I had a business trip to Vegas this week and I knew going into it I wasn't going to particularly enjoy vegas. I'm not a gambler, I could be if I wanted to, but part of me is just too cheap. I think to myself as I'm giving money to Casinos, "I could have bought a tv with that, or a new cd, or had a V8..."
I took some cash and played Pai Gow Poker, which if you've never played and you're going gamblin, you need to play Pai Gow Poker (Poker not the dominos, dominos is too hard). It is by far the best game you can play without losing your money in an instant... well I mean you can lose your money in an instant, but generally the odds are you won't.
Basically its two hand poker, you get 7 cards, and make the best five hand and 2 hand you can and if your two hands are better than the dealers two hands you win... if the dealer beats one of your hands you push and if the dealer beats both, well, your out. Plus its one deck and seats 5 i think and they deal out five hands (plus dealer) regardless of how many people play. So the odds are pretty good that the dealers not goin to have 4 aces or whatever. The only trick is the five hand has to be better than the two hand.
So i have two pair lets say, two 10s and two aces (a good hand in pai gow), i have to put the the two 10s up top and leave the 2 aces in my five hand. Though you can try and play around and keep both pairs in your 5 hand and put junk up in the 2 hand and just hope your junk is better than the dealers.
But another cool aspect of the game for novices like myself... you can ask your neighbor, the dealer, or your buddy who isn't even playing what to do. you can show all your cards and get a poll of what you should do. The dealers going to tell you what the house would do, so at the very least you'll push, if you try to get creative and go against the house you'll probably get burned.
So anyway that was one game i played and it was fun. A buddy of mine went up 500 bucks pretty quick and then proceeded to lose it all by nights end.
One thing that I can't stand though is the smoking, i had bloody noses from all the cigarette smoke and what not. That was one thing I liked about Mohegan Sun and the Indian casinos up in Conneticut was they were smoke free and would have a small smoking section. Vegas seems to be the opposite.
My company was at the Venetian which i must say was the nicest hotel I've ever stayed... and I've been to the Ritz. 3 plasma tvs in my room, huge bathroom with travertine tile showers, sunken living room with a view of the strip, it was nice. Granted I spent about 6 hours a day in my room... including sleeping time.
We were in conferences all day and basically had our nights free to do as we please, Sunday and Monday night. Sunday was an open bar night so I took advantage of that and then called it a night thinking it was real late... it was 11 o clock vegas time... the time change killed me though so i was dead tired. The next night I just wasn't up for much and just wanted to crash and did.
Blizzard Entertainment was having their global strategy meeting while we were there and I tried sneaking into their conference but I stood out as i was not 500 pounds and a complete dork... only a partial one. It looked kind of boring too, they weren't playing warcarft, diablo, or star craft.
It was a good time but glad to be back, its just not my type of place. A little too much sin/skin for my tastes. The night I packed it in early my buddy asked me why I was going to bed and I told him, "Frankly the women here are too distracting and I just don't want to see what I'm seeing." Not trying to be pious or anything but it was pretty surprising what people can get away with wearing these days.
I find it funny that companies have so many conferences in Vegas. They expect us to pay attention and attend all the meetings in one of the most distracting places in the world.
The only regret I had was I didn't walk up and down the strip at all. I mean I didn't really have time unless I wanted to late at night and by that time I was too tired for walking. But my company's going back there next year so if I'm still employed then i can go then.
Posted by holtonian at September 26, 2007 12:47 PM