Oct 6-10 Bally's, Rollin Smoke, SLS, High Roller

This is pretty long so I will post in 3 sections, one for each day.

This was my 14th trip to Vegas with one of my old college roommates. Three comped nights at Bally’s, reserved a room in the Jubilee tower. The offer I was playing on included a $75 resort credit and $75 in free play. Hunter (for those that don’t know he is a host at PH) was nice enough to increase the free play to $250 even though I am not a big enough player to have a host assigned to me.

My gambling budget was $2,000 per day, I use a modified version of the envelope system to manage my bankroll, more on that later. I am strictly a BJ and Craps player. We never have much planned for our trips. No fancy dinners or shows. Gambling, beer and some pool time is about all that is guaranteed on our trips.

I tried to figure out how to post pics here…I really did. But for some reason even though they show up normal on my phone and computer the end up rotated 90 degrees when I post them here so sorry no pics.

Day 1My flight (JetBlue JFK to LAS) arrives just after noon, luggage comes reasonably fast and there is virtually no line for a taxi. I usually let the taxi driver know I have been to Vegas several times so they won’t tunnel me. Leaving the airport the driver asks if I mind if he stops to go to the bathroom. Um…sure if you gotta go you gotta go. There are restrooms in a little building leaving the airport for the drivers to use. I never knew about that. You have to kind of double back to get to them and get back out of the airport so it adds a little distance to the trip, plus he was a little generous (in his favor) as to when he turned the meter off and on so the fare was maybe going to be a little higher than normal but whatever. Get to the hotel and it was $21.90, I gave him $30 and he said “you don’t need change do you?” I was planning on giving him the $30 anyway but felt like I got hustled a little especially when you add in his piss break but again whatever…I’m in Vegas.

I had checked in to the hotel back at JFK and they said I would get a text when the room was ready. I got the text as soon as I got out of the taxi…perfect timing. My friend arrived a few hours before I did and like any good friend met me at the hotel with a cold beer. The woman that checks me in hands me the keys and asks if I have ever stayed there and know where the elevators are. I say yes I have stayed there before but not in the Jubilee tower. She says “oh I don’t have you in a Jubilee room”. I show her my confirmation and am given the standard “that is just a request for a Jubilee room not a guarantee” response. Again, whatever, the room is free so I am not going to argue with her. Although I don’t understand how she could have not given me a Jubilee room at 1pm. I could see if it was midnight and all the rooms were accounted for, but 1pm?

Get up to the room and it is a typical dated Bally’s Indigo room. It is fine but I was looking forward to the newer room. The safe looks like it is about 75 years old and took me a few minutes to figure out how it works but I put 2 envelopes with $2,000 each in it and we were off.

First stop was the Tequila bar at Bally’s for $2 tacos. Not the best tacos in the world but for $2 not bad at all, 6 tacos and a pitcher of beer between the 2 of us $30. One of the best bargains on the strip.

Then off to the cage to get my free play. After a few minutes the woman prints off 3 $25 vouchers (which is what my original offer was before Hunter added more). Like it is going to matter even a little I show her the email from Hunter saying that the FP was going to be $250. So she makes a few phone calls, talks to someone else then comes back a few minutes later with the $75 she printed the first time and an ADDITIONAL $250. Not wanting to mess with karma I tell her I don’t think it’s right and that I think it should be $250 total not the $325. She kind of shrugs and was like “well that’s what printed so you have to take it”. Ok I guess if I have to take it I am not going to argue with her. Knowing that giving me an extra $75 free play could likely lead to the financial ruin of CET I double check with Hunter to see if I misunderstood or if someone else made a mistake. He confirms that it was supposed be $250 total but that it was my lucky day and to enjoy the extra FP!

I didn’t realize it but the offer I was booked under also included 2 free High Roller tickets. I had been on it before and wasn’t planning on doing it again but since it was free and my friend hadn’t been on it we figured we might do it. So a double bonus, extra free play and high roller tickets.

