Red Rock, MSS, Watching WSOP, Coupons...with Pix

Saturday, July 6

Me & husband P hop on Southwest Airlines from Houston to Vegas at 8:40 a.m. The plane is surprisingly not full, so we get a seat between us. Heaven! We land in Vegas about 9:30 and retrieve our budget rental car. I LOVE Budget, we see our name on the screen with a lot number, find our car, get in and go. No waiting, no talking to the agents, nothing! Beautiful and it costs nothing extra to be a “Fastbreak” member.

Our first stop is Alamo, some tiny roadside casino where we have $10 free play, near Blue Diamond Drive.



The friendly and quite sassy lady named Stephanie at the booth tells us we get $10 free play with sign up so we can save our coupons for another day. We joke around with her, she takes a shine to P. We already have fountain cokes in hand but she asks us if we would like anything else to drink. Mind you, we are just here to blow their free play and she still asks this. Sometimes the little dives are just the nicest places and this one even looks better than you'd expect from the outside. I play some bad paytable bonus poker but win $18.75, P plays a Super Cherry slot for fun and no profit.

Next stop is Silverton where P has a Bass Pro Shop gift card to blow and we decide to have lunch at Silverton too using bogo buffet coupon. Lunch is average, it’s our first time to eat there. It is a very nice-looking place, though. P doesn’t buy anything at Bass Pro, but I thought these were amusing



We go to look at model homes and lots again as we are planning to move to Vegas next year. As we are looking, it starts to rain a little, rare occurrence in July.

We are staying at a Best Western on Boulder Hwy tonight, because we couldn’t get a good Saturday night rate anywhere, because we have a deal for a free room here, and because we are cheap and stubborn people. It’s only a few miles away from Sunset Station, where we plan to play for the rest of the day. Even though this is Las Vegas, land of Yes You Can Check In Early, Best Western rejects us and tells us to come back at 3. We spy the Skyline Casino practically next door, where we’ve heard they have good paytables on VP and we’ve always wanted to check it out, and so that’s where we go.





It’s totally old school vibe there….they are playing 60’s music, drinks are flowing freely, and the 67-year old gal behind the bar is still rocking hot pants (she really shouldn’t be, but she is anyway so I’m going to give her props). I go back to play on a bartop playing quarter bonus and DDB and get a straight flush and cash out with a $60 profit. P plays old school coin dropper FPDW and wins $20. We go back to BW to check in. The room is nice and beds very comfortable.

On to Sunset Station, where they are doing swipe & win. P gets a $5 table bet and they decide that’s good enough to film him for their promo, if he agrees, and he does. They put makeup on him and everything, it’s just too funny.



They tell him what to say. We are supposed to see a DVD of this Oscar-winning performance someday soon, we’ll see if they follow up. I got 500 points on my swipe, which equals 50 cents. No camera shoot for me.

We have dinner at Cabo and sit at the bar so P can watch Nascar while we eat. There’s a bartender there from Buffalo (where I was born and lived my first 18 years) named Michael so we have some fun with him. I have grilled fish tacos and P has some combo plate, the chips and salsa are so good, they have a salsa bar with a bunch of different types. We use coupons for $4 off each and then pay with points, so a good dinner, good service, and free (besides a generous tip for my Buffalo buddy). Can’t beat that!

We go back to the bank of DDB that is 6/9 quarter but pays $1199 for Royals. We play for a while and P wanders off to the sports book. I proceed to get this nice surprise



I call P on my phone and tell him he might want to come on back over to me, and we whoop it up for a bit. We have spent many a day playing that bank and never got the Royal, I was beginning to think it would never happen.

We play at Sunset Station until about 10 p.m. that night, P stays on the DDB and I skip around, I play some 5-play quarter bartop bonus and put $40 in a penny Goldfish slot ($3 per hand max bet), get a good random bonus and cash out plus $123. We head back to BW for sleep.

 

Great TR so far! Im totally with ya, I have never gotten an actual royal.. I was playing a 5c DW machine and was down to my last 5 credits and got one with deuces so I think I won MAYBE $25... Im still waiting on a royal, no deuces!

 

Sunday, July 7

it is P’s birthday, so he gets to call the shots. He wants to work out a bit, so we drive over to the nearest 24 hour fitness (we are members). Back to Best Western to shower and check out, and then to Port Of Subs for lunch. They make really great subs there, I know everyone loves Capriotti’s but we prefer the Port. P is very happy with his big old roast beef sub and I get a small ham & swiss.

We go back to Sunset for a little while and the DDB machines. We get a few hits but nothing great. When we leave Sunset, it’s actually raining pretty hard.

