UK's August Adventure! A Live TR

She did the same for me. She is awesome. Enjoy dinner!!!

 

I see that you went over to Aria instead of enjoying the spa at Caesar's. My preference is Aria spa, although I have on occasion used the spa at the hotel I'm staying at for convenience. I am assuming you enjoy the outdoor lap pool- my favourite feature at Aria spa! Carbone....another favourite.....hope you had an easy going day.

 

The spa is CP is good, but nowhere near as good as Aria. Aria is one of the two best on the Strip. The Qua spa is 4th best, at most, maybe 5th

 

Packing up now. Have to get up at 5am to leave. Will try and write up a final summary of this leg of the trip sometime tomorrow

 

On the plane home as I type this. Here's the final recap from last evening.

After enjoying a little lemoncello at Carbone, I walked back to CP. Being a degenerate, I realized I was only about $500 away from a nice round number of gambling winnings. So I walked to the HL and saw that the big bac table was empty and about to start a new shoe. So I grabbed a seat and quickly debated whether I should just throw down a $500 chip, hopefully win, and then leave. Thankfully, I decided to play more conservative and just bet $100.

I say thankfully because the shoe started awful for me. I just kept guessing wrong and the other side always seemed to draw a natural hand. Three different times, I was down a grand, but got back in it by pressing my bet up to five or six hundred. If I had been betting $500 a hand, I would have sweated those five and six chip bets a lot more! Finally, about two thirds of the way through the shoe, I hit a run of nine straight bankers, was up $500, and left the table with my round number of winnings for the week!

After a quick stop by the cage to cash out, I went up to the room and packed. Didn't sleep great. My stomach was killing me. Wonder what could have caused that, lol. Anywho, I Lyfted to the airport this morning and now I am headed home. Been missing my partner and our brood of ridiculous cats all week, so I will be very happy to get home in a bit. Plan is to relax tonight, but tomorrow the August adventure continues! My partner thinks she can get away from work tomorrow around 3ish and then we will start the drive to Tunica.

Not many plans for our Tunica weekend. I know I have some sort of gift card to pick up. And I really want to check out the sportsbooks at Horseshoe and GoldStrike. My partner has a spa appointment Saturday and I am sure we will do a little pool time. Dinner at the steakhouse Saturday night. Probably a little time at the tables, but I am kind of gambled out after the past three days. I know my host always gets me one of the suites if there is one available (last time she got me the entertainer suite where the touring headliners stay), so I am hoping we get the top floor at Horseshoe. I will post more after we get to Tunica

 

Nice report! I have two Sky Suites trips booked for next year, one in March and one in May, and the rates are significantly higher than past trips around the same time. They are no doubt trying to capitalize on the increased demand.

 

So I just got home form the Tunica weekend that completes my month long journey. Sorry no live updates. We were busy having fun and then I started feeling ill Friday night, which put a damper on updating. But now I'm back home, curled up in a blanket, and ready to type a summary of the end of this trip report ....

My partner took off work around 2pm on Friday and we hopped in the car to drive to Horseshoe Tunica. Drive was uneventful and we arrived right around 6. After tossing our stuff in the room, we went down to the high limit room, took out a 10k marker and started playing blackjack. I went in the hole immediately, down 7k, but battled back over the course of an hour. Finally got up $1500 and decided I would low roll the rest of the trip (one or two black chips per bet). After all, I am well up this month and didn't want to give it back at the end.

Of course, as soon as I reduced my bets, I hit my hottest shoe of the whole trip, maybe the whole month. I made another $2400, mostly betting one black chip at a time. So up almost 4k, we decided to take a break and try the buffet for dinner.

I am not a big fan of buffets in general. The food is usually mediocre. And the ones that do have decent food cost so much that I can usually get an excellent meal elsewhere for the same price or less. But there aren't a lot of dining options in Tunica. And we had a comp for a buffet dinner, so we went. Food was typically uninspiring, but it filled us up.

After dinner, we checked out the Horseshoe sportsbook. @Hogman posted some good pics in another thread. Its in the corner next to the bar outside the poker room. They have added a number of new TVs to watch the action, and added a few more chairs. Skipping ahead, I also checked out the GoldStrike book the next day (next to Pickle and Jam) and it has a similar set up. So a few observations about the MS Tunica sports books in general:

*The lines are the same being offered by mlife and CET in Vegas. I mean, exactly the same. I brought the sheets I picked up in Vegas this past week to compare. The wager numbers are the same as in vegas. I assume that's where they are getting their lines each morning.

*CET told me they cannot cash tickets written in Vegas

*the employees at the book were friendly, but need more training. I used some basic sports betting lingo that seemed to confuse them

*The books need to be open later. I guess its easier in Vegas, where the west coast games start at a reasonable hour. But Friday and Saturday nights, the book was closed well before the later games had finished

*some supervisors told me the books aren't really helping casino traffic. They told me the books are bringing in some new people, but they are sports bettors only. They are making sports bets and then leaving without stepping foot in the casino.

Overall, though, the books are a nice addition.

Friday night, after making some ultimately losing bets at the book, we went back to the HL. Very happy I decided to play small the remainder of the trip, because it was awful. I was down the whole time. We ended up playing about 3 more hours of blackjack and ended up down $800, but still up for the day.

