Day 8
December 20, 1999
Started off the day by dropping off some film at Walgreen’s then headed over to the Showboat. They sent me a letter good for $10 cash when I earned 1,000 points. You get one point per dollar played here so I found this to be an easy amount of points to earn especially with Triple Play machines. Even though I had up to 60 days to earn these points I played some video poker and racked up enough points for the bonus money in less than an hour. I did end up losing $40 so I guess they accomplished what they wanted. They gave me $10 and I gave them $40. There’s a deal. Well for them it was anyway. I decided to try some blackjack after this. Things started out well here but then everything went downhill. I got down to my last bet that was for $30. Of course I get a double down hand so I hit my pocket for another $30. I won this bet and put the cash away. About an hour later I cashed out at this table with $900 for a $700 win. I guess that letter with the bonus cash offer did work out well after all. If I hadn’t gotten it I wouldn’t have gone to the Showboat so the last laugh was on them! Not only did I have a nice win but I also got a comp to the Showboat coffee shop. I had a NY Strip steak and mozzarella sticks. The food was good but the service sucked which seemed to become the theme on this trip. After the waiter brought my meal I never saw him again. Usually this is no big deal for me but it just seems like every time I need something there is no one to be found.
After dinner I headed back to Walgreen’s to pick up the pictures and then back to the Flamingo. Since the Flamingo doesn’t have much of a quarter video poker selection I went over to the Barbary Coast again. Played the deuces wild machines again and hit 4 deuces in less than 30 minutes. Things stayed good after this for about the next 2 hours when I was dealt the 4 deuces (why doesn’t this ever happen on Triple Play?). I played a little longer and lost the original $100 I started with for a $400 win.
Went back over to the Flamingo and played some double deck blackjack. Things were very good here. I was hitting my doubles and splits and even my larger bets. This included a 3 way split on 8’s with 2 hands doubled at $60 a hand. The dealer broke to give me a nice $300 win on that hand. As I was winning I was slipping chips into my fanny pack so I wouldn’t have so much sitting in front of me. Things continued being good and I was up to betting $100 a hand. A new dealer came to the table and started paying me in black chips. I slipped these right into my pocket. Eventually I was out of green chips other than my original buy-in so I left the table and went up to the room to see how much I had tucked away. I estimated I had 10 black chips and about 200 in greens tucked away. I was surprised when I actually had 15 blacks and $375 in green. I went back down with the $375 to try to see if the luck was still there. It wasn’t and I lost it. It was still a great session though worth $1500.
It was getting late and I was hungry so I went over to the Imperial Palace for a late night special at the Teahouse. I had the steak and eggs. It was a 6oz. strip steak with 3 eggs, toast and hash browns for $3.95. It’s no Binion’s deal but it was still pretty good. On the way back to the Flamingo I stopped at O’Sheas and tried my luck on that Top Dollar machine that I won on yesterday again but ended up losing this time.
Total win/loss for the day $2500
Total comps for the day $89