tourists washing through the casino. In this, the Venetian comes up aces.

Players ringed most every table of this lush card palace, either battling it out in the daily tournament, or peering at one another across stacks of hard-won chips at the regular ring games. I had read that the Venetian’s regular no-limit Texas hold’em players ran to the shark end of the spectrum, so I shied away from those tables for my virgin expedition. I was also smarting from a beating at no-limit two days earlier, in which my pocket Aces — the strongest starting hand in hold’em — were shot out of the sky twice in the same day. Having restored my confidence with several hours of limit hold’em the day before, I decided to keep working out the cramps at one of the Venetian’s limit tables. With bets and raises in structured denominations, your money can last longer. Unlike no-limit, therefore, you won’t go broke on the first hand. You also have a better chance of finding a player who pre-dates the no-limit craze, a veteran from whom you can learn. Wide public interest in no-limit is only about 5 years old; players who survived the late-Nineties closure of Vegas poker rooms are likely to have a rich trove of wisdom and stories about the game. This can pay more, long term, than winning for just that one day.

I took a seat with a couple of racks of the peculiar $3 chips used at the Venetian’s $6/$12 game. I had a feeling this denomination would lead to a calmer game than the one the night before at the MGM Grand. There, the $6/$12 game used the more traditional $1 and $5 chips. For the first two betting rounds, folks tended to bet with six singles; they did the same at the turn and river for the double bets. This made average-value pots look far huger: massive seas of blue chips with the odd $5 leering out in alluring red. Players who otherwise might not call a raise on the flop took one look at the gargantuan pile of cashlicious clay and decided, sure, why not throw another $6 in? Add to this a maniacally loose player to my right who raised and reraised nearly every hand preflop — and got at least two calls per hand — the dealers had to push some of these pots to their winners in three or four sweeps.

My hunch about the pace of the game proved to be correct. I was looking for a change from the heart-pounding duel of no-limit, but this was almost too slow. A $36 pot looks a lot more impressive as 36 individual dollar chips, rather than as a wan clutch of 12 tokens in this game.

It did give me a chance to get acquainted with my tablemates. None seemed to be a stereotypical “rock,” a local player grinding out steady wins by raising rarely, folding frequently, and breaking his silence about once per evening, usually to complain about some young “World Poker tour punk” who dared to raise his blinds. I did recognize one local, an off-duty Venetian dealer in fact, who I had seen during my trip the previous summer at the Aladdin. By her chitchat to her neighbors, I identified at least two of them as fellow Venetian poker dealers. Some players salivate at the prospect of playing with a bunch of dealers, believing them to be weaker players or risk-happy gamblers, but the one I recognized had a fairly effective, if straightforward, game. She did make the mistake of tacitly broadcasting her strategy in her between-hand commentary. I filed this information away in case we got head to head at all.

I struck up a conversation with the guy to my right, with whom I shared a number of favorite classic animated cartoons, including a few that I could imitate. Skilled mimicry of Homer Simpson can get even a stiff table laughing. Even better, the aforementioned dealer was wearing an Aqua Teen Hunger Force T-shirt, marking her as a geek of quality.

Our attention was drawn to a loud player two tables away. In a Russian accent slowed by a few drinks, he called for more chips and fresh booze at regular intervals. I smiled. Russians have a special place in the hearts of many recent converts to hold’em. In the film Rounders, John Malkovich portrays the ruthless underground poker-club owner Teddy KGB. Log enough table time and you will inevitably hear someone drop such classic KGB lines as, “Is position bet. I call,” and “Pay him . . . pay that man his money” in their most menacing faux-Russian accents.

In real life, however, poker players love gambling it up with Russian nationals, because if they’ve got the scratch to vacation in Vegas, they likely will be cavalier about throwing more green into the game. Few gamblers are as enthusiastic as Russians when they are building a mini-Kremlin of chips . . . and win or lose, they absolutely will have a drink or three with you. If you’re not having fun with a Russian sitting at your table, you’re deader than Lenin.

