April Trip -- last one for awhile

I know you're not supposed to start your trip report until the day you leave, but I'm leaving the house at 7:30 tomorrow morning and I am NOT getting up early just to write here. I need my pre-vegas sleep.

We're off tomorrow for my wife's birthday trip. It wasn't planned as a birthday trip, but when her birthday arrived yesterday and I hadn't bought anything, it suddenly changed. My wife was happy to take her gift in a Fashion Show Mall IOU. This is not going to be cheap.

This is also our first time travelling with another couple -- my brother Pat and his wife. He's been for business before and she's never been. Hopefully that will go okay.

Before every trip I like to talk out my plan, if only because it amuses me later to see how different it turned out from what I intended.

We're arriving just after noon tomorrow and we have a suite at the Mirage. Show plans are for Zarkana on Friday night and Elton John on Saturday. Dinner is Julian Serrano on Friday and currently unplanned for Saturday. I figured maybe I should leave something up to my brother.

The gambling plan is standard over-aggressive. I've got $4500 for the two nights. I'm going to start by buing in for $1000 at craps and betting quarters...we'll see how it goes from there. I like to take a shot early so if I hit I have a buffer for the rest of the trip. Usually that just means I'm chasing the rest of the way. I also want to play some VP this trip and am looking to try $1 three play DDB. So yeah, I'm going to have some variance. I could be broke by noon on Saturday.

This will be my last trip for a long while because I'm headed for Afghanistan in July for a year. So why not blow it out?

 

Have a GREAT trip. Good luck with the strategy.

And I presume that you are headed to Afghanistan for militaristic reasons. For that, sir, I tip my hat to you. Stay safe in all of your travels and thank you for what you do.

Santé,
TL

 

Looking forward to your updates! Good luck in Vegas and quadruple good luck " in country", thanks for your service and sacrifice!

 

Good luck! Let's see a lot of quad pics with a Royal for good measure!

 

I'm going on the same assumption and say thank you for your service.
And hey, while you're there, do a video.
https://www.vegasmessageboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92231

 

From one military wife (retired) to your wife, thanks for everything that you both give. Blow Vegas out and have the best time, ever. Be safe is Trashganistan. Your country thanks you, both!

 

Enjoy Mike! Have kept the homefires burning a few times myself - know how tough it is for your wife. Appreciate your service!

Can't wait to read your report!!

 

$1000 buy in and quarter play at Craps.....sounds like a good time.

Best of luck.

 

The trip started well. Somehow I hit no traffic driving from C Springs to Denver at 8 AM...for those who don't know, that's like hitting dealt quads. Got a nice upgrade for the wife and I on United due to my many trips this year and we sat in economy plus on a brand new plane...they really did that right. A ton of leg room, electric plugs at your seats, and an on time departure which I was worried about with all the airline nonsense I've been hearing.

One thing I like about Vegas is the people you meet. In the row across from us were three guys who were all about 22 and from UCONN. They were out drinking the night before and decided on a whim to go to Vegas. One of them didn't have luggage...just a backpack. Awesome.

I don't like the new terminal 3. I think we walked a mile to get to our baggage claim, and still our bags weren't there. Another half mile back to the cab line which was pretty much empty, and we're on our way to Mirage. Get a text from my brother...they're waiting in the lobby.

Part 2: Fuck the Mirage. Pardon the language, but there's really no other way to appropriately convey it.

I get to the check in...it's about 1, and I'm hoping the room is ready. Nobody in line so I step to an open position. Hello Mr. Mike...I have you in a Tower Deluxe room. Uh, no, that's not right. I have a suite. No, it says here you're in a tower deluxe. But they do have you down for VIP check-in, you can check in there.

I go in to the VIP room and they have me for a tower deluxe, which isn't surprising since they have the same computer. I tell the very nice girl that it's not right, and she calls my host. She hands me the phone and my host is very apologetic...he put in the paperwork for a suite, he swears, but it got messed up somehow. And they're full and they can't fix it, but they'll put me in for a room change. The girl takes my number and says they'll call me if they get a suite opened up. But meanwhile, here's my room.

Now it's a nice room. It's on the 24th floor, which means you get to use the bank of elevators for just the 23rd and 24th floor, and I get a sexy key that says VIP on it. I'd normally be really happy with it if I hadn't been promised something else. It's got a wonderful view of the pool complex and we can see all the way down the strip to Paris, and unlike the regular Mirage rooms the Tower Deluxe has a decent size bathroom complete with double sink and a vanity station which my wife loves. So I kind of like it, but I'm really pissed.

