FYI, During this trip, masks were mandatory.
Clicking on a picture, brings up a larger version of it.
Let's begin!
The Trip
Upon arrival to the rental car center, we decided to wait around to meet Vu Vo, 4 time defending holder of the world's shortest name title, but Larry Folts told us Vu had missed the flight. Not a good start to the trip!
Under the "why didn't we think of this years ago" category, we usually go out and buy either bottles of water, or a gallon, to use in the room, and occasionally order water on the casino floor, having the expectation to tip the waitress $1 for the tiny 8 ounce bottle. Before this trip I stumbled over something. A case of forty 17 ounce water bottles at Costco (after a recent price increase), is $3.29. This would be more than enough water for the week, and we could store the stockpile in the rental car trunk, taking out a set of bottles every couple of days day. $3 for a week's worth of water? We typically spent that much just for a gallon that wasn't too portable. What a deal! Plus having so many bottles would encourage us to bring a bottle down to the casino floor during the day, as staying hydrated is even more important in the desert air. We stopped the Costco near the M Resort, on the way to Southpoint. We definitely drank more water this trip. Maybe a new tradition.
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| Trunk only partially opened so not to cause undue attention to our ample stash of water. |
I don't usually report on detail of my many hours of VP play because I
personally think that reports containing experiences are much more interesting
than details of gains and losses and gains and losses. The play, in
time, is usually not noteworthy, but the experiences and sights around town
are. However, when there is something very unusual, I do include detail
in my report. One day, in particular was far from average. I
thought it would be fun to intersperse description of that day, in pieces, in
between the rest of the report. I'm posting this sub blog,
in color, so the text can more easily be
followed.
Some background first. When you play long hours, a great hand or two,
like Aces in Double Bonus, while making a big impact in a short day of play,
have much less impact on profitability as the hands mount in a long day.
You need several premium hands to even keep losses manageable. Casual
players don't realize this. That was how the first couple of days went.
SouthPoint
We played at SouthPoint to start the trip, and I pretty much exclusively
played 5 play video poker machines. For the second time in my
newer, lower denomination, multiplay career, I scored a mini royal
flush. Through about 80% of my couple of days of play there, I
was ahead, mainly due to the mini royal, but by the end of the stay, I was
down a bit, showing once again why I don't count multiplay royal flushes as
real career royal flushes. There are going to be (relatively)
many of them, and getting just one in a long day of play will still leave
the real possibility of a loss. Here, just like at the Rampart at the
end of my last trip,
getting one mini royal still led to a loss for the play at that casino.
This time we had two nights of dinners at Southpoint, and we added the
Silverado steak house to our itinerary, and next had a repeat (from the last
trip) of Don Vito's Italian restaurant the next night. The filet
mignon dinner at Silverado was my favorite dinner of the week.
The baked potato was as tasty as the reasonably priced 12oz
filet. Dinners were comped, of course.
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Salads tossed tableside at Silverado Steak House. |
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| SouthPoint restaurants are unique in their use of carts to bring out entrees. No waiters carrying trays with food here. Note the bins of butter, sour cream, and chives to serve with the potatoes. |
The Southpoint was crazy busy, and the lines at the hotel elevators averaged
about a dozen people waiting, or course many without masks. It was a
challenge that got old, trying to get into an elevator without unmasked
people, as more people continually joined the line. I have no
idea if these long elevator lines were normal for this hotel, as this was
our second stay there. It would seem odd that such a modern
hotel would be lacking the suitable amount of elevators. So
after all my praise of Southpoint in the last trip report, this was an issue
that, after two days of this, had us eager to move onto our next stay in our
itinerary.
For Sunday brunch, we decided to eat at the buffet even though it has been
referred to by someone as only "life sustaining". Still, we crazily
chose to eat there. I usually stick to breakfast foods for brunch, but
I had to also have some Mongolian grill made behind the counter for me, with
the veggies and sauces that I picked out. I first had this years ago
at the Rio buffet. Someday we'll have this for dinner there.
