Appetite whetted. Can't wait for the degen stories sir!

Yep can taste it...

Arrive on Thurs afternoon. Gang comes in on Friday. I decide I want to do play something different than the usual grind, so head over to the Venetian for $125 bounty tourney. Table looks soft to start, 2-3 locals, the rest will have Cycle's tread marks on them before long...

or this: 6th hand, ATo, LP, bump it up over 4 limpers, most come along for the ride. Flop 952 all clubs, I've got the Ace. I bet, one kid, obv tourist comes along. 6 of clubs hits, bingo, money goes in, and he turns over the straight flush.

Rebuy! Same table, I'm doing my thing, chipping up nicely, about 2 hours in I'm transferred, and very first hand at new table, I'm in BB and it's BvB vs a local. He raises, I look down at QJo, let's see a flop. KQ5 two hearts, I call his c-bet. Ten on the turn gives me open-ender, we both check. River is a 9, he leads out, I decide to shove in case he's got 2 pair and thinks I'm on the busted FD...or he simply has AJ for a turned straight vs my 2nd nuts. FML.

(Funny thing is I lost 250, but if I was at cash tables with those hands, I'm more than likely getting stacked for even more money. So I try to convince myself this was good! Oh Cycle....)

So F tourneys, who's got soy sauce, I need some fish. Stumble back to Harrah's next to my hotel, pick up a c-note without too much effort and call it a night around 1 AM. The gang arrives tomorrow, I needs a bit of sleep.

Friday, the groom and another friend arrive at 2, margaritas and nachos. The rest of the party is groom's 2 brothers, his dad(!), and 2 wives. They all flew over from overseas so it was easier to go Europe-Vegas-Canada, and everyone is totally cool. As people are checking in, little brother (mid-20s) put 30 cents into a slot machine, literally just the change in his pocket...and makes $320 right away! It's that easy!

Anyway, they've never been to LV, so one of our friends is playing tour guide. We wander the Strip up to...MGM, I think? Things were getting hazy pretty quick. Anyway, the destination was this super old school horse racing game, where you put quarters in and watch the horses run on a track. Sounds weird but it's a total blast.







The numbers around the edge of the track are actual odds, you have to pick win and place, the odds change with every race based on the same algorithm that Pokerstars uses to rig its games. Anyway, we're screaming like crazy, having a blast, and I tip the waitress $10 to make sure she comes back even though we're clearly at the cheapest game in the room. Language tip for you: "Corona" is Spanish for, "Miss, Cycle needs some more Corona, please."

Wander back outside, looking for a dinner spot. End up at Planet Hollywood and get on the wait list for a couple spots. While we're waiting, we find a statue of some bronze asses...seriously. Here's one of the wives, playin' along.




Find a craps table. I'm teaching the groom how to bet, and the shooter is HOT. like we played 5 rolls, he hit the point every time, and $20 became $100 in no time flat. Then we gotta go, someone found a table at (ironically) another Mexican place. This one has strip views:

South towards Aria



north towards Ceaser's, Mirage, Treasure Island



After dinner, a bit of blackjack where the dealer cleans everybody out. Then the gang wants poker, and well, Cycle knows a place.... Wander back to Harrah's so the wives can do whatever while the boys go degenerate. Little brother's slot winnings evaporate, groom holds his own, Cycle wins back everything he lost at the Venetian so I'm officially in the black, all while drinking white Russians, my drink of choice a million years ago when I visited LV when I was 21. Bed around 4 AM? Something like that.

next episode might not be up for a day or two. On tap: 1-star Amerikan brunch gluttony, Vegas bribes, 5 star sushi dinner, a totally un-PC anti-Cirque burlesque show, and a strip club story....

I love a white Russian, the drink is also alright.

Loved the stories, can we get more pics of the wives, a snap of the poker tables and a picture of a women's feet (ideally with painted nails)?

ROFL loved reading that! I always thought I would hate white russians but one night 6 years ago in the MGM i was on such a sick table playing 2-5. Chips were flying, pretty sure was a Friday and all the table was drinking.

All got chatting and was like 5-6 nationalities so we said lets do this - each person orders the round of drinks so start in seat 1 and go all round to 9 throughout the night.

Corona, newcastle brown (obv), tequila and then the russia obv orders the WR's and i was like fml this is gona be rank then i fucking loved it. Never had one since cos well that night was a hazeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Saturday we all manage to stumble out of the room for brunch. Hash House a Go Go it's called, supposed to be good and very typical American fry-up brunch diner style. Well, it was Amerikan all right. Huge portions of tasteless food for cheap. I didn't eat even half of what I got. Syrian refugee camps survive on less carbs. My coffee was called an "iced pistachio latte", so I'm thinking just an iced latte with some syrup, right? Ummm...




