Ah Vegas...

Though the number of smokers has dropped precipitously over even the last five years, the casinos of Vegas still burn my lungs and stink up my clothes in rapid fashion.

It was a fun two days and one night with my buddy and me, and we prowled the strip like two tigers on the hunt...er, okay, like two overweight thirty five year old geeks chilling and taking in the scene. It was a trip.

There is lots more construction, big surprise, but the town is still garish and now turning away from the Disney-fication it underwent less than a decade ago. All the major hotels on the strip now have burlesque shows again, and there is no shortage of female body parts prominently displayed on billboards, taxis and bus stops everywhere. As a heterosexual male who is also a human being I guess I shouldn't complain, but it all seemed forced and blatant to the point where I was wondering if Vegas had some serious issues.

On a more practical note, the casinos took $150 of my money, $120 of which went to the poker table and the rest to machines. I haven't played at a card table in over five years, and I must say, that even though I ended up in the negative, I had a blast playing. Most of the people were greener than I, especially in the $60 tournament I entered, and it was quite fun to win pots from them. Everybody also was really friendly and chatty, a different experience from my previous card club forays. Back then everyone was dead serious and concentrating on the cards, this time there was so much fresh and enthusiastic blood it was just a joy to be there.

Poker has truly exploded in Vegas. Every major strip hotel we walked through had new or expanded poker rooms, and multiple tournaments every day of the no limit hold-em variety. We got the biggest kick out of watching a few hands at a no-limit Omaha table in the Wynn casino. We saw a $9000 pot go down, holy crap! I was hoping to win a couple hundred, and these guys were messing around with the cost of my baby girls child care for a year! What a place.