7 Days in Vegas

Vegas 2010 – Supercross Finals at Sam Boyd Stadium

August 23rd, 2010 | Category: 7 Days in Vegas | Print This Post | Email This Post | Leave a comment

Things I Want To Do On My Next Vegas Trip

I still feel like a rookie when it comes to Vegas, I’ve been there twice now, for a week each time and I feel like I’ve only experienced maybe 10-20% of what Vegas has to offer.

As luck would have it, I get another chance to visit and cross a few more items off my Vegas to-do list.

On that list:

Play in the 7pm No limit poker tournament at Venetian.
Visit M Resort – didn’t know about this place until recently, reviews look good, might take the drive down the highway to check it out.
Bellagio buffet – Heading there on the first day for the lunch buffet, can’t wait!
Rent a Harley for the day – This is on my to-do list, it costs a lot so we’ll see how we do at the tables first.

UPDATE – April 27th

Only 10 days to go till Vegas, I’m starting to get more exciting each day especially with the weather here today in Ottawa.

Some more items have been added to my to do list including:

Dinner at Vic and Anthonys
3 rounds of golf
Outlet mall shopping
Vinnie Favorito comedy show

2010 Vegas Countdown – 80 Days

Time to get back in to the Vegas spirit, my next trip is already being planned for a 7 day trip to Vegas with my family on May 7th, 2010.

Already booked my tickets for the final round of the Monster Energy AMA Supercross Finals at Sam Boyd Stadium and I’m glad I booked early because they are already sold out 12 weeks before the race.

I was at this event last year and it was the best supercross I have ever been too. I have been following the Supercross series closely this season in anticipation for a great season finale in Las Vegas.

2010 Supercross standings after week 6: (from Supercrossonline.com)

Dungey 123 pts – Hill 123 pts – Villipoto 120 pts

I’m cheering for Dungey to take the title, and to do it in his rookie year would be very impressive.

Ricky Carmichael and Ryan Dungey signing autographs in Vegas

Vegas 2009 Trip Report – Day Eight – Golf at Silverstone, Flight Home

After my gambling budget was dealt a fatal blow, I woke up for our last day in Vegas with a round of golf to look forward to at. During the day before I had booked a last minute round of golf through tix4golf.com and got a great last minute deal for a round at Silverstone Golf Club, a 27 hole championship golf facility with some fine desert golf.

The course was about a 25 minute drive from Excalibur so you would likely need a rental car if you are going to playing here and staying on the strip.

Total cost for 2 green fees, 2 sets of rentals (Callaway X22 Irons and Diablo woods) and power cart: $140USD.

I think we teed off around 2:00pm and it seemed like we had the course to ourselves. This was a fun course to play with nice conditions and I would recommend it to anyone for $70pp all in (green fees, rentals, cart).

The course was nice, probably a 7/10 by Vegas standards but for me it was a great experience. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

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Vegas 2009 Day Seven – Gambling on Fremont, Shopping

It was Day Seven and I still had a good portion of my gambling budget in tact. I really wanted to hit up downtown and cash in at the tables. I thought it would be a good idea to go test my luck down on Fremont St playing Roulette, Baccarat and No Limit Texas Hold Em Poker. Spent about 2 hours digging myself into a hole and some bad beats at the tables put me into a terrible mood.

After losing $140 at Binions on Roulette I walk over to the Nugget and drop $160 on Baccarat in about 5 minutes. Starting to go on tilt at this point and decide that I’m gonna go play some Texas Hold Em where the outcome is more in my control. I walk over to Fitz where my friend is still grinding it out on the roulette table and head up the escalator to the poker area upstairs. I buy in to the $1-2 NL Table for $75 and quickly piss away about $25-30 of it before I pick up AA. I put in a raise before the flop to $6 and get 4 callers. Flop comes Q, rag, rag so I get a $15 bet out there only to get re-raised all-in so I get all in with AA vs KQ and turn come K river rag. and this lucky old man busts me out of the game. I then get so pissed off that I head down to the cashier and convert the last of my Canadian money and head back upstairs to register in the Poker tournament about to start. Maybe I could redeem myself but after playing for about 45 mins I get knocked out of the tournament by the same old man who picks up AA against my JJ and ends up busting me out of the game once again. As I’m getting up to walk away he chimes in “Nice playing with ya…” At this point I’m about to explode. I’m down somewhere between $300-$400 so I decide to cut my losses since we are almost out of money we end up going to the local Walmart grocery store to get some beer and snacks to go back and chill at the hotel.

A little bit different than our first trip to Vegas when we had tons of money to blow, but you win some and you lose and it all boils down to luck sometimes but we at least played it smart and booked a round of golf for the final day.

Vegas 2009 Day Six – Relaxing, Gambling, Cheap Eats

Day Six (Monday) was a day set out for gambling, sightseeing and relaxing. By the end of the day it turned out to be a full day of gambling and some cheap eats around town. We woke up after an uncomfortable sleep in our medieval beds at Excalibur and headed down to the in house McDs for breakfast. Large Double Double and a Sausage McMuffin is a great way to recover from a long night of drinking in Vegas. I had to keep remembering when I order coffee in the morning that they don’t know what a double double is so you have to say large coffee with 2 cream and 2 sugar and then repeat yourself two or three times until they figure it out. Weird, I thought double double was a universal code for ordering coffee but it must be some weird Canadian thing.

