A few months ago I discussed with my wife that the annual Rotowire trip to Las Vegas was approaching and there didn't seem to be any scheduled conflict to prevent me from going this year. After agreeing to take a trip to visit her friends two days after my scheduled return from Vegas and being informed that no bail would be sent from Buffalo, I purchased my flight from Buffalo and gave Chris Liss notification that I needed a room. Here's how I did on my trip and I'll apologize in advance if it seems like I'm bragging.

Before I even left for the airport, I had action on the USA vs. Brazil, taking the over 2.5 goals for $100 (this is for regulation plus injury time) and it looked good after the USA scored two minutes into the game. Unfortunately, both teams could only muster another goal and I quickly learned not to bet on women's soccer. There are two flights direct from Buffalo to Las Vegas via Southwest; one leaves early and one leaves late. Knowing we had a family party at my house scheduled for the previous day I elected to take the later flight which should have landed me in Las Vegas 9PM locally. My flight was supposed to leave locally at 6 PM and after getting through security at 4:45PM, I noticed that my flight was delayed – an hour and a half. I ended up sitting there watching Battlefield: Los Angeles on my iPad trying to kill what seemed like endless time. Once we boarded it was a bit of a bumpy flight and the view of Vegas as we headed in gave me a second wind. However, my nerves didn't feel too good after the landing gear came down and what seemed like at the last minute, the pilot pulled up instead of landing the plane. Luckily, it was only a 5-10 minutes delay after circling around the city before landing safely.
 
So let's quickly recap. I'm late to Vegas with a strange landing. I'm down $100 before I even set foot in Vegas. I'm not going to lie; I took this as a sign of things to come. Luckily, that wasn't the case.

As soon as I landed around 10PM locally, I checked in at the Paris where we stayed. It's an extremely beautiful hotel located right in the middle of the strip. Shorty after checking in, I met up with a bunch of other Rotowire guys and we headed to the Hilton to check out the lines there (usually they have the best odds of any sportsbook.) After heading back to the Paris I tried my hand at my favorite game in the casino, craps. I don't think there's a game in the casino I haven't tried and since learning craps, it's probably a 80/20 split between time I spend playing that and poker. After joining in the craps game, I lost about $100 in a matter of 20 minutes which isn't surprising given the ups and downs of the game. Oddly, this was my only trip to the table where I declined to throw the dice when it came to my turn, a mistake I won't make again.

A bunch of us then met up to have a few drinks and hung out for the rest of the night before grabbing breakfast in the wee hours of the morning. I then retired for the night, requesting a wake-up call at both 9:10AM and 9:20AM locally to be up in time to do a segment with Jeff Erickson for the SiriusXM show.

After doing the segment the next day, I met up with the rest of the Rotowire crew to have breakfast and do the first fantasy football draft of the season that wasn't a mock for me. In case you missed the blog, here's how my team turned out having the 11th pick of a 14-team league:

Round
1 – Ray Rice
2 – Miles Austin (who I keep referring to as Austin Miles…)
3 – Daniel Thomas
4 – Jermichael Finley
5 – Steve Johnson
6 – Mike Williams (Sea)
7 – Danario Alexander
8 – Jacoby Ford
9 – Ben Tate
10 – Sam Bradford
11 – Jared Cook
12 – Javon Ringer
13 – Ben Obomanu
14 – Donovan McNabb
15 – Dallas K
16 – Bucaneers D

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my team. I loved how Ray Rice fell to 11th; hasn't he typically been a top-5 selection? Daniel Thomas is something of a question mark since we don't know what the RB situation will be in Miami. I've got to think that they didn't draft him to ride the pine so I'm willing to gamble there. I couldn't pass up Jermichael Finley who was the 46th overall pick. I'd be shocked to see him last that long in most drafts. Sam Bradford should take the "next step" in season two and have a healthier set of wide receivers than last year. The rest are lottery tickets, although I love the upside of my wide receivers; I'd expect Mike Williams, Danario Alexander or Jacoby Ford to have a 1,000 yard season. I was targeting the Lions defense since I'm guessing they'll have to only rush four and get seven into coverage while getting a good pass rush. Since they were gone I took Tampa Bay who addressed their defense through the draft with Adrian Clayborn, Da'Quan Bowers and Mason Foster as their first three draft picks.

