Week five begins with my housemate Michael leaving to see if things work out with the girl he met in Vegas. People find love in strange places, so who knows 
Unfortunately, this leaves me without a laptop at home so with my internet access restricted to net kiosk terminals at the Flamingo, my blog has been without an update for some time.
Over the past week, I played in three major tournaments; in the first, a $550 VDS event, I chip up to 3x the starting stack before running three of a kind into a full house to go broke with ~20% of the field left.
In the second, another $550 VDS event, I 4bet shove with AK over a 3bettor’s JJ in the early mid-stages, get called, lose the flip for a 2x average stack to head to the rail.
The 1k Caesars Megastack Main Event is more interesting; we start 1000bb deep, I chip up from 50k to 60k quite easily before bluffing off 30k in a sick spot where I felt villain would fold top pair in a spot where my range is 80% nuts 20% air (I had air, obviously), unfortunately my read of villain is off and he makes the call with A5 for top pair no kicker on the river in a monster pot, knocking me down to 30k.
I find my way back to 120k without a major showdown by steamrolling the table as the blinds go up because everyone at my table seems to be weak-tight. During the last level of Day 1, I get moved to a more aggressive table and with about 20 minutes of play left, I have a brain implosion and elect to 4bet all in with 77 for about 45bb when I get 3bet by a laggy guy who has been playing like a maniac; unfortunately he wakes up with QQ and snaps me off to send me to the rail.
Other highlights this week include watching UFC 100 at a bar; we arrive just in time to watch Brock Lesnar beat the hell out of Frank Mir in a completely one sided bout. The UFC diehards hate it and the bar erupts in boos. I love it. That’ll teach the UFC fanboys to knock ‘fake wrestlers’. Frank Mir, you just got knocked the fuck out. Fun times.
A few days later, a friend I met named Joe decides that he wants to put a team of myself, James (a friend from Melbourne) and Adam (a random online player I became friends with in Vegas) into the $1680 WSOP Dream Team Poker event at the Rio.
Unfortunately, James and Adam both get coolered early in AK vs JJ and AK vs AA spots to bust and i’m left flying the flag alone with no chance of recovering any share of the team portion of the prize pool.
I eliminate one of the ‘Maven VT’ guys (their whole operation is ridiculous) to chip up early when my QQ flops a set against KK during the first level super deep (about 5% of the stacks went in pre) and he check-raises all in on the turn giving me a free doubleup. He gives me a speech about how bad I play. The Maven likes to teach his players to trap themselves, apparently.
I hover around the 2-3x starting stack mark for a while, encountering neverwinpoker.com’s Bryan Micon to my left at one stage and 2007 WSOP Main Event Winner Jerry Yang on my table at another stage. I actually bust Jerry Yang when my KK holds against his 75s all in preflop, although to be fair he did have under 1bb. Regardless, the structure eventually degenerates into a crapshoot and the average stack is about 12bb as we approach the bubble.
I get moved from the button to the BB three times in about 10 hands as my table breaks three times in under five minutes. This completely cripples my stack since I can’t find hands to defend my blinds or spots to steal and i’m left open shoving my way back from 7bb to 10bb before I jam 75o into AQo and fail to get there against a trash talking European guy. This leaves me with 1bb, I double up in the big blind but then bust a couple of hands later when I get all in for about 3bb in a five way pot with some random suited connector and fail to get there. I end up finishing about 60th, lol donkaments etc.
I spent my first night at Caesars Palace since the guys all have rooms there and i’m too lazy to walk home after a session one night; Caesars is definitely a world class property. I lose my shirt in the pool area somehow, along with the hat I got Micon to sign for a friend back home and my Team Obnoxious Jerks jersey from Dream Team Poker. When I told Micon during the Teams Event that I promised to bring ‘Hed1′ back some signed NWP gear and Hed1 responded with ‘don’t be a homo’, Micon insists on giving me a signed hat and shirt to give to him ‘with love’.
I spent the rest of the week playing cash (and actually winning a few buyins) and hanging out with friends from Crown including James, Brendan and Chris and some other guys I met on the trip, Joe, Seth and Adam. We have a lot of fun and decide that a few of us might meet up in Macau for the AAPT event next month.
My last night in Vegas is where the trip finally gets a little more interesting. I start out losing a buy-in playing cash while we wait for James to wake up (it’s about 9pm at this stage) at Imperial Palace. He finally arrives and James, Brendan, Chris and I head out to ‘Moon’, a club at Palms.
Moon is awesome with good music, only slightly overpriced drinks, plenty of drunk hotties (and some not-so-hotties including one girl who walked up to me at the bar, grabbed my ass and tried to pick me up using ‘oops, I didn’t mean to grab your ass, i’m so sorry, let me make it up to you, blah blah blah’.
Unfortunately, she’s not my type. James has a little bit of luck with a slim brunette from Melbourne (a solid 
whose name escapes me but her blonde friend cockblocks him and the half-hearted attempts to wing by Chris, Brendan and I fail miserably as the blonde chick ruins his chances by dragging her friend out of the club.