We wander around a little and end up at O’Shea’s buy in for $500 at a $5 craps table. It’s choppy as usual but a fun crowd. Drink service is excellent and the CW’s were attractive and dressed very nicely. Protip: It is much closer to walk outside and go into the Flamingo to use the bathroom instead of going all the way in to the one in the IP, Quad, LINQ or whatever it was called the day I was there. Play for an hour and a half or so and cash out even.

Off to Flamingo, buy in for $500 at a $25 BJ table. Drink service is horrific. When I finally get my first beer I ask the CW to bring me another one her next time around. I get a mini lecture that I can’t have 2 beers at once so I will have to have finished the first one before she can give me the second one. I tell her don’t worry I WILL be done with the first one when you come back. There was a super good looking woman playing at the table that had no idea what she was doing. Those players don’t really bother me, I am of the mindset that their bad plays can help me as much as hurt me. Go on a nice run and get up $750. I tell my friend I am going to cash out and go play at the Cromwell, my favorite place to play. He says he may or may not meet me there (he was pretty tired/drunk at this point). We had both been up since about 4am east coast time and we were both pretty tired.

Buy in for $1,000, play heads up against the dealer, a super nice, super attractive Russian woman. I don’t think she realized the cold war is over and manages to extract my money from me as fast as humanly possible. One thing I love about the Cromwell is that the dealers really do act like they feel bad if you lose. But I did win 2 more free high roller tickets for suited BJ’s that I couldn’t use! Anyway, manage to cash out down $25 for the night. All things considered not a bad result but feels like a loss after leaving the Flamingo up $750. My friend never shows, I get to the room at 11 and he is in bed passed out.

 

Good for you doing the right thing with the free play. Enjoyed Day 1, now looking forward to more!

 

good start to the trip report!

 

With that hassle from the cabbie and bally's front desk, the $75 goof-up in your favor is probably deserved! And I really should have made an effort to play BJ at CET in Sept. A high roller ticket for a suited blackjack is a pretty sweet deal!

 

Enjoying the trip report and looking forward to more!

Struggle to understand how you don't have a CET host at 2K a day budget. That can't be right. I have 2 hosts at CET, the first one assigned to me after just a 3 day trip there and would say we have a similar budget. I play slots, but felt they assigned them out too quickly IMO. anyway, sure hope you charged everything to room and see if a host on duty can take care of it!!!

 

Great read so far, and if down only 25 after such an eventful day and TACOS i say you're doing great!

 

Thanks glad you are enjoying, day 2 should be up shortly and day 3 by the end of today. As far as the host thing goes, I don't know if I should have one or not. I don't really care either way. After this trip I sent Hunter an email to thank him for the free play and he told me to let him know the next time I was coming and that he would take care of me.

 

Day 2
Wake up day 2 around 7 and go downstairs for some Gatorade. The first thing I see are 2 working girls getting escorted out by security and they did not look very happy about it. One thing that will NEVER get old is getting up early and seeing the hookers wrapping up their shifts.

We planned on going to the only logical place for a nice healthy, nutritious breakfast…the Denny’s up by Casino Royale. The only problem is that it isn’t there anymore, it looks like it was being remodeled but it was hard to tell for sure what they are doing. Plan B is the next best thing, McDonalds. After we are done eating we go outside and a younger homeless guys asks if I have $0.25. I give him all the change in my pocket. He thanks me and gives me a Vegas postcard and stick of gum. While I am 99.99% sure the gum and postcard were shoplifted from somewhere I appreciate that he isn’t just begging for money for nothing in return. Well I don’t feel like carrying around a post card that I have no use for and there is no way in hell I am chewing the gum that he gave me, so the post card and gum promptly go in the trash. Likely to be retrieved and put to good use by the next homeless person that goes shopping in the trash cans.

