We stood at Flamingo, my favorite casino to stay at in Vegas. I’ve stood there many, many times. I know, it’s old; there was one trip we stayed in an absolute shit room. I said we were done after that, but… they’ve fixed up the majority of the rooms now. Obviously, the pool is a big attraction, although with my son, we can’t get to the main, 21 & over pool. It’s still really nice. With the flamingos, turtles, and other birds hanging out, outside the casino, it’s so beautiful. The location, on the strip, it doesn’t get much better than that IMO. Finally, the gambling; I love to gamble there, especially in their poker room. So, you can understand when I tell you I was absolutely devastated when I found out that the Flamingo poker room was permanently shut down. That was a gut shot…
I walked over in the area it was located, and wandered around in disbelief. How? Why? The poker room at the Flamingo was one place that I was comfortable playing. It was completely chill. Plus, late night, nowadays, when the family is in the room, I like to gamble where I stay; I don’t need to be bouncing from casino to casino. I don’t need to be taking cabs back and forth. I want to walk my lazy ass downstairs, not step one foot outside, and sit down to gamble. Now, I couldn’t do this. I’ll tell you what; this makes me think our next trip to Vegas, we will be staying at a different casino. The guy told me I could play across the street at Caesar’s… yeah OK, but I DON’T WANT TO CROSS THE STREET!!! Haha…
I did though, that 2nd evening. I was hoping I had some mojo going, after my first session blues. The WSOP was going on, and as we walked through Bally’s to Paris earlier that day, I saw someone. I said, excuse me, excuse me… he stopped, and came back to take a picture with me, and then me and my son. It was Daniel Negreanu. He was cool as hell. Surely, this will translate to some poker luck this evening at Caesar’s.
I was planning on playing a cash game, but when I saw the midnight tournament was about to begin, I signed up. $100 ain’t bad. I was a bit down, a bit up… not making much progress, as I continued to drink my Coronas; the only one drinking at the table, what the F is that? I did make it to the break, where you could buy the same amount of chips for only $50. I asked some opinions on that, considering my short chip stack. I was told it wasn’t worth it; I was told to do it, since I had only X # of blinds left. Finally, in the bathroom, before we restarted, guy told me 110% to do it; he was of course $350 in already, but he told me, it’s a no brainer. So, I did it. A couple hands after that, I doubled up, and was on my way to the final table. I was still short stacked, but then got into a pretty big hand 3 way, with one player all in and the other player the chip leader. When he raised my bet after the flop with nothing but a straight draw, I contemplated folding; if I called, it would leave me with only 1K in chips. I called; I knew what the turn would hold, and for once, I was right. I straightened up, went all in; chip leader folded, he was bluffing. I won the pot, and moved up to either 2 or 3 in chip stacks. At that point, the table decided to 8 way chop; I wasn’t going to argue. I walked away with $500; not a bad night in the office.
From the gut punch that was finding out the poker room at the Flamingo closed, to the joy in actually winning something, actually being up for my trip halfway through heading back to the hotel room at about 330am, it was all good. Heck, I only have one more night to gamble; what could possibly go wrong?
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