I also learned that if you have pick 2.10, you don't get two picks. Not even if you're a HOFer ;)

After the draft I hit the table and played roulette (didn't I say I only play craps and poker?) since I saw something that attracted me to the table. All the previous numbers lit up on the board lacked 0 and 00. When I see this I always go and get $100 in chips and play both of those numbers for $5 with the logic that they'll come up since they haven't in a while. This is extremely flawed logic as no matter what numbers have come up before, 0 and 00 still have the same odds of hitting. Luckily for me it took only five spins for 0 to hit and I immediately walked away with my winnings. This happened two other times on the trip; once it hit on spin #3 the other time I lost the $100.

Afterwards we went back to the Hilton and checked out Cosmopolitan to get odds on the home run derby. I also noticed at the Cosmopolitan that they had the Copa America games available for betting and Mexico was getting a goal against Uruguay the next day. I remembered that Mexico has been playing better of late so this intrigued me. Back to baseball - I decided that I was going to fade Robinson Cano as I didn't see him in the same light as the rest of the home run hitters. Obviously, this was a big mistake which was compounded by the fact I'm a Yankees fan. Call me Benedict Payne. Needless to say the home run derby was a disaster and I took to the bar with a few others to play video poker and drown my sorrows. Then something happened. I'm not sure what but it started with three of us sitting in a row hitting four of a kind each within 15 minutes. Now this didn't pay a ton - $80 each – but it was a positive development exactly when one was needed. After hitting that, I cashed in the ticket and wandered back to the craps table. I figured I'd take the winnings and try my luck. After buying in for $100 and going back and forth between being up $300-$500 for about three hours, only myself and another guy were left at the table. I threw and hit four numbers in a row and, not to be outdone, the gentleman at the table with me then hit five numbers in a row. For those that don't know the game that's very, very uncommon and profitable. I ended up walking away with over four figures and retired for the night. The unfortunate part of winning that kind of money was that I had around $200 on the table when the guy finally crapped out.

Waking up the next day with such a drastic swing had me in a pretty good mood. After breakfast we had a poker tournament amongst the Rotowire guys. I was third out although I'm the type of player who doesn't mind going out as long as I didn't do anything too dumb. I had all my money in (around what we started with) about an hour into the tournament after flopping a gut shot straight flush draw. As I expected, I was "all-in" against top pair so while I needed some help, I knew I had a ton of outs. Unfortunately, the straight or flush didn't hit and I shuffled cards for 10 minutes until the next player was out. I learned that playing with the Rotowire guys, some of them value a 6 as good as an ace (you know who I'm talking about.)

After this a few of us took a walk down the strip, saw the tigers at MGM and checked out the lines at the different sportsbooks again. Remember the Mexico line I had seen the previous day with them getting a goal? It had actually moved to Mexico +1.5 goals which is a big difference in soccer. I discussed with Dalton Del Don what that would equate to in football terms and we agreed that getting a half goal is the same as getting an extra 3.5 points. I liked this enough to put $200 on Mexico, who ironically lost 1-0 and won me $186. We found the best odds for the All-Star Game at the Cosmopolitan along with a bunch of new odds. The ones that caught my eye? Jose Bautista, Adrian Gonzalez and Prince Fielder were all 5:1 to hit a home run in the game so I put $50 on each. These were both good and bad bets.

Why it's a good bet: I won. I hit two of the three and my thought process was I needed just one person out of the three to hit a home run to win. If that happens, I win $150. If two hit home runs I win $400. If all three go deep, I win $750. I liked that all three had ample time to get accustomed to the park and were in a "home run" frame of mind after the previous night.