We head to Sams Town because we have play $10 get $10 in freeplay. We sit down at 5/8 bonus quarter progressive machines and P proceeds to get Aces with Kicker, I kid you not, and of course that infuriates him after all that DDB we just played. Happy Birthday!? At least he has a $73 profit. I lose $50 and then we end up blowing our freeplay on 100 play penny deuces anyway.

We are headed to Red Rock where we have a three-night comp stay (but we have to pay reduced resort fee of $12.50 each night). On the way there, we go to Wildfire Casino on Rancho Drive, because as far as we know they are the last remaining casino to have P’s favorite slot game, Neon Nights. It doesn’t pay a whole lot but he just loves the game itself. I leave him there and go play nickel Winning Streak Deuces Wild. I have a blast and win $46 and P has the best time ever playing that game, he gets all three bonuses and almost gets 5 Wilds and ends up with a profit of $90



Check in at Red Rock is fine, we’ve stayed there many times before. The room is hot and we have a tough time getting it to cool down….that’s the only complaint, everything else is great as usual. There is a huge wildfire burning nearby, we can see it over the mountains and they talk about it day & night on the news here. It’s really tough for those involved who live closer to the fires that have to be temporarily evacuated. It did result in some interesting skies



We go out to Famous Dave’s nearby for dinner. I have a $10 coupon for them and we had enjoyed a meal there once in Denver, and I had wanted to return someday. Well this time it is just horrible, we have sausage and brisket and everything is just really bad. It turned out to be the worst meal we had the whole trip! Oh well.



Back at Red Rock, we hit up the bartops at the Rocks Lounge because the progressive is in the $1100+ range. There are no 4OK’s to be had for either of us, and to top it off, it seems like it’s loser loudmouth drunk night at the bar. One guy next to P is playing while standing and muttering to himself (loudly enough so we can hear) in an endless string of nonsensical stuff peppered with a whole lot of f’s and other colorful language. Buddy, step away from the machine and the alcohol. Take up yoga or something.

We end up going to a quieter area and play some slant top NSU for a while until we go up to the room around 11:30.

 

WOW!!! This is GREAT!!! Perfect combination of detail and pictures... niiiiiice!!!!

 

Monday, July 8

We do our usual morning ritual….I watch Jason & Monica on Fox5, we go down to workout at the spa/gym and then sit out by the pool and read for a while. I just love to spend the mornings this way!




these are P's feet not mine, I promise!

We go out to have lunch at Port of Subs again on our way to see the WSOP in action. Here’s a couple pix of some of the poker stars. It’s always amazing to see how many people try for a shot at this!


Daniel Negreanu


Joe Hachem


Antonio Esfandiari


Phil Hellmuth


there are always some people in crazy get-ups

We go over to Gold Coast for the $10 free play and $5 match plays and come out a little bit ahead. Then we walk across the street to Palms to play our $40 for $25 slot play. We play the $1199 quarter 5/8 bonus machines and I stop with $43 but P loses a little bit. Then we go over to the blackjack tables to play our $10 match plays, where P gets a completely wild hand:

Dealer has 6 showing. P gets 8-8 and splits them. He gets another 8. Splits that. Gets another 8. Splits. First 8 gets a 10, Second gets a 5, Third gets a 2, he doubles that and gets a 4. Last one gets a 10. So he has 18, 13, 14 18 against the Dealer 6.

She gets an A, but since dealer doesn’t stand on Soft 17 here, she draws again. She gets a 2, for a total of 19, and wipes him out. He has a $50 loss instead of a $60 win, big swing. Good thing he only doubled for $10 per hand instead of $20!

The other couple playing at the table is highly entertained by all this action and I’m sure had a good story to tell their friends later. We were not amused.

Back at Red Rock, P takes a power nap while I go back down to play at Rocks Lounge and continue my 4OK drought. I play for about an hour and am only down about $25 when P comes up and we go to the café for dinner. P has spaghetti & meatballs which he gives the highest forks rating, and I have my favorite egg white spinach frittata which is cooked perfectly.



We play a little bit of nickel Dream Card for fun and get this for a small profit



I put $20 in full pay DDB and get nothing, put in $20 more and get 2’s so I’m up about $48. P is playing at Rocks so I join him for a couple of hours and get a couple of 4OK’s, neither of us are hitting anything big, and by 10 p.m. the Royal progressive hits $1200 which is normally out of reach for us, we try to avoid the taxman but we’ve been known to through caution to the wind on many occasions. We go sit outside for a bit, it’s nice at night in front of the casino, and again you see the effect the fires have on the sky

 

Tuesday, July 9

Morning ritual again, and we go to lunch at the Red Rock buffet, paying with points. I mostly have salad and fruit, P gets a mix of things, everything is fresh & tasty.

