Day 3
Sunday December 17, 2000
Palace Station and a rough night at the tables
Got up early today. Started off by going on the Internet and sending some messages to my friends. Pretty uneventful other than that.
As afternoon got closer I headed out to Palace Station. I had a room reserved here. It's was complimentary for 2 nights. Even though I already had a room downtown I took them up on the offer.
I got there a little early to check-in so I went to the slot club to use a coupon that was good for 1500 Boarding Pass points for giving them my e-mail address. I also had a coupon good for 4X points on any Sunday in December.
After getting all this situated I went over to the FPDW machines and played for a while. I was getting some play for my money but then it started sucking in the 50's. About 2 hours into my play I hit the 4 deuces for 1000 coins. Of course the machine emptied and I had to wait for a fill. It was a fast fill. Only took about 10 minutes. I cashed out ahead by $100 and then went to check-in to my room.
I was given room 8024. It's a king room with a view of the strip. It's done in darker colors, browns and tans. The bathroom is quite large. It has a long counter with a coffee maker. On the adjacent wall there is another counter a little lower. There was also a stool under this counter. The toilet and shower were in a room next to this. It was not big but there is enough room to move around.
I was hungry now and I went to the self-comping kiosk by the slot booth. You get a 10% discount on point reductions when you use the machine. I got a comp to the Iron Horse Cafe. It cost 8,100 points and had a $25 limit on it.
I sat at the counter and ordered up. I started with an iced tea then ordered a cup of chicken noodle soup, an order of chicken fingers and the BBQ combo platter. The first thing to arrive was the soup. The waiter brought me a bowl, but no big deal about that. Next were the chicken fingers. There were 5 huge fingers. These would be a meal in themselves. Finally the platter came. There was enough food on this platter to feed a family. It had baked beans, half of a BBQ chicken, 5 BBQ ribs, and 5 slices of BBQ beef brisket. It also came with a huge chunk of corn bread. It was really good and there was no way I was able to eat all of it. I packed it up in a box to take with me. The waiter brought my check and I was still under my limit so suggested I get a slice of cake to go. I ordered a piece of chocolate cake. It looks really dark and rich. My total came to $24.94. You can't get much closer than that to max out a comp! Oh, by the way, I was only charged for a cup of soup even though he brought a bowl! I tipped the waiter and went up to my room.
Since I ate so much I was suddenly tired. Now I was glad I had this room. I figured I'd make use of it and took a nap for about an hour. It did the trick and I felt a lot better when I woke up. I gathered up my boxes of food and then headed back downtown to my other hotel.
The room offer I had included 2X points for all of my play. My first stop was the slot club where they entered the info to my account. I headed over to where the Lucky Draw 4 play machines were and saw they were gone. Damn, I liked playing those. I looked all over the place for them, but they were gone. I settled for a short pay deuces wild triple play machine. I was getting some play but this machine was streaky. After about an hour I was feeding in a 4th $50 bill. I just wasn't hitting the big hands on the deal like you need to do on triple play to get ahead. I finally got dealt 3 deuces and on the draw hit the 4th one on 2 lines. This brought me up over 2,000 credits. I played a little longer and cashed out with the 2,000 coins for a $500 hand pay. I also racked up 8 scratch cards for my natural 4 of a kinds. Only when I play deuces wild would I hit that many quads. I got four cards for $2, two for $3 and 2 for $5 for a total of $24.
Since I was doing pretty good I decided it was time to play some blackjack over at Binion’s. Things weren’t great over here. I was doing ok, staying about even until a new dealer came in and they changed the cards. Then I started getting killed. I was losing with 19 and 20 and pushing with 21. I moved to another table and was doing ok. I was up a little but then it changed and I lost at this table too. Now I'm having a losing day but I'm still up quite a bit so I go over to the Golden Nugget for some more blackjack. This was a big mistake. I ended up playing 14 hands. Of the 14 hands I lost 11, pushed 2 and won 1. I think this is the worst I've ever done and I've had some horrible runs on the blackjack tables. This session reminded me why I was going to stop playing blackjack as much.
Feeling like I should call it a night after 3 losing sessions I headed back over to Main Street Station. As I walked past Mermaids (formerly Sassy Sally's) there was one of the skanks out there trying to drum up business as people walked by. She was telling them "Come on inside, this is paradise." Well if Mermaids is paradise I don't ever want to be in paradise! I walked through the Las Vegas Club and crossed the street to the California and used the bridge back to Main Street Station. Between the time of day it was and the cold weather I thought that it would be better than walking out on the streets.
As far as there being a lot of bums and homeless people wandering around Fremont Street as has been reported on various message boards I have to say I only saw one, but he was keeping to himself and not bothering anyone.
When I got back to Main Street Station I was a little hungry so I dug into the left over BBQ I brought back from Palace Station. I had it sitting on top of the air conditioner so it was almost like having a refrigerator. This hit the spot and now we’re up to the point where I am typing this report. It's now time to call it a night and get some sleep.
Total win/loss for the day -$1100
Total comps for the day $ 157