Whipped cream, hot fudge, chocolate drizzle, wtf is this? Not even sure there was coffee in it. What-evs. It wasn't alcohol so my liver approved.

Afternoon entertainment was the gun range. Photos I don't have yet, I'll post when I do. We tried everything. SAW, uzi, sniper rifles, bullets larger than my middle finger, it was insane. BTW you can also no I'm not kidding, rent a tank for $2200 and run over a small car they get from the junkyard. This country is seriously messed up.

Dinner we booked a 4-star steakhouse at Bellagio, gonna be on the outdoor patio right next to the famous fountain...until they call and tell us a wedding parrty just booked the entire patio themselves. Must have paid a bundle to get the restaurant to cancel everyone who had reservations. Anyway, they put us in touch with the manager of the Japanese steakhouse upstairs, who says eeeks it'd be really tough to get a table for 8 on the patio with no notice. My buddy asks, "well, would $50 make it more possible?" "Let me check...." One min later manager is back on the line, tells us they're rearranging the patio as we speak.

Now I'm vegetarian, so the idea of spending $120 for sushi and cocktails is farkin' insane, except that I've never had food so good, ever. The eggplant with miso drizzle was so good I debated vowing to never eat eggplant again.







But the real star of the show was the patio, right on top of the fountain.

After din, next up is a show at Caeser's called Absinthe, which is like a hyper-offensive Cirque/burlesque show. The emcee let EVERYONE have it: gays, republicans, the guy in the wheelchair, both Jews and Germans, as well as every other racial group he could find. It really was hilarious, though well past the boundaries of good taste. At one point he calls up an Asian woman to the stage, sits her on a chair, and says she's to be the judge of a lap dance contest. Finds a hunky Black guy to come up, and then says the other contestant will be, "The nerdy white guy right there...yeah you buddy, I'm talking to you." And I swear to god he was looking at me, and I'm like no fuck you this can't be happening. "Hurry up nerd," he calls out...and then I realize thank the maker, there's another nerdy while guy sitting literally right in front of me, and he's the mark. Saved! But fuck that was close.

The show did have some cool acrobat stuff. This dude was just insane:




After the show we hit The Cosmopolitan for The Chandelier, which is exactly what it sounds like, a 3-story lounge inside a gigantic chandelier






It's known for fancy expensive cocktails, so I order up a Finishing School (which was tasty) and the groom wastes my money by ordering a completely undrinkable jalapeno-infused tequila concoction called The Royal Tennenbaum (subtitled The Groom's a Fucking Idiot Why Did He Order This?)








I would've preferred to keep drinking fancy cocktails, checking out dolled-up women and pretending to be a baller, but the boys wanted to get drunk and didn't want to pay $20 a drink. Which I kinda get, but trust me, ain't nuttin' free in Vegas, and the strip club will end up costing a LOT more. But they can't be stopped, so off they go. Cycle doesn't do rape culture, so I wander back to the hotel with the wives for a quiet beer and conversation. Try it sometime, @Harvie! But they did pass on one story. The gang at that point was groom, his 2 younger brothers, one friend, and yes, his dad was still truckin'. (Dad was awesome.) So they're at the club, stripper # whatever wanders over to the table, finds out it's bachelor and his dad, takes groom's head in her left hand, dad's head in her right, and smashes both their faces right into her tits, shaken not stirred. The ties that bind....

Rape culture LOL

Yeah the strip club will cost them way more than $20 a drink that is for sureeeeeeeee. Even the taxi will be that.

I love sitting in cocktail bars in Vegas. My mate and I propped up in a random small one in the middle of the MGM one night and was incredible. Quite old school and small but had so many people to talk to and the tables were somewhat shared.

That would've been a blast, but we were a group of 8, and at that size, you kinda exist in your own bubble. C'est la vie.

Sunday morning, most of the Euros are gone before I even wake up. We're down to groom, one mate, and meself, and we have all day to play poker. We head to Paris for some exceptional wood-fired pizza, and then end up at Bally's for a turbo donkament. I drop the $60 when AJ is cracked by J9, go to a cash table, and make it back and more while my buddies finish up. (No cashes for any of us.) Wander out and head back towards our hotel (which has no poker). Next door in the Flamingo, which had a surprisingly hopping poker room, so we crash there for the last 90 min before they have to catch their flight. I sit down next to some earbuds guy who looks like a local (more on him later), I'm utg with QQ and make it 12, he pops from BB to 32, we go HU. Flop is rags, and he shoves 200 into a $70 pot. I'm like, that makes no effing sense, make the call, board runs dry and he mucks. Man gotta love Vegas!