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| Mongolian grilled shrimp, chicken, and veggies with Mongolian and teriyaki sauce. |
We attempted to eat at the breakfast buffet Monday morning, and I should
have taken a picture, as the line was easily over an hour long, so we had to
change our plans. I tried to tell them all that the buffet was only
"life sustaining", but still they willingly subjecting themselves to eat
there. Some people are strange!
The cowboys were coming in for the Rodeo at Southpoint, many permanently
wearing their cowboy hats. Many of the younger ones we
encountered were exceedingly polite. Out in the parking lot, I
snapped one of my three most favorite pics of the trip.
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| Getchyer boots on, the rodeo is coming to town! |
A nice gesture becomes "work".
As I have said before, SouthPoint is old school Las Vegas, in a good way. At one point just before leaving there, I needed to speak to an employee there about a routine request. I had to stand and wait for about 5 minutes for the person to be available. Another employee saw this, and handed me a validated free drink coupon, good for 30 days, which I had no use for as we were leaving. I didn't want to reject this thoughtful gesture, so I took the coupon and thanked them.
I thought it would be easy and fun to find someone to give the coupon to, and put a smile on their face. My criteria was to find someone playing at a machine that was wearing a mask, not smoking, and whose appearance didn't scare me. I actually had to walk through many rows of slots until I found a woman who looked like a good candidate. She had no interest. Okay fine, I kept walking, and walking. I picked another woman, she too passed on the voucher. Yes, I made it clear that this wasn't a free drink in return for a sales pitch, etc, I was just regifting a free gift that I could not use. More time, and now a third woman thanked me for the gesture, but had no interest. After another 5 or 6 slot rows of walking, I found a man wearing a Veterans cap, and approached him. He was glad to accept it. It had taken me 10 minutes to give away a free drink voucher!
VP Excerpt 1:
This detailed report is from a very long day of Double Bonus where I
played approximately 8,000 hands in a day. If you are
not familiar with the Double Bonus pay scale, regular 4-of-a-kinds pay
250, while 2's, 3's and 4's pay 400, but four Aces pay 800.
It started modestly, and I was several times close to losing my initial
buy-in, but then, after about 45 minutes of play, I hit quad Aces,
upping my credits by 800. That started a mini drought, where
I was close to losing my buy in again, an hour and a half later. It was
as if the Aces never happened! Not really unusual in this
game.
In the next 1:15 of play, it was a typical double bonus fight, hitting a
four of a kind, only to see most of it disappear, until I hit the next,
again and again. Amazingly,
scoring 5 regular (250) quads, and 2's for 400 in 1:15 left just me
slightly in the black. That's right, 6 quads in 75 minutes, and yet it took the last one
of those quads to bring me, at my break time, only slightly in the black
for the day. That's not a typo, that's double bonus.
First time visit to Aliante
I chose Aliante as the Boyd property to stay this trip, as we have enough
downtown in our itinerary, and I was impressed at the pictures of the
property. The reason it is so nice is that Boyd didn't build
it! Station Casinos built Aliante, clearly in the mold of the classy
Red Rock casino, and then a couple of years later, sold it to Boyd.
The property is great, and the hotel is like a small private boutique hotel
with only 200 rooms, but they skimped on construction by making the rooms
very narrow. The shower was the best part of the room. The staff
at hotel are quick to greet you and wish you a great stay, they go out of
their way to do so. I've never experienced this at other Boyd
properties. The big negative is the location. It's far
away from everything! Very far! It's so far away that it
is near the NASCAR racetrack, and it takes almost a half hour, with no
traffic, to get there from downtown. Their pool was very nice,
but was closed for the year already, a disappointment.
Some pictures of the casino and hotel lobby follow. As you can tell,
after I showed them my credentials, security cleared everyone (except for
Kyle and Betty Boyd, who were playing a slot machine), from casino and hotel
lobby to accommodate my photography.
