Trip Report: 8/30 to 9/2/02 It was a good trip and served its purpose to take care of my gambling jones. jones (jOnz) n, vt. A thing done often. An addiction, esp. to sports, gambling, and other enjoyable acts. Borrowed from the cartoon "Fat-Albert" and the drug-ladened 60's and 70's. FRIDAY Packed my bags (and coupons) and leave the Carlsbad coast at 9:00am. 68 degrees and perfect. While on the road, I had to pull over for ~1 hour to dodge a minor work-related bullet. Arrived in Vegas at 2:45 for the 2:00 Flamingo Hilton meet arranged by Bob W the Riviera Guy on the LVT board (no T2V meets were scheduled). 102 F and perfect. Attendees included Bob, Mary Lynn (his wife), Mr. D.Meeks, DustyinVegas, LVNorm, Andrea (Norm's wife), and Frank. Gary and Tatehermosa were "no shows". Bob's son contributed some nice gifts to give away for this meet. Thanks for the gifts, Bob. The grand prize was a very nice 9/11 commemorative buck knife. It's always a pleasure to meet folks from the board. For the most part, it's astonishing as to how "board personalities" usually correlate to "real life" personalities. Time to head out to Fiesta Henderson to check in and to have dinner with my buddy, Jeff from AZ and his wife, Jeannie. Trip from Flamingo to Fiesta (door to door) was less than 20 minutes, even at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. Since I was running a bit late all day, J & J ate without me. That's ok. It was SEAFOOD FRIDAY! Ate my standard fare of two full plates of crab claws, a heapin' helpin' of Mongolian shrimp, yummy Chinese noodles, pizza, pismo clams, and pecan pie a la mode (no prime rib this time). May the games begin. .25 FPDW: -5 $1 Craps: +5 .10 FPDW: -40 .25 FPDW: +40 .50 FPDW: +75 Let it ride: +20 .05 FPDW: -5 .10 FPDW: +80 Played until 4:00am. Gambling: +170 Food and accommodations: 0 SATURDAY Up at 8:00am. Since 5x points were being offered on Friday and Sunday, Jeff and I decided that Saturday would be a good day to do Boulder Hwy and downtown. Jeannie wanted to stay in and study and relax. In a nutshell, we started at Joker's Wild and ended up at the Golden Gate. JOKER'S WILD CASINO: Played 50 cent craps with 10x odds. It's a decent local's joint, but the craps dealers are well-below par. As some of you know, it's a training casino for the other Boyd properties. Lost a bit. SKYLINE CASINO: Talk about smokey… it's like gambling in a double wide trailer home. Low ceilings, 100% locals, FPDW in the .05 and .25 variety. The reason for this stop was to find the rumored $1 FPDW machines. Jeff was going to run $100 through, just to say he did. Didn't find them. On our way out, we stopped by a .05 Wheel or Fortune game for a few minutes. Won a few bucks. ARIZONA CHARLIE'S EAST: Had a coupon for 3x cash back. When I presented this coupon to the slot club lady, she explained all the rules, and told me (at the end) that the system in down. Jeff got a cap for new sign up. When I asked for one of those caps, he said "… only for new sign ups". I retorted, but you have a giant stack back there and your slot system is down and you casino is empty. "… only for new sign ups". I blerted out, point blank, "… this place sucks". I will NEVER go back there again. Can you imagine that. This place was like a ghost town because of their broken system, and they wouldn't even give a potential decent customer an AZ Charlie's baseball cap; a cap that I would never wear anyhow. I predict bankruptcy in a few years. NEVADA PALACE: Kind of a "hidden" joint, even though it right there in plain sight on boulder hwy. It's a decent joint with 10 cent roulette, weenie-craps (tub w/ 2x odds), and those deceiving DW machines (25 for 4k, but 40 & 60 for SF & 5k, repectively). There's really no reason for anyone to come here. Boulder Station: Nice place, nice people, nice games. I had a few coupons for the 40 coin bonus for a natural 4 of a kind. I never got a four of a kind, but the lady next to me hit 4 deuces and claimed the 40 coins for me. Locals are cool. They have FPDW in the .05, .10, and .25 variety. I would stay here. PLAZA: I'm liking this place less and less each visit. Even though I don't think it smells like piss (a la stungazed), there's something about the cleanliness and clientele here that kind of bothers me. To no offense, but there seems to be a lot of trailer trash and non-english speaking customers here, and I've always observed a high percentage of them NOT washing their hands after going potty. What's up with that? On the good side, many of my pit buddies are still