So I head down to gamble. Because gambling angry is a good idea. My brother is with me, and he's a very good influence, so that helps. I buy in to a craps game for $1000, as is the plan, and my brother gets the dice right away...7 out. Down $200. Huh. I get the dice and make 3 points and several numbers and now I'm up maybe $400. We go around kind of treading water and I'm near even.

The waitress comes around and offers drinks. I ask if she has a single malt scotch. She says she has Macallan. Wow. Yes please. Light ice. She brings me one with the perfect ice (which is rare) and I tip a red. The next one she brings is at least a double, maybe more, oh, and here's a bottle of water. I like Rosie the waitress.


There's a girl to my left at the end of the table who isn't playing, but nobody cares because the table isn't full. I really want her to throw the dice and even offer to make a bet for her if she'll do it. She doesn't want to and her boyfriend, who is playing, gets the dice. He throws for about half an hour and only makes 2 points, but he kills the numbers. He makes the all tall for me and is one away from the all small but he can't hit the 3. He does however hit about 10 eights, and I've got it pressed up to $300 before he 7s out. I'm at $2000. It goes down hill from there. I bet too big too quick on some not good rolls, but I stop the bleeding down just $300. Not bad...we played for 2 hours and I averaged over $200 a bet, easy, and I've really taken care of the table so I expect to get the high end of my play. Good way to start off the comp train.

During our play, our boxman was Benny. He was an odd guy...he was just staring at spots on the table for long periods of time, very intensely. At the end of it, Benny goes on break and Al takes over. I like Al. I cash out and ask Al what he has me down for...he says he hasn't added it up yet, but if I come back in 5 minutes he'll let me know. We come back and he says I've got you for $120 average. Huh? There was no point in time where I had lower than $120 on the table, and I'm not counting odds. I was playing line across for $135 plus my $25 pass, and that was before pressing. On the one long roll I had $650 on the table when it sevened out. I ask Al WTF, and he says that he got the numbers from Benny and there were some 30s and 50s for bets in there, and there's nothing he can do. There's no big number anywhere. I'm so pissed I can't even speak without embarassing myself, so I walk away.

This trip is not starting well at all.

 

Part 3: Things don't get better.

We decide that we need food, but not a ton of food because it's about 3:30 or so and we're having dinner at Julian Serrano at 7:30. The Mirage, unfortunately, has a serious shortage of light quick eats. I kind of miss the food court at the Monte Carlo, where you could always just grab a six inch subway to hold you over.

We walk around a bit and settle on carnegie deli, which has a takeout window. We are just going to get a sandwich to go and eat it as we walk around. I order a hard salami sandwich and a water for $18(!) and my brother orders a BLT. I really need something to soak up some of this scotch. I get the bag and it weighs about 2 pounds...no exaggeration. I open the sandwich and it's HUGE. There is literally and inch and a half of hard salami on a giant bun. The problem is, it's hard salami and you can't actually bite all the way through it, or even get your mouth around it. I take half the meat off the sandwich and drop it in the bag, and even then I only eat about a quarter of it. It really wasn't very good, and I'm not that hungry. The BLT wasn't much better, but we did enjoy picking the bacon out and just eating that. Our wives show up and have some bacon, although I guess they've been out and had something to eat already.

We decide we're going to play VP, so we wander around the Mirage for a bit. They want to play quarters and I want to play 3 play $1 DDB, so I look for some multi-denom machines. I don't find what I want, but I do find a bank of 3-5 play $1 machines with a bank of quarters right across the aisle, so we decide to do that. The 3 play DDB is 9-5. VPFree says that the Mirage has multi play $1 DDB at 9-6, but if they do, I never found it the entire trip and I spent a lot of time looking at pay tables.

I hit two sets of quads, but no premiums, and the thing about playing $15 a hand DDB is you really need to hit quads about once every 20 hands to stay afloat, which I'm barely doing. I cash it out even after about 300 hands and I decide that I'm done with that. I look behind me and the other three are hunched over their machines intently, so I decide to stay and shift down a bank to a 3-5-10 play super times pay. I put the $300 ticket back in and my intent is to play 10 play quarters, but when I select quarters for some reason the 10 play option disappears. I examine it further, and the only thing you can play at 10 play is dimes. So what the hell, I select dollar and play 3 play again. This is also 9-5, so I briefly wonder why I wasn't playing this all along since it pays slightly better with the super times pay than the machine I was just on. I quickly find out why I shouldn't have been playing this as the machine does a magic trick and makes my $300 disappear.