“Cheeps! Cheeps!” bellowed the Russian, as I and my seatmate steepled our fingers in a Monty Burns–like pose of financial anticipation. Would the Poker Gods guide this wandering son of the tundra to our table? I watched him accept another rack of chips from a runner, then stand and head to the exit, slapping a fresh pack of Marlboros smartly against his palm. If you’ve ever seen From Russia With Love, our man at the Venetian closely resembled a suntanned Red Grant, with his blond hair cropped closer, and dressed for holiday in a striped T-shirt and khaki cargo shorts. No stereotypical, lumpy gray Muscovite this.

Over the course of the next hour, I kept an eye on him — who, for the sake of at least giving him a name, I shall call “Yuri” — as he burned through chips with a scorched-earth vengeance, guided hapless cocktail waitresses into an empty seat to harangue them on some point, and above all downed drink after drink with a lusty “Na Zdorov'ye!” . . . until a spilled tequila shot got him cut off. A grievous blow!

As if feeling jinxed by that incident, Yuri rose slowly with the remainder of his chips and sat down at a no-limit table adjacent to mine. This evidently proved costly, accelerating his donation of chips to a point where even this gamble-happy guy had had enough. With a bellowed “I do not like NO LEEMIT!”, he once again called for chips, rose again . . . and sat down to my immediate left. I nudged my neighbor and quietly issued a Quagmire-esque “Giggity giggity giggity giggity!”

Yuri seemed more sedate than his earlier self as he carefully unracked his new chips. Perhaps his losses at the no-limit table had finally reached his threshold of pain. When someone takes a licking but still has chips, or seems willing to buy more, you leave them along with their thoughts for a while. The worst thing you can do is to rub the player’s nose in it and induce them to leave. In poker parlance, the exhortation to keep a fish in play is, “Don’t tap on the glass.” So I let Yuri think, stack his chips, and bet when the action came to him.

A way of opening a connection presented itself in the form of my dinner. Earlier that evening, my neighbor had availed himself of the tableside dining option by selecting, from the leatherbound mini-menu of entrees, fish and chips. When the golden-battered fish arrived, nestled in a bed of green-leaf lettuce next to a fragrant sheaf of shoestring fries and enticing tubs of tartar sauce and cider vinegar, I pointed a quivering finger at it and all but commanded the waiter to clone it for me. I devoured the fish upon its arrival, but could only engulf about half of the fries. So I offered Yuri the chance to help me finish them. He graciously thanked me and set to work cleaning the plate.

I gently chatted with him about poker, thinking less of him now as a sheep to be sheared and more as a fellow player. He definitely preferred limit hold’em, not liking the dramatic swings of no-limit. I could see why, based on his style of play; he bet to the river with hands as small as a single pair and chased draws like a pitbull chasing a chicken-fried cat. I never got into a hand with him, my cards having gone dead-ass cold. I sympathized with him at getting cut off from the free-drink train, and suggested he ask the floorman to reconsider. All Yuri really did was knock over a glass onto the rolling drink stand next to the table. Hardly a bootable offense.

About an hour after Yuri sat down, I counted my own chip stack and decided the combination of good limit players and my growing drowsiness were not going to restore it to its starting size anytime soon. As I had guessed, the $3 chips made the pots visibly smaller, and thus less worth loose calls and raising wars, than the gargantuan pots buckling the MGM $6/$12 tables. And the only real fish I had encountered was the deep-fried kind I had engulfed earlier. Yuri was a steady, but not wild, donor, betting but rarely raising, more like someone playing a multistage blackjack hand. He fell short of being the true maniac every solid poker player covets.

In the area of courtesy, however, Yuri measured up strongly. I racked up my chips and offered him my hand and a parting “Do svidanya.” He smiled, rose, accepted my hand with both of his, and returned my valediction, adding a sincere “Good luck.” As I redeemed my chips at the poker room cage, I could still feel the warm impression of his handshake.