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| Casino, with the notoriously very stubborn Kyle and Betty Boyd (of Boyd Gaming), defiantly remaining. |
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| I thought the stone outside all the restroom entrances was very attractive and made them easy to spot around the casino. |
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| Hotel front desk |
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| View of lobby area right off the elevators. |
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| View towards the front entrance, right from the elevators. A small cozy boutique hotel, but with small hotel rooms. |
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| One of the lounge rooms in the middle of the casino, obviously, during happy hour. |
At Aliante, I did take a small shot at the Sequential Progressive. Yes, you are reading that progressive pay line correctly, that IS 84 cents at the end!
The highlight of dinner was when I got a tap on my shoulder, only to turn
around and see, you guessed it, Larry Folts from the rental car center,
who was eating at the next table! What a small world!
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| Center bar at Salted Lime with Tequila bottle chandelier. |
After a long breakfast break, which included a drive, I went back to
it. I'll take you through it, in more detail.
1:35
Good to see that after the break my "talents" have not left me , as I
scored a "special" four of a kind, in 4's for 400 credits.
1:44
Maybe a sequential run, as I score the other two 5's for 5555.
2:08
I'm getting a lot of these hold a pair, get a quad, nice surprises,
and this happened again with Ten's.
2:08
Five hands later, I make up for the prior 24 minute "drought" with a
quick additional four-of-a-kind, in 4's!
2:26 88 becomes 8888.
So, in an hour, I had 5 quads, two of them coming within 5 hands of each
other, and of the 5, 2 of that group of quads being the 400 coin
type. Now, I'm decently ahead.
And, in the last 2 hours and 15 minutes of play, I had 11 four of a
kinds in double bonus. Average for that amount of play
would be 3-4 quads.
How I left Palace Station after I missed on a 4 card royal flush hold for the 61st consecutive time! Yes, I apologized.
Binion's Change
While visiting Binion's, we found that the "take a picture with $1 million dollars" area/promotion, was gone. In its place was a slot tournament promo area. I believe you have to earn 100 points to qualify to play the promo.
A Major Lifetime Milestone!
A major milestone in my life was when I received this in the mail for
the first time! To quote Steve Martin from the Jerk, "I'm
somebody now"! There are almost 8 billion people on
Earth. Of those, how many get free play mailers from Jerry's
Nugget? I'll estimate 20,000, which may be high. If 20k,
that would mean I am in the 0.00025% of the people on Earth that
receive a Jerry's Nugget mailer! A very exclusive club
indeed! Jealousy of me will get you nowhere, people!
We stopped at Jerry's to celebrate this generous free play offer, and
purchased a Strawberry Ring for dessert, using comps, to have later.
I do like the Four Queens for many reasons, but I also like to laugh at how they handle things. Here is a picture from my last trip, of what they did when it appeared that someone had a run in with the vending machine, smashing the glass. Their initial solution was to just turn the machine so the glass faced the wall, and have the back and sides of the machine facing out, strapped in duct tape.
Well this trip they did one better, and just removed the machine totally, leaving the marks and holes in the wallpaper from it's prior position still visible. Keep in mind that these walls were refreshed just about 3 or so years ago, when they redid most of the rooms in the South Tower.
I added this to my collection of odd sign photos. I'd love to know the story of why this sign is needed. The vendor calling Four Queens to complain about receiving service calls for this bill counting machine (in Magnolias of all places) without a contract? Just leave it broken if it malfunctions?
These two are definitely worth the click to get the larger version.
New fake brick painted crosswalk freshly installed, complete with Superhero!
Golden Nugget Notes
GN Rush Tower showing some age
We first stayed in a the GN Rush tower just over a week after it opened, and it's been our preferred tower. But lately, it's showing signs of age.
Zorro Update
I introduced "Zorro" of FSE fame in my last report: Zorro's history from prior report.