One of the “problems” with our trips is that we don’t like to gamble too early in the day so killing time in the morning can be a problem. So we decide to sit at the little outside bar between Flamingo and Cromwell and people watch. My friend gets his first beer at 10am. I am the more responsible of the 2 of us, so I wait until 11. It turns out the woman I buy the beer from in the gift shop and I were born in the same hospital, 2,500 miles from Vegas in a town with a population of 40,000 or so. Very strange coincidence.

We recognized (remembered them from our last trip) the 2 homeless people that dress up as Mini and Mickey Mouse (or some kind of mice…I am not a mouse expert) and hustle people to take pics with them for tips. A few thoughts about them 1) like postcard/chewing gum guy I respect that they are not just begging for money 2) It was pretty funny, they would “work” for like 10 minutes then take their costumes off for 20 minutes or so to smoke a cigarette and talk to the other talent. They were off the clock more than there were on it 3) I can’t imagine how UNGODLY AWFUL those costumes must smell. Since it doesn’t look like their occupants have been cleaned since the last time we saw them a year ago, I doubt they run up very high dry cleaning bills for the costumes.

After a few hours of hanging out we go over to the high roller, I redeem my vouchers for my 4 free tickets and wait for a couple to get in line to buy tickets so I can give them my extra 2. They were very grateful that I was giving them away for free. Similar to my last time on it there was no line and we get right on with only 5 other people in our pod. The ride is fine but now that I have done it twice I doubt I would do it again even if it was free. After we got off the ride we got a few slices of pizza from the walk up pizza place in the LINQ. The Pizza sucked.

By this point it is 2 pm and my friend says he needs to go the room to take a nap so I go down to hang out at the pool for a few hours. (Does any casino have a shittier location for the sports book than Bally’s? Basically in the basement next to the food court.) Not a good pool day, it was pretty cloudy and the pool was dead. Grab a burger at Johnny Rockets (my first one ever, not a bad burger at all) and head up to the room. My friend is passed out cold. As I get out of the shower he is showing signs of life.

Since day 1 was basically a breakeven day $500 more goes into each envelope for the remaining 2 days, so the gambling bankroll for the day is up to $2,500. Buy in for $500 BJ at the Flamingo, up and down as usual, cash out even and head back to the Cromwell.

Back at Cromwell buy in for $1,000 at my favorite BJ table, a $25 table in the back outside of the high limit room. It’s just me heads-up with the dealer for a while. Then a guy walks up to the table and puts down a $100 bill. The dealer asks if he wants any green. “Nope I am just making one bet”. He bets the black chip and of course gets an 11, reaches into his pocket for another $100 and draws a 7. Dealer has 19. That was a quick $200. In the history of casino gambling has anything that started with “I am just going to make one bet” ever ended up good? Then my friend shows up to watch me play (he is a $5-$10 per hand player). I was playing an average of $100 per hand or so. I ask the pit if my friend can play $5, he says he has to get that approved and comes back a few minutes later and says he can play less than the table minimum but only until X happens. I didn’t hear exactly what X was (shift change maybe?) but we played for a while after that and they never told him he had to up his bet. Even when other players sat at the table which was pretty infrequent. He plays pretty good strategy so I wasn’t too worried about the other guys complaining about $5 guy making bad decisions and messing up the table for them. Things start to go bad, really bad. Lose the original buy in. Buy in for another $1,000, then another $500. So in for my $2,500 limit for the day. It got to where I only had 2 $100 chips left. Then things start to go good, really good. It got to a point that I was betting $150-$200 per hand and got back to even. Should have stopped when I was even but gave back $500 before I colored up. So down $500 for the day so far. Not bad considering where I was about an hour before.

I wanted one last session at Bally’s before bed. Buy in for $1,000 in their “high limit” room $25 BJ table. The little elevated area off main floor, hardly a high limit room but it was still quiet. Flat betting $50 a hand I don’t think I lasted 20 minutes before losing it all. So down $1,500 and called it a night around midnight.

