10 nights, 4 hotels, lots of VP pics

I got back recently from a 2 part trip to Vegas, staying at 4 different places, all comped.
I stayed 3 nights at Venetian then 2 at ElCortez. I left town for a few days and then came back and stayed 2 nights at Cosmo, and 3 at Luxor.
I've read a bunch of trip reports, but haven't yet written one.

If I could write as well as Flusher I'd write up a witty report of my stay. But I can't; so I'll just post pics of my wins along with some commentary.


I spent most of my gambling time playing video poker. Mostly multi-line dollar, some multi-line-quarter when the paytables weren't so good.
I started my trip at Venetian and they have the last original Star Trek game that I know of. That may be my favorite slot machine of all time and I spent a bunch of time on that.

This trip I got the biggest win I've had on the Star Trek game.
The game occasionally triggers a mini 'bonus' after a win. I got one that changed all the winning symbols to a single symbol.
In this case it changed them to the jackpot symbol. That doesn't happen often, but it picked a good time, as I already had one, and it lead to 2 or 3 full-line jackpots, for a $450 win on a 70 cent bet.



I had two other big wins at Venetian , both on quarter VP. The first was Aces-w-kicker on DDB.
The second was a dealt 4-to-a-royal when playing 3 hands. When I drew, the first hand got a queen of the right color but wrong suit; the second hand got the right queen!


But despite those hands I still managed to leave the Venetian down a bit.


The next two days were spent at ElCortez.
There my game of choice there is 3-way-action. That game is 3 games in one. You get paid based on the deal, based on the 5-card draw, and then you get 2 additional cards and get paid based on that. It's 90 credits to get the full payback (which is a bit over 99%) but I play nickels, for $4.50 a spin.

I had a nice run there. Twice I managed to get the royal on the 7th card, and got a couple other good hits.




Every time you hit a win over $200/$300 at ElCortez you get a slip (if you're willing to wait to flag someone down) which you can turn in for a small gift or freeplay (usually $10). I think I had 6 or 7 by the time I left and was up nicely.

I also played a bit at 4-Queens while eating lunch in Chicago Brewing Company. That was fun, but like last time all I did was lose.



I then left Vegas and came back the following week, starting with 2 days at Cosmo.
There I played lots of $1 video poker, mostly bonus poker. I'd usually play 3 lines but would 'parlay up' for a few hands after a nice win.
The first day I wasn't doing much of that as I went on a terrible streak where I couldn't hit anything. The first time I sat down I went through $600 without getting a single quad. The next session I lost more than that while getting just one quad. At some point I switched to DDB (since I had to make up for the loss :^) and that was a big mistake. The next day started out just as bad, and soon I was down over $2500 having been there less than 24 hours. That's more than I'm usually willing to lose in a day but I was (well, had been) up.
I headed back to the room to do something besides lose for a while. It was too cold for the pool so I decided to try out the Spa at Venetian, using a coupon I had received from my stay there. That was nice, but would have been nicer if all the hot tubs/whirlpools weren't closed.
I stopped for dinner at Bacchanal Buffet on the way back, then tried my luck again.

This time things went much better.

I was dealt a single King and managed to pull a royal. The cards came up just slow enough so that after the 4th I saw I had 4-to-a-royal, and thought wouldn't it be great if I got the last card. I was surprised when it did, but then confused because the machine didn't lock up and start making noise, so I started checking again to see if I really had one. Then the machine stopped making the noises for the other hands and started playing the happy music.

This was my 3rd dollar royal, all on 3-line spin-poker, and all on line 1. Maybe I should only play the first line. :^)


Even after that hand I continued to do well. I switched to DDB for a while, played a couple hands at max bet and got a hand with 3 quads:




My last 3 days were at Luxor
I got a couple nice STP hits:
1) An unusual handpay on a full house (a dealt full-house with a 10X multiplier while playing 3-lines ), for $1200.
2) A handpay on a dealt a dealt wild royal flush with a 5X multiplier.
3) I played some quarter STP at Aria (after having dinner at their buffet), and while playing 2-line DDB got a dealt quad with a 10X multiplier)
For added excitement, on all of those the multiplier came up on the last or next-to-last card, so I got to root for the needed card while waiting for the multiplier.




Continuing the dealt quad theme, I played bonus Quick Quads at MGM one night, got dealt quick-quads while playing 3 hands, then another after increasing to 4.



With one exception I didn't do any fancy meals (I've already mentioned a couple of buffets). The one fancy meal I did was at Luxor. I went to Tender at Luxor and got their $90 Wagyu filet. It was really disappointing. It just didn't have much flavor. I should have gone to Craftsteak.

And a couple other wins from the end of the trip:




That's about it.
I had a good time and in the end I left a winner. Even without the royal I would have been up a bit.
What more can you ask for.

 

Congratulations! Thanks for the vp porn.

 

Thanks for sharing. Glad you came out ahead.

 

Now that's some VP Porn!

Have to say I'm a bit jealous on that Quick Quad royal, my first one came on penny quick quads...doh! And a dollar royal just from one card??? Wow!!!

And Full Pay 3 way action at El Co??? So 9/6 DDB with 100 SF on the 5 card draw portion? I may have to take a stab at that...

 

Nicely done! Lots of variety on your VP play....

 

Nice report, thanks for sharing.

 

Enjoyed!!! Nice to see someone is winning, at least. Some really nice hands there.

 

Great VP porn; congrats on the Royal and coming home a winner!

 

Awesome, thanks for sharing. You had quite the run on dealt winners!

 

I believe so. I've checked the full pay table in the past and it matched the one that was listed as 99.3%.
Although to be honest with all the unusual payouts on the 3 hands, I don't have the full pay tables memorized. So it's possible they changed part of it at some point and I didn't notice. I should check carefully every trip; but it's El Cortez, so i guess I just assume nothing changes.

Once I've managed to get one of the 7 card hands (4 of a kind plus 3 of a kind). It paid 12,000 (nickels) which is equivalent to half what a royal flush pays on the draw.

My best (dollar wise) hit on 3way action was at MGM during my best VP hour ever. They have a full pay one in the high limit room; but it's dollars and you need to bet 3*$10 to get the full odds, and thats too much for my bankroll.

But I had just hit my 2nd ever dollar royal, switched up to DDB and got another nice win (deuces-with-kicker), so I decided to give it a try and stuck in 100 or 200 of my winnings. A few hands in I got dealt a quad, for a 1000+500+200 payout (missing the 4-kind+3-kind by one card).

 

Agree with El Co, changes are rare.

And awesome run at mgm! 3 way action is so odd. It looks like it spread like wildfire in Vegas (Gold Coast has 58 games alone! They obv bought too many, lol). But the game doesn't exist outside of Nevada and barely exists outside of Vegas.

 

I've only EVER seen it at Lakside Inn, in Tahoe.