Day 4
Saturday July 15, 2000
Up early again today at around 9am and start off my day by heading down to the pool with a quick stop at the gift shop to get a copy of the Review Journal. One of the headlines was about the Venetian and the Bellagio are both negotiating to get some art in their properties. There was also a crash landing of a small plane. It actually landed right on Flamingo Road a few blocks from the strip.
After the pool I got myself ready and then went down to the casino to play some video poker. Today is Saturday and The Reserve offers quadruple points on the weekends. This makes their cash back .4% or comps .8%. This is a great deal. I started off with the nickel 50-play machines and Deuces Wild. I lost $200 pretty quickly so I switched to Bonus Poker. Things were better here and one of the highlights of this session was when I held a single jack and hit a royal flush on line 21. A few minutes later I held ace-jack and hit royals on lines 27 & 35. I was doing well here and as if 3 royals weren’t enough I then got dealt a flush with 4 to a royal. I of course dumped the odd card and pulled royals on lines 40 & 48. I hit 5 royal flushes in about a half an hour. That would be all though. At least for the next hour and a half when I hit another one on line 21. That line 21 seems like a good line. That’s 2 on it today! Then on the very next hand I hit yet another royal flush on line 12. Other highlights of this session were hitting 5 straight flushes and hitting quad aces 27 times. After almost 5 hours of play I cashed out $1701 for a $1301 win. I ran over $21,000 through the machine in that time and racked up over 80,000 points on my slot card. That’s good for $80 cash back or $160 in comps.
It was now going on 6pm and hunger was really setting in since I hadn’t eaten anything since last night at the coffee shop. I got a $20 comp for Tusks tonight for 10,000 points, which on a 4X points day is only $2,500 coin-in. I ordered the 10oz Filet mignon again. The food was great again tonight and the only real difference I saw was they were serving water out of pitchers instead of the bottled water. Either way, it doesn’t matter to me.
After dinner I headed down to the strip with a quick stop at Wal-Mart on Tropicana to pick up a few items then it was on to Bally’s. I stayed here on my last trip and I really liked the place. Tonight’s main reason for stopping here was to use their valet as I think it’s one of the better valets in town. The second task was to run a $20 bill through a quarter Top Dollar slot machine for my friend T. The arrangement was play it until it was gone or until it became $40. Well as luck would have it I hit a few bonus rounds and ended up turning T’s $20 into $45.25 for a $25.25 win. T will be happy.
After cashing in my coins the next stop was the free pull for $1,000,000. You get one free pull per day with your slot card. As always on these free pull games, I lost!
It was hot out today but I decided to take a walk down the strip. This turned out to be a mistake since the pirate battle just finished up and the strip was a zoo. I decided a strip walk could wait and I headed back to the Barbary Coast where I would be meeting Gary from VG Enterprises and his wife CC to watch the band Madhouse.
It was still early so I played some of the quarter full-pay Deuces Wild machines. I lost $100 really quick. Since I was doing really well so far this trip I decided to try the $1 progressive Deuces Wild machines that are next to the quarters. These machines are short pay on the Wild Royal and the 5-of-a-kind but the important 4-of-a-kind pay out is 25 coins. The royal flush was over $4700. I lost $100 here but did get quite a bit of play. I decided to try one more $100 though. This worked out well because just a few hands after I popped this $100 in I hit the 4 deuces for a $1,000 pay off! I played a little bit more and cashed out when my credit meter got down to $100. This gave me an $800 win for this session at the Barbary. It was still a little early to meet everyone so I tried some 5-cent bowling video slot machine. I lost 20 and never did get to play the bonus round. Then I moved over to a 5-cent Spin Poker machine. I got quite a bit of play here and cashed out ahead by $1. Now that’s no big win like I’ve been having but hey, a dollar is a dollar!
It was now time to meet up with everyone. Madhouse was already playing in the lounge so we all walked over and got a table up front. Rosco and Frank the webmaster also came to see the show. Madhouse is a fun band that plays music from the 60’s to the present and adds a little bit of comedy to the act too. After their set Crazy Ray came down and sat with us. Ray is a nice guy and is a lot of fun. Lee, the female singer of the group also came and sat in with us during part of their break. If they’re playing when you are in town go check them out for a while.
One of the highlights of the show was this drunk guy that was sitting up front. Every few minutes he would stand up and walk up to the stage, kneel down and start playing air harmonica. Ray worked him into the show and it was really funny. He even named him “Cooter”. After the next set the guy was sitting at the bar and security escorted him out of the casino. Madhouse plays until around 4am but I left the show at around 2 and headed back up to the Reserve and went to bed around 3.
Total win/loss for the day $2100
Total comps for the day $79