 

So you played bj from 4pm-12am on day two without a break, or having dinner??
I love it, a man after my own heart, true degen move:evillaugh

 

It was more like 5 pm to 12 am. Nope no dinner breaks, a few small breaks between casinos but other than that just pee breaks. I wouldn't have it any other way. Glad you like

 

I had a session last year you would be even more proud of. 5 pm until 2 am. same table no break and it was a big winning session. at one point the pit told me I was working OT.

 

LOL

I have had some grind sessions like that with live poker before. My body tends to hate me though unless I have drowned it in alcohol while doing so.

 

Enjoying the report; looking forward to more.

 

Day 3- last day
We get down to the lobby around 8 trying to figure out what we are going to do for breakfast. We see a sign for the Bally’s breakfast buffet for $12.99 a person. Sounds like a good deal…and it was. For $13 it was pretty good but that price didn’t include coffee. How can a breakfast buffet not include coffee? Seems like a bait and switch to me. But even with the upcharge for coffee it was worth it. It definitely served its purpose and was about 25 times more satisfying than the sausage McMuffin with egg that I had the day before.

So the inevitable question of “what are we going to do to kill time before we start gambling” comes up. Well we had planned on going to lunch at Rollin Smoke. For those that have never heard of it, it is a BBQ off the strip that gets really good reviews. It is north of Bally’s west of the strip so I suggest we just start walking up the strip and we will figure it out. I also mention that there is a new casino (SLS) up the strip that I wouldn’t mind checking out.

So we start walking up the strip and decide to go into the Wynn to use the facilities. I figure I would show him the Popeye statue. We start talking to one of Popeye’s body guards and he told us that recently Wynn got an offer of $60 million for it. I told him I would give him $65 million, even though he has probably heard about 500 variations of that “joke” he laughed and said he would pass it along to Steve W. and get back to me.

So we leave the Wynn and start heading back up the strip. My friend asks how far up the new casino is. I tell him I’m not sure exactly how far but that I think it is pretty far up and that we need to walk through a pretty sketchy area to get to it. We have a lot of time to kill so we soldier on and figure it can’t be that bad. I have not spent much time and north of the Wynn except one trip to the Stratosphere several years ago so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We get to the Riveria and I said I wanted to check it out since I had never been there. I have read some horrible things about it here and expected it to be a total dump. It was not nearly as bad as I expected, it was reasonably crowded pretty and pretty bright. Not what I was expecting based on what I had read and it even had $1 BJ which I had never seen.

We leave the Riveria and head up to SLS, we saw a few homeless people between Wynn and Riveria but the area wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. But HOLY HELL it was a long walk from Bally’s. 3.4 miles according to google maps plus when you add in the distance walking in and around Wynn it was closer to 4 miles. This is vacation, I am NOT supposed to be getting exercise!!!! I thought SLS was fine and a place I would go to again IF it wasn’t in such a shitty location. That is likely the last time I will ever see the inside of the place. So the plan was to go from the SLS to Rollin Smoke for lunch. The original plan was to talk to lunch, but after the 4 mile hike to SLS, neither one of us wanted to walk almost 2 miles back to Rollin Smoke. Ok so we agree we will cab it…but it is only 11 o’clock…and we just had breakfast at 8:30…so what are we going to do? Duh…one Bud and one Bud light please. The “sports book” has some couches so we just hung out there for a few hours drinking beer and catching up. The guy I was with is one of my best friends and we only see each other about once a year. So it was nice to hang out and catch up and recount the stupid things we did in college. Like that one time that I…..oh never mind you don’t want to hear about that. SLS could have one of the worst sports books on the strip, basically just a few TV’s and a betting window. Unless they have another one that I didn’t see I thought it was pretty weak.

