Day 5 Tuesday July 13, 2004
Dining:
After my craps session I got a comp from the floorman to the buffet. I have never tried this buffet so thought this would be a good opportunity. I thought it was pretty good but nothing special. They had a number of different stations like Italian, Mexican, Chinese, American and Seafood. They had a decent selection. I’m not a big fan of buffets and this being the 3rd one already this trip pretty much reminds me of why I don’t do buffets that often. The main reasons being the foods get dried out under the French fry lights and the steam tables unless the food turns over fast. The desserts were pretty good and there was a good selection. Of course the canolis didn’t pass the test. The filling was weak and the shell was soggy. Normally this buffet is $8 and I’d say that’s a fair price. After lunch it was time for more video poker.
I had dinner with Yahtzee Mike at the Gold Rush Café at the Gold Strike. I know this may be hard to believe but we actually paid for a meal here. This was my first time playing here and Mike didn’t have enough comp dollars to cover the bill so we actually paid. Don’t get used to reading stuff like this though. I try to never pay for a meal unless I have to. I ordered the hot open turkey. The food was pretty good and very reasonably priced. My meal was only $5.29. We also had a coupon that was good for free dessert if you ordered 2 entrees. We went with the chocolate cake that we split and it was still more than enough. Next stop was more video poker.
Gaming:
I was up really early today and after getting ready headed up to the Cannery to get in on their 5X points and other promotions. I get a lot of bang for my buck out here at the Cannery. Since 100% machines are excluded from multi-point days 8/5 bonus was the game today. I decided since I was up and it was 5X points I’d take a shot with some triple play. The machine sucked up the first $100 in little to no time at all. The second $100 lasted quite a while. Even though the quads seemed far and few between I was able to keep going. The dealt winners also weren’t as frequent as they should have been either. Today’s card of the day was 8. On multi-line games it has to be on the bottom line to get the 100 coin bonus and I was lucky enough to hit it once on the bottom line. Eventually the lack of quads and dealt winners ground me down to nothing and I dropped $200 this session and put over 27,000 points on my card ($5400 coin-in).
After taking a short break I sat at a 5-play machine. I was having much of the same problems on this machine as I was on the triple play machine with a lack of quads and dealt winners. I finally did hit quad 4’s on one line and shortly after I was dealt 4 to a straight flush and connected on line 4 with an inside draw. This is the third day in a row I have hit a straight flush. I finished this session up $100 and put just 5000 points on my card ($1000 coin-in).
Next up was craps. They have a $3 game with 10X odds here. The table only had 3 players at it but one player had a lot of money in front of him so I figured the table was pretty hot. The table was choppy but I eventually got ahead on my roll and on a don’t pass bettor that was shooting from the dark side. This was very entertaining because when I shot I was repeating numbers back to back and collecting on my come bets and he was losing his don’t come bets. I also made 3 points this roll. When he shot from the dark side he was repeating number after number and made 2 passes wiping himself out! He walked away muttering the eff word and a few other choice things! I had 4 decent rolls and one where I sevened out right away. I made a good chunk of money on a shooter that rolled for about 20 minutes straight. I cashed out the session with about $200 in profit. Also got a comp for the lunch buffet after I colored up.
After lunch I returned to the triple play machines. The machine started out choppy and my $100 quickly became $13! Three quads in about 10 hands brought me back up and I played for about 3 more hours. This machine was a roller coaster and I wasn’t hitting any quads for long periods of time, then I’d hit 2-3 real close together. I thought it was kind of odd that I hadn’t been dealt a quad yet today with all of the hands I had played and then I was finally dealt a quad. Not just any quad but, quad aces for 1200 coins! After about 3 hours I quit with a $300 win and put another 36,000 points on my card ($7200 coin-in).
Altogether today I put 68,755 points on my card which is almost $14,000 coin-in.
One of the promotions the Cannery runs is you can redeem points on certain days for $10 gift cards at popular stores. Each gift card cost 4500 points and you’re limited to 4 gift cards from each store. They also offer a roll of quarters for 4000 points but there is only a limit of 2 for those. I really like this promotion because the gift cards are as good as cash back as far as I am concerned since I shop at these stores anyway and they are offered at a higher return rate than their cash back is. I got the following items by redeeming my points today: • 4 Home Depot • 4 Target • 4 Rite Aid • 1 Meadows Mall • 2 Rolls of Quarters This was a total of $150 worth of cash and gift cards on top of everything I won today at the Cannery. It doesn’t get much better than that!
After getting my gift cards I headed back here to the Orleans and I had a message on my voice mail from Yahtzee Mike saying he was coming to town tonight instead of tomorrow and he was staying at the Gold Strike. So after a quick break I headed out to Jean to meet up with him.
When I got to Jean and met up with Mike my first move was to get a player’s card. I have been here once before but other than a quick hit and run on craps I’ve never played here. Our first play was the FPDW. I actually had a hard time at first playing deuces after playing so much bonus poker so far this week. I hit a few straight flushes and a wild royal to finish ahead by $23.75. A killer hand for me was when I got dealt 4 aces though. It only pays 25 coins on this game! One strange thing that happened when I took the coins to the cage is the coin counter registered $43.80. I’m still wondering where the hell the nickel came from. Next stop was dinner.
After dinner we hit some 8/5 bonus slant tops. I didn’t do well here at all and dropped $40 here.
Needing a break from VP we took an entertainment break with some Monopoly slots. These things were tighter than a crab’s ass and we both lost $20 here. Neither of us even hit the bonus round before losing. After getting killed here I tried $5 in a 2-coin nickel Wild Cherry machine with very few hits.
Next up was blackjack. We sat at a $3 shoe game. I spread my bets from $5-20 depending on how I was doing. We were doing ok on the first shoe but the second shoe started out tough. Mike cashed out with a nice win and I stayed in. I was dealt 4 12’s in a row and busted out every one of them. Then the shoe got good and I won a bunch of hands. I won all but one of my double downs and cashed out ahead by $50. They were also running a promo that if you got back to back blackjacks you got a prize. It’s actually a nice metal thermos that comes in it’s own vinyl case and has the logo of both of the Jean casinos.
After cashing out at blackjack we watched craps for a while and saw a couple of pretty hot shooters and wished we had gotten into that game. Discouraged after this we went and played some more deuces wild. I couldn’t catch any big hands and dropped $20 here before calling it a night at about 1:30am and heading back to Las Vegas.
Total win/loss for the day $450
Total comps for the day $202