Memorial Crowds Flood Vegas

It is Memorial Day weekend and Vegas is gloriously flooded with tourists.

Traffic along The Strip is a case of pure torture. The sidewalks are moving masses of people doing their best to walk out in front of cars.

The mobs when the Bellagio Fountains and the Mirage Volcano erupt are screaming and well inebriated with no concept of allowing anything to pass by.

And the poker tables are full.

Last night (Saturday) I sat at poker nirvana. Four young guys (YG) who said they were from USC had brought their home game to the Mirage. All four were splashing huge bets. When they lost, which was often, one of their members would pop out a huge wad of $100 and restake his cleaned-out buddy. I love kids with silver spoons.

They also didn't tip normally. For those not in the know, Vegas dealers work mostly for tips. It is customary for the winner of the pot to push $1 or more to the dealer as gratitude to their winnings. I'll occassionally tip as high as $10 if I've stacked a monster pot. But while YGs didn't during their wins they sure they made up for it when it came for the dealer to change out. Their member in the 9 Seat would push a bunch of chips to the dealer. These were sizable piles of chips, one time it was about 40 chips, all mixed whites and reds. My rough guess was about a $120 tip to be shared by the dealers, and that was just the biggest tip.

The dealers were very happy with these guys.

Makes me almost want to become a dealer.

Almost.

Okay, not really but I was definitely glad for the dealers. Good for thse dealers too, because these well lubricated YGs were a handful, making wild requests, acting out of turn, getting into conversations and ignoring action in front of them. They were nice drunks, but their exuberance were like puppies with new toys.

It even rubbed off on me. For some reason I couldn't get my bets right. I was constantly tossing out undersized calls or making raises that were under the minimum raise for the time. The dealers were patiently getting my attention that they needed another red chip, or...

I ended up going to the old standby of calling my action just to make sure it was clear what I really wanted to do. It just sucks getting old.

The game also had a couple TAG locals in the mix so it was a very good and predictable table. It would have been better if I had caught better cards because when people are willing to call big pot raises with nothing but K high you have to have something. I snagged two big pots where my 2-pairs managed to avoid a bunch of straight and flush draws.What with the big raises and re-rases from YGs there were no small pots to be had.

In the end the YGs headed out for a date at Hakkasan and the table died a sudden death. It was a good solid win for me and I was happy.

I hope they are back Sunday evening.