The Guy’s Guide to Enjoying March Madness: Vegas Style

Unless you’ve got a hookup with the Adult Video Awards, there may be no better time to hit Las Vegas than during March Madness. It’s a guy’s dream: nonstop sports, gambling, drinking and entertainment all compressed into a short period of time.

Vegas can be daunting even for the most experienced of Sin City travelers, and you always want to maximize your time while there, especially if you want to spend most of it placing bets and watching Gus Johnson scream his lungs out over a buzzer beater.

So, we here at The Bachelor Guy are going to provide you with some handy tips to make your March Madness experience the equivalent of hitting a five-team parlay.

Limit Your Group
Yeah, it may be fun in theory to have 20 guys all hit town for a mega-weekend of fun, but do you know how hard it is to coordinate that many people?

Some guys are going want to go to the strip club. Some are going to want to eat dinner at 4 p.m. Some are going to want to go to the pool. It’ll be impossible to get reservations, seats, travel or just about anything else.

Find about five-to-seven guys you know really well and have that be your baseline. It’s enough people to have a great time, but you don’t have to spend time wondering if Chip’s passed out at the pool… or if Frank is in jail.

Find Your Bar
Pick a place at or near your hotel and set it up as your base camp. Make friends with the bartenders on duty and milk it for all its worth.

Last time I was in Vegas for March Madness, my friends and I set up shop at the hotel bar at New York, New York outside Coyote Ugly. We chatted up the bartender, left big tips, and before you know it, the drinks were flowing a little more freely and the shots were being dished out, gratis.

It’s a worthwhile investment because now you have a late-night, post-club spot to keep the party going.

Stake Your Claim
Now, finding seats during March Madness at the big casinos can damn well be impossible. But there are no rules against claiming territory as your own. The problem is, you have to get up mighty early (or stay up late) to get prime terrain.

Here’s how you do it. Pick one person, on a rotating basis, to be the seat wrangler. Set him up in the sports book late at night with some “reserved” signs and leave him there. You can bring him drinks or let him sleep, but either way, when the morning comes, you’ve got seats right in front of Big Screen Heaven.

Bet Wisely
Remember, March Madness is a marathon, not a sprint. If you are there for the first weekend – and really, that’s the best weekend to be in attendance – you’ve got betting from Thursday to Saturday, so don’t blow your load on that Thursday 5-12 matchup when there’s plenty of action yet to come.

There are serious gamblers out there with a lot better strategy than I, so you can look to them for the real hardcore tips and tricks. But here’s one I always live by: Use one or two bets for your heart. Otherwise, bet with your head. Coastal Carolina is NOT going all the way.

Bring a Jacket/Sport Coat
Let’s face it: March Madness, for the most part, is a sausage fest. There are going to be hordes of sweaty, drunk dudes everywhere you go. So, if you want to see any girls at all, you are going to have to go to either the strip club or the hotel club.

And if you want to get into the hotel club, you’re going to have to change out of the tattered Syracuse t-shirt and into something a little more presentable. Trust me; this is going to be the one piece of your wardrobe that you don’t want to forget.