26 June 2009

Well into the Vegas routine now, we head up to the Wynn to play in a $120 tournament with one $100 second chance rebuy needed.

The Baglady was out early (poor thing – she runs even worse than I do!) so she headed off to the Encore to see if there was a $10 Pai Gow Poker table there. There wasn’t, but she did come across John Duthie playing at a $25 table so stopped to rail and to chat.

John has a system to make it more interesting:

• if you win a bet, let it ride (i.e. play for double stake)
• if you win a second time, take the profit (i.e. still play a double stake)
• if you win a third time, or lose at any earlier point in the sequence, go back to the single stake.

Meanwhile back at the Wynn I’ve had an interesting game; there were only two decent players at my starting table, one a Brit who must be well known because Mad Marty Wilson wandered over to chat. But not so well known that I recognised him, obviously. It was fun listening to him ordering his drink:

“I want a cup of boiling water. Not just warm, BOILING. And I want a small jug of cold milk alongside it. Not warm, COLD.”

When it finally arrived, he ceremoniously took a tea bag out of his pocket and proceeded to make a nice cup of tea.

Ah, the Englishman’s perennial and futile search for a decent cup of tea in America!

I was quite happy with my play in this game, managed a few moves, unfortunately was still card dead, had to make a move too soon after our first table broke got looked up, raced and lost. Out on level 6, seems to be my favourite level.

Anyway, I wandered off to the Wynn to find the Baglady and then we headed off to the explore the Stratosphere tower. Now that’s a fantastic view from the top of the tower. It’s as good as the helicopter; okay you only get one perspective but you can spend as long as you like looking at it and picking out the landmarks. Definitely another must-do. But if you’re scared of heights it’s best not to look down:

But the views are terrific. Here’s one back down the Strip…

There are adventure rides at the top of the tower, but quite frankly we were both far too scared to even think about going on those!

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