Poker in LA, Los Angeles, California

    


Los Angeles is much less exciting than New York. There is not much to see for people who don't know their way in LA.

First off, you cannot just walk around like in the Big Apple. LA is a place where you have everything but you really need to know where and when. I enjoy LA, to me it feels like a piece of me these days with Venice among my favorites, the endless number of great restaurants and of course the much more relaxed West Coast life style.

I stayed over at my old college roomate's apartment at fort McArthur down in San Pedro. The place was protected by police and it was more hassle at times to enter than to get into the country. After a few great lunches and dinners, I left for Vegas with another one of my college friends.

We had a tremendous time as always and besides the business I had to take care of I think I made the most out of the trip. I always play poker, that's just my game and I drink a lot of beer along the way:) So after a long and exhausting drive through the desert and a mandatory $6.99 prime rib in Primm, we finally arrived at our hotel. It's gotten quite expensive in Vegas, since the city is trying to go away from the 'family getaway' image rather to the 'Sin City' style that's been advertised a lot.

Anyhow, we still got a good deal afterall and were close to my favorite poker place, Excalibur. People may wonder why the Excalibur, but I guess it's just because I know several of the dealers there and I have played there since the days when I first came to Vegas. There is another great advantage to the Excalibur, the poker rate makes the rooms very cheap and there is a ton of tourists that really have no clue what the game is about. I was sitting at the tables for 24 hours. I never had a session this long and at the same time I was building stacks that would have easily allowed me to play limits 5 times higher than the ones I was playing, which makes things a lot more fun.

We had a lady from Mexico, a waitress from Russia, some youngsters from Albuquerque, and rappers from Chicago. The juice was offered by a rich couple from some other place outside the country. Nobody knew what these guys were doing, they kept throwing chips in, raising, reraising and so on, but I don't think they even knew the proper order of the cards and were always surprised and amazed to see their hands lose over and over again. I had my peaks with a straight flush, that I turned while another player made their Ace high flush and my quad threes when the pot grew, due to the many reraisers while I was comfortably calling the bets. After 24 hours I was exhausted and had to hit the sack. The next day I took care of some business and we did some sightseeing.

It's funny how I can drive down the strip over and over again when I come back to Vegas. Things change so fast that it's always worth it to see the new buildings. We stopped at the Wynn, which was really nice. Besides their beautiful shopping Galeria, they have this very nice cafe with a little lake and a wall with a waterfall in the back. Everything is upscale and they did a really good job on this one. We also grabbed some food over at old town, since they usually offer the best food deals there.

Stopping by at Binions is also a mandatory stop for me these days, it's like the cradle of Poker and you never know whom you might see there. Anyhow, checking out Binion's awakened our hunger for playing poker again, so we went back to gambling a little more, this time just for a brief stop before we took off to LA.

The drive seemed endless this time, as we were both exhausted. We finally got back at 5 am and I had a meeting the next day.

I did some more sightseeing on the following day in LA and finally took off again for Germany. I flew out on Frontier Air, which is quite good. They pu this whole friendlyness image up 'we're a different animal' which I like. I also got the emergency seat, so it was like flying business class:)

After a relaxed flight across the Rockies and a stop over in Denver, I finally arrived in New York, where I went for Dinner with another friend there. We grabbed Korean food, since I had missed my chance to do so in LA...He then dropped me off at JFK to fly out to Germany.

Singapore Airlines again surpassed all expectations. I have no idea how this airline manages to make the trip feel like a massage. The flight attedants are very friendly, and as always gorgeous as well. Something new I hadn't seen was the 120 on demand TV which allows you to rewind movies or fast forward and you don't have to wait anymore until the show ends before the next one starts. The other amazing thing is Internet, which I had to test. I just love these new technologies, so I had to get them and call my friends and family using Skype from 30,000 feet altitude. This is really amazing and things will indeed never be the same as these technologies are quickly moving mainstream.
Read about Los Angeles in our travel-guide
All you have to know about Los AngelesGetting around in LA