TR 11/7 - 11/10

TR 11/7-11/10 (Previously posted on another board)
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Flew NW from Appleton, WI to LV via Minneapolis, 6:45pm departure, 11pm arrival in LV. Had 3 nights comped at the Plaza and 25 tickets into the 4Q $25,000 drawing at 10am Sunday, 11/9. After catching the Beltrans shuttle it was midnight (2am our time in WI) when we hit the sack. Sat. morning we were up early and hit the casinos around 7 am after eating breakfast at the Golden Gate. I had shrimp cocktail and helped my wife eat the $1.99 breakfast special (which isn't very special but at least was freshly cooked at that time of the morning so the eggs hadn't begun to harden and the bacon was actually crisp).
Started gambling at Fremont $1 video poker, got zip for my first $40 on the 9/6 so switched to $1DB and hit 4 4's for $400 then tried the next DB machine over and hit 4K's for $200. After that I tried a few more in the immediate area but didn't hit so went to play craps. One table at the Fremont had people playing on it, I know, I know, lousy double odds but I still like to play here (and always get room offers here every few months) because you can see how many rolls have been made since the shooter started and because I have been lucky here in the past. The table was choppy for awhile then we had one good shooter who rolled 23 times before sevening out so I was up. Then we had 3 people seven out rapidly and the table evaporated just as it was my turn to shoot. I stayed and rolled by myself while most of the others opened up the other table. I could hear some good noise coming from the new table but since I was winning I stayed put. I got in 24 rolls before sevening out (another Fremont hat earned) and made a bit over a hundred. I then squeezed in at the other table where the counter said 32 rolls and placed the point (5) as well as the other 3 inside numbers for single units ($17 inside) and put a buck on all the hardways. The shooter kept throwing numbers so I pressed to double units and everytime he hit a hardway I pressed them all a buck, replacing them as needed when he threw easy numbers. Anyway, he ended up rolling 51 times before he sevened out! I made another $100+ on the end of his roll but nobody could follow it with much so I took the money and cashed in with most of the other players who were gathered around the cashier cage still talking about that roll. In hindsight I could have made much more with bigger place bets but when I saw on the counter he already had rolled 32 times when I arrived I didn't think he would go to 51.
Next I went to the California to play craps but no one was on the tables so I played Aces/No Faces for a while on the machine I caught a royal on last August for $4000. I racked up a lot of points on the slot card but never hit any quads, just lots of little stuff like 3 of a kinds, straights, flushes, and the occasional full house. Only once did I even get 4 to the royal to draw to so I decided to head to Main St. and try craps there.
I bought in for $200 and started slow, $22 inside and the hard numbers and had mixed results until one of 2 Hawiian brothers started to shoot. The lady next to me told me he was Mr."8" because he threw a lot of 8's and she wasn't kidding. In the next 30 minutes he threw all the numbers (only a few hard though), especially 8's. We were making a lot of noise and really enjoying this guy's 3/V dice setting success and filling our racks with a lot of red and green. His older brother was making a $5 come bet with each roll and taking the 20x odds so he was racking up black with each repeat. I'm a place bettor and had my inside numbers up to 4 units until I got that scared feeling and told the old lady, who had squeezed over to let me in, that it was time to get some money off the table. She followed me down to single units ($22 inside) and left our hard way and 4x odds bets up too. Two rolls of diminishing returns later he sevened out and she told me I was hired as her prognosticator. I laughed and told her not to expect me to save us every time, I just got scared. In craps we run that fine line between greed and fear, nes pas? I stayed around long enough for him to roll again and again he did a real fine job, hitting a bunch of easy 8's (I hopped the ez 8's on the come out and got paid) and other numbers before he sevened out after around 20 minutes. This was one happy table! Then his older brother decided to shoot and announced he would roll for at least an hour. He started off real well and we all got our place bets up right away so as to take advantage of another long roll and then you know what happened, he sevened out after about 5 or 6 rolls leaving us with our hindquarters exposed. The old lady next to me gave me some grief for not forcasting it but no one was too bummed as we were all still well up. I cashed in and went to find my wife at the 4Q.
She was not winning anything so I had to fork over a hundred to help her get re-started and I played some .25 video poker there for awhile at that one 9/6 machine by the cashier cage near the megabucks machines, where I caught a royal last Easter, but no such luck this time. I did cycle thru quite a few slot points on that machine and on a .25 Wild Cherry progressive ($3000+ jackpot showing) so maybe we will hear from them with some kind of future mailer. The rest of the day we ate (lunch at the Plaza diner on a $5 off coupon and dinner comped at the California coffee shop) and played here and there downtown neither winning nor losing much.
I'm not much of a drinker since I teach Driver Education at our local public school and I never drink in LV since I take my gambling serious and want to come home a winner as often as possible so I don't have any wild drinking stories to tell you about from my side but I did see a Hoss Cartwright look-alike in GN making an incredible racket at the craps table with his roudy friends. The most fun part of that was watching all the pit bosses and floor people cringe the whole time as he was definitely upsetting the decorum the GN tries to portray. Made me think of some of Hurricane Mikey's craps table stories.
Sunday we had breakfast comped at the Fremont buffet and after playing unsuccessfully for a couple hours there and at the Plaza (craps and VP) we headed over to the 4Q's for the big money drawing. I am guessing there were at least 500 people there with tickets in the drum but still better odds than the lottery, right? They started off with 5 $500 prizes and incredibly one local woman won 3 of those in a row so she must have had gobs of entries in the drum (entries were based on previous play in the last quarter with 25 tickets minimum to each person). Another local won $1500 and then took home the big $10,000 prize so he too must have had beaucoup tickets. We got zip and moved on to the Horseshoe .
I tried craps but it wasn't busy so no other tables to run to when the trend was not your friend. I tried some blackjack which isn't really my game as it lacks the excitement of craps but I do play it at the $25+ level to keep the interest factor up. I quickly press when I win a couple hands and quit the table immediately after losing a couple in a row so I usually never stay too long unless I get a lucky streak. (-$50)
By noon I was back to even moneywise for the trip but it went downhill from there. I met the wife again at the Plaza (that's what is nice about Downtown, it is small enough to split up and find each other again without too much trouble) where we had lunch. She stayed and took a nap (I know what you're thinking, how can you nap in Vegas??? but I didn't say anything as at least she wasn't losing anymore money while she was asleep).
I probably should have stayed with her because I couldn't seem to get much going that last afternoon either, losing steadily at craps and VP. In hindsight, I should have switched over to the darkside since the trend was that way but it is always difficult to make that decision and change the upbeat mindset of positive craps for the setting up of a couple don'ts and hoping for that seven while the rest of the table wishes you would disappear (especially when you win the DC's). Also I was getting tired from so many hours of steady play and had lost the "feeling" (spider senses) of the imminent coming of that evil seven so my place bets were going down way too often. Still I didn't quit since this was my second and last day in Vegas until our NY trip and I wanted to recoup my losses. Bad idea, because no matter which casino I went to it just got worse until finally we met up again and ended up with our LV ritual, a stop at the $5 slots for a last chance at big bucks. We ran a couple hundred thru the ones at the Fremont without any real luck and that was it for gambling. I was down $800 for the two day trip but didn't feel too bad, it could have been much worse as many of you well know. Maybe we will have some luck at the end of the year on the NY trip to balance things out.
We took a cab to the airport and made it thru security without having to take the shoes off our swollen feet and made our redeye flight on time. I always play a last $20 thru the WOF .25 machines there, just in case, and came out up $18 so that helped pay for the $25 (incl $3 tip) taxi. We almost got a bump in Minneapolis, as the flight was oversold and we were the only volunteers, but in the end the flight left with 2 empty seats due to no-shows so we got home as scheduled. Oh, well. At least I had the Packers game to look forward to, right? Wrong.....what a lousy ending that was. At least I hadn't bet on them to compound my losses.
Final thoughts:

