Flamingo Days & Nights -- A Local's Report

Here's a little report on our three-day stay at The Flamingo this week,
in acceptance of an invitation from that resort to stay there and
receive our choice of $1,000 in table-game promotional chips or $500 in
cash.

We checked in through the VIP Services desk at about 6 p.m. on
Wednesday. Our room was a very nice one in Flamingo's newly remodeled
tower, on the 22nd floor, directly overlooking the lovely pool area. The
room was about 400 square feet, with a king bed, two chairs and a
writing desk, a comfortable sofa, and a coffee table. The bathroom was
small, but met our needs.

Once we got settled, we drove over to The Greek Isles, the former Debbie Reynolds hotel-casino, to meet another Travel2Vegas subscriber and enjoy the Wednesday night comedy show, which always features female comedians.

After the show, we returned to The Flamingo to collect our promotional
chips and put them to work. There is an online friend to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude (and more) for suggesting a strategy to use the promotional chips on one spin of a roulette wheel. At about 10:45 p.m., I collected the 10 $100 chips, which required me to
counter-sign for them in a book at the cashier's cage, and strolled over
to a roulette table. I bet one promo chip on each of 10 three-number
combinations, $100 of my own money on each of the remaining two
three-number combos, $50 of my own money on 0, and $50 of my own money
on 00.

At this point, the dealer called the pit boss over, and he looked at the
bets I had placed and went straight to a telephone to call someone
higher up to verify that my bets would be allowed. Moments later he
returned to the table and gave the dealer the go-ahead.

She spun the wheel, the ball dropped, and the number came up 7. This
paid me $1,100 for the promo chip bet on the 7-8-9 combination. I lost
my $300, but walked away with a net gain of $800 to put to work during
our stay.

No more gambling for the first night. Our strategy had worked, and we
were happy to end day one ahead $800.

Early the second morning, we sat down for our first blackjack session.
All our sessions during this visit were at $25-minimum tables, and the
most we bet on any hand was $75. This two-hour session was a bad one,
and we quit with just a little remaining from the $800 we had collected
on the spin of the roulette wheel the previous evening.

I had to take Roz back to Anthem for a meeting, after which I drove to
Treasure Island and a scheduled rendezvous with two other New Englanders
who are subscribers to this board, Don and Bill. The three of us drove
to Salvadoreno, a restaurant featuring the cuisine of --surprise,
surprise-- El Salvador. This place, one of many on Bill's ambitious
"to-do" list for his visit, was a revelation. Located on North Main
Street, just past downtown, it is an excellent restaurant with dozens of
menu items, including combination plates, at very reasonable prices. I
will definitely be taking many of our friends there in the future.

After dropping off Don and Bill at Treasure Island, I drove to The
Stratosphere and picked up a cousin who is visiting from New Hampshire.
I brought him over to see Mac King at Harrah's, and then hurried to
Barbary Coast to catch the last 90 minutes of Peter Vallee -Big Elvis-
in the lounge. Pete had already received mention in the previous
afternoon's Las Vegas Sun, and a photographer from the Las Vegas
Review-Journal was shooting some photos for the next day's paper while
we were there. One of the photos appeared with a brief story in Norm
Clarke's column in Friday's R-J. And as I telegraphed a couple of weeks
ago, Vallee receives major coverage in the new National Enquirer, the
one with Nicholas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley on the cover.

After Peter's show ended, my cousin and I drove over to Jerry's Nugget
in North Las Vegas, where we met Rosalyn and a group of our neighbors
for dinner. The coffee shop at Jerry's is offering a prime rib special
all this month: For $5.49, you get your choice of soup or salad, an
eight-ounce slice of prime rib, potato, vegetable and bread/rolls.
Several of our group had never been to Jerry's Nugget or tried the prime
rib, and all were very pleased with their dinners.