I decide it's time for blackjack.

 

It sucks when a suite turns into a room even if it is comped. Thanks for carrying on with the report despite the rocky start. Hope you have better luck at Blackjack to make up for it.

 

Before I start the next piece of this, let me say a few things to those of you who haven't quit reading. This is depressing, but it gets better at points, so it's not all bad. Ups and downs.

Second, if you're worried about an army guy being self destructive and blowing a ton of money, don't be. I've invested well and I have the money. At no point am I gambling with something I can't afford to lose. In fact, although I stated up front that I had $4500 for the trip, I came into some more money and bumped it to $5500 at the last minute. That's the gambling money, not the entire budget.

So back to the story.

Part 4: Blackjack, the Hyena, and things get worse.

The Mirage has the best 6 deck blackjack game on the strip. $25 minimum, dealer stands on soft 17, and all the good rules you want. House edge is about 0.3%. Four tables, right outside Revolution, if you're looking for them.

But my brother wants a $10 minimum table, so we walk around and look. There are like 3 different table game pits, so it's confusing. We eventually find a $10 game and sit down. Most of the tables are packed, so there isn't much choice. There's a couple there sitting in two of the middle seats, and the man is playing $50 a hand on 2 spots while the woman plays $25 on one spot. So there are two spots open on the right and one at 3rd base. I want to play two spots, so that leaves my brother going to 3rd base. My brother who says things like "I don't think you have to always hit 16 against a dealer 7, because the dealer isn't always going to have a 10."

I absolutely don't care how another person plays his cards, but the man playing seems serious about the game and I don't want to piss him off. (In retrospect, if he was serious, why wasn't he playing at the tables in the other pit with better rules? Oh well, I'd been drinking and didn't think it through.)

All this is resolved as the couple is happy to slide down to the right giving us 3 spots on the left. I put my brother in the middle and I sit at 3rd base and play the last two spots. The woman, now sitting at 1st base, the spot I was going to sit, hits blackjack on her first two hands...I'm a genius.

The dealer is a 60 year old asian woman with makeup that looks like it comes out of a mushroom fueled horror movie. She cackles like a hyena, and every time there's a push she cackles "push push better than take take." She also shows a 10 for an up card on about 8 of the first 10 hands, then repeats the pattern over the next 10 hands. Despite this, the table is doing okay except for me. I play $50 a hand on each spot and go straight down. My time perception is warped here because the Macallan was working and the waitress was not slow, but it feels like I was there 10 minutes before I busted my $1000 buy in. It was probably more like an hour. I think it was about 15 minutes in before I realized it was an auto shuffle machine. I'd never played one before. I'll never play one again. You live you learn. Our dealer might have busted 3 times total.

The funniest part of the episode beyond the pure absurdity of the acid trip hyena lady was when our wives came up to the table. The hyena asked if they were our wives, then she pointed to my wife and said 'your wife' then pointed to my sister in law and my brother and said 'your wife' and then pointed to the lady at the table and the guy and said 'your wife.'

The lady holds up her left hand, with no ring, and deadpans 'no, not wife.' We earlier learned that she was 31, and they were clearly a long term couple, and based on their reactions, it's a subject that may have come up once or twice. It was awesomely awkward.

The wives left, I finished losing, and we left. Later my brother would say "We really should have got up from that blackjack table, but you seemed like you wanted to be there." Huh?!? Me? You're supposed to be the conscience of this trip, I'm the degenerate gambler! Too funny.

At this point, it was about 5 or a little after and the VMB crew was meeting at 5 over at TI, so I should have started moving in that direction, but I was pretty drunk and very pissed, so I would have been horrible company and I decided not to go. That was about a $1000 mistake, because I went back to craps, bought in and proceeded to throw away the rest of the $2500 I'd brought downstairs in about 15 minutes. And I knew I was doing it as I did it, and that it was a poor idea. The bad thing is that it was a $25 table and my brother who didn't have the bankroll to support it joined in for the last few rolls and got hurt pretty bad.

Next up in Part 5: Julian Serrano, Zarkana, and the beginning of a comeback.

