Aria trip with planned live updates

100% agree. The dice cannot be influenced. People can be thrown off of their game in BJ, but not craps. I guess she could tilt me into playing long shots like the hardways, but I am a strict pass line and come line with odds bettor.

My read was she was just having a bad day. My overall experience with bosses and dealers at the Aria is overwhelmingly positive.

 

Look for the supervisor John. Pit sup with a beard. He is great.. And you are right, dice don't have eyes, ears or a nose so keep going! Yes, I too get nothing but great vibes from 80% of the craps crew at Aria.

 

Trip reports continued

Sorry for the long delay, I took mental notes the entire trip, but my computer battery inexplicably died Friday night.

When I left off, I had just gone to bed Friday night. Saturday morning, around 3:00 AM PST, I woke up for some reason. I had a text on my phone from a friend of a friend who I understood was in Vegas. He had texted me around 2:00 AM PST to see if I was still up. On the off chance he was still up, texted him back. He was staying at the MGM Grand and invited me over to play. I took a taxi over and the driver was one of those Vegas drivers who constantly bitch about the "Vegas crowd" and how he hates them. I can understand his point somewhat, there are a lot of dudes who can't handle Vegas. However, you also don't want to bite the hand that feeds you.

I met my contact at the BJ table. He played at the table minimum for $25 a hand and I was betting between $100 and $300 a hand. We tread water for a while and then made the mistake of ordering drinks. I was drinking Makers Mark neat and he was drinking Dewar's on the rocks. I tipped the cocktail waitress $5 per round and she began bringing extra drinks without us even ordering them. I lost count of the number of drinks after 10 in three hours time. As can be assumed, my memory of the events that followed are a bit hazy as well. At some point we ate breakfast at the MGM cafe and we said our goodbyes. I don't recall if I cabbed it back to the Aria or walked. However, given my state, I am going to assume that I cabbed it.

When I got back to the Aria, my two trip mates had just woken up. They went to breakfast while I hit the craps tables again. My memory of that session is hazy as well, so I do not recall if I won or lost. Before we started our trip up the strip, we stopped in at the PUB in Aria and took the 7 second challenge, which I never did, but always wanted to do. One of my friends declined, because he lacked confidence and balls. So it was two of us. We asked the bartender for tips, he said to do it with Boddingtons and to "drink fast." Only the first piece of advice seemed helpful. Fortunately, I was able to finish, but my friend was not. So we paid for his beer and headed out (mine was free because I won the contest).

My friends wanted to walk the strip, so we strolled up the strip on the Harrah's side. It was pretty busy on the strip, but it was a beautiful day. We were trying to find the O'Shea's that had just opened in order to see beer pong in a casino. However, they must have moved it because we could not locate it. Instead, we picked up the rental car that we had left at the top of the strip the night before and headed downtown to the El Cortez. The El Cortez charges $10 for parking which means that I will never go there again.

The El Cortez was uneventful. I cannot recall the last time I played $5 singe deck BJ, but it was there so I did it. I did not want to waste big gambling at that crap hole, even though my odds were better. The $5 game was cold so we hit the craps table. The craps table was $5 with 10X odds. I played for $10 with full odds on the pass and two come bets. The group at the entire table kept chanting during every roll, "We don't need no sleep, we don't need no rest, we at the Cortez." It started out as catchy, even given it's butchering of basic proper grammar. However, like a Top 40 pop song, it quickly devolved from catchy to annoying after having it peppered at us for a half hour straight. It probably didn't help that the table was extremely cold.

Based on the cold table and annoying crowd, we headed back to the strip. On our walk back to the parking garage ($10 for parking that was still two blocks away is very tilting), we saw that there had been some type of crime, because there was police tape and officers everywhere down the street. Downtown is not quaint.

After we got back to the Aria, my light sleep caught up with me, so I took a quick 2 hour nap. I felt refreshed after that and I headed to the Mandalay Bay for dinner. My buddies were playing at the Luxor, so I played some $25 pai gow poker with two older couples from Oregon who were very nice. I lost two commissions ($2.50) on the game and headed to dinner.

We ate at StripSteak and had a great dinner. We started with a Macallan 12 and Herradura each. We ordered the foie gras dumplings, lobster tail, hamachi, bone-in ribeye, sea bass (not Chilean-Rick Moonen would not like that), lamb chops, potato puree (it is just mashed potatoes, call it that), roasted mushrooms and truffled mac and cheese (anyone else out there think that putting truffles on mac and cheese is like putting gold rims on a Chevette?). We had wonderful service and the meal was really good. I highly recommend it.