We still like Downtown for the compactness, ez R/F comps and better odds, GG shrimp cocktails and Horseshoe snackbar when we don't have a meal comp.

Already looking forward to our 12/28-1/2 trip

Maybe with that length of trip I can finally talk my wife into spending a day/evening on the strip again for a different "flavor". After all the TR I have read here I want to hit the CR and SOF craps tables and the Paris buffet for breakfast and the Alladin buffet for dinner.

Thanks for reading my first TR to a message board, usually I just make verbal ones to the other teachers at my school who like to go to Vegas.




Reply Re: TRI
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Are you sure that Hoss Cartwright look-alike WASN'T Hurricane Mikey? I saw a photo once and there was a similarity!!!!!!!

stephen2753
Reply Hoss Cartwright/Hurricane Mikey
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I don't think it was Mikey, I didn't see any teeth on the table ! Steve H.

 

Steve,
Nice effort on your first T2V post. I could tell you take your gambling seriously. I was vicariously with you as you made your way from one downtown casino to another. I also like the compactness and being able to easily hook up with friends/relatives.
What is the counter at the craps table you referred to? Does it actually show number of rolls?
I'm surprised you don't head a little further east and hit up the Cortez for some of those low limits rolling. Maybe that's why you don't.

 

Hey man...I'm MUCH better looking than Hoss Cartwright!!!

Ya know, my ears were burnin' last week, so I KNEW somebody was thinkin' about me--but no, sadly I was not in Vegas...

Great trip, sounds like ya had a blast!

Mikey

 

Good post Stephen. Needed some craps stories to get me going. Personally, I like that you can press your bets more gradually in BJ, but sounds like that's not your speed! Got the Fremont on my to-do list for the next trip, looking forward to it.

p.s. go Pack, but probably not this year...