 

I know many here are fans of Mirage, but I have to say I'm not a huge fan. I've stayed several times, in everything from a basic room up to the penthouse suite. The pool area is nice, and the rooms are decent (although the basic rooms have tiny bathrooms). The casino is way too dark and too brown (brown walls, brown carpet, brown ceiling...). One big thing though that you touched on is that the food options suck. Nothing for a quick bite, and a lot of overpriced crap. CPK offers overpriced average pizza, Carnegie offers ridiculously priced sandwiches with way too much meat that you couldn't ever eat. Samba is a sad excuse for a Brazilian steakhouse. Beyond that everything is higher end dining or the crappy buffet.

At the end of the day I tend to stay at the Mirage usually because I'm traveling with people who are staying towards that end of the strip. I really want to stay in one of the Lanai's though, but I haven't been that lucky. All that being said, it's a decent option as there are some nice things about it, but overall it seems like there are some people who hold it in a bit too high of a regard IMO.

 

I'm going to get into some of that as I go. I agree with a lot of what you said, but I found some good things that I'll share as well. Thing one, they comp Macallan at the tables. But yeah, I'll never go back to the Carnegie Deli. Unless I want a giant pile of meat for some reason.

I chose it this trip because I wasn't happy with the offer I got from Monte Carlo, which is where I stayed my last three trips. Of course MC increased their offer after I had booked Mirage, but at that point I'd talked myself into the change.

 

Walked through Monte Carlo at some point and its starting to look pretty decent, I actually thought better than mirage, but way less crowded, no scene when I walked thru.

 

Part 5:

I went up to the room to get a quick shower to wash off the casino smell of smoke and failure. The shower in the room was phenomenal -- super water pressure. We cabbed it down to Aria and got there about 7 for a 7:30 reservation at Julian Serrano and a 9:30 showing of Zarkana.

We went to the box office first to pick up our tickets. I got mine and looked at them and they weren't the seats I booked. Everyone thought I was crazy, since I booked them 2 months ago and I couldn't possibly remember the seats, but I knew that I did. I tend to remember exact details like that. And in this case, my brother had free seats in a balcony section that he got from a package deal with his flight. So I specifically booked seats that were near the free section so we could at least be close. At this point, I simply assumed I was being screwed again.

Julian Serrano had our reservation and sat us five minutes early. To sum up, the food was phenomenal, the service average. To make things easy I just said I'd pick up dinner, that way we could order a ton of different things and everyone could try each plate. The only thing wrong with this strategy is that some plates don't really have enough for four people to try...like the seared scallops (which were beyond good -- so good that we ordered a second plate) that only came with 3 jumbo scallops. The Iberico Sliders were incredible, and I really liked the oxtail and the spanish tortilla and the chicken croquettas. The only dish of the 12 or so varieties we ordered that I didn't care for were the roasted red peppers. All in all, some of the best food I've had. As for the service, our waiter had too many tables. At one point I ordered a beer and it took maybe 20 minutes. The entire bill was $291 including tip, which is really reasonable for the quality and includes two margaritas each for the ladies and my Sierra Nevada.

After dinner everyone had to go to the bathroom except me, so I decided to hit and run some 3 play $1 DDB. I hit quad 3s, no kicker on the 6th hand and played it down to a $200 win as everyone came back together. It was only $200 (still down $2300) but I knew that things had changed. Can't explain it, but I knew.

We went to Zarkana and I was right -- different seats. I had bought seats right center, and we were left center. But the seats were better -- we were not in the balcony. We had front row in the back orchestra section, and my brother and SiL were in the same section about 6 rows back. No idea why at that point, but they were nice seats on the aisle for us. About 10 minutes later my Brother and his wife walk past us with an usher going forward. I ask where they are going, and they say they are moving up. The usher asks us if we want to go too. I ask if we can all four sit together, and she says yes. She takes us down to about row 10 in the center section, and we get one of the nice couch type seating things on the left aisle. Absolutely perfect seats. I've never seen anything like that at a show. They ended up doing that with several groups...the usher had a paper that I think had a list of empty seats and she upgraded people to fill the best seats. When I looked back, the entire balcony was empty/dark. Most of the floor seats were filled. I'd say Zarkana isn't long for this world based on this random sampling of one Friday night.

Based on what I've read here I had zero expectations for the show. My sister in law, who has never been to vegas or seen Cirque before, thought the show was awesome. I thought it wasn't as bad as people say -- even pretty good. I did hear one guy on the way out saying that it was the worst cirque show he'd seen. I've seen them all except Criss Angel, and I'm not sure where it fits. Better than Zumanity. I don't know, it was okay. Maybe if I went back and saw the others again I wouldn't like Zarkana. But on that night, I kind of did. My wife fell asleep, so I guess she can't say.

