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By Johnny, May 29, 2006 2:09 pm

The Memorial Day holiday brought a great opportunity to pay another visit to Las Vegas for the 3 days off. It was also a birthday celebration for Chanthou as well as a celebration for me being debt free. We left for Vegas Saturday morning and did not arrive until 5pm. The traffic wasn’t too bad. There was some delay’s on the way to Hesperia, but it was negligible considering we did not experience major traffic from that point on.

I played some craps and a $50 1-2 NL game when we got there. Unfortunately lost about $150 before we even went to eat dinner. We enjoyed a nice dinner at an Asian noodle place in the Hilton (our hotel). Did some saki bombs and saki shots for Chanthou’s birthday. After dinner I went back to the 1-2 NL game and bought in for another $50. At the end of the night I walked away with $377. So I was up $177. We spent the next morning eating dim-sum in Chinatown Las Vegas. Because I had won the night before, I decided to give everyone a treat and paid for the bill. We then went to see a magic show at the Tropicana hotel. This was my first Las Vegas show I’ve ever experienced. The show was okay and I’ve always enjoyed watching magic so it was a good experience.

After we finished the show, we went back to the hotel. Rich and I decided to lay-out at the pool. It was nice. The pool was cold and the weather carried a breeze towards the end of our 2 hours out in the sun. I did get a bit of color, but nothing to really brag about.

We get back up to the hotel room and discovered that the girls had received comp dinner at our hotel for signing up with a player’s club card. Sweet! We stuffed ourselves with all sorts of buffet food. There was even free alcohol at the buffet.

After dinner, we went to see Fremont Street, the original “Las Vegas Strip” in Downtown Las Vegas. I really liked it there. It was also a first time for me being there. We settled down at the Binions Hotel and played some craps. Lost another $140 there. We left Fremont at 11pm and went back to our hotel. Obviously I had to visit the card room once again after the successful night I had before. With the initial $50 buy-in, I had slowly accumulated about $650 and became big stack in a matter of 5-6 hours. Unfortunately, I had lost $400 in a matter of 2 hands afterwards. The second place chip-leader had busted me with a set of Q’s. We actually both had Q’s and I thought I was good since my cards were Q-10. Unfortunately, he had Q-A. That hurt. I grinded out my last $200 for another 3 hours until I lost it all. I rebought w/another $100 and played all the way till 5am this morning. I lost it on busted up flush draw against another Q top pair. The cool part about both poker nights, I came across a couple of regulars who were very receptive of me. The first night I had an older gentleman who joked around with me and told me all the regulars that played with us that night along with their style of play. This morning, the guy who beat me w/top pair Qs shook my hand and said, “I’ll see you in the circuit.” He thinks that I play professionally! A great confidence booster to a down weekend. At the end of the trip, I had only spent $300 of the $600 I brought. Not bad considering I had treated for dim-sum and paid for other expenses besides gambling.