We saw a few shows (rat pack show again, of course), ate at some amazing restaurants, and I got in one awesome craps session where i was the only player at the table and i got on a very nice long roll and pocketed a nice pile of black and green chips.

anyways, this being a poker trip report, and not a overall vegas trip report, on to the poker…

i played all no limit, the poker hosts will always push you to limit.  i think they make more rake or something on limit.
but when i walked up to any room, the host always asked if i was looking for a seat at a 3/6 limit game.
i always said “no, i don’t play math, i like to drink.  put me on the no limit table” 

Bills Gambling Hall:

i had the most fun, and won the most, at bill’s gambling hall. they played a $1 no limit. only one blind of one dollar. plus they have cracked AA or KK jackpots during the day.

when you play there, make sure you bet on the pig races.  (they have, or at least did have, a slot machine next to the poker table that had a big screen with pig race bonus round that all the poker players would pick a pig and bet on).

 table was right next to the front door and only a $20 min buyin, so people would walk in, buy in for $20 or $40 and then play stupid, hopefully give it to me, then leave.  NEXT! 

drink service was very good there. most of the people were either kids who watched too much WSOP and thought they were awesome or beginners that thought they should try it out with that low of a buy in and only one $1 blind, with a couple of drunk locals thrown in. dealers were good too.

Golden Nugget:

played a lot at golden nugget – very nice, played 1/2 there. game didn’t play that cheap, tho. half the table bought in for $200-$300, and the other half the table had stacks of over $1000, one lady had at least $4k-$5k and the $300 buy-in stack next to me and i were figuring this dude at the other end of the table had at least $10k in front of him.  those people had big watches, too. i’m talking watches the size of connecticut. they were talking about playing in bellagio’s $10/$20 game so i don’t know exactly why they wanted to play a 1/2 game, but maybe they just were slumming or something.

limping and then a raise to $9+ with at least 2 or 3 callers was standard preflop. did 4-5 hour sessions starting at about 11pm for a few nights. got a breakfast comp for me and the wife after each one. i held my own against the regulars and decent players, but at least once per night i had some random schmuck utter what came to be my most hated phrase: “what the hell, it’s only money” and then proceed to call my huge bet and flip over a worse hand and then proceed to suck out. oh well, that’s poker. 

i must have looked like i played really tight at the nugget, cuz once i was one off the button and everyone limped for the $2 so i bumped it up to $25 hoping to steal or at least thin it out and steal with a c-bet on the flop. everyone folded around to one of the huge $1k+ stacks, a guy with a watch the size of connecticut, and he reraises me to $75 or something like that.  i think for a few seconds, and then say i fold, and the guy gets all big headed and flips a KQ and says to me “you can’t wait around for AA all day, buddy!” like he’s the king of bluffing or something. i look back and say “yeah, i know, i should play more hands” and i flip over a J4offsuit.  the look on his face was classic. 

oh, and golden nugget thinks that Hennessey is a normal brandy comp drink, so that was nice.

other places i played:

planet hollywood:

very nice poker room.  played 1/2 while waiting for the tourney and doubled my $200 buy-in after watching this guy buy 2 pots and then calling his all-in bluff.  most everyone there thought they were a lot better than they were. then i did the 1am tourney there, busted out in the middle. was pretty schnookered by that point.

fitz:

played one tourney, busted just before bubble. wasn’t too impressed with that joint.

binion’s:

played one tourney, busted in middle. was a cool 5 way allin with 4 people busting out, tho, so that was interesting.  i was shortstacked on the small blind and i had 4 people go all-in in front of me.  i had to call with my Jd 10d. heck i would have called with a 2 and a kleenex.  when the hands got flipped, there was a KK, AK, AA, and 99.  obviously, the 99 hit a 9 on the flop and won.  just like on the internet! a couple of diamonds came on the flop so i had a really good shot at quadding up and then making the money, but that third one just never came. oh, well. 

