Year 2001 was a great year for me traveling to Las Vegas. I ended up visiting (4) times in 2001 - March, May, October, and December!

Both the May 2001 and October 2001 trips were similar in many ways. We stayed in nice strip-view rooms in the Excalibur facing New York, New York. The picture above of the busiest intersection in the world, Las Vegas Blvd and Tropicana Blvd, was taken from our hotel room! During both trips, we played mostly higher denomination slot machines ($1-$10) and did fairly well, and played a decent amount of blackjack where we broke even or made a little. Both trips we played a little craps. Both trips we flew first class and stayed 5 nights and had several nights comped by Excalibur.

During the May trip, we saw Lou Rawls and Nancy Wilson at the Paris Theatre which was probably the best live show I've ever seen! The October trip we saw Mystere at Treasure Island. It was a great show, but in my opinion, tickets are overpriced at close to $90 a person! Each trip we take in a show at the the Excalibur's comedy club. Each trip we venture out to visit other casinos in Las Vegas. To date, casinos we have visited include: Excalibur, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, Tropicana, NYNY, MGM Grand, Monte Carlo, the Aladdin, Casino Royale, Bally's, Paris, Treasure Island, the Venetian, Caesar's, the Orleans, and the Rio.

During the October 2001 trip, we saw more than our share of compulsive and uninformed gamblers. These include an guy playing $5 slots as fast as he could hit the button while not even looking at the reels and eating a sandwich! We also saw an older gentleman playing $5 slots as fast as he could but he would say "7-7-7" outloud to the machine on each spin, seemingly to influence the machine into hitting a winning combination. We sat next to an uninformed and intoxicated blackjack player who was wagering $600 per hand! At one point he was said to have doubled-down on 20 and pulled an ace! He mentioned at one point he was down $4800 for the session. This is small peanuts compared to the guy we saw in the high limit area playing video poker for $1125 a hand. He was down something like $20,000 the night we were there and the waitress said he was down $34,000 one night in the recent past. Whatever!