My buddies leave, and I've got 2 nights on me own to play. The poker is uneventful, easy as pie, no losing sessions for Cycle unlike last trip. I played at the Flamingo for hours, got to know the stories of a couple of them. Earbuds guy, in his late 30s, him and a blond woman (early 40s), every smoke break, they go outside and get teenage-smoochy. Turns out he's from Atlanta, she's a fellow Canadian, and he was supposed to fly back home a couple of days ago. Has a look that says, "I done fucked up,"...and a wedding ring to prove it.

Both of my last 2 nights I caught a Cirque show. "O" is one of their highest rated, most expensive, and man it sucked. Other people at the show and at the casino thought that as well. Decided to give "KA" a chance on my final night (cuz Penn and Teller were off, ditto Brittney and c'mon, you know you'd pay to see that), and man did KA deliver. First half was slow, then some peak Cirque action. Not making this up, I was sweating by the end, I was so tense just watching it. (No photos or recording allowed.)

Final day, try one last tourney at Venetian. $150 buy-in, again I don't last til the break. Back on my Eff Tourneys soapbox, play cash the rest of the way. Final night at Flamingo, I refuse to end on a losing session so I stayed until god knows when just to book a win. I 4-bet pre with aces, leave the guy like 60 back from a 200 stack. Kxx flop, I check, he tank-shoves with QQ. Gotta love Vegas. I hear stories about how soft 1/2 is, but my home casino is reg-infested. But man I could get use to some action like this.

unofficial final tally: Went with $2K, paid for everything in cash except the Cirque shows, came back with almost $2K. Vegas, baby, Vegas!

Denouement: view from the wedding reception, back in Stanley Park, Vancouver. Pic is tilted cuz Cycle was tilted. The wedding day consisted of a peach, champagne in the limo, cider, another cider, yet another cider, chocolate covered espresso beans, and sangrias. Nutritionist-recommended liquid diet! Cycle may never drink again...or at least until I can fit back into my jeans.

Finally got around to reading the report. Epic stuff! Here are some random thoughts:

"MTT's bring more disappointment than dating and selling life insurance combined".

White Russian is the sort of drink you think you won't like and you kinda don't want to like it because even though Big Lebowski was great your fascination with the movie faded away and you don't want to be just another cliche guy who drinks White Russians because they are part of the pop-culture. Finally, you get one and you realize it's impossible not to like it. Personally, I prefer the OG Black Russian slightly more but those two along with the Old Fashioned are most likely my favorite cocktails.

Holly shit that coffee...

I'm curious if the 'rape culture' remark was a joke and if not I'd be interested in the explanation.

$120 for veggie sushi, I thought food in Vegas was meant to be cheap? I'm a little shocked that no-fish sushi is that expensive.

I've shot an old style AK47 before and the power they have is unreal, I jarred my shoulder for 2 days after firing it, it was on that day I learned that if you get shot with anything, there is no way you're moving or running anywhere like they do in the movies.


Hmm all this talk about white Russians brb .

Not a joke. I will answer this one when I have time to do it justice. Thank you for being curious.

To be fair, it wasn't just sushi, we did a prix fixe deal, where the chefs to just bring us an assortment of stuff, and 5 of the 8 are carnivores. The veggie sushi was just whatever, but everything else, salads, veggies, etc, it really was amazing food. We just split the bill so obvs I had to pay for someone's tuna, but I made up for it by making sure to order from the expensive cocktail menu. I'll never do 5-star again, so I'll call it a bucket list expense. IIRC it was $80 per person, plus tax, tip, beverages. And location, location, location. For the first 45 min we essentially had a private patio on top of the Bellagio fountain.

Vancouver has hundreds of $10 sushi joints, so this was deliberately something different, as well as a last minute substitute from the steakhouse plan.

From one of the guns, the groom had a mark on his shoulder for a week. "Guns" doesn't even do them justice, personal cannons is perhaps more accurate.

Ah yeah that makes total sense then, it was more about the experience and the setting, in that case $120 seems rather cheap. PS: I had to Google prix fixe deal as I didn't know what it meant , guess I would not be allowed into such establishment.

@CycleVancouver I'm always ready for a stimulating conversation, but if you don't want to discuss your beliefs/politics I totally understand. I don't particularly enjoy talking politics, but I'm also in the process of revisiting my views and discussions can only help with that.

there was a minor panic when we all gathered for the first time, and realized Cycle didn't bring proper attire. Dress code ain't my thing.