Posted this on 2+2 and thought I'd submit my first TR here.

Buddy of mine is getting married so we decide to throw him a bachelor party in the most original of bachelor party cities...Vegas.

Day1 (Friday): Checked in to the Venetian around 8:00pm and headed down to the poker room to kill time before meeting the rest of the crew. My friend and I sit down at the 1-2NL and we're on the list for the 2-5NL. Previous TR's are correct in that the room is filled with locals logging in hours for the freeroll. My friend and I were the only tourists at the table. Suffice it to say the game was a grind.

I like the room itself. It's wide open (not a box like Harrah's). The dealers were fine and the waitresses were easy on the eyes. Chairs were very comfortable.

Notable hand #1: My friend (Jason) is in the 5-seat and UTG with $200 and limps in for $2. The 8-seat with about $300 raises it to $15 straight. Everyone folds to my buddy who flat calls. The flop comes 7s-8h-Jd rainbow. Jason checks and the 8-seat bets the pot ($35). After about 30-seconds my friend calls. Turn brings the 3h. Jason checks and the 8-seat bets $45. My friend thinks a bit before moving all-in for $150. The 8-seat goes into the tank for about a minute before announcing, "call". River is the 8c and Jason turns over 9c-10c for the nut straight. 8-seat turns over 7h-7d for the winner. Salty...

Notable hand #2: I'm in the cutoff with Ah-Qh and two players have called. I make it $15 to go and get called by one of the limpers. Flop comes 4s-Qs-9h. Limper checks to me so I bet the pot ($35) which he calls. Turn is the 9s. Limper checks. I check. River brings the Kd. Limper checks. So now I'm trying to figure out what hands I can beat that would have called the flop. I can't think of any so I check as well. Limper shows Kojack offsuit (which was not one of the hands I was thinking of) for the winner.

Last guy shows up so we’re finally ready to head to Tao. We stop off at the BJ tables at the bottom of the escalator and I tell everyone to give me $50-bucks. I bet the $700 and catch a 19 to the dealers 18. Everyone agrees to press it and we’re dealt A-5 with the dealer showing an 8. Take a card and the dealer gives us a 5. Sweet! Dealer’s reveals his hole card as a 6. Next card is a 2. Last card is a 5!!!! Motherf*^%^&*!!! I turn to the boys and say, “let’s quit after that nastiness” and when I turn back around I realize that I didn’t move the $1,400 from the betting circle and the dealer had already dealt off the first 2 cards. Oops. My bad…We luck out when we catch a pat 20 with the dealer showing a 5. The floor man asks jokingly if I’d still like to take the bet back. After the dealer doesn’t make “21” I smile and tell him nah. Tip the dealer $50 and we’re off to Tao.

Tao on the weekend is everything you may have heard it to be. First of all, it’s impossible to get in, especially if you’re a group of 14 guys but luckily we were hooked up.

We get in and wander around the lounge a bit before heading upstairs to the club. Get up to the club and it was just wall-to-wall people. It was probably about a 2-to-1 guy/girl ratio but 50% of the ladies there were at least a 7 with more 8’s and 9’s than I’ve ever seen in one place. Go-go dancers were beyond hot and the dance floor was just insanely packed. Shoulder to shoulder, body to body. If you tried to make your way through the dance floor, some girls would grab you and some would grind on you. It was just an awful experience. Ok…maybe it wasn’t awful.

The balcony is a cool spot to hang out and grab a smoke. It’s pretty small so it can get crowded. They have waitresses come out there to sell you ready made shots. These girls were uber-hot…so of course we had to buy a round and have them come back for another.

Robert Hory was there that night as well. When I happened to see him, there were 3 blondes (all 10’s) fawning over him. His life must suck.

A few of us decided to leave the club after a few hours to play more poker. It’s always a good idea to sit down for a little NL holdem when you’re drunk off your ass.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a few 2-5NL tables going at 3:30am and got seated at the 10-seat. Average stack was $500 with the big stack ($2,500) at the 8-seat. Since I’m pretty shitfaced I figure I better buy in for only $300.

Notable hand #3: On the third hand after sitting down I look and find As-Ah on the button. 4 players limp in and I make it $40 to go. UTG and the big stack both call. Flop comes 2-4-9 rainbow. UTG checks and the big stack says, “I need to see where I’m at” and bets $60. I announce, “raise” and make it $200 total. UTG says, “all-in”. Big stack insta folds and I make the crying call for my last $50. Luckily for me, UTG limped in with Kings and not 9’s and I took down the pot when he didn’t improve. After the hand big stack said he laid down Queens which was a blessing since a Q spiked on the river.

Notable hand#4: UTG raises to $20. 9-seat calls and I call holding 8c9c. Flop comes 6s-7s-10h. UTG bets $50 and 9-seat calls. At this point I’m guessing UTG is holding a set or over pair and the 9-seat is holding an over pair or AK/AQ /AX spades. I make it $150 figuring a call from UTG and a fold from the 9-seat if he’s holding spades. UTG folds and 9-seat goes into the tank. After 30-40 seconds he shows 6h-6d and mucks it.

After the poker session I donked off a few hundred on BJ and Craps, got the eye from a couple of working girls at the circle bar then headed off to bed hoping to wake up in time for noon Casesar’s tournament on Saturday.