After dinner, we went to Ri Ra at Mandalay, where they were in the midst of a (hopeful) records breaking live music event. I think that they were on day 13 or something like that. Ri Ra is a soulless chain, but it is pretty good at being a corporate rip-off of an Irish pub. We all had Irish Car bomb shots (that name seems borderline racist) and a few pints of Guiness.

On the walk back to the Aria, my buddy insisted we stop in Excalibur and play Let it Ride, which is inexplicably his favorite casino game and apparently the Aria does not have Let it Ride, probably because it is the single most asinine casino game outside of War. We all bought in for $100 and predictably all lost it all.

After getting back to the Aria, we declined to gamble further (Let it Ride will do that do you) and we drank some Wild Turkey 101 in the room and passed out. Note to self and readers, Wild Turkey 101 is like drinking liquid sandpaper.

That is it for Saturday, I will be back sometime later with Sunday and the conclusion of the trip.

 

LOL...my condolences.

And as for O'Shea's, it's not directly on the strip anymore. There is an entrance in the Linq and in the Quad casino.

 

WRONG, Her job is to KEEP him at the table and let the math kick in!!!

 

I noticed that I did not post my details of the bar crawl with comments; here they are:

Encore: Lounge bar: Nothing special, nothing memorable.
Wynn: Parasol down: Nice bar, overpriced cocktails, even for Vegas.
Palazzo: Table 10: I love the bar layout here. Ridiculously good happy hour. Very nice bar, very good bartender. We had $9 "rock shrimp" but in reality were 8 jumbo fried shrimp. We also had the stuffed dates that were also really good. The drink was described as spicy by the bartender, but it was pretty mild to me.
Venetian: Canaletto: Very solid bar. Excellent chips and salsa. Margarita was sneaky strong-which is the best kind. It tasted weak at the time, then it kicked in later on. Good happy hour: $5 drinks. I liked the bartender, she agreed with me concerning the Walking Dead. My buddies were expressing their excitement about the new season and asked me why I was not contributing to the conversation. I told them that I stopped watching after season 1. You would have thought that I told them that I supported ISIS or opposed breastfeeding (side bar-when my wife had our two children I was shocked as to the full court press that the doctors and nurses gave us regarding breastfeeding; they made it seem like if we did not breastfeed our kids, that they would end up as drooling morons). I simply told them that I tired of the same thing week after week: kill zombies then argue about how to avoid being killed by zombies; rinse lather and repeat; ad nauseum. I mean really, it is the same fucking show, 10 time a season for every season. The bartender won point with me when she heartily agreed with my assessment of that show......or maybe she was just angling for a good tip.
Mirage: Abbey Road Bar: My buddy who is a huge Beatles fan (I like to piss him off by telling him that "Imagine" is my favorite Beatles song) wanted to go to the Revolution bar but it was closed and we settled on the Abbey road bar. The prices were at the usurious level, but my aviation was strong and delicious. There was no real Beatles stuff in there, which was disappointing for my Beatle loving buddy. Although, I was able to tilt him again there when I said that Sublime had a shot of being bigger than the Beatles if Brad Nowell had not died. He predictably disagreed.......strongly. The greatest thing about that bar was the bartender. Completely hot. Completely nice. Made great drinks. Blonde, busty and wearing a leather bustier thingy. Truly one of the hottest bartenders ever. Please take my advice and check this place out.
Caesar's: Serendipity: We went there for the happy hour, which had been discontinued. Strike one. The menu was a confusing mess of confusion, Strike two. The bartender was pretty nice. Solid double. After he saw us pull out the breathalyzer, he mentioned that he got a DUI once and thought that the breathalyzer was a great idea. He liked it better that we just had one for fun. He mentioned that he thought that every car should be sold with a breathalyzer. Seriously, that is a great idea. Ford, Chevy, Honda; if you guys are reading my Vegas trip report, please send me and the Caesar's bartender with a check after you steal this idea. Bartender made us a respectable kamikaze shot.
Bellagio: This is where my memory starts to fade. I believe that we intended to go to the Petrossian bar, but instead I thought it was a good idea to throw craps. I got us free drinks while I threw the bones, those drinks only "cost" about a $1000 total.
Cosmopolitan: The plan was to go to the DOCG happy hour, but they only run that Monday through Thursday, so we went to the happy hour at Comme Ca. Very solid place. drink was good and strong and the happy hour food was good (shrimp cocktail and salmon). Nothing too memorable, but that could have been due to my drunken state.
Mandalay Bay: RM Seafood. Very good bar here. I had a bourbon drink that was excellent. Always one of my favorite places to eat and drink.

