Day 9
Thursday July 20, 2000
Got up early as I had been doing most of the week and headed down to the pool with a quick stop at the gift shop to pick up a copy of the Las Vegas Review Journal. What’s this on the cover? Oh NOOOOOooooooo. “Stations agrees to buy Fiesta”. This news is just terrible to me. I like the Fiesta and the great selection of video poker and decent slot club. All of this consolidation in town is nothing but bad for us players. I stayed at the pool for a while and then went back up to the room and rested for a while before getting ready and heading to the Sahara.
When I got to the Sahara I pulled up to the valet where I waited about 10 minutes for someone to come and get my car. I found this to be unacceptable, particularly when it’s 110 degrees outside. Once I got inside I found a bank of 50-play machines. They were all terribly short pay but for some reason I played anyway. This was a mistake as I lost $300 really fast.
I left the Sahara and walked over to the Stratosphere. This used to be one of my favorite places to stay and play but inconsistencies in hosts and comps caused me to move away from them. I played some double deck blackjack here. The table was pretty rough but then turned around and I was up $700. I finally walked away with a $500 win. Then I tried out my luck on one of the 100% payback Bonus Poker machines but lost. On the way out the door I went into my fanny pack to put my slot card away and felt something wet. EWE. What the hell could it be? Well it turned out to be chocolate. I grabbed a few Andes candies on my way out of Tusks last night and threw them in there. They must have melted on my walk from the Sahara to the Stratosphere so I spent the next 15 minutes in the bathroom wiping chocolate off of all of my slot cards. I finally got out of there and went back over to the Sahara. I tried out the Lucky Draw machines with no luck losing $80.
Feeling hungry I went to the slot club to get a comp to the Caravan room, the coffee shop at the Sahara. There was a jackpot at the bank of blazing 7’s machines across from the desk and she told me that was the 3rd one since she had gotten there that day. The only problem was they were all won with short coin so the progressives weren’t won. I’ll never understand why people play progressives with short coin.
I had a $12 comp to the coffee shop and I already knew I was going to have the steak and shrimp special that was $10.95. This isn’t really a great price for this dinner though. It’s a small strip steak and 3 breaded deep fried shrimp. The service really sucked here today. I was just sitting there waiting for someone to come take my order and finally the hostess came and got my drink order. I ordered a lemon lime soda and the trick worked again. No charge for it again. Serves them right for providing shitty service. The meal was very good and hit the spot.
After lunch I went back over to the New Frontier and played some of the full-pay progressive Deuces Wild progressives. I couldn’t seem to hit anything but I did finally hit the 4 deuces and cashed out with a $150 win. When I got to the booth my total came to $1.25 less than what I should have gotten and I told the guy in there it was wrong. He paid me the difference and had an attendant come over that wanted to look at the machine I was playing. I pointed it out and she opened it up but found nothing wrong with it.
I went upstairs for a while and rested before heading down to the Silverton to meet my friend Anne and her mother. I got there early and went to the slot club. They recently changed they’re slot club around eliminating cash back. I had a few dollars of cash back that I was still allowed to collect or I was allowed to convert my cash points into comp points at almost twice the rate. I took the comp points not realizing I already had about $300 worth of comps here. I earned those last December when they were offering 12X comps points for Christmas. Comp points here are earned 1 point for every dollar played and are redeemed at 400 points are $1 in comps. After getting my points all worked out I played some 50-play video poker. I lost $100 here and then tried some $1 video poker. I lost here too. I even tried some quarter single line video poker and lost here too. I was already down $200 before my friends even got here. I eventually found them at a Blackjack table that had one of those continuous shuffle machines. I don’t like the idea of those things and refused to sit down. I also recommended they stop playing too. All of the other tables were pretty full so we all decided to drive out to Sunset Station instead.
When we got there I used my coupon from the Las Vegas Advisor that was good for 2 points for every mile I traveled to get there. Since I live in NY I got 4,800 points and they would be credited with-in 72 hours.
After all that was done Terry played some slots and me and Anne went to eat at the Sunset Café on a full comp. I ordered chicken fingers as my appetizer and the prime rib. It also came with soup and rolls. There was a lot of food here. I always get a good meal when I come here. I topped it all off with a hot fudge sundae for dessert. Something always makes me order way more that I usually eat when I have a full comp just so I can get the maximum value out of it.
After dinner I played a little video poker with no luck and then some Blackjack. Things were up and down here but ended up losing $500. I was actually losing with 20’s and pushing with 21’s and blackjacks. We all left Sunset Station at about 2am. I still wanted to play more so I went downtown and tried out Binion’s.
I got killed at 2 tables here in a short amount of time so I went over to the Golden Nugget to try that out. More of the same crap was happening here. I finally decided to give up for the night and accept my first loss of the trip. I got back to the New Frontier at about 5am. As I was walking up to the door there was this blond girl dressed in a short black mini skirt standing by the door with a cocktail. My first thought was she was a hooker. As I walked by she said hello and I turned and said hi just to be nice. (No, I wasn’t interested) After that she said hey don’t worry I’m not a working girl. I started laughing and she said, “well lots of people think it”. I told her I had no problem if she was as I kept walking. I finally got up to bed at about 5:30am.
Total win/loss for the day -$2200
Total comps for the day $109