All told, I probably lost about $100 at the Venetian poker room. I returned to my hotel room less disappointed with losing than I might have been. With a few more days left to battle it out at the poker tables, I considered the loss no more than a new scar across my back from the most recent hand-to-hand melee with the enemy. Amid the press, however, Yuri distinguished himself as a welcome and friendly rival.

Far from my initial eagerness to loot him, I was now glad I hadn’t been at the no-limit table and in a position to take his whole stack. To paraphrase Hannibal Lecter’s reason for sparing Clarice Starling, the poker world was far more interesting with Yuri in it. He was worth more than a hundred grumpy rocks who bitch incessantly about the casino air conditioning or drink service. Give me a table full of Yuris each time I play poker, and I can retire, if not rich, then happy.

Las Vegas 7/06: Opening Fire on the Locals

Early Skirmish at Bugsy's Joint

IT WAS SOMETIME IN the early afternoon of Thursday, July 13, that I felt battle had to be joined. I hadn't flown across the country merely to watch these games from the rail or to cruise through the new rooms without at least giving one of the old poker pits a try. After eating, my wanderings took me to the Flamingo, where I had stayed for my first three trips to Vegas, and where — like most casinos in town — they had expanded their poker room to accommodate the surge in interest. From what had been a vestigial nook, the management had grown a respectable-sized cluster of tables in one corner of the casino floor.

I watched the play for a while, selecting a $1/$2 no-limit hold'em game situated close to the rail. Play seemed weak; few preflop raises, and pots being taken down on the flop or turn with a single raise. Spying an open seat, I decided to take a chance.

It turned out I was sitting close to a very drunk player, two seats to my left. This guy was betting at every pot, seeing just about 75% of flops, and seemingly stealing pots at random. This made it tempting to play back at him, but with very little time to have seen what sort of cards he played, I held back. When I did finally get into a hand with him, I found myself facing an all-in river bet after he called my increasing flop and turn bets . . . and I had only a strong Ace paired with one on the board. Not wanting to go broke this early on merely top pair, good kicker, I folded. The guy mucked without showing and mumbled, "I bluffed you." He repeated this a few times while stacking the $150 or so pot. I said nothing, having lost an early profit and only about $20 of my starting buy-in, so I wasn't too upset about how things had gone down. Besides, this guy's starting hand range was fairly broad, so if I got him all in with a solid hand, I was a favorite to take the win back. Tragically, he racked up and left before I had the chance, balancing two racks of red $5 chips and a Budweiser as he weaved to the cashier.

Around this point, some skilled locals sat down. I have a post in the back of my head about identifying this sort of potentially dangerous player, so all I will say at this point is that I took my advice from January's trip and racked up when a new $1/$2 NL table opened.

You can travel halfway across the globe and be surprised to find someone from not only your own country, but your neighborhood. I didn't hit that close, but the young couple who sat to my left at the new table was from Cape May, New Jersey. I chatted them up, primarily to see if they were regulars at Atlantic City to their north, and learned that they actually habituated an underground cardroom down in their neck of the woods. Never hurts to be friendly at a poker table, especially with the two folks to your left, because, among other reasons, they're the folks whose blinds you'll be stealing as often as you can when you have the button or the cutoff seat. (You'll also be chopping the blinds with the person to your immediate left, another reason to at least be on speaking terms.)

Although the couple spoke in terms that led me to believe they had some technical depth at hold'em, the young man was outclassed in skill by his girlfriend. He was making very poor plays with only a single high pair (the sort of trap I had avoided earlier with the drunk), and he rebought twice before busting a third time and storming off in a sullen rage. With one mediocre player gone, and a couple of locals sitting down, I decided to cash out and secure some food. After being ahead nearly $100 at the other game, I was now dead even, and if my choice is a hard-fought tie or a loss born of stupid play, I'll take the former every time.

Storming the Castle

A LIVELY COMMUNITY OF poker bloggers has been regaling the Internet with their adventures for better than two years now. These folks have met up in Las Vegas a couple of times, to put names to faces and let off some steam with low-limit poker enhanced by alcohol and sleep deprivation. In one early jaunt, one blogger suggested the entire group descend on the poker room contained within the Camelot-like façade of the Excalibur. Echoing Billy Crystal's parting exhortation to Cary Elwes and Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride, this plan was cloaked under the codename of "storming the castle."

