SIN CITY

They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Well, for my spring break one thing that happened in Vegas was a little gambling and what stayed there was my money.

To kick off our spring break a couple of my friends and I decided to pack things up and head out to good ol' Sin City for a few days. We'd all been there before...the only thing that made this trip special was that we were all finally 21. Now, I'm sure I'll look back on this trip when I'm 65 years old and laugh at how young and immature I was, but please bear with me for the time being and expect to hear a lot more not-so-subtle hints at awesome it is to be in Vegas as a 21 year old.

Leaving out the grisly details of my interpretation of Vegas' open container law and how this factored into my subsequent gambling, I want to take a minute to discuss my apparently inherent misunderstanding of the workings of video poker machines. My friends and I stayed at the Aladdin hotel, which happens to have a fine collection of these machines. We experimented with a few groups of them but after a while decided to keep coming back to the same set of three machines over the course of our trip. I kind of liked going to the same three machines as it made me feel like I (maybe) had a bit more a personal connection with the device I was endlessly feeding my money into. Even so, that didn't help me figure out the difference between the "place bet" button and the "place bet and go all in" button. I can't tell you how many times I caught myself laying down $20 dollars on a single hand (high rollers need not read this...if you do understand I'm a college student with very little money who knows nothing about gambling).

By several repeated acts of God I managed to lose very little money on any of these hands and sometimes actually make a little cash. By the time my friends and I finally made our way home I think I was $35 dollars in the hole...not bad when you take my horrible gambling habits into consideration. Still, it was a little irritating to see my friends walk up to a roulette table, put some money on a single number, and walk away with $200 dollars on a single spin. I guess that's Vegas for you.

Regardless of my losses, Vegas was still tons of fun and I'm counting the days until I can go back there and act like an idiot again. I mean sure, I'm a college student, but I can't ALWAYS be expected to act smart!