Well again on this trip, we ran into the Mayor of Downtown, Zorro, in his
"office", which some of you might mistakenly refer to as a seat at a
Golden Nugget slot machine. We got an updated briefing from him
after he finished his calls. He was dressed low key for the
daytime, but had his evening pimp hat in a hat bag on the handle of his
rolling suitcase/secret agent bag. We wanted to watch him in the
evening out on the FSE, but it was so busy that there was no way we would be
able to find him in the crowds. Even Golden Nugget was doing a Circa,
and requiring IDs to be presented to security in order to enter the casino at
night!
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| Zorro, taking care of business in his "office", which some of you might mistakenly refer to as a seat at a Golden Nugget slot machine. He is in his low key daytime outfit, with his evening pimp hat in a hat bag on the luggage handle. |
The way the cookie crumbles
One of the goals of this trip was to recover from my extreme disappointment on
the last trip, of not being able to purchase a single Four Queens/Binions
cookie. I had my scout head over to Binion's Deli and found that
at least they had several chocolate chip cookies in stock. I used
Four Queens comp dollars and went across the street to make my purchase.
I suffered a new round of disappointment, when I learned that my two
favorite flavors of cookies, white chocolate macadamia nut, and peanut butter,
were no longer being made due to "lack of demand"! The regular
chocolate chip are pretty good, but they don't floor me like the no longer
made varieties! More disappointment! We scooped up
some chocolate chip, and skipped the oatmeal raisin. "You people"
(the rest of the world) have no taste if you don't realize those other
varieties are the best, and don't buy them, and now I am the one that has to
suffer for it? Life is just not fair!
VP Excerpt Part 3:
3:10 It took 44 minutes for my next quad, but this was my favorite hand
of the day, because with holding a Jack, I drew 2222 for 400! My
15th quad of the day.
I didn't want to get up, but I needed to take a quick restroom
break. I was in disbelief when I saw the machine I had been playing
on was now occupied when I returned!!! I instead reluctantly sat at another nearby machine and
hoped the magic wasn't confined to one machine.
3:19 This time, four 8's. Okay, maybe this other machine is going
to cooperate too?
3:41
Four 10's. Now, I'm really up for the day! But my gains, so
far, could easily disappear in 30 minutes at this game, just like the 800
for Aces did earlier.
3:46
What just happened? I held a single Ace, and now I had four Aces for
800! The second Aces DB quad of the day! By far, I'm now at
the high of the day.
4:02
Holding two 7's, I got the other two. My credits are now at another
new high. This is getting really good!
I should be taking a break, for several reasons, one of which would be to
check into the hotel, but with things going so well, I'm not going to get
up. I'm not superstitious, but my experience is, sometimes
these runs keep going, but if you take a half hour break and return, the
"magic", many times, is gone. I'm getting a bit eye weary, but the
quads are giving me energy to keep pushing on.
4:09
A whole seven minutes later, three 2's become four, for 400, another new
high for the day.
4:14
The 4's were jealous of the 2's, and two of those became four, for another
400. I'm now up half a royal flush for the day! Go, go, go,
go!
I'm really trying to soak this all in, as I know years later, I'll be
reminiscing about this session, yet even better is that right now, I get
to live it, and feel it! I don't want it to end.
Another first time hotel stay!
The amazing thing about this town is that we are now over 70 lifetime trips,
and despite that, on this trip we managed to stay in not one, but two hotels
for the first time ever on this trip, for brand new experiences. Both
were amazing properties, physically, but Rampart (JW Marriott) stood
out. The best way to summarize it is that to me, this was a true
resort, in my mind. Meaning it had spacious grounds, and felt
like it was a tropical vacation resort. One look at the pool really
shows this.
I was able to snag a hotel room there with canopy doors, which is normally
an upgrade. What this did for the ambience of the room on an
ideal 78 degree day, was amazing. Clean fresh air and bright sunshine
were streaming into the room. We had great views of the golf course
and mountains in the distance. How about a working ceiling fan in the
room? How many places like this are in the entire town?
Enough yakking, here's what I mean.