After grabbing some dinner, I was ready to mount a siege of my own. I've played some fun poker at the Excalibur, owing to its low table limits and the lessons the poker room offers to passing tourists. It does host a no-limit game, for those looking for a higher-level game. This doesn't guarantee that you'll get a table of skilled operators, though. Table selection is still key, no matter what the reputation of a room as a fish tank might be.

I noticed two no-limit tables running. The floor person was initially looking at the "main game," but it looked to be populated with serious players. I wanted funloving tourists and drunks out to donk it up with a couple of surplus Benjamins. That description more closely suited the second table, which had a couple of seats ready and waiting. "I'll take one of those seats, please," I said, peeling two C-notes off for conversion into chips. He acquiesced, and the cage person proffered a stack of 20 reds, an abbreviated second stack of 16 more fivers, and 20 blue $1 checks. I noticed that the Excal had sprung for new chips, not an insubstantial investment. Nice to see one of the comparative bargain properties laying out some coin.

My initial assessment of the table was correct. This one was laughing, betting it up, with four or five players seeing flops. I'm normally a "tight" player, seeing fewer than average flops with my starting cards, but when you have half the table tossing in $2 to take a chance on the next three cards, and even three or four of them calling a raise, I broaden my range somewhat to take advantage of strong draws or to kill the crowd with a flopped set. At a fun table like this, you want to join in, and if it means you sacrifice a couple of two-buck bets so as not to stick out as a rock, you'll have a great chance of cracking someone when your middle pair catches a third or your suited connectors flop straight and flush draws.

Despite loosening up preflop, I didn't take too many hands to the river. I won a few pots here and there, which made up for the flow of chips my looser play had created. This would become moot when two new players sat down. After about an hour or so, our table became shorthanded, with only 6 players. I like short games; you can push single pairs harder and price opponents out of draws much more easily. Some of my poker-night regulars dislike short games like this for that very reason. Hell, six-person (aka 6max) tables have become a staple on Internet poker sites, many folks on the Two Plus Two message forums have inquired as to the production of a book devoted to shorthanded play, and there is even a 6max event at the World Series of Poker now. Last year, poker legend Doyle Brunson, who was winning big across the oil states and in Vegas before the Internet was born, took his 10th championship bracelet in the 6max no-limit event. So this is a straight-up legit form of poker.

So as I said, my chance to be more aggressive at the shorter table was interrupted by the two new arrivals. I initially regretted this, because my earlier, looser play would have benefitted me now. I was already entering a greater number of pots, which is a staple of 6max play, so when I put the pedal down and raised preflop more with a wider range of hands, I might have gotten more calls with even worse hands than mine. Then when I had KK or AA, I could take them to school. With eight players, however, this sort of deceptive, lucrative larceny is a little more difficult.

My regrets faded about a half hour into playing with these two new guys. One was clearly experienced but favored unreasoning aggression over selective force, and this cost him. I limped into a pot (i.e., called the starting bet, then called a raise that came after me without reraising) with A5 of the same suit. I had at least three other callers in addition to the aggro guy, so I had favorable odds for a flush draw on the flop.

Instead of the flush draw, I got an Ace and a 5, two pair. No matching cards, no straight possibilities. Split two pair on a rainbow flop is a great hand. The aggro guy bet strongly, I called, figuring to push on the turn, and the other players folded. The turn was a beautiful Ace. He checked, I thought for a while and bet about half the pot (I didn't want to scare him out), and he went all in. The only problem was that he pushed the bulk of his chips in, then said, "All in," and tried to drop the remaining $60 or $70 in. I said nothing, but the dealer immediately called it a string bet, and declared only the initial, majority bet to be a legal raise.