The view from the top of Palms is pretty awesome (see pics in my thread at the forums), we stand around drinking for a while with an awesome view of the strip on the balcony at the club and discussing life, the universe and everything.
After a couple hours, James and I decide that we’re going to the Spearmint Rhino as neither of us have been to a strip club in Vegas and it’s my last night in town and James is also leaving in a few days.
It’s now about 3:30am and the night is just beginning. Chris has met a new friend, a young African American guy who tells me his name is ‘Gizmo’. He offers to give us a lift to the strip club and the four of us accept. On the way, he says if we want value for money from strippers he has a friend who works as a stripper and we should go around to her place and ‘follow his lead’. Intrigued, we accept this offer and purchase a carton of Coronas at a service station before heading off for what is sure to be an adventure. Let it ride.
A few minutes later, we find ourselves entering a condo in a gated community south of Mandalay Bay. The five of us walk in to the condo (it’s about 4:30am) and find a fairly attractive blonde woman sitting topless on the couch. Wait, what?
She introduces herself as ‘Isabelle’ and confims that she is indeed a stripper ‘who also does sex shows’. Okay then. She seems to be friendly with Gizmo but the nature of their relationship remains a mystery for now.
Isabelle asks what we’re here for and Gizmo tells her that we should all have a gang bang. She seems to be pleased with this idea, but Chris and Brendan both seem very much not fine with this idea. While drunk, James and I haven’t reached that stage of intoxication yet. I mention to her that James and I have both never had a lap dance (true in both cases) and I offer to buy James a lap dance.
She waves away the money, grabs a blanket from another room and sets it down on the floor, instructing James to lie down. Isabelle strips down to a G-string and grinds away on him then takes his shirt off and starts taking off his pants. James finds this a little bit awkward with the rest of us sitting there in a random stripper’s living room instead of the VIP area where this kind of debauchery is supposed to be taking place.
Suddenly, she stops and says it’s my turn. She comes over to me and does goes through the same routine on the couch, then out of nowhere pulls my *ahem* equipment out and asks if I mind. I laugh it off and tell her i’d rather not go any further with my friends in the room here.
Gizmo offers everyone some… let’s call it white powder to ‘loosen us up’. We elect not to partake since illicit substances are not our scene. Isabelle goes back to randomly giving lap dances to all four of us for whatever reason and when it’s my turn, she grabs me and pulls me into the bedroom, much to the amusement of James, Brendan and Chris.
Okay, i’m not complaining. This is where the TMI principle kicks in (too much information, as if he hadn’t crossed that threshold already) so we’ll skip ahead a few minutes.
Let’s just say this is quickly becoming my most enjoyable night in Vegas to date. We do our thing for maybe 15-20 mins and as we’re finishing up, Gizmo knocks on the door and asks if I would like to ‘do some DP with her since the others don’t seem to be up for a gang bang’. Wait, what?
If you don’t know what DP is, consult urbandictionary.com but you’re probably better off not knowing. She encourages me to but I politely decline and we head back out into the lounge to drink more beer. Isabelle invites James into the other room but he declines. Chris and James still want to get to a strip club and I have a couple hundred American dollars left in my wallet to burn before my flight.
Gizmo heads into the bedroom to do whatever with Isabelle. After a few more minutes (it’s now about 5:30am) we tell Gizmo through the door that we’re going to get a taxi and head to a strip club and thanks for an interesting night but we’re heading off.
We go to leave but as we’re walking out to get a taxi, Gizmo races to the door and tells us he’s happy to drop us off at a club. Isabelle the stripper decides to stay behind.
Around 6am, we walk into the Penthouse Crazy Horse III club (it’s called something like that, I was fairly drunk). We realise that this isn’t the Rhino, but Gizmo tells us the Rhino is overrated, so whatever.
I tell everyone it’s my round (it is) and instead of ordering drinks, I tell everyone to choose a girl since i’m buying a round of lap dances. There are only four girls in the club and one customer at the bar, a few security/bar guys and, well, us.
The strippers quickly flock over to the drunk 20-something cashed up poker players like bees to honey. Poker players are the fish at strip clubs. James takes a liking to his girl so I buy him a dance and tell her to take good care of him since it’s the first time he’s had a lap dance in a strip club (technically still true since our ‘Isabelle’ experiences did not occur in a strip club).
James’ girl is about 5′8 with a perfect body and light brown hair. She’s a solid 9 in the club, although who knows since strip clubs do provide an environment in which gentleman can… overlook flaws. Not to mention the many Coronas I have consumed.
I find girls for Brendan and Chris then figure that since it’s a round i’ll get one for myself as well. I decide on a girl named ‘Isis’ (lol, stripper names) who tells me she is from the Phillippines. At this point, I am convinced that she is as close to a 10 as i’m going to find, not just at the strip club but possibly ever.
After our dances, we find that James has disappeared into the ‘VIP Area’, no doubt to have his wallet emptied, among other things. An hour passes and still no sign of James. I purchase an $8 bottle of water which I figure is a fair price for 300mL. It isn’t even Fiji Water. Eventually, Brendan and I send Chris in to the VIP Room to find James. Chris returns a few minutes later and says that James’s response when he entered his VIP Room was ‘fuck off’.