the steakhouse on top of binion’s is really good, too.

plaza:

played 2 of the $40 one table tourney’s.  came in second on the first one and won the second. worst players i found in vegas were at that place in that tourney. i overheard more than once, “that’s not what would happen on my playstation game”.  funny story: you can chop the prize once it is down to 3 people, and in the second one i played, it ended up with 2 of us left and i could tell this was his first time ever playing in a casino. he had me about 4 to 1 in chips, like 100k to 25k or something like that. and i offer to chop the pot 50/50 with him right then.  he’s like “no way, i’m totally going to win!” and his friend (who looked like he knew a bit more what he was doing and had busted out in like 7th or something) says to him, “dude, take it, or this guy’s going to crush you”. so, the guy refused my chop offer, i just said, “okay, don’t say i didn’t offer” and about 3 hands later i had evened out the chip stacks and he then proceeds to ask me if i want to chop. i said, “sorry, you had your chance” and then about 3 hands after that i won the entire thing, and the guy’s like, “whoa, i should have taken that chop”.  heh heh. that was awesome.

imperial palace:

eh, not so great. crappy room, really. drink service was slooooow and it seemed to take them forever to get me on a table in a mostly empty room.

i did hit a 4 A’s on the video poker there while waiting for a table, so that was good, but i still probably wouldn’t go back there anytime soon.

excalibur:

i was going to play at the excalibur, since i’ve heard that was the softest game in town, but they had all computer poker there, so i didn’t play that.  can stay home to play poker online if i want to play on a computer.

luxor:

played a little cash game there, 1/2. but the tables were mostly all full. and the wait list was really long. but the people playing looked like a lot of fun. lots of jager flowing. which is the best place to play   i finally got in one night, but i got put at a table of fuddy duddy old men for the first hour, then got moved to a fun table and proceeded to get hammered on free shots. one dude at the other end was buying your choice of patron or jager for anyone in a hand with him. i think i about broke even there, kind of a blur, so not sure. 

well, that’s it.  ended down for the trip, but had a load of fun and learned a lot, so it was a good time.

maybe, someday soon, i’ll get my rear in gear and post a overall vegas trip report.

The basement casino is open for business.

Breif history:

When we moved into the house, there was nothing down there. Just a big open box with the concrete foundation walls on all sides. Staircase coming down in the middle, furnace & water heater on one side, laundry washer & dryer on the other.

This last spring, I, with the help of my dear ol’ pop, put up drywall walls to create some rooms. Walled off a furnace room, and also a laundry room.

These photos were taken Sept 25, 2006.

I posted those, so you can see what has happened in a very short time span, considering it’s only been one mere mortal working on it.

So, without any further ado, chadd’s new basement casino:

Welcome to the k2 Lounge!

Bar

New Bottle shelves (added Nov 22 2006)

Beer Tap (added july 2007)

Blackjack table

Craps

Poker

Entertainment center

Home Theater PC (added march 2008)

Jukebox (added april 2008) [update: now with backlit display art]

Random shots

There’s still a lot to do. Need more art on the walls, need to add kegerator behind the bar [update: wall beer tap added], add a sink behind the bar, add a couple bookshelves, trim out the drywall, start/finish the downstairs bathroom in the laundry room. Should keep me occupied for a while.

In the meantime, it’s done enough to be usable, my own little piece of Vegas in my basement. And, after the first party we had down there last week, I think it will work out well. But, i think i might have to initiate taking a rake from the poker table, or else i’m going to have to send back that volcano for the front yard and the flamingos for the back.

Construction was exactly the same process, differences were purely cosmetic.

I went with a birch veneer instead of oak, and used a light stain. The playing surface uses a midnight blue speed cloth ordered from yourautotrim.com, chosen to match the upcoming blackjack table.

I wasn’t able to come by a donation table base this time around so I went to the local restauraunt supply store, Kessenich’s, and lucky me, they had a cast iron base in stock that I took home that morning. At a cost of $43 for the base, it was a bargain for me.

