Vegas Extravaganza - Day 10

After the tournament win Sunday afternoon, I went back to my room to catch up on some much needed rest. Oh, and I had to shower. Desperately. After I cleaned myself up and caught a few Z’s, I found myself up at about 7:30 PM. Where oh where had the day gone. There were still a few off-strip casinos I hadn’t hit up, so that night seemed like a good night to mop them up. As I browsed my shrinking list of places I hadn’t been off the strip, I noticed that Red Rock Casino was the farthest away. It seemed to make sense to go to that one first and then swing back and hit the other which were closer to the strip.

So off in my car I went. I hit my first snag when I went to punch in the name of the casino and my GPS unit, which has been wonderfully reliable in every regard, didn’t have the listing! Uh, that’s not good. I had already noticed that Red Rock wasn’t even listed on the site I was using to get the list of casinos, Cheapo Vegas. I don’t know why it wasn’t on the site, but it should definitely have been in the GPS. Unless it was such a new place that it wasn’t around when my GPS software was loaded. That was a possibility. Luckily, I’m much more resourceful than your average human. I dialed directory assistance to get the address and then dialed the address directly into the GPS. Yep, you won’t catch me napping anytime soon. Hahaha.

The drive to Red Rock took about 20 minutes, taking me the western suburbs of Vegas. Very pleasant, by the way. And then, in the middle of a huge empty and carefully landscaped area, it arose like a vision in the night. Red Rock Casino. The place is GINORMOUS and whoever built it sank a LOT of money into it. I mean, we’re talking Wynn hotel type money. This was, by a huge stretch, the nicest hotel I’ve been to on this trip. Nicer than the Paris. Nicer than the Venetian (though not by much). Everything was beautifully clean and new. The people were mostly nice looking. The cocktail waitresses were young and nubile. And, most impressively, the casino was laid out in a very nice and organized manner. If you looked up, you could see nicely marked signs for everything you needed and it wasn’t confusing at all. This is a big benefit if, like me, you’ve been wandering through smoke-filled casinos for 10 days trying to find the poker room.

I did find the poker room, and I was very happy. Like the rest of the place, it was beautiful. 20 tables in a real separated room that was quiet and pleasant. It was next to a beautiful restaurant and they chose to put very pretty stained glass squares to cordon off the restaurant from the poker room. They even put a private bathroom in their just for the poker players; a very nice touch. The other thing that impressed me about the room was the number of games they had going on. They had Limit Hold’em, No Limit Hold’em (1-2 AND 2-5) and they had an O/8 limit game as well. This put them up their with The Orleans as the only offstrip rooms to spread all these games and actually get players; there were 14 tables going when I arrived. Most impressively was when I heard halfway through my O.8 session, that they were starting a 4-8 Mixed game. I immediately asked which games they were using and the answer was a cornucopia of games I’d never played. Badoogie (sp?), 2-7 triple draw and Razz were all mentioned. Uh, I’ll pass, but that’s awesome that they actually got that going. This room had POKER players in it. It helped, too, that I cleaned up at O/8. I peaked at +300 but cashed out at +177 after losing some pots on the river.

I really really enjoyed my time at Red Rock. How much, you ask? Well, when I looked down at my watch to check the time, it was 1:40 in the morning! I seriously thought maybe two hours had passed but I had been playing O/8 for a solid 5 hours and hadn’t felt it at all. I knew I would have to get up early for New Year’s Eve since I wanted to get back to New York time for my flight home the day after, so I called it a night, drove back to my hotel room and crashed, determined to make my last full day in Vegas a memorable one.