I discovered one important thing while in Las Vegas earlier this week.

Poker is bad.

I love playing the game, but runs like I had recently really make me question why I bother. I could hardly get any good cards and, when I did, someone else would turn over a hand that would edge me out regardless of what I had.

On my last night, I didn’t have a playable hand for probably close to an hour. All garbage. Down to my last $50 or so, I get Q-10 with only five players playing. No one raises so I get to the flop, finally. Pair of 3s and something else. The turn is a 10 so I have two pair and am feeling good. River card is a 3 so I have a pretty good full house, as long as no one has a pocket pair of face cards.

We’re down to three guys now, both of whom were aggressive usually and kind of weren’t up to the river. I go all in with my whopping $24, and they both call. One guy has a 10 like me, and I could deal with splitting the pot.

The other guy had a 3. Game, set, match.

That pretty much summed up my experience for the trip. I did finish second in a pair of single-table tournaments, but they were winner-take-all so that didn’t mean much. They were fun and provided me a chance to experience the stereotypical drunken poker-playing douchebag at Harrah’s one morning. He was really ripped and ordered three drinks within his 20 minutes or so at the table. He never shut up and pissed off everyone at the table.

Finally, his cell rang and he left the room for a while. Even the poor chick he was with was getting annoyed. When he came back in the room, he realized that he had knocked over a drink the waitress had left on the floor for him since he was ordering them so fast. He got pissed, went all in without looking at his cards and was knocked out. Thank God.

The bad part was that that the guy who eventually beat me was the one who knocked the douchebag out. That hand really helped his stack, which put all of us on our heels the rest of the game Not a big deal.

The rest of my gambling was s-so. I mostly played penny slots. I did win $50 in video poker within half an hour of hitting the casino, but pissed that away at the poker table. I also had $50ish loss at video poker at Mirage one day, which blew because I had gotten ahead playing slots.

I managed to win a $50 pot in penny slots at New York, New York on a Star Wars machine, The force was totally with me there. I also really enjoyed the Top Gun, Wizard of Oz, and Rocky slots. The one that treated me best was probably Money Storm.

I only played blackjack once the entire trip, and that was in a tournament at Planet Hollywood where I got a free entry for joining the players club. I didn’t win at my table, but had fun.

For the whole trip, I spent my bankroll and came home with nothing to show for it. The way I see it, I stayed within my budget and people from several different states will stimulate the economy with the money they won from me at the poker table.