For now, I am bored with regular quarter VP, so I go off to play some different things. I start with nickel Winning Streak Deuces Wild and lose $40, but it lasts me an hour.


couldn't push it up, dang!


nice push-up here

I go to the blackjack table, play for 2 hours on a $10 table and end up with a $200 profit. This is very good for me. I never press my bets beyond $25 and it was a real roller coaster ride. I like to play at tables with the shoe, and after the first one I had $10 left of my hundred, put another hundred out there for chips but in the second shoe I never did have to touch that because I built the $10 back up….then in the third shoe I lost it all again! It went that way for a while but then it swung up and I went along for the ride. Nice dealers and a great pit boss, Big Joe, made it a fun afternoon.

P and I play nickel Dream Card 5-play DDB, we get 9’s and the dream card 9 and make about $60 profit overall. Winning Streak and Dream Card are so much fun to play!



We have dinner at LBS Burgers in Red Rock, they have Happy Hour pricing on beers & burgers are $7.77. We get a comp for dinner using our points. The last time I had a burger here it was A+ and the skinny fries were also A+ but this time the burger was maybe a B and they changed the fries to regular size. Still good food at good prices though.

I go back and play more Winning Streak nickel deuces for about an hour and a profit of $54. Then I decide to play quarter WOF (5 quarters a spin) and I’m there for over an hour having a blast and end with a profit of $75.

P spends his evening playing full-pay DDB, at one point he gets four aces out of the box but does not get the kicker. Sorry, no photo on that one! He did end up with a profit and got quite a few other 4OK’s.

I blow $40 on Goldfish and another $40 on full pay Loose Deuces. Then I want a good drink, so I go into the Lucky Bar and play $1 5/8 bonus because they removed the good paytables on the quarter machines when they renovated the bar. I get a nice Jim Beam on the Rocks and hit four 10’s, leaving with a $100 profit. I end the night with a $40 loss back on my quarter WOF.

I made a little money for the day and spent it having fun, not pounding away on the same old bonus VP machine! It was a good day.

 

Skipping the workout today as I just might have over-indulged a bit last night and I’m feeling kind of rough. Oops it happens! We’re checking out of Red Rock today and heading to MSS for a two-night comp stay. We head out to watch the WSOP again for a bit, but we decide to stop at Palace Station along the way to do their Senior Slot Tourney. This way, if one of us should get lucky, it’s closer to come back to get the cash then it would have been at Red Rock. Well we didn’t need to worry about that! Neither of us gets close, and we also lose a little playing bartop quarter bonus to earn the 400 points it takes for us each to get extra shots at the Tourney.

On to Rio, where I have some Total Rewards points I want to kill so I don’t have to worry about keeping the card alive anymore. We just order a burger and a ham & cheese sub and two cokes at the Sports Deli, but my $18 in points doesn’t even cover that and we have to fork over some of our own money. Pretty pricey for average food. We walk around the WSOP some more.



Then we go to Ellis for the play $10/spin the wheel for free play. This takes much longer than it should because there’s only one guy at the player’s club booth and he is slow, and there is a line. We made a little money on the free play and our $5 match plays. Then we went to Hooter’s for their play $10/get $10, I lost mine but I think P won a little.

We check in MSS around 3:30 and get a good room near the elevators and on the train side, on the 10th floor.

I go downstairs and promptly lose $120 playing VP. But I do get a very good beer or 2 for that price at the bar, a High Roller. Man, they make good beer at MSS!

We go to dinner at Magnolia’s, where P has his standard Loco Moco and I have the Greek Salad, which I heartily give A+. I read on line that Four Queens will give you $10 in free play if you show a card from any other casino, so we try this, and it’s true. For some odd reason they don’t have Paul in their system, so he also gets another $10 for being a “new” member. We have coupons that double your points up to 500, so we decide to play some bartop progressive quarter DDB. Nothing good happens and I lose about $200 and P also loses. No 4OK’s.

We go back to MSS and since I know those 4OK’s must be coming, I want us to play side-by-side 5-play quarter bonus. Before long, P gets this:



Even though it doesn’t matter, he draws to see how many kickers he gets. Ouch. But a $500 jackpot nonetheless.

I didn’t keep notes from this point on, I know I played some regular bonus VP and P went to the back to play the old school VP machines, he won another $100 or so.

 

Thursday July 11

I apologize in advance on this one, as time goes on I just seem to take less and less photos and sometimes my notes get foggy. This is in direct correlation to the increase in my level of degenerate gambling--I have no time for those things now, I am busy hitting VP buttons!