Didn't sleep well at all Friday night as I came down with a bad cold. Still, we got up at 9 Saturday morning so my partner could keep her spa appointment. After that, we gambled a bit more, broke even, and hit up the pool. Apparently, Horseshoe has followed GoldStrike's lead and made their pool 21 and up only. I think a lot of people used the pools as babysitters while they gambled. We actually saw one family at the pool with their teenage daughter and the staff came and told them the girl could not be there. To my surprise, I saw the couple leave with their daughter, but then the adults returned ten minutes later by themselves. Did they just dump the girl back in the room??? Good job, parents lol.

After swimming and relaxing, we went and picked up our shell gas card giveaway they were doing this month. I guess I gambled enough Friday night that now I probably won't be paying for gas for the next year, lol. So that is nice. Afterward, we gambled a bit more, won another $500, and then went over to the Vid Poker machines near the buffet. It was a good time. We ended up even at VP. We got lucky with one 4oak and a couple full houses when we pressed our bets.

We ended the evening at Binion's Steakhouse. Its decent. I think the steakhouse at GoldStrike is more consistent, but the meal was good this evening. Afterward, my head cold was killing me, so I collapsed while my partner stayed up and played more VP. After all our expenses, we still ended this leg of the trip up $3k.

And we ended the month well up! Gamblor was kind to me and we made more than enough to pay for Disney, Vegas twice, Tunica, and about $8k in futures NFL bets, with lots of leftover cash for the safe at home. I love to travel and get away to do stuff, but after a busy month, its a good feeling to know I will be home for a couple weeks. Still, its somewhat surreal for me to realize, though, that next month will be very similar to this past month! We go back to Disney for our annual big trip to visit the other parks, then I go directly to Vegas to meet a buddy for the Canelo/Triple G fight, and then my partner and I go back to Vegas again a week later with family, planning to make a day trip to Bryce Canyon. All that will be fun as we get closer to the trips, but right now I am traveled-out and thrilled to be home with our cat family and sleep in my own bed for a while! Hope you all enjoyed reading along

 

Great report Uk , and great winnings also, good luck next month, you got style and class.

 

@UKFanatic - great report, as usual. any lean yet on canelo/ggg? im assuming late $ comes in on canelo, but i still like ggg.

 

I don't feel like I have any valuable insight, but I like Triple G. I have watched each of them fight a couple times and I think GGG is better and Canelo's style won't work well in this matchup. So I plan to bet GGG.

As for the money coming in, I noticed early last week in Vegas, the CET line was -150. By this weekend, it was -155. I hope a lot of late money comes in on Canelo so I can get a good price on GGG the afternoon of the fight. I suspect it will, as he is the dog and popular with the public. That's a good combo to get a lot of action.

This post reminds me that it was exactly a year ago I was in Vegas for the May/McG fight. What a joke. I mean, it was a fun experience to attend, but I kept making bets throughout the six weeks leading up to the fight that by the time it started, it was the largest exposure I have ever had on a sports bet. And I had zero concern that I would not get paid. I was just making a short term loan to the casinos, lol. I still cannot fathom how many people I know/met who put money down on McG (which I love; that Mayweather line just kept getting better). I don't feel nearly the same about this upcoming fight, but I will likely still make a four figure bet just so I can have some action during the match

 

Am I reading this right? It sounds like it's off of the actual gaming floor as Pickle and Jam is off the floor... That's not going to generate much other gambling revenue at all.

 

Its correct. Actually, when we walked over to try and find it, we came in the back of the casino near the buffet. We walked over to the area near the steakhouse and cafe, thinking it would be there. Nope (although there is a new tables game section over there). Then we walked to the front, thinking they must have pout it in the bar area next to the host desk. nope. Then we decided they must have put it upstairs. We were headed that way when an employee told us where it was. Its basically in the front lobby! Seems like a strange spot. But it is nice that there are a ton of tables and TVs in that area to watch a game after you make a bet.

One other sportsbook tidbit I forgot to mention: Horseshoe needs to subscribe to more sports feeds for their TVs. After we made an MLB bet, we asked that the game be shown on one of the TVs. They tried to accommodate and search for it, but the game wasn't available in whatever sports package they had!!! Instead, half their TVs were tuned to ESPN showing the LLWS (you know, one of the few sports events you're NOT allowed to bet on! Makes perfect sense, lol)

 

Yeah I asked if I could bet on the LLWS in Vegas 3 years ago...hahaha

And yeah, I don't think most Tunica casinos have an expanded sports package. A possible cost they all failed to consider.

 

i know what you mean about the mayweather fight, sometimes a line is just so off, you're weary of a trap line, but a mismatch is just that. triple g is the better fighter, that's really not in dispute. and you only pay vig if you lose

 

Great report as usual. I'm sorry you got sick, but not surprised with all the travel and being around so many people.

TomTWI

 

Great report. I have a couple of trips booked to the Beau in October and November, specifically because they added the sports book and I can hang around, bet and watch football.

 

What are you thoughts on the sports book at Gold Strike and Horseshoe? How do you think they will handle big crowds on Saturday and Sunday...if there are big crowds?

 

I had to LOL on this, the Pats were "robbed"?? I haven't seen an ass kicking like that since the first 3-quarters of SB LI. The Pats will be good, but let's be realistic with what they are/were.

 

I've been to GS recently for their book. It's actually inside the Pickles and Jam restaurant so the only place to watch it's the restaurant itself. The book itself is tiny. Horseshoe looks ok and Sam's Town is pretty nice, it's upstairs and good sized.

 

Appeared as though both books had the capacity to have three betting windows open at any given time. My guess is that they will be slow at handling crowds at first, but get better as the staff (and gamblers) get more experienced at placing the bets. My guess is that this coming weekend will be their first big test