News / Dave Allan / 02 July 2009 / 1 Comments

My journey to Vegas started in the small hours of the 30th June at 6am. After stuffing my newly ironed shirts into my suitcase along with a mixture of smart, casual, hot, cold weather clothes I was ready to leave for Gatwick.

Some people are superstitious about gambling and will only bet on their lucky numbers in roulette or a horse that has their child's name in it and I must admit I am more than a little superstitious myself. I had no idea that the next 12 hours were to be the luckiest of my life.

I should have known that I was in for a good day when I arrived at the airport in record time despite it being rush hour. However things did not start off well as I looked despairingly at the monstrously long queue for Virgin that snaked as far as the eye could see and took my place at the back of the queue. Just as I looked at my watch to assess how little time I was going to have in duty free shopping a new checkout desk opened and I was asked to proceed straight to it. I thought my good luck had come to an end when my hand luggage was removed and checked for 15 minutes by a burly security guard, but that was merely a small blip of inconvenience. Clearly the big man upstairs wasn't done dishing out the good luck because when I went to the boarding gate my ticket made a curious noise. I instantly thought the worse and that somehow I had been mistaken for a terrorist or something when the nice lady behind the desk said the most magical words of my life.

"You've been upgraded to upper class? Is that OK?"

Is that ok?....... Is that ok?!?!!

I could have kissed her - and probably would have if she hadn't reminded me of a character in Shrek!.

I have never been upgraded in my life nor had a seat number on a plane in single digits. I proceeded to act cool and dignified, as if this kind of thing happens to me all the time by promptly updating my facebook status, taking photos of the cabin like a tourist and phoning as many people as I could to tell them where I was.

After boarding to the left (again a new experience) I was offered some savoury nibbles and a glass of champagne. Hmm what to have for lunch - let me just look at my three page menu and then select my choice of wine. I had a grin as wide as the plane for about 20 minutes.

I have no idea how much first class costs but I like it ....I like it a lot. They serve you drinks any time you want, you have a full size bed, loads of freebies and best of all they serve you edible food on proper plates with real cutlery. After retiring for a small nap I was woken up for tea which consisted of pastries, a choice of freshly made sandwiches, scones, ice cream (Haagen Dazs) and of course tea. Did I mention that first class have their own free bar? The only down side was that the flight was still 10 hours long. Surely first class should get their quicker!

When I arrived I caught a cab to the newly built Encore Wynn hotel which is hard to describe accurately. I have stayed in lots of nice hotels in Vegas including the Bellagio, Mirage and Wynn but this is something else. All our qualifiers and journalists are staying here during their trip and I am sure they will be blown away by its sheer scale and luxury.

Having been woken up by a nice journalist from E-Gaming Review at 4am this morning I am now off to find some breakfast before heading over to the Rio to prepare for our PR Stunt and say hello to their Head of Media (my counterpart) and the Harrah's events team.

My colleague Simon who is a Vegas Virgin flies out on Friday and will be keeping you all up to date on the goings on of the team every day. Make sure you log into betting.betfair WSOP section every day or Betfair Today to keep track of what we are getting up to.

Richard Bloch

Tales of the Vegas Virgin - The Introduction