After taking a week to recover I'm finally writing up the trip report. Foward to checking bags in at Midway airport in Chicago.

It's about 2 pm on Sunday, the Southwest airline check in line is fairly short, about 10-12 people, we quickly check in and proceed to find the restrooms. Present at this point in the trip are my good buddy Marc, his girlfriend Stephanie, and my cousin Matt. We are meeting up with the rest later.

I've made it pretty clear to the rest of my crew that I'm going to vegas to play poker, and everyone seems to have their own agenda. (getting drunk, getting married, getting the hell out of Sycamore, etc...)

After reading the stories of the tiltboys from tiltboys.com, I've decided that the best plan of attack is to stay Six Sigmas Out all weekend.

SIDENOTE (from tiltboys.com): [There are] rare individuals who live on the far right hand side of the normal distribution for luck meted out over one's lifetime. The consensus is that they are actually about six sigmas out. A sort of statistical singularity, if you will. ]

Since being in Vegas, and planning on playing a bit of poker, and already suffering the most demeaning suck-outs ever from Party fishes, I figured it's time to find where Six Sigmas out is and firmly plant my ass there for the duration of the week.

The flight out was normal, although we didn't get seats together due to our boarding passes (no assigned seats on Southwest), we were the last group to board.

The flight crew was amusing and friendly, and informed us how to survive a water landing should the situation arise between Chicago and Las Vegas, (I wrote it down just for future reference).

I was able to reread the good parts of Championship Satelite Strategy during the flight. Also, I've rerealised that my Ipod is my best friend during public commutes.

(Before I left I ripped the entire audio of the movie Rounders and put it on my Ipod.)

We touched down on time and proceeded to look for our baggage, on the way off the plane I was joking around with Marc and was talking to some guy about taking bets about who's bags would come out first. I circled Marc just for spite, and to test the guy to see if he knew about the tiltboys, since they bet on that kind of stuff too.

Marc thought we should catch a shuttle but for 4 people going to the Luxor, it was only going to be $15 or so and I didn't feel like waiting for the shuttles.

We grabbed the cab and had a good conversation with the driver who was from Southern Illinois. We passed a guy holding a sign that said "Why lie? I need beer".

We got to the Luxor, and I waited to check in, which took about 20-30 minutes. We put our stuff in the room and decided to go look for Matt who took an earlier flight and was supposed to meet us in the casino.

My cousin Matt and I went down to find him. After walking around the casino several times, I get a familiar cry of "Thirty Three, Hard Six" and turned around to find Matt at the craps table..... wait for it.....

up about a grand.

I got on and promptly lost $50, enough of that, Matt went back to the room and put his bags away.

I signed up for the 8:30 $25 buyin Tournament at the Luxor.

The rooms were nice and clean, everything was themed like Egyptian tombs. The view was good, and we were on the 18th floor, so it was very cool looking over the balcony as well.

We all went down to the Pyramid cafe for some dinner/breakfast/keno action. Waiting in line with 100's of Drunken Nascar Fans who just left the Nextel Cup rac. We all went in on a Keno ticket for $1 each and broke even, then won $10 on the second try. I had some excellent pancakes and make it to the 8:30 tournament with 3 minutes to spare thanks to an excellent waitress who rushed my order.

I finished 12th or so, Matt made it to the final table, and had to post the BB forcing him to go all in on the first hand. He actually hit top pair but someone hit a flush by the river and he would have had kicker problems anyways.

The tournament structure is kind of lame anyways T300 for $25 and extra T50 for $3 dealer toke before the tourney begins.

I won the first hand with 99, and the only other hand I won was with 99 later on. After that the blinds went up faster than I could catch cards, my final AJ allin lost to 55.

Afterwards we meet up with Amanda and Adam who had flown in later. Then Marc and Steph went out and the rest of us started walking up the strip, I ended up playing a 2/4 kill game at the Monte Carlo that saw some great action.

Best hand: I get AA and the flop comes A99. There's tons of action, betting is capped on the turn, and I take down a $100+ pot in a 2/4 game (kill was not active in this hand) mostly from the lady with the K9 who made a boat on the turn. She had caught a royal flush 20 mins before that (using only 1 card, no jackpot).

I played several hours. Then we kept walking up the strip. Played some Pai-Gow poker at Barbary coast. I won $40 playing craps there as well.

We stopped by the Flamingo (where I stayed in October) Matt hit some bonus mode on a nickel slot machine, won like 45 free spins, and won 900+ nickels ($45+)

I made my way to the Bellagio to play their $100 ($1/2 blinds)buyin NL cash game. I found out it was changed to $200 ($2/4 blinds) on thursday, lame. I played anyways, folded for about 15 minutes until I got QJo in mid position in an unraised pot. I limped in, and the flop came KQJ, I checked then called a $50 bet a Q came off on the turn. I bet out $50 and was called.

At this point my stack in down to $75 and there's about $330 in the pot. The river is a rag, and I'm heads up with a guy that has a rack of $700+ infront of him (meaning he won at least $400 of that. I'm a bit worried about him holding KQ, so I check to him, he takes a long time deciding, and finally checks showing my a q9, I take it down, and the table gives me quite a bit of crap about not betting my hand.

I feel I played ok, I was worried about being beat and I hadn't gotten a good read on the big stacks at that point. Plus, I figured I'd push all in If I was bet into on the river, (I did have a boat).

I played a couple hours longer, at one point I get QQ, 2 off the button. UTG raises to $30, there's 3 callers, I bump it up to $125, the player 1 to my left (who has around $1500) raises it about $525 the button finally calls. The rest all fold.

Board is J 10 8 - 2 - 9 rainbow. The raiser shows down KK, the button (who I beat with the Boat) shows AQ and takes down the thousdand dollar pot with the Q high straight. (I would have split it with him)

Finally I left at 8 am, with $202 in chips. I kept the chips so I would have to come back to play again.

Got to bed by 9am, and got 3 hours of sleep. Day 1 complete. (And 9 hrs of day 2)

To be continued.


--Chris Falco