After dinner, Roz and I returned my cousin to his hotel, then we went
back to The Flamingo for another blackjack session, which turned out
really well. In fact, we did not know at the time that we had already
experienced our only gambling losses for the three-day period.

We slept in our own home Thursday evening so that it would be convenient
to attend an early morning meeting. Then we went back to The
Stratosphere and picked up my cousin, bringing him to Samuel's Deli in
Henderson so that he could enjoy one of their famous sandwiches he had
heard about. Most sandwiches at Samuel's cost $9.95 or thereabouts, and
they are huge. My favorite, which comes with a choice of sides, is a
combination of corned beef and tongue on light rye. If you folks think
Stage Deli, Jason's Deli, or some other sandwich place in Vegas is the
place to get a great sandwich, you should try Samuel's, which will, as
Mac King might put it, "blow your funky mind."

With lunch out of the way, we spent a few hours back at the house with
our cousin, which included the heartbreak not of psoriasis, but of
watching Pedro Martinez lose a game to the Minnesota Twins. Then we
brought our cousin back to his hotel and said our good-byes.

Returning to The Flamingo, we played more blackjack, winning a modest
amount, then called it a day.

On Saturday morning we started with breakfast in the Flamingo Paradise
Garden Buffet, the second time we had begun our day with a visit to this
venue. The cost is $9.95 plus tax, and we were pleasantly surprised by
the quality of the room and of the food selections. Because this is
actually a breakfast/lunch buffet, you can have such items as pork chops
and fried chicken for breakfast if you want. The food is tasty, and a
seat by the outdoor area, next to the koi pool, floating swans and pink
flamingos, makes for a very relaxing start to one's day.

We had already checked out and brought our bags to the car before going
to breakfast, so all that remained was to play a little more blackjack
before returning home. This session, which I thought would be a brief
one at best, yielded our best results of all, and it was three hours
before we left the casino.

One problem we had with the casino was the ventilation. It seemed very
smoky most of the time, and both of us were bothered by it at various
times.

A most enjoyable sojourn for us locals, and very lucrative to boot. I am
willing to share more of the financial details with friends who are
interested in e-mailing me.

 

I am confused about the promotional chips you recieved. Did you get to cash those in for cash as well as keep the winnings? What was counter-signing for the chips? Sorry to sound so dumb.

 

Promotional chips, which some also refer to as "action chips," cannot be cashed in. They have to be played at the table game of your choice, and they also cannot be broken down into smaller denominations than the $100 value of each chip. They are engraved differently from normal casino chips, so that the dealers can recognize them.

Each promotional chip is good for one play only. If you win your bet, you are paid off in real casino chips, which you can cash as you see fit. But whether you win the bet or not, the promotional chip is taken away from you. The only time a promotional chip would not be taken away would be in blackjack if you have a push (tie) with the dealer, in which case you get to play it again. If you used them in Let It Ride, you could also pull two of them back from the first two circles.

There is a choice in offers of this type: Receive the promotional chips or take a lesser amount in cash, which you could walk out the door with if you wish to. The ratio is quite commonly two-to-one, which in my case resulted in a choice of receiving $1,000 in promotional chips or $500 in cash. So the challenge for me was to see if there was a way to use the promotional chips so as to be guaranteed of receiving more than $500 back. And this I did, by spreading them on the roulette table and adding enough cash of my own to guarantee a net win of at least $800.

Counter-signing for the chips simply means this: The casino already had my name in a three-ring binder, along with the names of others who had accepted this offer by making a room reservation for the days they were invited. I had to sign my name in the book next to my printed name, as well as present photo identification, before the chips were issued to me.

If this does not answer your questions, feel free to let me know.

[ August 17, 2002, 07:54 PM: Message edited by: DavidB ]

 

I apperciate the answer. I had an offer something like that, but cannot afford airfare from Ohio. Ya know, it would be nice to get there for a 2 night stay, pick up your $500 and only have had to pay for plane tickets, but my stupid boss cannot get my paycheck right.