Day 7: Poker time

It’s a week into the trip and so I’ve finally started to play a little poker.

My original plan was that I wanted to concentrate on no-limit hold’em and clock up 100 hours at the table playing either $1/$2 or $1/$3 (whichever was offered at a particular casino) and hope that it might start to give me an idea of whether I can actually make money in that game.

However, after spending three days out of town this week after dealing with the initial jet-lag, that target is going to be a little more difficult to achieve than I first thought.

A hundred hours is still hardly a substantial sample size, but it would double my career total number of hours at the table.

My records show (and god bless my PDA-phone for this knowledge) that I’ve played 96 hrs, mostly from my last 4 trips, and that I do have a winning record this far.

Beating the lowest limit tourist game in town for a modest amount isn’t exactly something to write home about, however I’m hoping to get a bit more reassurance that I’m doing something right before I even consider taking a shot in a bigger game.

So far I’ve played a massive 5 hours: 2 hours at Excalibur on Friday night after we got back from California and 3 hours last night at MGM Grand.

Both times I was amazed at how little traffic there was around the Strip on the weekend. It took just fifteen minutes to leave the house, park in the Excalibur’s garage and get my name on the waiting list on Friday night!

Coming in the same direction last year, it would often take fifteen minutes of queueing in traffic just along Tropicana Ave just to approach the Strip.

Parking at one of those hotels can sometimes be impossible without a room key, but I sailed straight into the Tropicana valet on Saturday, no problems at all.

Even if you’re staying on the Strip, it can take fifteen minutes to get from your hotel room to a poker table…

The slump in tourism and raging gas prices have some advantages.

Anyway, so far, I’m up an impressive $32. Expect a graph to follow shortly.