Fun in Sin City

Back from a long weekend in Vegas; once again, we had a fantastic time. Here's a video I shot of the view from our hotel room:



The food highlight was Mix, situated on the 64th floor of the Mandalay Bay. The food was great, but it was not the best meal I have ever had, and I am not sure it was worth the price. I think we were paying for the ambience more than the food. On the entertainment front, we saw The Producers, "starring" David Hasselhoff. I will give him credit; he went for it, and the show was more entertaining because of it. I took a small ironic pleasure in the idea that The Hoff may end up alienating some of his German fans by playing a gay Hitler. As far as gaming went, I managed to play hours of poker every day, and was pleased with how I did. I played in five tournaments; I made the final table in three of them, and won one of them. In addition to the money, they gave me a souvenir chip that says "First Place" on it; that may have to be my card protector at our next home game. In addition to the tournaments, I sat down at three different cash games and played for a couple hours each time. When you add up the money I won, minus all of the buy-ins, I ended up losing $30 over three days and probably 12+ hours of play. Not bad at all.

Our trip to Vegas inadvertently overlapped with the NBA All Star game; fortunately, we were not exposed to any of the ugliness that we heard about, both through the media and word-of-mouth from cabbies and hotel workers (apparently the casinos are still very good at suppressing news that may have a negative effect on tourism). The short version of what we heard seemed to go like this:

• If you live in Las Vegas, made money due to the game being in town, BUT didn't have to be anywhere near the actual game/city/people, then you probably loved the event.

• If you live in Las Vegas, tried to make money on the game, AND had to actually be there to do so, you probably hated the event (and, according to three separate cab drivers, probably made less money than you would during a typical weekend without the influx of people).

What I know is that there were an extra 300,000 people in the city over and above the normal amount of tourists (which, given that it was a holiday weekend and Chinese New Year...Gung Hay Fat Choy, by the way...is already a lot), so it was hard to get a hotel room, a cab, and dinner reservations. Good thing we planned ahead.

As usual, we had a great time, and as usual, it is good to get out of Vegas after a couple days. That way, in a couple months, I'll be ready to go back.