there, comps are still rather easy, they still have a lively craps game, FP quarter deuces, and the BEST paying FPDW in all of Las Vegas… the 101.08% quarter game that pays 4700 for the royal. Met the Director of Sales, Clay Lake. He wrote us up a $30 diner comp just for the asking. Had two chocolate malts (extra thick, extra malt, easy on the syrup), chicken tenders, and BLT with extra bacon (well-done). Before leaving, we watched Jackie Gaughan play poker for about 5 minutes. I wanted to chat with him for a while, but they seemed to be really into their Pan game. Maybe next time when we have more time. GOLDEN GATE: The last time I was here, those striking culinary union folks were calling me a loser just for walking into the casino. I was trying to track down the beach that was yelling at me so I could give her some sheet, but she was nowhere to be found. Played BJ for about an hour with a 2/1 BJ fortune cookie coupon and a 2/1 BJ POV coupon. I think I only got 2 or 3 BJ's the whole time, but ended up even for that session. Man, those oriental lady dealer's sure are cold. That's it for the tour. Ahhh, back to the beautiful Fiesta Henderson. Nice english speaking dealers, nice smell, better gaming conditions, excellent food, etc. Jeannie made reservations for Fuego's Steak house. Since I was still full from the Plaza, all I could eat were a couple of these little garlic escargo appetizers and a Ceasar Salad. Called my wife, Rachel, to check on the family. She now has the cold that I had last week, and baby has a 102 temperature. That's just great. Now she's mad that I came. The rest of the night was craps, .10 & .25 DW, and more craps until 2:30am. Gambling: -172 (-10-38+20-60+55-70-20-40-35-10-20-20+76) Food and accommodations: 0 SUNDAY Up at 8:30 AM. Breakfast at Baja Beach Café. I had a coupon for the two deuces wild specials for $2.22 (Why do I use a coupon for comped meals? Who knows?) Back to FPDW. Jeff was dealt 10, J, K, A in spades. We all rooted for the Q of spades… and BANG. Royal time. What a lucky dog. A grand really takes off the pressure. I think I went down about $100 in VP this morning, but would make it up after lunch at the craps table. At this point, for some reason, I stopped writing down my wins and losses. A friend of mine from San Diego who moved to Henderson came to visit. We had at the Café and had the Feel Good soup with steamed wonton's. Tasty, but the noodles weren't up to spec. Back to craps. The three of us bough in next to this real old Bitterman who was playing the don'ts and the BIG 6/8. While playing, I was reading this sheet on "craps calls", and Mr. Bitterman says "…move the paper, dice might hit it". Whatever. The table got hot and was absolutely KILLING Mr. Bitterman. Point after point, number after number, we filled up our racks, while Mr. Bitterman bought in for another hundy. We color up and leave Mr. Bitterman alone with his depressing life. His playing style really did reflect his personality. Our original intention for Sunday evening was to hit the Rio/GC/Palms area. We were all to hit the seafood buffy and J&J would go see Scintas and I would try and track down vegas eddie and jackincols. Those plans didn't pan out (sorry guys, next time). I called Rachel to check in. Baby's doing better (after a trip to the doctor's), Rachel is still sick, now my bro-in-law, who is staying with us, is breaking out in hives. Crap. I tell her it's probably just an allergic reaction to something and to give him an antihistamine. Whatever, I'm in the dog house. Dinner buffet time! Prime rib, Mongolian bbq shrimp, yummy chinese noodles, and I think that was it. Finished up by playing .25 and .10 FPDW until 11:30pm Gambling: -260 Food and accommodations: 0 MONDAY Up at 7:00am and on the road by 8:00, and back home by 12:30. No traffic, but during the drive, Rachel calls to instruct me to pick up some steak and ribs on the way home. "…boil the ribs and get them ready for the bbq tonite." The last thing I want to do after a vegas trip is to go shopping on Labor day and bbq for 9 people. I happily obliged, but I'm still in the dog house. Gambling: 0 Gas: 25 SUMMARY Not a good gambling trip. I didn't count, but I think I came one card short of either a true royal or wild royal at least 25 times. The Craps tables were good to me. If anyone is thinking about Arizona Charlie's for a future trip, just don't do it. There are better places with better games and nicer folks. Net cash LOSS for the trip = $262 Total sleep in Vegas: ~14 hours Thanks for reading. Mike