A blonde stripper who seems to have noticed that i’m the only person spending money in the club and therefore an easy mark asks me if I think her boobs are real or fake. I tell her it’s hard to tell with her shirt on but if I have to guess i’ll go with real. She strips down to her bra and asks me whather I can tell yet. It’s a legitimately tough call and I stick with my original answer. She then gets topless and asks me if i’d like to feel them to help me make my mind up. She isn’t quite as hot as the other strippers but she does seem to have perfect breasts. I oblige and eventually tell her I think they’re either real or the best fakes i’ve ever seen (this is an honest answer). She hugs me, tells me she loves me and then wanders away when she realises i’m not spending any money. My heart breaks, although not that much, since Isis is sitting on my lap again trying to convince me to go to the VIP area. I never find out whether they’re real or fake. Maybe Brendan did, since he got a lap dance from her.
Eventually, James and his girl emerge and I dare to ask how much he spent; he says it was $100 and the best $100 he has ever spent. I can’t really argue since they’ve been gone for close to an hour and a half and from what I understand, that’s not a bad rate for a Vegas strip club.
After eventually separating James and his stripper, she says she would like to thank me for introducing her to James with a free dance. Strip clubs are awesome at 6am when the girls are bored and we’re the only guys in the club. I get a free dance but tip her the $20 anyway. Clearly this was her plan. I’m such a strip club fish.
I check my wallet and find that somehow i’ve only spent about $180 tonight and that includes five lap dances, only two of which were for me. I can spare the buyin at 200NL for a night like this. Gizmo pulls me aside and asks me again whether I want to ‘go back to Isabelle’s place and double team her’. Instead, we elect to ask Gizmo to drop us off at Caesars Palace. He drives off, never to be heard from again. I still don’t know whether Gizmo was his real name.
I’m quite exhausted and i’m flying out in under 10 hours, James hasn’t slept in 48 hours, Chris is still freaked out by Isabelle wanting a gang bang and Brendan says we should have gone out to Palms earlier so he could have picked up. We laugh at him.
James heads back to Imperial Palace to sleep, Brendan heads to his room at Caesars, Chris wanders off to play some cash or something and I wander over to the Flamingo and ask the nearest blackjack dealer where I can get food at ‘whatever hour it is now’ since I seem to have lost my phone. She informs me that it’s 10am and points me towards a cafe where I order some delicious waffles with maple syrup.
I walk home to the Meredian for the last time, leaving the bright lights of the strip behind me. I sleep for an hour, quickly clean the apartment, give the keys to the landlord and grab my bags. Goodbye, Vegas, I think we’ll be seeing each other again.
I walk over to Tuscany (which is across the road from my condo) and ask for a taxi; a limo driver there offers to take me to the airport for a comparable price ($20) and I figure why not. Somehow, i’ve never been in a limo before and i’m leaving Las Vegas in one piece, so a celebration can’t hurt. The limo is stocked with champagne glasses and if there was anyone left with me, i’d consider a toast. There is no one else left though and i’m still quite drunk, so I stretch out in the limo and watch the giant medieval castles and pyramids of the Strip fade into the distance.
We arrive at McCarran International Airport; I board my flight to LAX and after a short delay, my V Australia flight departs for Brisbane. I even manage to get about six hours of sleep on the flight.
Thirteen hours later, I step out out of the terminal and into the refreshingly cool Brisbane sun. It’s not Las Vegas but Bris Vegas is close enough and I can go outside without sweating again. I’m home.
I didn’t get my one time this trip but my bankroll is still in good shape and I had one hell of a time and some… interesting… memories. Maybe next year.
The Final Count
Cash Games: Approx +$300
Tournaments: Approx -$6500-7000; +$10000 in unused Main Event Seat
Expenses: Approx -$2000
Casinos Visited: Caesars Palace, Venetian, Palazzo, Wynn, Excalibur, MGM Grand, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, Rio, Palms, Paris, Bellagio, Gold Coast, O’Shea’s, Bill’s, Imperial Palace, Casino Royale… probably some others that I forgot
Best Movie I saw during the trip: The Hangover
Best Club: Moon at Palms (although I didn’t visit many)
Hottest Stripper: ‘Isis’ from Crazy Horse III
Hottest Cocktail Waitresses: Surprisingly… the Rio
Number of random hookups: More than Brendan, less than Chris and James. We’ll call it a tie. More than zero and less than five.
Number of hookers I was propositioned by: 2
Number of tournaments I played: 20-something
Number of tournament cashes: 1 (miserable failure accurately describes it)
Best dealers: Caesars Palace
Best floorstaff: Wynn
Best atmosphere: Caesars Palace
Best hotel: Mandalay Bay or Wynn, it’s close
Biggest disappointment: The Venetian; it’s overrated, smoky and the food is awful
Best value hotel: Imperial Palace: despite what they say; it’s acceptable enough and location IS everything
Biggest dump of a hotel on the strip: Luxor
Biggest dump of a casino on the strip: Casino Royale
My next trip will either be The Victorian Poker Championships or APPT Macau in August. It’s been fun but that’s all for now folks.