After I score my McDs I go and sit in the Kripy Kreme area in Excalibur to score some free wi-fi internet service. I still don’t understand why every hotel in Vegas charges $14/day for internet. It seems like a matter of time before some outsider (Google) comes in and broadcasts free Wi-Fi throughout the entire city. Why not give out free Wi-Fi and have sponsored ads all over it. You already have taxi billboard advertising in Vegas so it seems like a natural progression.

After breakfast I head back up to the tower to get ready for the day. The plan was to go win some money playing Baccarat at South Point then head over to the Hard Rock for some NL Texas Hold Em. We ended up glued to the tables at South Point from about 3pm-midnight drinking Miller Chill’s and having a good old time. Ended up losing a bit of my bankroll at first then fighting my way back up to even for the session. We even took a break after losing a few hands to release our anger on the bowling pins at the Bowling Center on the second level of the hotel.

Vegas 2009 Day Five – Gambling at South Point, Check in at Excalibur

Day five was a relaxation day and time to have a little fun down on the casino floor. We had a 12 noon checkout time at South Point and woke up on Sunday morning, checked out and loaded our luggage in the car. Then we went back into the Casino and played Baccarat for a good 5-6 hours. The Baccarat at South Point was the best Baccarat I have played in Vegas, they have several tables running and they have great drink service.

After an afternoon on the tables we decided to head up to our final hotel destination which was Excalibur on the South end of the Strip. I had purposely booked the low end rooms @ $39/night hoping that we could do the $20 Sandwich Trick for a free upgrade but I failed miserably in my first attempts and we ended up in the medieval rooms with a semi-strip view. You can read about my attempt at the $20 sandwich trick here.

Once we got checked in at Excalibur we decided to do a little casino wandering heading through Luxor down to Mandaley Bay and back.

Some photos from Day 5:

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Vegas 2009 Day Four – Monster Energy Supercross Finals at Sam Boyd Stadium

The highlight of the trip was the day at the Monster Energy Supercross finals at Sam Boyd Stadium. I had been to the supercross in Detroit and Toronto before but never the series finals in Las Vegas. The race was spectacular with Ryan Villipoto winning the race and the Toyota truck. Chad Reed came 2nd after taking a good charge at James Stewart who held on to 3rd place which was enough to clinch the championship. Another great year of Supercross racing capped off with a great final race. I was equally impressed with the pit party before the races which allow the fans inside access to see the riders getting ready for the races in the pits.

The day started in our room at South Point. We saved a ton of money by staying off strip for Fri/Sat nights, and by going to the Supercross races we saved lots of money by not being around the casinos all day too!

Many Photos from the 2009 Vegas Supercross and Pit Party:

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Vegas 2009 Day Three – Meeting The Stars of Supercross

Photos from Day Three:

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Vegas 2009 Day Two – Gambling on Fremont, Outlet Malls, LA Comedy Club

Day Two: Gambling on Fremont, Outlet Malls, LA Comedy Club.

9:00am: The day started out way too early and we were still running on Eastern time. We get up around 9am and head out only to find everything is closed. I guess 9am is the crack of dawn in Las Vegas because everyone is up all night partying. So we head to McD’s for breakfast just south of Mandalay Bay and notice this is the first McD’s I’ve ever been to with flowers in it as if they were trying to be a fancy steakhouse or something. What a joke, the fast food places in Las Vegas are like night and day from Canadian fast food. I can’t believe how expensive the coffee is in the States, it’s more expensive than beer. For some reason I can get 18 beer for $15 in Vegas but it’s $2 for a large coffee at McDs….it really makes my blood boil. I’ll just start drinking Miller’s for breakfast I guess.

Vegas Breakfast

11:00am: Alright, time to head down to dirty old Fremont and start raking in the cash hand over fist. At least that’s what our intentions were is to go win a couple hundred so we could get show tickets or a cool trip somewhere. Head on up the highway to the Golden Nugget, Valet the car and get ready to throw down a few bucks on the baccarat table. Used a baccarat money management system I have been reading about and it’s nothing to write home about but I was able to turn $100 into $180 in about 45 minutes of playing very selective baccarat. I find the Baccarat at the Nugget fun and fair. The shoe’s don’t go on crazy streaks and they always shuffle the cards by hand before each shoe so It feels more authentic to me.

12:00pm: Go cashout at the Nugget and head on out to Fremont St to see what’s going on. I stand and watch as a street artist does a few paintings with spray paint and sells them to tourists.

Fremont St Spraypaint Artists

After watching this guy for a while I hit the road and walk over to Binion’s to catch up to my friend who is kicking some butt at the roulette table with his free match play coupon you get when you take a picture with the Million Dollar display.

Some more photos from Day Two:

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