For at least the floor we were on, the balcony doors open to a cement wall
that is half way up. Not so bad really, and it served as a nice
shelf to place a coffee cup and enjoy the view
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The most impressive part of the room was the walk in closet (that's
not a complaint). |
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| How's this for a view from the room? Through the open doors. No glass, no screen, just fresh air and a view of the golf course and mountains in the distance! |
Not impressed enough? How about the grounds/pool area?
We like uncrowded venues, and so nothing is less relaxing to us than being
cramped at say the Golden Nugget pool, or the Mirage pool, where lounge
chair after lounge chair are pushed right up against each other, row after
row, around the pool. You end up being as close to a stranger than you
are to your companion. Contrast this with the Marriott. First
the pool size... Large! And just a single row of lounge chairs, spaced apart, around the entire pool, landscaping all
around. No loud Derek Stephens pool music blasting, just reasonable
volume music with a variety of genre's. A
wonderful peaceful relaxing time. We felt like we were somewhere
else, like we "escaped" from the hustle and crowds of Las Vegas. I was
able to unwind from long days of VP. This was probably the most
peaceful and relaxing two hours that I have spent on a trip, in years.
VP Excerpt Part 4:
4:20 (6 min since my last quad) Ten's have been my friends lately, and TTT becomes TTTT, and yes,
another new high.
4:37
Obviously, the machine is cooling off! ;-) 17 minutes for
the 5's to join the party, quad number 23!
4:43 Another quad of 5's, I can smell smoke coming from the machine
now!
4:47
The line "4 2's, 3's, 4's 400" (lots of punctuation!) lights
up on the pay scale as two 2's become four.
4:56
The quad nearly every ten minutes run continued, as I looked up and saw
9999 dealt to me on the screen! I'm now up close to 3/4ths of a royal flush. I'm half looking around me to see if the casino manager is going
to send a slot attendant to shut down my machine in suspicion of a
malfunction or fraud.
5:00
The Jack of spades joined the other three Jacks. I pause, staring at
the screen in disbelief.
This is certified insane now! Four of a kind number 28 of the
day.
5:17
I was just about to hit the call attendant button, to complain about going
over 15 minutes without a single quad, but then I got the fourth 8 for
quad #29.
I had a dinner reservation ahead soon, and still hadn't checked into my
room. I went about 15 minutes more without a quad, and I really
needed a break. I got a strong feeling that it was time to
check in, relax a bit, and head to dinner. I've been pretty much
playing the entire day, with only a two hour long breakfast break and a
short bathroom break.
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| Walkway from hotel to casino. |
D Day
The next day I played at the D, during a day where they offered me double my usual amount of free play. I'm guessing many others had a similar offer, because despite arriving early on a weekday, the VP machines at Vue Bar were more busy than I had ever seen. That wasn't the worst part. As I had seen in prior visits, the Derek Stephens casinos staff are likely trained to not mention the word "mask" to anyone. As such, every single person, and I mean every person, sitting at the bar, was maskless, despite most of them clearly not actively consuming a drink, or smoking. So we passed on sitting down and went to redeem and played our Southwest matchplays. When I returned to the Vue bar, there was a string of 5 empty seats in a row. About 2 minutes after I sat down, masked, in the middle of the 5 seats, another customer sat right next to me, not drinking, with no mask. I frustratingly retreated reluctantly to find a VP machine not at a bar, where I could play without a maskless customer right next to me.
I immediately started losing, and between this and having to leave the bar, I was quickly in a bad mood and wasn't enjoying my play. That started to change about 20 minutes later, when I hit 4 Aces in Bonus Poker for 400, to put me ahead, and change my mood a bit. I had a nice run, hitting quads whenever my credits started to take a hit, and slowly building a profit. Towards the end, I pulled four 4's for 200, and then another quad or two, to cash out up about the amount of the Aces quad, which offset my first day of losses. Playing about 4,000 hands of Bonus Poker in a day, without a royal flush, and coming out ahead is not unheard of, but relatively rare for me.