After the show we headed for the cab line. It's right near the night club (sorry, I don't know the name of the club in Aria) and the lobby was filled with what looked like a casting call for extras in a show about women in really tight dresses with really high heels. The lobby was filled with them, and the ratio was about 10 women for every guy. Not sure if it was like that in the club, but I couldn't help thinking about the three guys I met on the plane. If I had their number, I'd have called them. The environment was perfect for them.

We got back to Mirage around 11:30 and everyone was beat. They all headed for the rooms...I headed for the craps table.

 

Oh man I know that feeling well. I can't count the number of times I was just losing and knowing I would keep losing but did it anyway. Just mentally decided ok just going to lose the rest and say fukk it.

Loved your description of Serrano. We kept meaning to eat there last time but never got around to it. Also glad you had fun at Zarkana. Maybe the Vegas show is better than the one they had here in NY. But it was probably cuz you also had that awesome sofa seating.

Awesome report so far, really well written and entertaining. Can't wait to read about the comeback!

 

Great line and ohhhhhh have I ever been there!

 

I really can't recommend Julian Serrano enough if you haven't tried it at least once. Knowing what I know now, I think I'd do it different and order my own dishes. Give me the scallops, the sliders, the tortilla and the sauteed spinach and I think I'd be good.

Part 6: Gamble, gamble, breakfast, and more gamble.

I hit the craps pit at 11:30 PM and there are 5 tables open, two at $25 and three at $15. Two of the $15 tables are packed and one is maybe half full, and it's got what we'll call 'veteran savvy.' By that I mean it's mostly guys in their fifties who look like they've played craps a thousand times before. One of the guys is actually sitting down, maybe in a wheelchair. He's at the other end so I can't tell. Reminds me of Colorado casinos. This is great for me -- I don't want to be crowded and I don't need the kids. I buy in for $1000 and play at $15, but I still make all my place bets at $25-$30, so really I haven't decreased my risk much at all...just cut a bit off the odds. Not a particularly bright mathematical play, I know.

The cocktail waitress shows up and she is at least 70. I'm not exaggerating. She's a tiny old lady, and I almost don't want to order a drink because I don't want her to have to walk. I order a Macallan anyway, light ice. She would return 11 hours later with a Macallan with three of the biggest ice cubes I've ever seen. I tipped her $5 anyway. Call it guilt. I go up about $400 after 3 or 4 shooters, then have the weirdest run. Nobody really makes anything good, but nobody sevens immediately, either. It's like with every shooter I make $100 or lose $100, but I hover between a max of $1650 and a low of about $1300 for at least an hour. I decide that I'm cashing out if I hit either $2000 or $1000. At 1:30 AM I cash out for exactly $1000. I don't ask for my rating -- I don't want to risk getting pissed off again.

I go to sleep and I'm awake at 6. I never sleep in Vegas. I give up trying at 7 and I'm showered and downstairs at the craps table at 7:30. I've got $1500 in my pocket and $1500 in the safe so that if I start to lose I have to make the trek back to the room. We're having breakfast at 9 at the Mirage buffet, so I've got some time to play. A quick stop at the MLife desk tells me I played 5 hours and 3 minutes the previous day at $131 a hand. Guess they rated me about right the night before.

Rosie is back as my CW, and she brings coffee while a guy throws for five points. Rosie is a slightly oversized and top heavy Latina who is stuffed into a dress about a size too small. Did I mention before that I like Rosie? Nobody else hits anything, but that one roll is enough for me to stay up for the session and cash out about $400 ahead in time to make breakfast. During the session my brother texts that he's playing blackjack switch and that I should come down, but I don't know how blackjack switch works or what the house advantage is, and that's my one hard and fast gambling rule. I only play games where I know how to play and what the odds are. It would be a good four hours before I'd violate this rule.

The Mirage buffet for breakfast has been one of my hidden great values of Vegas for as long as I can remember. $15.99 for a very good breakfast. Except it isn't. For weekends now it's $26.99 for champagne brunch. Oh well, I express comp it and we're in. The waitress offers mimosas. I've never had a mimosa, but since I paid $26.99 of the Mirage's comp dollars, I'm trying it. As it turns out, I don't care for mimosas. I decide it's lunch time because I paid $27, and I'm too lazy to stand in the omlette line. I have some very good jumbo shrimp and some very average prime rib. The pot stickers are good and the strawberries and bananas in yogurt are the perfect combination of breakfast and desert. I complete my miracle morning by not overeating, which is the first time I can remember that happening at a breakfast buffet. The ladies are going shopping and my brother and I are going gambling.