Ok so now it’s about 1:30 and we are ready for lunch. I have heard a lot of good things about Rollin Smoke and I thought it was known by all of the locals. Well neither the taxi driver nor the guy at SLS that got us the taxi had ever heard of it. I didn’t take that as a good sign. When we pulled up it was what I expected, a dive looking place in a little strip mall in an industrial area off the strip. We went in and it looked like all the customers were locals and the place would not be described as very clean. The manager/owner was super nice. I thought the food was good/very good but not quite as good as most people here and on Trip Advisor. I ordered pulled pork, brisket, mac and cheese and mashed potatoes. They messed up the order and gave me ribs instead of pulled pork. No problem, they gave me the pulled pork when I pointed out the error. The pulled pork was the best of the 3 and very good. The brisket was ok but I didn't like the ribs at all. Not much meat and not a lot of flavor. The sides were fine, nothing special but I ate them all. Overall I thought it was good but I wouldn't go out of my way to go back. For those in the Northeast that have had Dinosaur BBQ, I think Dinosaur is better. The owner called us a cab which arrived in about 5 minutes to take us back to the hotel.

We get back to the hotel and decide to go to the pool for a little while before gambling. Much more activity at the pool this time. I go to get 2 beers and the bartender does his job and sells me on the bucket of 5 for $32 (I think that’s what it was) instead of $16 for 2. We only have time to have one each at the pool but I figure the rest won’t go to waste. I was right…sort of. We each had a second one on the way to the casino. But, as much as I am ashamed to admit it, sadly #5 was sitting unopened in the bucket in warm water on the desk in the room when we checked out the next morning. A nearly unforgivable action.

So using my modified envelope system the bankroll for the last night was upped to $3,000. The thinking being that after my $1,500 loss the previous night, even if I lose the whole thing, I will still go home with $1,500 (or 25% of what I came with). We head out around 5. My favorite table at Cromwell won’t be open until 8, the Flamingo BJ tables were pretty crowded and I strongly prefer to play at tables with only a few people or heads up with the dealer.

So I ended up at the Margaritaville craps table. Buy in for $500. I generally play pass plus 3x odds and the 6 and 8 (boring I know). I will press after a number hits for a second time but I am not ultra-aggressive with the presses. I will play the 5 or 9 if the 6 or 8 is the point and sometimes the 4 or 10 but not a lot. If the point an even number then a 2 way hard way on the point. Once in a while I will play the fire bet, when I play the fire I also put the dealers on it. One of the best thing about the dealers at MVille is that they truly appreciated the hard way bets. After each 7 out or win on the bets I would get a thank you from all of the dealers. I like playing for the dealers and even more so when it seems like they appreciate it. For the most part it was a really fun table. There was one guy standing next to me that would not shut up, he was talking about everything. He was playing the dark side and kept saying, among other things, that everyone hated him because he was playing the don’t. Finally I told him that I didn’t hate him because he is playing the dark side but that I hate him because he was a babbling idiot. Ok, so that’s not EXACTLY what I told him but maybe that was just what I was thinking. I did tell him that I doubted anyone hated him because he was playing the dark side and that I personally didn’t give a shit how he bet. But he insisted that everyone hated him. Whatever dude. One thing about his betting that I thought was weird that I had never seen before. It was a $5 table and he was betting $5 on the don’t pass plus odds (I’m not sure if that’s what you call it when you bet the don’t) plus a $5 midnight bet on almost every roll. I think the midnight bet is one of the worst bets from a player’s perspective but I don’t think he lost much, if any, on it. He hit it twice so at 30:1 collected $150 each time in a relatively short period of time. It was a weird table though. Not a lot of quick 7 outs but not a lot of points hit and a lot of 2,3,11 and 12. For a long time it seemed like I was just hanging in there and should have been making more money than I was given the lack of 7’s. I treaded water for a while when I thought I should have been up but ended up losing the buy in. But it was a lot of fun.