I have played long enough to sit there with some discipline while someone is in the process of putting his or her foot in the snare, so I waited while the dealer sorted this out, then said, "I call," and flipped up my cards to show the full house. Aggro-man yelled "Fuck!!" and pounded the rail with both fists. He showed Ace King for trips, which did not catch another King. I took down a $270 pot on that hand.

I drifted down about $70 over the course of the next hour, due to draws that didn't come in on the river that I had to fold, but I was still firmly in the black when I scrounged for a chip rack and headed over to the podium to cash out. I did find out why the two guys had come over in the first place. They had been sitting at the other no-limit game, the more serious-looking one, and at some point it had simply broken up. The second of the two players who migrated to my table — the one I didn't clobber with the Aces full — got into an argument shortly thereafter with the dealer. When a person went all in, the dealer counted down the bet. The second guy (hereinafter Nit) — who wasn't one of the two participants in the hand — said the dealer wasn't allowed to do this. The dealer disagreed, and after Nit became vociferous, the floorman was called. After getting the dealer's side of things, he declared it legal and departed . . . but not before angrily telling Nit, upon learning that he wasn't in the hand, to mind his own business when he didn't have cards. This shut Nit up for the duration of my stay, which, after sensing this was why the previous table had collapsed, was not much longer than the time it took to lose the aforementioned $70 or so. I instead hit the parking lot, reflecting in turn on how lacking in etiquette both men had been in their own ways, and of course bouncing along on the cushion of a win.

Ealier entries in this tale of degeneracy can be perused here:

• Escaping West and the Course Curriculum
• Landings, Lodgings, and First Blood
• Abbreviated World Poker Tour

Las Vegas 7/06: Escaping West and the Course Curriculum

RIGHT NOW, IN JERSEY, it's raining hard, with thunder and wind lashing at the dripping bushes outside my window. I would say it represents a radical difference from the place where I spent the bulk of the past 2 weeks, the arid valley of Las Vegas, Nevada, but as our plane rolled into takeoff position this Thursday, rain — thick drops of it — was spattering the porthole windows. This was the third dose of precipitation in as many days there, and the first two had filled the dry washes with rushing, debris-choked waters that engulfed cars and harried casino patrons in the usual areas where floods occur. Locals know to dodge such low points as the Flamingo Wash behind the Imperial Palace, but inevitably, some impatient tourist judges his or her rental car to be seaworthy, attempts to ford the maelstrom, and swamps hopelessly, giving the wiser locals a wry chuckle when they see the flailing dupe being plucked from the roof of the car by Vegas's Bravest.

Indeed, a sly trap the town springs on its unwary visitors, one of many. I stepped in a few over the course of my visit, but I also set a couple myself, both of these transpiring on the green gladiatorial felt of no-limit Texas hold'em. Although I came back just about $140 lighter, I fought my way out of a nearly $600 hole due to a crushing misfortune with good cards on the second day of the trip. All in all, the trip was like a visit to poker graduate school, where one's fundamentals are taken for granted and where advanced skills can be taught and tested. A buck-forty was cheap wisdom compared to the tuition I saw some folks pay.

First, some details on logistics and my chosen reading material.

I flew out to Vegas for my ninth visit this July 12. After a very short night of sleep — more like part of the morning — I was driven via Air Brook to the airport at a quarter past five. No hitches on the ride to Newark, check-in, the security hurdles, or boarding the jet. The in-flight movie was so nondescript, and contained so few identifiable stars, that I can't even tell you what the hell it was. I know it was yet another light romantic comedy, of the type I railed against in January. I was busy reading my brand-new copy of No Limit Hold'em: Theory and Practice, my first copy of which was turned to wet pulp earlier in July by a bad morning rainstorm. See, the poker grad course had a new textbook to absorb, and, only having replaced this tome a day prior, I had some catching up to do for the first class.

As you might expect, the poker boom has flooded bookstores with new and reprinted books on the topic. Over the course of 2004, as the World Poker Tour garnered record ratings and the World Series of Poker Main Event was won by another nonprofessional player, it seemed that anyone who had ever published a poker how-to book got a new edition of it out to the public. Six months before Raymer's big win, I had to order a copy of David Sklansky's seminal Theory of Poker used from someone on eBay. By the second half of the year, even writers long dead were having their texts dusted off, bound with new covers, and placed on the shelves next to the works of living stalwarts like Doyle Brunson or T.J. Cloutier.