Dinner was our new usual at Andiamo's, excellent as usual. It is amazing that by 5:30pm, once again, almost all tables had already been seated, on a weekday!
Your typical outfit for breakfast at Panera on a 80 degree day.
Resorts World
We visited Resorts World for the first time. A nice property, as
expected, but the distance of the parking garage to the casino, alone,
would keep us from staying there. I can't imagine customers who are
not in good shape walking the 2-3 football fields of distance in the
exposed outdoors to get to the casino. Wind, heat, sun, etc. I'd
hate that walk on a 105 degree day!
The bar VP seats looked to be the most comfortable seats
anywhere!
VP Excerpt Part 5:
Dinner allowed for relaxation and a nice breath away from the machines, but
I had about another hour or so of play to hit my coin-in goals.
A couple of hours had passed since I stopped playing, and I sat down
at the same machine. I started out cold, and things just felt
different. Ten minutes without a quad and it felt like eternity.
Ten became twenty minutes, and my evening buy-in credits were
dwindling. After about a half hour, my buy-in was gone, without a
single quad or a single full house. While I am aware that going a half
hour without a quad is not too bad of a sub-session, it just felt like the
balloon had popped, and the magic was over!
I changed up and played the last half hour or so at Jacks or Better, and
held even for that session, which of course, is very good, although boring
in comparison to the prior hours of play. I had at least 2 four
of a kinds in that game, but I didn't remember to note them, so let's say I
had 31 quads in a day of play. I had reached my coin in
targets, and netted just under 3/4 of a royal flush in gains. To me,
this kind of session is far more fun, exciting, and maybe more rare, than
having the same win total in a day where after being down for the session,
on one hand hitting a royal flush, to net the same win of 3/4th of royal
flush.
To review, I had a period of from 4:02
to 5:17, 75 minutes, where I had 10
four-of-a-kinds! I've been on the other side of the coin a several times in double
bonus, where I've gone two hours without a single quad, which of course is
painful. I've had about three other lifetime sessions like this
where I had similar great runs, but I think this one had a slight edge,
mainly because I documented it so well, and because I think this session
had more risk (more hands) than the others.
A day with Picasso
As luck would have it, while planning our trip, I saw that Sotheby's
had teamed up with Bellagio to sell some of the Picasso art that formerly
adorned the Picasso restaurant at Bellagio, and there was a free exhibit
that overlapped the dates of our trip. We had eaten at Picasso
quite a few years ago, but this was a chance to see the art up close, and
even better, at no charge, since this was a 3 day viewing event in advance
of the auction. I expected it to be very crowded, but it really
wasn't, and there weren't masses of people pushing through, and getting in
the way.
We made about 3 passes through the 3 rooms, viewing the art. In all
cases but two, the art wasn't even under glass, and there were no ropes to
restrain people from getting too close. I was very surprised they
were so trusting of the public. It was a once in a lifetime
experience. On the way out, we heard a couple of the young women
heading in, giddy with excitement over getting to see this over $100
million art exhibit. The buzz going around the gallery was
that Jerry's Nugget was the favorite for the high bids on several of the
pieces up for sale, to then display the Picassos in
Jerry's Nugget Coffee Shop. But the results of the auction showed that Jerry's was outbid,
for all the pieces!
Return Trip - Confiscated Tiramisu!
My day of Double Bonus was an euphoric experience. I kept
expecting it to turn the other way, and instead, for the most part, it kept
going and going. Playing 8000 hands that day made it very difficult for
luck like this to last most of the day, without having a large swing downturn
at some point. It was stunning to experience, to the point of
disbelief. From a play standpoint, this day alone, along with no
other disaster days, made this a very memorable trip. That alone
assured me a week in the black, and a big sigh of relief, for a
change.
Rampart is a new favorite, and after 4 days of play there over 2 years, I've
finally made it on their comp room radar. It's now in "the
rotation".
And last but not least, we've made a new friend in
Larry Folts. We are hoping to each plan our next trip for the
same week in Oct 2022, to share some great times, again!
The End
