Just a quick post in relation to my 10 most common BJ mistakes from a week or so ago. The biggest mistakes I saw most people make during my trip were: 1) Taking the even money on blackjack, 2) Not hitting the A-7 vs a dealer 9, 10, or A, 3) Standing on 12 vs a dealer 2 or 3 (not a big mistake percentage wise, but a mistake nonetheless). Just eliminating these three errors would make most people better blackjack players.

I used my laptop with a Road Runner dial up connection to make my posts while on the road. Road Runner offers the service as a way to access the web while you roam, or if your cable connection should ever go down (heaven forbid!). They offer local numbers throughout the States, so connecting from anywhere is a breeze. The local number I used in Vegas had a pretty slow connection. It should have been connecting at 56k but I was getting only half of that for some reason. I made the posts through my home computer using gotomypc. The connection was great and everything worked fine. What was funny is that by going through gotomypc, my connection speed actually increased almost to the speed of my cable connection, which I guess makes sense, seeing as how you are actually connected to your computer. An example would be ESPN. When I would try to open it directly on the laptop, it would just take forever (I timed it at over 10 minutes once, probably due to the heavy graphics) but when I used the gotomypc, it would open in a flash. I have never read a bad review about gotomypc, which I guess makes it a good product. I know that it worked well for me and I have no complaints at all. Still, I would also like to enable remote posting via e-mail. Ideally, I would like to be able to post text messages and photos via cell phone, while on the move. That would make things almost like a 24 hour news service! I know it can be done, I've seen it. All I need is to get some new equipment and get things configured. Back to the drawing board :)

Well, it was the best of times, it was the worse of times. I ended up in the hole by just a slight margin. Just like the posts below say, Days 3 and 4 were crap. I couldn't hit anything and I just kept getting more and more frustrated. Good thing I went to bed early on Saturday (Day 4), that enabled me to wake up refreshed on Sunday, and play blackjack while watching the Pistons big win on the new Stardust plasma screens. That last round of blackjack and a half hour dice game brought me back to almost even for the trip. I could have played a little longer and made a run for the plane, but there's always more trips and gambling around the corner, no need to get too excited. The highlights of the trip were my big crap games at the Venetion and Mirage, and a run of cards at the Stardust where I had 4 blackjacks in a row, a double down 21 and another blackjack! 5 out of 6 blackjacks! Not too shabby. Peace Rules losing the Derby was a disappointment. The torrid pace and tough trip ruined any chance he had to nail the victory. He was still game in the stretch though, and I still think that he was the best horse and ran the toughest race. It was great to se the Detroit Pistons stand up like men, and send Orlando packing. Detroit needs some good sports news. All in all it was actually a pretty uneventful trip. It's always funner when there are other people around to commiserate with about your losses and to gloat to about your wins. I'm sure I'll be doing plenty of gloating come September!!