Lurking near the end of most lineups of poker books, mostly due to Sklansky being the author or co-author on many of them, the offerings of poker publishing company Two Plus Two have been seminal to the educations of amateurs and pros alike. Older titles by Sklansky and frequent collaborator Mason Malmuth recently have been supplemented by crucial studies on small-stakes limit hold'em and tournament play. The No Limit Hold'em text is the most recent addition to their library, and from what I was reading on the Two Plus Two forum devoted to study of smaller stakes no-limit games, this one was definitely worth a read.

I envy the younger players, who certainly have more time on their hands to do the study that I need to wedge in among work and sleep. I can recall a time when I virtually knew all pertinent parts of the various first-edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks by heart. Nowadays, guys are learning poker on the Internet and sharpening their understanding of it via books and online discussion boards. I remember one year when I was in Vegas, I wandered by the high-limit section of the Palms poker room. One player at a $1/$2 no-limit hold'em table had a pile of his effects on one of those rolling drink stands some casinos have for tableside drink or food convenience. In the pile was Sklansky's Theory of Poker, another Two Plus Two book which I now believe was Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players, and a stack of 3" x 5" notes rubber-banded together. I never spoke to the man, not having any legitimate reason for interrupting him in the middle of what was (to me at that time) a high-level game. But I have taken his example as an inspiration in what sort of study poker deserves if one wants to win consistently.

So buying a second copy of No Limit Hold'em was more than a kneejerk reaction to the first copy's needless destruction. I wanted to stay competitive. I had to assume that professionals — not merely the TV personalities that have emerged from the sport, but the anonymous, skilled grinders who derived their daily pay from winning at the "smaller" games — were reading the book as well. It is an advanced course in no-limit poker thought, and I didn't get through the whole book while I was in Las Vegas. Time actually spent at the tables, and the sleep deficit it created, threw my reading schedule all out of whack. It will take me some time to digest it fully. But I know that guy at the Palms surely has a copy, and is working through it. Therefore, so should I.

More details, as well as my Route 66–length tangents, in the subsequent posts:

• Landings, Lodgings, and First Blood
• Abbreviated World Poker Tour

Fortunes Won and Lost on Every Deal

AROUND THIS TIME NEXT month, I will be deeply sick. Sick of mind, not of body, though the physical side effects of the mental trauma are usually fatigue, loss of muscle tone, and weight gain. My condition will not be unique. Millions of people suffer it yearly. They learn too late that the cure of the malady is, tragically, further exposure to its cause.

I speak, of course, of LVWS: Las Vegas Withdrawal Syndrome.

Just before the NFL Conference Championship playoffs in January, I will make my eighth trip to Las Vegas. I've stayed at two hotels in the previous seven trips: the fabulous mid-Strip Flamingo for the first three, and the venerable yet dazzling Golden Nugget in the Downtown area of the city. The Nugget will be my home away from home again this time.

I was unprepared for what I would encounter on my first trip in June of 2001. Friends of mine had been out there earlier that year, and I knew one or two former coworkers who had gotten married or had family there. My own interest in gambling developed locally. I had made my first gambling trip to a casino (Foxwoods, in Connecticut) in September 2000. Though I didn't know how to play most of the games, I was still fascinated by the whole operation: the dealers throwing out cards or counting chips with accurate flair; the players crowding around the roulette wheels or craps tables and by turns celebrating or scowling; the massive wall of TV screens and LED horse listings in the race book, and the hordes of hard-bitten men squinting at Daily Racing Forms; and over everything, the electronic warbling of thousands of slot machines. I played a few games, lost, and headed back home, lighter in wallet but intrigued.