Day2 (Saturday): Woke up after 3-hours of sleep, showered and headed down to the Venetian pool to meet some of the fellas for breakfast. Despite being surrounded by beautiful, sweaty, half-naked women, I decided to skip breakfast because the heat at 11:00am was too much to bear.

Took a cab over to CP to play in the noon tourney. CP is a difficult place to navigate through if you've never been there, and it took me some time to finally find the poker room. Once there the cashier informs me that the noon tournament is at 2:00pm this week. No sweat...I'll just play a little 2-5NL utnil it starts.

I check out the suroundings and discover that they're filming part of the Vegas Open in the back of the poker room. Also running on the elevated section is a 300-600LHE game. I immediately recognize Eskimo Clark and Sean Sheikan. FWIW, Sean was the shortstack for the game.

Played the ring game for 2-hours. Most players seemed decent and only 2-players appreared really "donky". Ended up $130.00 without showing down a hand.

Notalbe hand #5: Euro Donk in the 1-seat limps in for $5 UTG. I call him a Euro Donk not because he was European but because he was a sunglass/headphone wearing donky player who happened to aslo be Euro. Anyway...I call from MP with Ac-Jc. Everyone else folds and the BB checks. Flop comes Ad-Jh-5s. BB checks and the Euro Donk bets $20. I call and the BB folds. Turn card is 9s. Euro Donk bets $50. I announce "all in" (he only had $150 left) to which the dealer repeats, "he's all in". Euro Donk passes his cards to the dealer. The dealer mucks the hand and begins to push me the pot. All of sudden Euro Donk freaks out and yells at the dealer, "What are you doing? He folded!" Turns out Euro Donk had A5 and thought I announced fold. Maybe the fact that I didn't push any chips and only did a hand gesture added to his confusion. Nonetheless, his headphone donkiness cost me $150. So of course as he's steaming away and asks me "What did you have?" I tell him, "J-5."

Tournament was fun. Blind structures were awesome. I made it about half way through and only had my starting stack of 5k when the following hand took place;

I'm the BB with A-Q off and the levels are 400/800. Button raises to 2000 and I move all-in for 5000. He's got me 2-to-1 on chips and says, "Don't want to, but I call" and turns over J-10. Flop comes Q-J-2. Turn card is a J and I'm out as the river was no help. Bummer.

Saturday night: Headed down to the circle bar around 10:00pm. The Venetian was simply packed with beautiful women most of which were headed to Tao. I probably come to Vegas around 7-8 times per year and I have never seen this many 8’s and 9’s. It was truly a good weekend to be in Vegas. We hit up a fair amount of girls (working girls and tourists) before heading out. Once outside we were confronted with a mile and a half long cab line. Slipped a bellman ten bucks and problem solved. Total wait time, 30-seconds.

We arrived at Red Rock around 10:30pm. For those of you who don’t know, Red Rock is a Station Casino (part of the Green Valley Ranch group of properties) and is simply awesome in appearance. A buddy had us hooked up with a cabana at the club so we were able to bypass the line and walked right in. The club itself is relatively small in scale and played mostly hip-hop. It seemed like a majority of the clientele were locals, which was ok by us as Vegas has some fine as locals. The cabanas by the pool were simply incredible. Waiting for us was a pitcher of Red Bull, pitcher of Tonic w/lime, bottle of Grey Goose and two bottles of 25-year old Macallan. Sweet!!! My only complaint is that they need to implement a better “cooling” system as the cabanas are outdoors.

After consuming all the booze and making ass with the locals we headed out. On the way out (4:00am) I stopped by the poker room to check it out. It's a nice looking room that's wide open. There were only a couple of 3/6LHE and one 1/2NL games running. Not enough action to warrant sitting down.

The house limo took half of us back to the Venetian for some late night poker.

There were two 2-5NL tables going and I was able to get a seat right away. Only 1 notable hand for the session which happened to be the 4th hand dealt after I sat down.

Notable hand#6: I’m UTG with $300, look down at Jh-Jc and limp in. Action goes…call, call, fold, raise to $40, fold, call, call. Small blind folds, big blind calls, I figure I should fold but the Macallan talks me into calling. The other two limpers call as well. That’s 7 players to the flop for $40!!! 5 of the 7 have me covered as well. Yikes…

At this point I’m wondering what type of flop do I want to see and wondering why I listened to the stupid drunk voice…

Flop comes Js-Jd-Kd. That’ll work…

BB checks to me and I bet $60 trying to entice a raise, figuring somebody out there has K’s. Believe it or not, only one person called out of the six remaining players and it wasn’t the original raiser. WTF?!?! Anyway, turn card comes Qd and I check. The guy pushes for his last $110 as he wasn’t one of those who had me covered, and I call. River is a meaningless 3s. The guy ends up showing AQ.

I guess I was lucky that 6 people called with trash and one guy pushed with crap but after the flop I thought I had a good chance to triple up.

Sometimes listening to the drunk voice pays off but that’s also the same guy that had me bluffing off all my money with 2s-3s against Aces on my last trip.

Overall it was blast of a trip. Didn’t play a ton of poker but got to play more than I thought I would and made out ok. Spent a [censored] load on drinks and “other” fun stuff and donked off around a dime on BJ and craps.

Can’t wait to go back…