Ok so done at MVille and off to the Cromwell for my favorite table to end the trip. Got there around 8 and bought in for $1,000. It was choppy at the beginning, no big swings either way. The first dealer was the worst I ever had at the Cromwell. She wasn’t bad just not very friendly. Didn’t ask our names when we sat down, didn’t thank me for playing for her (basically like a lot of non-Cromwell dealers). That is one of the reasons I love the Cromwell, they are for the most part very friendly, ask your for your name and are appreciative when you play for them. The drink service there is fan-freaking-tastic, no lectures here about having more than one beer, she was bringing me a new one when I still had half a bottle left in the old one. I was tipping $2-$5 a drink so I’m sure that helped but the CW’s were great. Enter the next dealer, Mia, good god she was fantastic. Very talkative, very friendly, very cute, very everything. High fives when you win and everything. One of the best dealers ever. Followed by Emma, a Brit that moved to Vegas relatively recently that dealt to me the night before so we remembered each other. She is also great, very fun and friendly. Sadly the cards didn’t cooperate. Eventually I lost the original buy in and got in for $1,000 more. But it was a gradual decline, I was there for a while. At one point I wasn’t paid for a hand that I should have been paid for so Emma called the pit over who had been there as long as I had. The pit told Emma to pay me and thanked me for my patience and acknowledged that I had been there for a while. At some point my friend asks to borrow $200 so I gave it to him. I lost my second buy $1,000 buy in and got in for the last $500 I had budgeted for the day. Eventually it runs out at about 1:30am. Lost the whole $3,000 I had budgeted for the day. But it was by far the most fun night of the trip. Best dealers, best players at the table and best CW’s. I love the Cromwell. Plus since I gave my friend $200, technically, I could have taken that from my walking around money to gamble more, so I really only lost $2,800 for the night or $4,300 for the trip. It was still a really fun night.

The last morning
We had flights out around noon. We got back to the room around 2 am. My phone rings at 5 am. It is my former boss who is on east coast time. The reason I was able to get this trip in is because I quit my job and had a week off between jobs. I ignore the call from my former boss who was calling to ask me where a file was saved, one of the reasons I left that job was because he would do things like call me when I was on vacation and he is still doing it WHEN HE ISNT MY BOSS ANYMORE. We drag our asses out of bed around 8. I check my bill on the TV. I had a whopping $45 of room charges that were not covered by the resort credit. I go to the host on duty and he agrees to wipe out the non-tip charges so it leaves me with a bill of $18. I am sure I left a lot on the table and wish I would have charged more to the room.

So we are in the taxi line to go to the airport and there are a few SUV’s circling (which I have never seen). The taxi line guy is saying $10 a head to the airport in an SUV. I ask if that means me and my friend can go there for $20. He says no that they need 4 people. Ok fine, so eventually they got 2 others so the 4 of us are going to take the SUV for $10 per person. It is a good deal since it is a flat rate and basically the same cost as a taxi for the 2 of us…until he drops all of us off at T1. I was flying JetBlue and have always gone out of T3 (since it opened) I asked him I am in the right place and he assures me that I am. I thought maybe something had changed. Well it hadn’t and I had to take the shuttle to T3. Not a big deal since I had plenty of time before my flight was leaving. I goodbye to Vegas after trip #14, another great one.

 

thanks for the TR. sucks the lazy driver dropped you off at T1 and not T3. That was pretty cool you got the $75 plus the $250. Hunter is a great guy.

 

Love reading your report. I think you don't give yourself enough credit for what you deserve as far as comps. I wouldn't be afraid to ask for a suite next time. Again, thanks for sharing.

 

Thanks for sharing your TR, really enjoyed it. Love the part about the former boss -- some people!

 

Nice report, thanks for writing it up!

 

Enjoyed your report. Great attitude about losses.

 

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. I don't think I am over comped but don't necessarily think I am under comped either. My problem, for lack of a better word, is that the friends I go to Vegas with have a very tight budget. So he has no interest in say a $200 dinner unless he was sure it would be comped on the back end. So there is little opportunity for me to run up many room charges to be taken care of by the host at the end of the trip. As far as the better room, when I booked the trip only basic rooms were showing up as comped. The suites were at a discounted rate (at least I assume it was discounted).