By next March, I had taught myself the basics of blackjack. This was just before the current poker boom, when blackjack was still the most well-known casino game. I returned to Foxwoods, found a relatively inexpensive blackjack table, and with the help of a matronly dealer who must have had a soft spot for newbies, I won $362.50. (Yes, I remember the exact number. As you will learn in this blog, I have a memory like a fly strip: adhesive and incriminating.)

It was a fateful day. A crushing loss that afternoon might have sent me home with a sour taste for any wagering more significant than a box on a Super Bowl grid, never to set foot in a casino again. Instead, I returned home exultant and already planning my next outing . . . on which, a month later, as if to rub things in, I won another $125.

Hell, I was a goddamn expert, now.

By now, my thoughts were turning to Las Vegas. Though on my third trip gravity and probability had reasserted themselves and I had made a donation to the kindly Mashantucket Pequot tribe, I felt pulled to give Sin City a try. Not just for blackjack — if anything, I went into the plan figuring I would leave a good chunk of my money out there — but for the entire experience. The neon . . . the Elvises . . . the wild gaming action . . . the Rat Pack . . . I figured I had to do it at least once before I died. And it had been nearly 6 years since my last significant out-of-town vacation. I was due.

In the waning weeks of winter 2001, I resarched my Vegas options. I snagged the latest Fodor's guide and read up on the newsgroup alt.vacation.las-vegas (which was a lot less choked with spam than it is nowadays), but by far my most useful and hilarious resource was Cheapo Vegas. From all of this — and from a sense of history — I decided on the Flamingo Hotel and Casino. It offered a huge amount of reasonably priced rooms, one of the best pool areas in Vegas, a real-live zoo with penguins, and two historical bullet points:

1. The modern Las Vegas Strip was founded here by Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, and
2. Part of Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas transpired here.

The Mafia and the Good Doctor. How could I miss?

And so it was that in June of 2001, I stepped off a Continental jet into the vaulting expanse of the terminal at McCarran International Airport and found myself surrounded by two groups of travelers: those gloomily waiting to depart, and those plopped down in front of the scores of slot machines in the terminal.

Yes, slots in the actual terminal.

Glorious.

I made a fine first effort to blend tourism and gambling that first trip. I played blackjack up and down the Strip. I floated idly in the Flamingo's gorgeous pool complex. I assaulted the town's buffets like a wall of angry Mongols shattering a city gate. I drove my rental car out to Hoover Dam and joined a tour group in burrowing deep into its concrete recesses. And more than anything, I confronted the simple brutality of Vegas heat in June as I trod the roasting sidewalks from one hotel to another.

The contact high lasted for at least 2 weeks following my return. The addiction? Still going strong.

The $350 I lost while in town was of little consequence compared to the fun I had. When George Clooney refers to Las Vegas as "America's Playground" in Ocean's Eleven, he is not merely bullshitting Matt Damon. Though the free food and rooms are not as liberally dispensed as they were when the Mob openly ran the town, you can still sit back and be pampered in more refined ways: spa service, gourmet restaurants, artfully designed casinos, hot cocktail waitresses (oh, damn, I did say refined, didn't I?), and increasingly plush accommodations as the town's hoteliers try to outdo one another. These days, you can go to a property like Wynn Las Vegas or Mandalay Bay or the Venetian and have a diverse Las Vegas weekend without ever leaving the joint.

I always rent a car, though, because I like to get out and drive around the town. Last time, I snagged the car at the airport, which allowed me a glory roll down the Las Vegas Strip. Even in the daylight, it's stunning. Of course, I made the same trip once night fell, to recharge my batteries by digging the millions of feet of neon signage glowing in the hot desert night.

When someone says the word vacation to me, I automatically think Las Vegas. When a coworker mentions that he or she has plans to visit the city, I immediately feel envious, then ask where he or she will stay, so I can follow up when they return and learn what that hotel is like. When the first snow falls in New Jersey, I begin thinking of my western escape route to the city in the desert. I have made reservations during snowstorms before. As if it really takes that much.

I will undoubtedly have more to share as the day draws near for departure. I know I won't be sleeping that night, so where better to listen to the minutes tick away?