Day 5
Monday December 18, 2006

I was up pretty early today, especially for me at 8am. Once I got ready and out the door it was nearly 10am. My main plan today was to go to South Point to play for a while and earn some gas cards for my play before having to come back up here to GVR to play in my video poker tournament session.

When I got to South Point my first order of business was to go get a new slot card since the broke off from the Coasts card. They told me that all points earned at South Coast prior to the change would transfer over within 24 hours and that nothing was going to be taken off of my Coasts card. This was a huge deal for me since I had only played at South Coast twice and both were on 2X days. This now turned out to be worth 4X because those points are now on 2 different cards for 2 different companies. It didn’t take 24 hours for my points to transfer over. It too about 2 minutes and I had just under 20,000 points to start with. That’s $60 worth of cash or comps or in the case of the gas card promo they are running $120. Not a bad start considering I still have that $60 on my Coasts card.

Add in the fact that today is 2X points (although not really advertised) and that gas cards are being sold at ½ price it’s almost like today is a 4X points day, provided you redeem for gas.

I started off with a five play 8/5 bonus machine. This machine was just killing me. Few dealt winners and not much else to keep alive. I did manage to hit aces to bring me back to life. Since they were on the base line I also redeemed a free buffet for any quad coupon from the ACG. I hit aces again a few minutes later but eventually got hammered again. I quit this short session up just $1 after hitting aces twice.

I moved to another bank of machines and played the same game again. This machine was great. I got lots of dealt winners and a fair share of quads. My meter kept growing and soon I was up over $500. Next thing I knew I was up over $600. I was up almost $700 eventually but hit a cold streak and cashed out with a $400 win. I thought after that swing it was time for a break.

My break started of with playing some Deal or No Deal penny slots. I hit 2 bonus rounds but that was all. I couldn’t hit much during the regular game though. I quit ahead by $5 here.

When I was done playing slots, I hit the Garden Buffet and used my free dinner buffet voucher for lunch. This buffet is pretty good with a bunch of different stations. I’d rank the food here slightly ahead of the Suncoast buffet the other night and way ahead of the Fiesta Rancho buffet. Everything I had was pretty good with exception of the blueberry cheesecake. That seemed to have been sitting around a little too long and the blueberry topping was like rubber.

After a lunch that was way too big I tried the 5 plays again. I sat down at the machine from hell. This machine swallowed 2 bills in under 15 minutes and the best hand I got dealt was a pair of jacks. I switched machines and dropped another hundred in 15 more minutes. The dealt hands were a little better here but there weren’t any other hands hitting. I tried one more machine and this one was much better. I got about 45 minutes of play and had the meter between 1 & 2 hundred. I was up by $100 but went through another cold spell and finished the session even.

I had to get going back to GVR so I went to the slot club to cash in my points for gas cards. While there Rich showed up. When I got to the booth the lady there told me I could only have 1 card because they were low on them and they’d be getting more in on Friday and I could get the rest then. I wasn’t too happy about this but there isn’t much I could do. I hope they do get the cards because not being a local I could really end up getting screwed if they don’t have them by the time I go home next week.

When I got back up to GVR I registered for my tournament session. I drew machine number 7. I also found out the 3 people hit royals this morning. This was good to know because I can play super aggressive for royals and aces with kickers. In this session we played DDB and got 15 minutes or 1000 credits. I used the strategy of going only for royals and quads. I didn’t hit anything and finished my session with only 520 points. I believe I was low for my session time. Tomorrow’s session will require at the very least, a royal and some quads to rank.

After my session I decided to take a break from gambling and went down to the Pinball Hall of Fame for some inexpensive entertainment. I hung out here for a few hours and had a good time as I usually do.

I got back up to GVR to meet up with Rich and Dawn and we went to Fiesta Henderson for dinner. We were all in the mood for Chinese food and I went with my standard Feel Good Soup here. It was really good tonight. The chicken had good flavor and the broth was rich. Sometimes this stuff is hit and miss so I was glad it was good tonight.

After dinner we came back to GVR and hung out at the drop bar for the next 4 hours. I took my shot with some $1 8/5 bonus and this shot paid off. I hit aces twice and a bunch of other quads. I had the meter way up and was actually ahead $1200. I kept playing with a loss limit in mind and after running over 13k through the machine cashed out with a $700 win for the session. It’s not the $1200 I was up but it’s still a nice win for taking a shot at the dollar level.

At about 2am I quit for the night and headed to bed.

Total win/loss for the day $800
Total comps for the day $174