Headed out to Vegas Wed 9/26 for a 5 day trip. Stayed 2 nights at Flamingo and 2 nights at Caesar's. I was taking my brothers out there for a belated 21st b-day. I arrived early that morning and had all day to bum around by myself before my brothers arrived. I hit up the 2pm tourney at TI. I had never been to the TI poker room and like how it was away from the main casino. There were 21 entries and I came in 8th(I think). No real memorable hands and I just never got enough chips to make a real move. That night I played a couple hours at Bally's (1/2 NL... the only game I played this trip). I found this room pretty loud as the casino is right there. This girl kept freaking out at the craps table right next to the room. I am sure it was over her winning 5 bucks or so and it got a bit annoying. It was boring session and I think I walked away down 20 bucks or so. The next day I played in a Mirage 115 dollar SNG. I am not by any means a great poker player, but I knew after 5 minutes that I had a good shot at winning. One thing that was really to my advantage was that they missed the 1st blind increase. Which meant we got a first blind level of 30 minutes instead of 15. That really helped accumulate some chips. Slowly I bluffed and won my way to the final 2. I had more than double the other player's stack. We agreed that if they could come back and tie it then we would split the winnings. So we played a couple of hands and I think I ended it on the 3rd hand heads up for a cool 700 bucks. Best hand of this SNG was when I flopped quad 10's and checked... then I got really lucky when the other guy hits his set of 3's on the turn giving him the full boat. Very lucky and basically won the tourney for me... Friday afternoon I hit up the MGM for some 1/2 nl. I won a couple hundred after a couple small pots and hitting a full house with my Q 10. I can't believe how busy that room always is... I lost a bunch outside of poker that night and played some 1/2 at Flamingo to try and make it back. Biggest hand was when I had (k,7 diamonds) and with 2 diamonds on the board the pot got pretty big when the river produced a 3rd diamond. Turned out the other guy also had pocket diamonds for a lower flush (8,5). So I walked away up a couple hundred from that session and was very happy. I played some more at Flamingo Saturday night and found pocket aces once which won me about 60. No other hands that session... Sunday afternoon I hit up Mirage for some 1/2 NL. I lost almost my whole stack the 2nd hand when the other guy hit a straight and I had 2 pair. I won most back when I pushed the rest of my chips in with A,K. The game was slow so I entered a 70 dollar SNG. Unlike the 115 dollar one which has 1500 starting chips the 70 dollar only had 1000. I figured I would be in plenty of trouble, but still enjoy playing in them. I lost 500 chips in the first 3 hands. Then for the next hour or so I played some of the best poker of my life. I turned 500 slowly into a lot of chips and got down to final 2. We instantly chopped the winnings and each took 300 bucks from the tourney.

So I guess If I ballparked it my poker winnings from this trip would be as follows:

TI - -60 in the tourney
Flamingo +300 1/2 NL
Bally's -40 1/2 NL
Mgm- +200 1/2 NL
Mirage -50 1/2 NL +815 sng's (mirage has 10 to a sng... says 9 in the tourney listings)
UP well over 1000 for the trip. After last year not playing much poker I promised to play lots more of it this trip. I did that and had better results that I could of imagined. I gave some back outside of the poker room, but still left Vegas with more than I came with and had a great time.

PEACE