It’s our last real day here as we are flying out at 9:25 tomorrow morning. My eyes open at 5:30 a.m. and I throw on some clothes and go downstairs to play. I am still half asleep sitting at a quarter bonus upright VP machine, but 2 cups of coffee help me wake up. I used to go down and play early in the morning all the time, but that was when I liked to play all the slots and it was a good time to be able to actually hear the machines and enjoy playing. Now that I mostly play VP, that doesn’t matter so much. But here I am trying to squeeze every minute out of this last day!

I get 2’s, Kings, and Aces w/kicker (remember I am just playing bonus), and 7’s and cash out after a couple of hours with a profit of about $140.

We walk over to the nearby 24-hr Fitness to work out, nice facility. We go to Hash House at the Plaza for BLT’s, which we loved last time around. They aren’t quite up to the standard set, but still tasty and we use a coupon for $10 off $25.

Then we go down to the D to hit up their sign-up promotion. We signed up P when we last visited in May. They will give you $100 in free play if you earn 1,000 points at sign up. In May, we both played on P’s card and did the progressive bartop quarter bonus upstairs. This time, I sign up and we play 50-cent NSU on the coin-dropping slant-tops upstairs. It took us a long time to get to 1,000 points on the quarter game last time and we ended up stopping at 600 points for $60 free play, so we figured we’d step up our game a bit this time to see what happens.

I have a pretty friendly machine and end up with only a $38 loss. P loses $250. It takes us a little over 3 hours. Neither of us gets four deuces and as you can tell by the numbers, we don’t hit a Royal either! We get our $100 free play and play the same game with a result of $93. So we end up $195 down, but for 3 hours of play for 2 people, we all know that ain’t bad and hey, we took our shot. We will each do this promo again on our next visit, because we have coupons that give us the same deal. It will be interesting to compare our results.

I do want to add that because of the play P (actually we) did in May at the D, they already sent him a bunch of offers for the next few months, and he was already able to use a $30 matchplay (sadly a loss) and $30 of free play, which he got $54. He also got offers for free rooms and dining credits. It will be interesting to see what kind of offers I get in the mail.

For my sign-up, we also got 250 entries into the July drawing for the Camaro, you don’t have to be present to win. But you do have to be willing to write your name and player’s card number on 250 tickets! We did this back in May and did not win, so maybe this time we’ll get lucky.

We head back to MSS and have dinner at Triple 7. I get the Mediterranean Chicken Salad which is fabulous and P really likes his chicken tenders. I thought I had points but the waitress said I didn’t (I think she ran P’s card which is on the same keychain), so I just pay for it.

We play side-by-side old school coin-dropper DDB, there’s a nice progressive on it (almost $1200). I can’t hit anything to save my life and drop about $100 pretty quick. P is going along with a couple 4OK and having a good time, so he stays there while I go try the quarter 5-play bonus. I get Q’s J’s and A’s but end up losing my $200. It’s almost 11 p.m. so I call it a night as we are getting up at 6 a.m. tomorrow.



Hitting the Royal on the first day is always a challenge….I managed to give back most of it but still came home with $341 more than I left with. P finished up just a little bit under. I don’t keep track of what I spend in tips and actual expenses, or how much I make back in free play, so it’s all under the same umbrella for me. I consider this one a winner, especially for the length of time we were there and all we played!

We got $52 in scratch-off cards this time at MSS. I finally managed to make Sapphire at Boyd.

We even got lucky on the flight home, as P scored the window seat in the exit row (he is 6’4”) and we had an empty middle seat between us.

See you in September, Vegas! Thanks for another fun trip.

 

Really enjoyed the report! We never get lucky on SWA with seating. Almost always full planes from Milwaukee to LAS on the non-stop flights.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write this. Great report, and loved all the pictures. Nice Royal

 

Thanks for posting your report. Congrats on the Royal! Also, wow that was one crazy black jack hand! I rellay enjoyed reading about the oof strip places I never really heard of before, very interesting

 

I loved it!!!

 

vp

Enjoyed reading your adventures. Thanks for sharing.

 

Great trip report I really enjoyed it. A ROYAL on the first day too!
On a side note, I am from Buffalo and every time I am in Vegas I run into at least one person working in a casino from there as well.

 

Enjoyed reading with lots of gambling.

 

Thanks for this great report. Sounds like you had a great time.

 

Great trip report. I loved the pictures. Thanks much for posting!

 

Nice. Sounds like you didn't do too bad over all. Good use of points, comps, free, etc. Always would like to do the off strip circuit sometime but we never rent a car for more than a day and really, who wants to drink and drive. Thanks much for sharing.

 

Nice report and great pics! Heading out to MSS in August. Looking forward to staying DT for the first time. Also plan on checking out some of the smaller places this trip ( Skyline, ect.). Thanks for sharing.