I forget why, but my brother disappears for a minute and I hit up the good blackjack. $25 minimum, six deck, dealer stands on soft 17, DaS, surrender...pretty much the best game you're going to find anywhere in town outside of a high limit double deck game. I sit at an empty table and chat up the fifty something pit boss, Jeanette. I go for a more aggressive approach this morning, starting with $50 in each spot and pressing by $25 each time a hand wins. The dealer busts three of the first four hands and I'm up. My brother joins in and I never look back. At the end of the shoe I've got $1600 in front of me plus $175 sitting on the left spot and $75 on the right spot.

Two other guys sit at first and second and things start to go south. I lose the $175 hand and it's not a good shoe. The guys leave, poorer for the effort, and we hang for a little longer into a third shoe...maybe a fourth. I end up cashing out at $1050. I talk to Jeanette about my rating to see if I can sweet talk her into over-comping me, but she's got me for an average of $130, which is probably pretty close. Most of my bets were between $100 and $150 with only that first shoe really getting pressed.

We decide it's time for craps. There are two tables open, a full one and an empty one. We decide to play the empty one and stand at opposite ends so we can throw dice at each other. We talk shit and hit points. Not a lot of points, but enough...one here, two there, an occasional 3. Rosie comes by and asks me if I want a Macallan. I look at my watch and it's 10:45. What the hell. I get up to almost $1800 and people start to join the table. We don't really start losing too much, but the vibe is gone and we wisely decide to quit while we're ahead and only one drink in. It's still early and I don't want to go back to blackjack, and for some reason I decide that I want to play the wheel of fortune game with the giant screen that we saw by the buffet, so we head that way.

All the seats are full, so my brother decides to go book a tour for Sunday (they have a late flight.) I decide to sit down at a slot machine with buffalos on it. I put in $100 and violate my rule...I have no idea how it works. There are five video reels. I hit max bet, they spin, I lose. I guess that's how it works. A cocktail waitress shows up and asks me if I want a drink. I ask her if she has a single malt scotch, expecting her to tell me that they only comp JW red for slot players, but to my surprise she says they have Glenlivet. So I order one, light ice. She says she'll bring me a double, because they don't put much scotch in a single. I'm betting $2 a spin to start, and by the time she comes back I've dropped to 80 cents because I'm trying to make my $100 last until my drink arrives. She brings the drink and I tip her a red chip out of my craps money. This will turn out to be a mistake, in retrospect.

Just after she leaves I hit 3 coins, which triggers 8 free spins and on the free spins your wildcard icons turn to bonuses. And if you get 2 coins during your free spins it adds 5 more free spins. Hey, I'm getting good at this slot thing! Somewhere during my free spins, I hit five buffaloes across with two of the spots being wild for a x2 and x3 bonus. The machine yells "Buffalo!" and coins start flying up from the bottom of the screen. $150 later, it stops. So I go back to max bet and hit 3 coins again pretty quickly. I don't hit another big hit, but I'm at max bet and I keep getting free spins, to the point where i don't touch the machine for 15 minutes. The cocktail waitress is back, and if my last drink was a double, this one is twice a double. Basically a full glass of scotch. Woo hoo! I watch my game play and my brother shows back up. He booked a helicopter trip to the Grand Canyon. I tell him I'll play it down to $200 and quit. But then I hit five buffalo across again, so I yell "Buffalo!". I hit some more coins, but the bonus spins don't pay and I cash out for $300.

There's a seat now at WoF, so I sit down next to a lady about my age and her mom. I've never played, so I ask her how to play. She asks if I'm on a budget and I say no, so she says just hit 'play max' and it's $2.70. I put my $300 TITO in and start playing. I really just want to spin the wheels on the big screen, but I can't make it happen. I watch the ladies hit them and spin, but you know, they really don't pay that much. But dammit, I want to spin the wheels! The waitress finds me with another quadruple Glenlivet...she's a persistent one...and I keep playing. I finally hit a spin, but it's only one of the three wheels. I win $7.50. Boo! I cash out for $100. I guess I'm not good at WoF. Back to craps!

 

Keep it coming Mike. I'm enjoying all the gambling details.