Here’s the finished product in all its glory.

Basically, just cut a bunch of circles and screw them all together…. basically.

I started out with just one sheet of 3/4″ sanded oak veneer ply. Not the lightest to carry by yourself, but hey, I need the exercise.

I was trying to figure out how to make all these circles as accurately as possible, so I put together a simple circle jig that the jigsaw sits in. It’s made of a scrap strip of 1/4″ i had laying around, screwed to a 2×2. I cut out a rectangle that the base of the jigsaw sits pretty snug into and drilled holes at different lengths away from the blade. This thing made cutting the circles a breeze. Never had to measure or mark anything. Just dropped a screwdriver into the correct hole in the jig and away I went.

Got all these circles cut out in no time with that jig. Here you can see all the pieces of the table strewn about my driveway. You can also see that I should probably reseal my driveway, but that’s another project. The thinnest ring is the rail lip, the second thinnest ring is the top of the padded rail, and the fatty ring is the racetrack.

The smaller solid circle is the playing surface and the larger circle is the base for the table that everything else sits on.

I got all that out of one 4×8 sheet of ply but it was a tight squeeze. if you look close at the 2 rail rings you can see some flat parts where the edge of the circle was cut off since the ring went outside the area of the ply. No biggie, since that is going to be padded and covered in vinyl anyways. Not really noticable in the finished product, unless you are REALLY looking for it.

Next, I put on a coat of stain on the racetrack and the bottom base piece. Beautiful.

While that was drying, armed with my pile of 40% off coupons for JoAnn fabrics, I went off to get myself some vinyl and foam. Ended up getting 54″ of whisper vinyl and 2 sheets of 1″ HD foam. JoAnn’s only has the skinny sheets of foam, so I ended up having to cut out 4 smaller curves to go all the way around the rail. (Only ended up needing one sheet. I’ll use the leftover one on the next table) To hide the seams, I just laid a small piece of thin batting that I had laying around over the seam before I stretched the vinyl over it. (What manly man doesn’t have extra batting laying around? I can see the Milwaukee’s Best can falling from the sky to squish me now)

First screwed the 2 rail rings together. Tested to make sure it still fit on the racetrack. It did.

Then I laid out the ring on the foam and vinyl. Pulled and stretched the outside of the rail, stapled and trimmed. Then cut the star in the middle and pulled inside up and stapled that down. Did a quick test and yep, it still fit on that racetrack. Yay!

The next day my order from yourautotrim.com got to my place and i built the playing surface. I ordered one yard of forest green suited speed cloth and one yard of 1/4″ closed cell neoprene for the padding under the suited cloth. I must say that suited speed cloth sure is nice. Laid out the foam, covered, stretched and stapled. No problemo. Then I just screwed it down to the center of the base piece. You can see the racetrack drying from it’s latest coat of poly in the background.

The table pedastal is from the bar I work at. It was rusting away in the basement, so I thought I could put it to better use. Used a few T nuts to bolt the leg to the bottom base.

After that playing surface was done and screwed on, all that there was really left to do is finish applying coats of poly to the race track. I ended up putting on 6 total and I am really happy with the finish. Nice and glossy, but the grain is still plainly visible. Looks good if I do say so myself.

Final poker table dimensions:

48″ total width
3″ padded rail with 1″ HD foam padding
5″ racetrack
32″ playing surface
29″ legroom under table
about 32″ total height

Materials list and (approx) cost:

1 – 4×8 oak veneer ply – $36
1 – table pedastal – donation
1 yd – neoprene – $16
1 yd – suited speed cloth – $17
54″ whisper vinyl – $14 (used 40% off coupon)
2.5 yds green 1″ HD foam – $15 (used 40% off coupon)
4 t-nuts and bolts – cheap, i just had these laying in my “shop”
an assload of staples – $2 per box