 

Damn, that would have been nice to know.....too bad you weren't part of my group....we wasted a lot of time looking for that.

 

I won $500 on the Eagles at -1 but lost $500 on the over 50. But watching them kill the Giants took away the pain.

- - - Updated - - -

Scoreboard.

 

I had a premature exclamation on this one. I WAS up, then got cocky and posted about it and the craps gods punished me by bringing me back down to earth. Ended up losing there. The danger of writing these reports live and while drinking is sloppy grammar and hazy memories.

 

She was the exception, not the rule. Plus, I can't no play them because that is where I get my best comps.

 

Computer battery went dead. Posting on the phone is hard.

 

I lost the god damn over too, but I'll take the goose egg for the Giants any day as a consolation prize. Hoping the birds get healthy over the bye week.

 

Vegas trip report Day 3

I woke up around 6:30 AM Sunday morning and made my NFL bets. I bet Denver at -10 for $440, San Diego at -7.5 for $550, Eagles at -1 for $550, Panthers at +7 for $440, New England at -1 for $550 and the Eagles over for $550.

I ended up winning 4 and losing 2. I think I netted about $800. Here are the two losers:





The winners have already been cashed and they took them, they won't let you keep them as a memento.

 

After making my bets, we ate at the Aria buffet. $30 is a bit steep for breakfast, but they had crab legs and shrimp. Aria is a solid, if not spectacular buffet. It trails Wynn, Bellagio and Caesar's. After breakfast, we staked out a place at the video poker machines near Five50 Pizza. The bartender was very good in instructing on the free drink policy at the bartop. He explained that you have to play at least .25 and max bet on the machine and then he could comp one drink per half hour. There is a light on the slot where you put your player's card that blinks if you are not playing enough, but my experience was that a good tip meant that the bartender ignored that. I had drink tickets from my sports bets to use in between the half hour drinks, so I did not need to test that policy, so I don't know if that one is strict.

I alternated between shots of tequila and whiskey/cokes. I had about 10 drinks while I watched the first set of games, 4 shots and 6 mixed. The mixed drinks were very weak but were interestingly poured out of the gun, even the booze. I had never seen that before. The Denver game looked like a bust until a pick 6 won the cover for the Broncos, the place went nuts on that score. After the first set of games, I was 3-3 and almost free rolling.

We headed to Five50 for pizza and wings and Cowboys-Seahawks. My buddies are Cowboys guys and I am an Eagles man so I was talking a lot of shit.......but if you watched the game, you know that I ended up disappointed. The food at Five50 is great. I had been there before a few times so I knew that the pizza was great. However, I had never had the wings. The wings there are awesome. Crispy, juicy, just enough heat, just enough tang, just enough sweet. A must order.

After lunch we watched the rest of the Cowboys game in the high limit lounge while we smoked cigars. After the Boys won, my non-scotch drinking friend wanted to try a good scotch. So I played some BJ in the high limit room for a couple of shoes to get some comped Macallan 18, which we each had one glass of. I had a nice run and hit for about $4K, playing $300-$500 a hand.

We then watched the Eagles kick the Giants ass in the room while drinking more liquid sandpaper (Wild Turkey 101). After that bloodbath was over, we showered, dressed and went to Sage for our last dinner. We ordered cocktails and then ordered every appetizer and side dish and shared them all. It was an excellent meal, but the foie gras brulee was especially magnificent. After dinner, the other two went to bed, because they were both broke.

I was pretty drunk at that point and was in no condition to gamble, but that has never stopped me before. What a mistake. I ended up losing all of my winnings that I had up to that point (not sure how much it was, but it was a lot) and I lost an additional $5K of my own money. So at one point in the trip, I was up $15K and I ended up down $5K; only a $20K swing. Fuck me.

I went to bed feeling very drunk and very stupid. A wise man once said that you should quit while you are up. That man was apparently not me.

Final stats for the trip according to the Aria were 10.5 hours of gambling at an average hand bet of $528 for a shown loss of $6K. In reality, I think that the time was correct but the average bet was probably more like in the $400's. Also, I know I lost only $5K due to my line of credit accessed.

Of course, I wish I had won, but still a good trip.

 

Ouch!
Well, losing only $5K is not too bad, and you had a great time.
Thanks for sharing!

 

Good report! Sucks about the bad luck near the end. And you don't remember any of it? Ugh.