Why it was a bad bet: While Chase Field is a hitter's park, the roof was closed which has something of a negative effect. I didn't realize at the time (although I don't think it would have deterred me) that there hasn't been a home run in the last two All-Star Games. Throw in that three players totaled |STAR|six|STAR| plate appearances and I was pretty lucky.

Other wagers I took:

NL – 1.5 runs +180 for $50 (win)

Run scored in the first inning – Yes +130 for $40 (loss) - Brilliant, Kevin. Fading Roy Halladay and Jered Weaver.

Will any player have exactly three hits – Yes +300 for $40 (loss) – Dumb bet as only two players – Matt Kemp and Rickie Weeks even got three plate appearances. I seem to remember Ichiro getting three hits in one of the two past ones which is why this was an available wager.

Over 6.5 hits in the first five innings -160 for $50 (win)

I am quite sure I was the loudest person in the Paris sportsbook when the ball jumped off Fielder's bat and after watching the replay it looked like it made it out of the park by a foot. That hit alone was valuable for not only the home run wager but the NL – 1.5 runs as well. Needless to say I was pretty happy as we headed to Smith and Wollensky's for a steak dinner afterward.

The next (and final) day I had a later flight so after eating breakfast I headed over to the Hilton to place some future wagers. I also placed some wagers for my friend Mark Stopa, who discussed them in his blog. This was the perfect time to take these wagers as we don't know what's going to happen after the lockout ends. Who will make a big free agent signing(s)? Here's who I took and why:

To win the Super Bowl:

Buffalo Bills 200/1 for $5 – I wouldn't be a fan if I didn't take this. The Hilton was the only place with this type of odds; other places had them at 100/1 and 80/1.

Houston Texans 40/1 for $30 – I'm regretting not putting more on this. What if Nnamdi Asomugha signs with them? Then what will these odds look like?

Detroit Lions 30/1 for $30 – Everyone is asking about Matthew Stafford's ability to stay healthy. What if he stays healthy for the whole season? As I stated earlier, do they really need to rush more than four with that defensive line?

Tampa Bay Bucaneers 30/1 for $30 – Again, the defense is improving and their offense collectively has a ridiculous amount of upside.

So roughly I have three horses in a race looking to win around a grand. I could see all three making the playoffs and if that happens, I'll be happy. All three of these had the best odds at the Hilton; I can't remember which but one was 18/1 somewhere else.

The last future bet I made was at the Paris, where I got the Sabres to win the NHL title at 22:1. The Hilton had them at 20/1 and the Cosmopolitan surprisingly had them at 10/1.
After a discussion with some of the guys, we chalked this up to the Paris being a little slow on the offseason moves the Sabres have made.

While I didn't see any shows in Vegas, a magic act occurred when I arrived home late Wednesday night. My winnings had disappeared come Thursday morning although the same  wife who wouldn't provide bail has had a big grin on her face since. I had a tough time calculating how much I actually won; I spent a lot on food and bought a few drinks for my colleagues – enough that more than one bartender was on a first name basis with me but the time I left. Overall I had a great time, Vegas was everything I expected and more. I've been to Atlantic City a few times as well as casinos in Indiana, Florida, Niagara Falls and Syracuse. Nothing comes even close to Vegas and I'd urge you to try and find the time to go if possible.

Lastly, I was impressed by the crew of guys Rotowire has accumulated. Not only was everyone there knowledgeable about sports, they were all extremely personable and friendly. I'm sure winning some cash didn't hurt my experience and maybe next year at this time you'll see a "Return to Vegas" blog by me. After attending the Cleveland/Yankees game on 7/6, Vegas and then Cincinnati over the last three days I'm guestimating that I've traveled around 35 hours and over 5,000 miles the last 12 days. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to my son's soccer games, fighting a losing battle against the pool and some R & R this week.